Aipac Director Urges the U.S. and Israel to ‘come Clean’ About the Iran Arms Sale-contras Connection

Tom Dine, the director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, urged Israeli and American leaders to “come clean” in divulging every possible detail about the controversial arms sales to Iran and the U.S.-supported Contra rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Speaking to supporters of AIPAC during a fund-raising swing through northern California, Dine stated that it is in the best interest of U.S.-Israel relations to answer the questions that Jews and non-Jews alike have begun to pose.

“Did Israel sell arms to the Contras with the authority of the President of the United States?” Dine asked during one talk to 600 AIPAC supporters at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco Tuesday. “Did it circumvent American law or manipulate American foreign policy? By selling arms to Iran, has Israel helped Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, spread his Islamic revolution? These are serious questions, and ones which require serious answers.”

But Dine, who stated that “the truth hurts, but is better to get it out in the short run,” said he is confident that Israel’s Knesset will get to the bottom of that country’s involvement. “With an unfettered press and a parliamentary system, the truth will ultimately win out,” he said.

A TANGLED WEB OF INTERESTS

Regarding U.S. actions, Dine said he hopes a bipartisan Congressional committee soon will be formed. Describing the Reagan Administration’s involvement as “the most tangled web of national and global interests I’ve seen in my 20 years on Capitol Hill,” the former Congressional aide said he is most concerned with how the crisis will affect the conduct of foreign policy.

Furthermore, he noted, “in the disarray, some people close to the President are dividing administration members into loyalists and those “who are disloyal to the President, and this is extremely unfortunate.”

The main problem with this “siege mentality,” Dine said, is that one of the major architects of the U.S.-Israel policy, Secretary of State George Shultz, who “has been critical in advancing U.S.-Israel relations in the last two years,” may be forced to resign.

POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF CABINET SHAKEUP

Dine speculated about the consequences of a prospective Cabinet shakeup. He noted that with Vice Admiral John Poindexter fired as the National Security Council (NSC) chief, and with the appointment Tuesday of Frank Carlucci as the new NSC chief, “we may be seeing a lightly pro-Arab tilt in the offing.”

Carlucci, who worked for Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger during the Nixon Administration and early in the Reagan Administration, was a “strong supporter of arms sales, especially AWACS, to Saudi Arabia,” Dine explained.

In the event that Shultz is forced to resign, Dine said, Weinberger, a strong supporter of arms sales to the Saudis, may become a major foreign policymaker, possibly even Secretary of State. “No matter how pro-Israel Reagan is, the President has to have people in the State Department whose support of Israel is unfaltering,” Dine declared.

Referring to last year’s $3 billion foreign aid package, to the Free Trade Agreement of 1984, and to the “strategic cooperation” that now exists between the United States and Israel, Dine stated that it has been nothing short of “amazing, in a time of budget deficits, what the Reagan Administration has done to be supportive towards Israel in terms of military and economic assistance. “Clearly, this whole affair is potentially tragic when you consider the extent of the bilateral relations between Israel and the United States that have been nurtured over the years.”

It is precisely the unprecedented cooperation between the two countries that may be endangered by the unfolding controversy of arms sales to Iran and diverted funds to the Nicaraguan rebels, Dine said while noting that Congress will be acting on foreign aid appropriations as early as March. “It’s critical that both the U.S. and Israel clear the air now before foreign and military aid comes up for a vote,” he said.