Cabinet Gets Its First Full Report on U.s.-israel Arms Shipments to Iran

The Cabinet, meeting in closed session Sunday, heard its first full report on the U.S.-Israel arms shipments to Iran. According to a Cabinet communique, Premier Yitzhak Shamir made a statement which was followed up in detail by Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The Cabinet convened as a Ministerial Defense Committee, the proceedings of which are classified according to law. No details of the briefing were released but Israel Radio reported later that several Ministers complained over the delay in advising the full Cabinet of the affair.

URGES REJECTION OF U.S. REQUEST

Meanwhile, David Libai, a legal expert and chairman of the Knesset’s Comptrol Committee said Sunday that any American request to send an investigatory team to question Israeli citizens and officials in connection with the Iran arms deal should be rejected because it would amount to an infringement on Israel’s independence and authority.

Libai may have been referring indirectly to Shamir’s statement to editors here Friday that if U.S. panels investigating the affair wanted to question Israeli officials, such a request would be considered on its merits.

Libai, interviewed on television, said the U.S. could request Israel to investigate individuals on its behalf, but Israeli authorities would then have to decide what information to relay to Washington. For Israel to accept an American investigation on its own soil would be a dangerous precedent that could “institutionalize” a threat to Israel’s independence, he said.

He drew a distinction between the Iran arms sale investigation and the case of Jonathan Pollard, the American civilian Naval analyst convicted of spying for Israel. In that instance, Israel permitted American investigators to come here to question Israelis thought to have been involved with Pollard. It was an “exception” he said because the Israel government as such had not been responsible for Pollard’s espionage.

Israeli officials continued to insist over the weekend that they were ignorant of the transfer of proceeds from arms sales to Iran to the Contras, the Reagan Administration-backed rebel force trying to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. “Representatives of Israel” were implicated in the possibly illegal transfer by U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese last week who alleged that they deposited between $10-$30 million in a Swiss bank account maintained by the Contras.

But Israeli officials, who acknowledged supplying arms to Iran at the request of and with the specific approval of the U.S., said over the weekend that Israel would have been betraying its own vital interests if it had knowingly acted to contravene the Congressional ban on arms to the Contras which was in effect at the time of the transaction.

A report published in The New York Times Sunday said emerging evidence in the affair shows a significant role played by Saudi Arabia in the arms shipments to Iran and the transfer of funds to the Contras, indicating that the Israelis involved may have played a less central role.

The key Saudi figure was Adnan Khashoggi, a multi-millionaire businessman. While he brought two Israeli licensed arms dealers, Yaacov Nimrodi and Al Schwimmer, into contact with Manucher Ghorbonifar, a well-connected Iranian arms dealer in 1985, the ties to Iran were forged more by Saudi Arabia than by Israel, according to the Times account.

STATMENT BY FORMER MOSSAD OPERATIVE

Meanwhile, Nimrodi, a former operative of Mossad, the Israeli secret service, issued a statement in London Sunday aimed at clarifying his association with the affair, “in the wake of Western and Israeli press reports.”

Nimrodi, who presently lives in London, said he executed only one small deal, at the behest of the highest American authorities, the sole purpose of which was to help obtain the release of an American hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, who was being held by a pro-Iranian group in Lebanon.

“After U.S. hostages were taken … a meeting was held in the office of a high-ranking Israeli government official where the idea was raised that I use my contacts worldwide and in Iran to try to find a way to free the hostages. All this was to be on the basis of humanitarian aid alone to a friendly and allied nation that was in trouble,” Nimrodi’s statement said.

He said he acted with others and as a result, Wier was released on September 19, 1985. Nimrodi said President Reagan told the truth when he said the arms shipment to Iran was so small that it could be carried in a single cargo plane with room to spare.

“Everything I did was in the nature of a national mission, without any reward or profit,” Nimrodi said. He expressed disappointment that no Israeli leader has come forward to refute media allegations that he raked in large profits from the deal. All he received was the thanks of then Premier Shimon Peres when Weir was freed, he said.

After Weir’s release, “the American authorities reached the conclusion that they could pursue their efforts in the future without my help” and they continued negotiations with Iran on their own, Nimrodi said. “At that time my friends and I were requested to cease our activities in this matter. I withdrew from the matter completely, and was not involved in any further development.”

Officials here stressed over the weekend that Israel believed throughout the affair that the American Administration was entirely behind it. They indicated that they could not believe that U.S. Marines Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North, an aide to President Reagan’s National Security Advisor, Vice Admiral John Poindexter, had acted on his own authority in the Iran arms deal and the transfer of funds to the Contras. North was fired by Reagan last week. Poindexter resigned.

Though media reports have claimed Israel was sending arms to the regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Teheran long before the U.S. became involved, Nimrodi insisted that “Since the fall of the Shah (in 1979) I have not executed a single deal with the Khomeini government, directly or indirectly.”