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It “is really proving to be the kiss of death for the Saudis, should they pursue this policy of engaging with Israel. I mean this would be very, very irresponsible. It is incredibly unpopular across the region and I think that this is where they are going incredibly wrong,” Hafsa Kara-Mustapha told Press TV on Wednesday.
Iranian money appears to be stronger than the Iranian threat, as dozens of Israeli companies have been holding secret trade relations with the Islamic Republic in recent years.
Although the ties have been slightly limited in the past decade following Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's calls for Israel's destruction, trade between the two countries continues.
The business relations are conducted through companies active in Turkey, Jordan and Dubai, which are registered in Europe and exposed to an American boycott.
"Despite what is seen on the ground, the secret relations with Iran total tens of millions of dollars a year," says Yehoshua Meiri, chairman of the Israeli-Arab Friendship Association, which encourages the development of economic relations as an alternative to a peace process.
"Even when harsh statements are made on both sides, business thrives," says Hemeiri. "Relations with the Iranian colleagues are excellent, and political statements are ignored.
“Israel also secretly sold Iran weapons that the US wouldn’t, said Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the U.S. Parsi added that, “[Israel] lobbied Washington to sell arms to Iran and ignore Iranian rhetoric on Israel” as late as 1989. This later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair.
Today, Iranian expatriates who support the Reformist regime say that despite anger at Israel for pushing sanctions, war rhetoric , and policies they see as discriminating against Palestinians, Iran should recognize Israel as a legitimate state and disagreements should be dealt with through diplomatic means. There are no polls, but Parsi says that the sentiment is common.
Iran's reputation is based on its rhetoric, but not on its deeds
Iranians consider Jews an important minority
Former Mossad director Efraim Halevy said that it’s important to pass diplomatic messages to Iran that speak to the human concerns of its people. “Ultimately, the only way to settle conflicts is to speak to and engage the enemy,” he said, “even when the enemy is not responding.”
But why did Ariel Sharon, Israel's Prime Minister at the time, make such an outreach? After all, Iran and Israel had been at loggerheads. One year before the Bam earthquake, Iran was accused of financing the deaths of hundreds of Israeli citizens through Hamas terrorist attacks in buses and in cafes in Israel's major cities. And only one year before, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said that Israel should be eliminated, and then went on to become the first senior Iranian official to deny the holocaust.
Ariel Sharon's efforts could be related to some unfinished business which started in 1996, after the election of Netanyahu as prime minister and the appointment of Sharon as Israel's foreign minister.
The article Iran, Israel reportedly forging contacts by Steve Rodan, which was published in the Jerusalem Post on Sept. 9, 1997, provides some interesting insights. According to Rodan, after his election Netanyahu felt that “the policy of the previous governments of Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres in leading an international campaign against Tehran was counterproductive.” According to the same article, to show good will “Netanyahu stopped attacking Iran and sent quiet signals that he preferred a dialogue.” The article goes on to say that Netanyahu also ordered the cessation of broadcasts by anti-regime movements which used Israel's Amos satellite to broadcast into Iran.
The two sides also began to renegotiate Israel's $1 billion debt to Iran.
Read more: www.al-monitor.com...##ixzz2zKdoNeSe
This is much more than a now-it-can-be-told story of treachery and alliances, as the title would suggest. It is a well-constructed history of the strategies Iran and Israel have adopted toward each other from the time of Iran's last shah to the present -- and the ongoing dealings of each with the United States. Iran's close relations with Israel during the Pahlavi period came to an abrupt halt with the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979. But Israeli efforts to rebuild ties with Iran began immediately, as Islamic Iran developed a strategy much more focused on maintaining a balance of power in the Middle East than its public rhetoric supporting Islam and the Palestinian cause would suggest. Many maneuvers by each have followed since. Well researched and enriched by a hefty number of interviews with U.S., Iranian, and Israeli officials who explain what their governments were thinking and doing at the time, this book offers a judiciously balanced account. There is, of course, no need to stress the utility of viewing Middle Eastern politics from the perspective of Iran and Israel. This is also a useful way to tie together such discrete issues as Lebanon's Hezbollah, the Iran-contra affair, the 1981 Israeli bombing of Iraq's Osirak nuclear site, and much more -- including the present Israeli push for forceful action against Iran's nuclear plans.
"Iran was desperate for new suppliers prepared to provide US weaponry." Israel's offer was just what Iran needed.
Ayatollah Khomeini returned the favor when rumors started that Iraq was working on a nuclear bomb - a threat neither Jerusalem nor Tehran could accept. Iran's intelligence agency passed on valuable information to the Israeli air force, which bombed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, setting back the suspected Iraqi nuclear program by years.
Such secret cooperation was highly sensitivem, says Fürtig, "and both sides tried to keep it under wraps. Neither Iran nor Israel wanted this to become public knowledge."
In November 1986, the Iran-Contra affair hit the United States: senior administration officials had secretly sold thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to Tehran and used proceeds from the weapons sales to fund rightwing Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Israel was significantly involved in the transactions.
immediately after Israel was founded, Iran was actually one of the states on the committee at the U.N. who was preparing a plan, and they were against the partition. They were against the idea of creating two states. And Iran, at the time, said that this would lead to several decades of crisis. But once Israel was a fact, the Iranian government felt that because it was facing a hostile Arab world, as well as a very hostile Arab ideology, Pan-Arabism, Israel was a potential ally for the Iranians, particularly as Israel started to shift closer and closer to the Western camp and the United States. So throughout the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, the Iranians and the Israelis were working very, very closely together, had a very robust alliance.
They tried to keep it secret. It wasn’t necessarily very secret, but Iran never recognized Israel de jure. They recognized it de facto. They had an Israeli mission in Tehran, but they never permitted it to be called an embassy. They had an Israeli envoy to Tehran, but they never called him an ambassador. When the Israeli planes were landing at the Tehran airport, they created — they built a specific tarmac off the airport for Israeli planes to land, so that no one would really see that there are so many El Al planes flying to Tehran. And the reason why the Iranians were doing this is because, on the one hand, they needed Israel as an ally because they were fearful of the Arab world, and, on the other hand, they felt that if they got too close to Israel, they would only fuel Arab anger towards Iran.
“The Saudis and the Israelis have joined together in this really bizarre sort of colonialist alliance against the changes that are taking place in the Middle East today,” said Kevin Barrett, with the Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance, in a Monday interview.
He pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia and Israel behind the terrorist operations under the name of al-Qaeda, saying, “Al-Qaeda has always been a false flag operation and it is designed to sow discord and violence and keep the Middle East in chaos so it can never win its independence.”
The analyst argued that the Israeli and Saudi regimes would not exist if it weren’t for the massive support from the West.
Plots by Saudi Arabia and Israel to destabilize Syria and the Middle East are doomed to failure due to the recent developments in the region and beyond, a political analyst tells Press TV.
In a Friday interview, Gordon Duff pointed to Riyadh and Tel Aviv’s conspiracies to trigger crises in Syria and across Middle East, adding, “This love affair between the Saudis and the Israelis is not going to weather the changes in the Middle East that are going on.”
He pointed to US’ growing criticism of Israeli measures vis-à-vis Palestine, the prospects of a thaw in relations between Tehran and Washington, the Syrian government’s military gains against foreign-backed militants in the country and a new American and Russian outlook on Syria as some of the indications that the scenario of destabilizing the Middle East “is going to come to naught.”
The top US diplomat will also visit Poland, Israel, occupied Palestinian territories, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria and Morocco during the trip from November 3 to 11, she added.
The trip comes as ties have strained with Saudi Arabia, a key US ally, over Washington's failure to launch military strikes against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, indicated that the kingdom plans to scale back its cooperation with Washington on Syria, threatening to take the alliance to its lowest points in years.
Israel's 1 BILLION dollar debt to Iran
Macbeth: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
originally posted by: Wrabbit2000
This is why I think the US needs to get 100% and totally OUT of the Middle East for anything beyond trade and commerce, like any other nation. They can fight side by side in the morning and be shooting each other that night. "They" not being any ONE group, either. That's the whole problem. The sun must bake the noodle over there or something, and we can just wonder from afar while they sort their own issues...is my thinking.
Besides.. Israel is a political enemy to Saudi Arabia. They do stupid crap like arrests falcons and pigeons as Jewish spies. (See headlines carried by wire services of that very thing in the last year or two). Iran however... Well now.. That's a whole different thing. That's an enemy of religion and Faith. Working with Israel won't cost them Paradise, while removing Shia Islam will surely get them into it...by Saudi Royal perspective, anyway. This whole thing has been a regional religious war we aren't even a party to, since long before we did get there.
The Liberty's survivors contradict Spector. According to subsequently declassified NSA documents: "Every official interview of numerous Liberty crewmen gave consistent evidence that indeed the Liberty was flying an American flag—and, further, the weather conditions were ideal to ensure its easy observance and identification."[97]
On 8 June 2005, the USS Liberty Veterans Association filed a "Report of War Crimes Committed Against the U.S. Military, June 8, 1967" with the Department of Defense (DoD). They say Department of Defense Directive 2311.01E requires the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough investigation of the allegations contained in their report. DoD has responded that a new investigation will not be conducted since a Navy Court of Inquiry already investigated the facts and circumstances surrounding the attack.
As of 2006, the National Security Agency (NSA) has yet to declassify "boxes and boxes" of Liberty documents. Numerous requests under both declassification directives and the Freedom of Information Act are pending in various agencies including the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, and Defense Intelligence Agency.
"... On 8 June 2007, the National Security Agency released hundreds of additional declassified documents on the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, a communications interception vessel, on 8 June 1967."[98]
On 2 October 2007, The Chicago Tribune published a special report[6] into the attack, containing numerous previously unreported quotes from former military personnel with first-hand knowledge of the incident. Many of these quotes directly contradict the U.S. National Security Agency's position that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots, saying that not only did transcripts of those communications exist, but also that it showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.
Two diplomatic cables written by Avraham Harman, Israel's ambassador in Washington, to Abba Eban Israel's minister of foreign affairs, have been declassified by Israel and obtained from the Israel State Archive. The first cable, sent five days after the attack, informs Eban that a U.S. informant told him (Harman) that there was "clear proof that from a certain stage the pilot discovered the identity of the ship and continued the attack anyway."[99] The second cable, sent three days later, added that the White House is "very angry" because "the Americans probably have findings showing that our pilots indeed knew that the ship was American."[6]
Documents of the Israeli General Staff meetings, declassified in October 2008, show no discussion of a planned attack on an American ship.