and Israel, some positive, some negative, some outright sinister. The Shah helped to build a pipeline from Eilat to Ashkelon, in order to transport Iranian oil to the Mediterranean, bypassing the Suez Canal. The Israel internal secret service (Shabak) trained its notorious Iranian counterpart (Savak). Israelis and Iranians acted together in Iraqi Kurdistan, helping the Kurds against their Sunni-Arab oppressors.
The Khomeini revolution did not, in the beginning, put an end to this alliance, it only drove it underground. During the Iran-Iraq war, Israel supplied Iran with arms, on the assumption that anyone fighting Arabs is our friend. At the same time, the Americans supplied arms to Saddam Hussein-one of the rare instances of a clear divergence between Washington and Jerusalem. This was bridged in the
Iran-Contra Affair, when the Americans helped Israel to sell arms to the Ayatollahs.
Today, an ideological struggle is raging between the two countries, but it is mainly fought out on the rhetorical and demagogical level. I dare to say that Ahmadinejad doesn't give a fig for the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict; he only uses it to make friends in the Arab world. If I were a Palestinian, I would not rely on it. Sooner or later, geography will tell and Israeli-Iranian relations will return to what they were-hopefully on a far more positive basis.
One thing I am ready to predict with confidence: whoever pushes for war against Iran will come to regret it.
Some adventures are easy to get into but hard to get out of.
The last one to find this out was Saddam Hussein. He thought that it would be a cakewalk-after all, Khomeini had killed off most of the officers, and especially the pilots, of the Shah's military. He believed that one quick Iraqi blow would be enough to bring about the collapse of Iran. He had eight long years of war to regret it.
Both the Americans and we might soon be feeling that the Iraqi mud is like whipped cream compared to the Iranian quagmire.
July 7 2007
Not since the resurrection of Jesus Christ has there been such a miracle: a dead body buried in a cave has come to life again.
The "Jordanian Option" gave up its ghost almost 20 years ago. Even before that, it never was very healthy. But in 1988, some time after the outbreak of the First Intifada, it was officially buried by none other than His Majesty, King Hussein, himself. He announced that he had given up any claim to the West Bank.