Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric fails to hide away its close links with Tel Aviv

Islam Mohamed

Iran uses the Palestinian issue to achieve political gains. Sometimes it takes sides with Israel when this serves its own interests. However, Iran’s media mouthpieces keep parroting anti-Israel rhetoric.

On August 15, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani described in a televised speech the latest peace deal between the United Arab Emirates and Israel as a “gross mistake”.

He expressed hopes that Abu Dhabi would rethink the deal.

Iran always talks about the liberation of Palestinian territories and Jerusalem from Israeli occupation. Nevertheless, it always overlooks the presence of a large Iranian community in Israel.

The Iranian regime enlisted help from Israel in supplying the Iranian army with weapons. This was revealed and went down as the “Iran-Contra affair”. The administration of U.S. president Reagan secretly facilitated the sale of arms to the Khomeini government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. The administration hoped to use the proceeds of the arms sale to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Under the Boland Amendment, further funding of the Contras by the U.S. government had been prohibited by Congress.

Reagan administration justified the arms shipments by saying that they were part of an operation to free seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by Hezbollah, a paramilitary group with Iranian ties connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The plan was for Israel to ship weapons to Iran, for the United States to resupply Israel, and for Israel to pay the United States. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the hostages.

The first arms sales authorized to Iran were in 1981, prior to the American hostages having been taken in Lebanon.

The affair was investigated by the U.S. Congress and by the three-person, Reagan-appointed Tower Commission. Neither investigation found evidence that President Reagan himself knew of the extent of the multiple programs. In the end, 14 administration officials were indicted, including then-Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger. Eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted were all pardoned in the final days of the presidency of George H. W. Bush, who had been vice-president at the time of the affair.

Relations between Iran and Israel did not stop there. Iran used to buy arms confiscated by Israel from the Palestinian resistance and pay for it with money and oil.

The monthly British magazine, Middle East, referred in November 1982 to ongoing negotiations between Iran and Israel for supplying Iran with arms taken away from the Palestinian resistance in return for cheap Iranian oil shipments.