Evidence that the Israelis sold Iran nuclear-capable missiles

How the Israelis sold 

nuclear-capable missiles to 

Iran in the 1970's 

DOCUMENTS DETAIL ISRAELI MISSILE DEAL WITH THE SHAH

NY Times,

1 April, 1986

Before the fall of the Shah in 1979, Israel was involved in a multibillion-dollar project to modify advanced, surface-to-surface missiles for sale to Iran, according to documents said to have been left in Teheran by Israeli diplomats.

The documents reveal that the Israelis told the Iranians that the missiles could be fitted with nuclear warheads, although this possibility was not pursued. The two sides agreed that if Iran wanted a nuclear ability, this would pose a problem with the Americans.

The Israelis left shortly before the 1979 revolution. The Israeli papers, in English, were published in paperback by the Iranians who seized the American Embassy in November 1979 and who have published more than 50 volumes of secret documents found there.

The Israeli-Iranian project, code-named ''Flower,'' was one of six oil-for-arms contracts signed in April 1977 in Teheran by Shah Mohammed Riza Pahlevi and Shimon Peres, then the Israeli Defense Minister. Two Nations Had Trade Missions

At the time, Iran and Israel did not have diplomatic relations, but they had trade missions. In addition, Iran was the only Middle Eastern country that recognized Israel's right to exist.

The two countries, according to transcripts of conversations in the documents, intended to keep the proposed missile improvement secret from the United States.

Although American officials were aware that Israeli and Iranian military leaders had exchanged secret visits, they did not know the nature of the discussion, according to interviews with former officials of the State Department, the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council staff.

The possession of surface-to-surface missiles was part of the Shah's plan to turn Iran into the most formidable military power in the Middle East. For the Israelis, the deal offered a guaranteed oil supply as well as financing for advanced military research. Work Halts After Revolution

According to the documents, a missile was test-fired in Israel in the presence of an Iranian general. The aim of the project was to extend the range of an Israeli missile developed in the early 1970's and replace American-supplied parts so that Israel could legally export it without American approval.

Israel was still perfecting the missile when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power in February 1979 and halted cooperation with Israel.

Two Iranian officials involved, Gen. Hassan Toufanian, the arms procurer, and Adm. Kamal Habibollahi, the navy commander, said in interviews that the conversations recorded in the documents were genuine. The two now live in the United States.

In a third interview, Ezer Weizman, who took over as Israeli Defense Minister in May 1977 and who is now a member of the Cabinet under Prime Minister Peres, did not deny that the documents were authentic. Weizman Confirms Contacts

''Obviously we had relations with Iran and I knew General Toufanian personally,'' he said from Jerusalem in a telephone interview. ''I had many conversations with him both in Tel Aviv and in Teheran. But I don't think it is appropriate that I, as former Minister of Defense and as a Minister in the Israeli Cabinet, should comment on affairs of state backdated to 1977.''

Other Israeli officials called the papers a forgery.

''These rumors and falsified documents are usually spread by the present regime in Teheran with the view to discredit the previous regime,'' Avi Pazner, a spokesman for Israel's Foreign Ministry, said.

A spokesman for Mr. Peres, Uri Savir, said, ''I have nothing to add to Mr. Pazner's statement.''

The Flower project, according to the documents, involved the production of missiles with warheads weighing 750 kilograms, or 1,650 pounds, and with a range of up to 300 miles. They were to be shipped through a Swiss company to central Iran for assembly and testing. Books Available in Libraries

The books with the documents are on sale in Teheran. They are available in the libraries of Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Columbia University and in the Library of Congress. The volume on the missile project, published three years ago, was made available to The New York Times through the Iranian Library of Encino, Calif.

Richard Helms, former director of the C.I.A. and a former ambassador to Iran who is now a consultant on the Middle East, said:

''I am hardly surprised that these documents have not come to light until now. The books attracted a great deal of attention when the first volumes appeared, but ever since the hostage crisis, interest in Iran has been drastically reduced. Even though new volumes still appear with some regularity, they tend to be regarded in intelligence circles as a kind of ancient history.'' A 1977 Visit to Israel

Some of the papers date from July 1977, two months after Israel's Labor Government fell and Menachem Begin was elected as Prime Minister. It was then that the Shah, concerned about the viability of the military deals he had signed with Mr. Peres, dispatched General Toufanian to Israel.

General Weizman tried to convince General Toufanian of Iran's need for an advanced missile, according to a conversation recorded in the documents.

''You must have a ground-to-ground missile,'' General Weizman said. ''A country like yours with F-14's, with so many F-4's, with the problems surrounding you, with a good missile force, a clever and wise one.''

Then, perhaps as a bargaining tactic, he almost called off the missile project, telling the Iranian that ''the 'Flower' is not a top priority for us.''

General Toufanian hinted that such a project might cost more than Iran could afford.

''No country has enough money for defense, no country whatsoever,'' he said. ''Neither Iran nor the U.S.'' 'It Was Beautiful'

Israel's development of the missile was so far along that General Toufanian was able to witness the firing of a missile during his visit.

''It was beautiful, beautiful, a fully developed missile,'' he recalled in the interview.

He added that there were technical problems that would have to be overcome before Israel could deliver it. Among its components were American-made inertial navigation equipment and a guidance system that Israel was forbidden to make available to other governments.

There was also the more serious political problem of how the United States would react when it learned that its two allies were secretly working on a missile with a nuclear capability.

In the documents, General Weizman said the missile could carry a nuclear warhead.

''All missiles can carry an atomic head, all missiles can carry a conventional head,'' he said.

A summary of a conversation on the same day between General Toufanian and Moshe Dayan, then the Israeli Foreign Minister, said:

''General Dayan raised the problem of the Americans' sensitivity to the introduction of the kind of missiles envisaged in the joint project. He added that the ground-to-ground missile that is part of the joint project can be regarded also as a missile with a nuclear head, because with a head of 750 kg., it can be a double-purpose one. Question of Nuclear Ability

General Dayan is described as saying that ''at some stage, the problem will have to be raised with the Americans'' and that he would discuss it with the Shah during their next meeting.

Although the Israelis never explicitly said that they had a nuclear ability or that they were willing to turn over such a capability to Iran, it was implied in the discussions, General Toufanian said.

''When you read these pages, there is no doubt about it,'' he said in the interview. He said Iran was not interested in a nuclear weapon at that time, but ''tat did not mean we would not be interested in another decade.''

Iran had signed the 1968 treaty barring the spread of nuclear weapons, but Israel had not. Israeli leaders have never acknowledged that they have nuclear weapons, but C.I.A. documents and American intelligence officials have concluded that Israel produced nuclear weapons as early as 1974.

American officials said they were aware that Israel was developing a missile that could carry a nuclear warhead. They also knew that Iran was sending oil to Israel. What they did not know was that Iran was involved in Israel's weapons development. 'I Was Surprised'

Gary Sick, Iran specialist on the National Security Council staff under President Jimmy Carter, said:

''I was surprised by the documents, surprised to learn that two countries closely allied with the United States were conducting joint military operations without talking to us about them.''

Most surprising was the joint missile project, the former officials said.

Harold Saunders, former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, said:

''Israel built a lot of things for the Iranians that we did not know about. But it surprises me that the Israelis would have brought the Iranians into the development of a missile that may have been part of their nuclear program. If that is the case, I am surprised we did not know about it.'' A Down Payment in Oil

General Toufanian said in the interview that Iran made a down payment for the missile in 1978 by shipping $260 million worth of oil from Kharg Island.

A team of Iranian experts began work on the site of the missile assembly plant near Sirjan, in central Iran, according to General Toufanian. A testing range was to be located near Rafsanjan, from where the missile could be fired 300 miles north into the desert and south into the Gulf of Oman.

Operation Flower was only one of several joint Israeli-Iranian military projects, according to the documents.

The summary of a conversation in July 1978 in Teheran between Admiral Habibollahi and the Israeli navy commander, Adm. Michael Barkai, outlined other possibilities. The document lists items that Israel had ready to sell, from advanced radar systems to systems to convert planes for maritime use, and mentions the possibility of ''enhancing the 'Flower' project'' so that the missiles could be launched from submarines.

''My interest always was to have a submarine force,'' Admiral Habibollahi, who now lives in the Washington area, said in an interview. ''And we were considering tactical, nonnuclear missiles for our submarines.''

A version of this article appears in print on April 1, 1986, on Page A00017 of the National edition with the headline: DOCUMENTS DETAIL ISRAELI MISSILE DEAL WITH THE SHAH. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

https://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/01/world/documents-detail-israeli-missile-deal-with-the-shah.html

Israeli Arms Sales to Iran

WMEA,

November, 1986

In September, when the Israeli government radio accused Iranian troops of training Lebanese Shiite guerrillas for attacks on the Israeli-backed South Lebanon Army, and said that Iranians themselves might also have been among those who attacked Israeli positions in Lebanon, the US media reported those charges in great detail. None found the time or space, however, to note how ironic it was for Israel to complain about Iranian military activities.

Iran might have been hard put to continue its costly six-year-old war with Iraq—not to mention simultaneously stirring up followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Lebanon—if Israel had not been willing to sell the Khomeini government great quantities of the weapons Iran desperately needed to keep its army in the field. That is only one of the anomalies of Israel's booming arms trade. US law and US policy also come in for some stretching and twisting.

Over the course of the Gulf war, Iran's quest for weapons has become legendary, with many countries and hordes of private arms dealers eager to conclude arms deals and reap the premium commissions Iran offers. Israel, with standing access to the same models of US-made arms upon which the Shah based Iran's arsenal, and with its desire to build up an indigenous arms industry, has led the pack. The London Observer estimated that Israel's arms sales to Iran total $500 million annually.

Before 1979, when Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi held power, Iran was the world's biggest buyer of Israeli arms. The Islamic fundamentalist government which succeeded the Shah militantly damned Zionism up and down and hung a prominent Iranian Jew for "spying for Israel." In 1980, however, when the Iraq-Iran war began, Iranian representatives met in Paris with Israel's deputy defense minister and worked out a "Jews for arms" deal. Iran permitted Jews to emigrate and Israel sold Iran ammunition and spare parts for Chieftain tanks and US-made F-4 Phantom aircraft. Channeled through a private Israeli arms dealer, this particular agreement appropriately ended in 1984, when Iran was slow in paying its bills.

Although secrecy is the first principle in the netherworld of arms trading, details of several subsequent major Israeli arms sales to Iran have come to light. In 1981, Ya'acov Nimrodi, an intimate of leaders across the Israeli political spectrum, sold the Iranian defense ministry $135,842,000 worth of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, 155 mm. mortars, ammunition, and other weapons through his Tel Aviv-based company, International Desalination Equipment, Ltd. From 1955 to 1979 Nimrodi had been Israel's military attache in Tehran.

On July 24, 1984, Radio Luxembourg reported that Nimrodi had met in Zurich with the deputy defense minister and the top intelligence officer of Iran and with Rif'at al-Assad, the brother of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Swiss government sources said that the meeting resulted in a deal to ship 40 truckloads of weapons a day from Israel to Iran, via Syria and Turkey.

On September 15, 1985, a DC-8 cargo plane returning from Iran and supposedly bound for Malaga, Spain, made an emergency landing in Tel Aviv. Investigation revealed that the plane— recently acquired from an obscure Miami firm by a shadowy Brussels-based "Nigerian" company—had been flying Hawk missiles from the US to Iran via Israel. A Boeing 707 registered to the company had been carrying loads of 1,250 TOW missiles from Israel to Iran via Malaga.

At about the same time the London Observer reported that a ship carrying 25,000 tons of Israeli material was making a rush delivery, sailing directly to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas rather than first going to Zaire where the Iranian buyers would inspect the cargo.

In May, 1986, West German authorities foiled an $81 million ammunition deal and uncovered a tank deal in the process. Charged in the case were an Israeli and a former Israeli citizen. The West German weekly Stern said a telex from the state-owned Israeli Military Industries dated April 1 indicated official Israeli involvement.

In June of this year a Swedish businessman was reported to have acted as intermediary for Israeli sales of explosives to Iran. The shipments went from Israel to Iran via Argentina. In September, 1986, United Press International reported that the Danish Sailor's Union had logs and records to prove that since May a Danish freighter had taken four 900-ton shipments from the Israeli port of Eilat to Bandar Abbas in Iran. The union was certain the arms were US-made.

Re-selling without permission arms acquired from the US and the sale of US weapons to Iran are both prohibited by US law. In separate incidents involving sales negotiated within the US, federal authorities have arrested two Israeli military reservists and a Yugoslav-American, Paul Cutter. Cutter, who has connections to Israeli Minister of Trade and Industry Ariel Sharon, and who also told co-workers he was authorized to sell arms Israel captured in Lebanon in 1982, has been convicted and jailed. The Israeli government disassociated itself from these men.

Now, however, a federal "sting" operation has cracked the biggest arms deal yet. US Customs Service agents drew retired Israeli army general Avraham Bar-Am and 12 co-conspirators (three of them Israelis) into a carefully-laid trap last April, Tapes made by the Customs Service reveal Israeli government involvement in a $2.6 billion conspiracy to sell US-made arms to Iran through third countries.

On recordings made available to the Chicago Tribune, Samuel Evans, a London-based American lawyer who coordinated two separate conspiracies to offer sophisticated aircraft, missiles, and ordnance to Iran, is heard to say that he would be discussing the deal with Israeli Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin and that the authority for the transaction went "right through to (Prime Minister) Peres."

The case is particularly serious because federal authorities presented evidence in their indictment that the deal included phony re-export certificates attesting that Israel was re-selling surplus arms to Turkey, which is legal, rather than to Iran, which is not.

General Bar-Am claimed from his jail cell that he had an Israeli government license to sell arms. Denying any involvement, Israeli officials insisted that the license was only to prospect for sales, one of a thousand distributed to former military officers. The Israelis have worked hard to bolster this contention. In late September Defense Minister Rabin called a press conference to say the permit process would be changed to avoid the appearance of government approval. But an earlier statement by Ya'acov Nimrodi that such sales are government-authorized and that permits come from a special department in the Israeli Defense Ministry and are difficult to get contradicts Rabin—as have many reports over the years that it is common Israeli practice to sell arms through fronts and agents.

The US government has avoided dealing head-on in public with the Israeli government over this issue. When the Bermuda conspirators were arrested it was reported that the Israeli ambassador was called in for a stern warning. It is unlikely, however, that prosecutors will focus on the Israeli government's role when the Bermuda conspirators stand trial in New York this November.

Over the last six years Washington has several times expressed its disapproval of arms sales to Iran. During the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, Israel was specifically asked to stop deliveries while Iran was holding US hostages and it is possible that Israel complied. At an October I luncheon he hosted, Secretary of State George Shultz assured diplomats from the Arab states of the Gulf that Israel had told US officials it had stopped selling arms to Iran in 1983. Shultz, in fact, accused the Soviet Union of not clamping down on sales by its allies to Iran!

During the Reagan administration US policy has swung through various levels of support for Iraq. Israel's often-stated policy on the Gulf war is to keep it going as long as possible because the dreadful carnage ties up the combatants and prevents either from attacking Israel.

In 1983, then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon blurted out duringa US speaking engagement that Israel sold arms to Iran because it regarded Iraq as the greater enemy, and that the sales had been thoroughly discussed with US officials. US officials acknowledged such discussions but denied that Israel had US permission."

Last spring what turned out to be an Israeli disinformation campaign propounded the notion that the US had asked Israel to sell arms to Iran. The tapes in the Bar-Am case are said to suggest that the US was considering shifting its support to Iran while the conspiracy-sting was being hatched.

This kind of last-ditch Israeli government defense, probably supported by pro-Israel political obscurantists in Washington, has almost certainly been used before. When it was revealed that Israel was shipping arms to the Soviet-supported government of Ethiopia to fight Western-assisted resistance movements, and arms to the Argentine junta during the Malvinas-Falklands war, Israeli disinformationists in Washington sought to argue that Israeli actions which directly contravened stated US government objectives were really part of a "double game" somehow coordinated with Washington. This time, arrests by the US government of Israeli "players" have left no doubt that the US interest is to halt, not abet, Israeli arms sales to America's enemies.

Jane Hunter is the editor and publisher of Israeli Foreign Affairs, P.O. Box 19580, Sacramento, CA 95819.

Here is the interview with the Shah cited by Rick Wiles

Shah of Iran on 60 Minutes

Here is the entire video from TruNews

Here is an item from al-Jazeera on Israel's nuclear capacity