Former Treasury Secretary John Connally, announcing his candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1980, said yesterday that the Middle East oil crisis brought about by the turmoil in Iran emphasized the “strategic importance” of Israel to the United States.
The three-time Governor of Texas, speaking at the National Press Club, also urged quick agreement by Egypt and Israel on a peace treaty but suggested they make their own arrangements without the “intervention” of the United States which said has failed.
Connally, whose political theme centered on “strong leadership both at home and abroad,” did not mention Israel or Egypt in his prepared remarks but spoke extemporaneously when he was questioned about Iran, and then, in the course of discussing that situation, he suddenly swung into full endorsement of Israel both morally and strategically. He gave no accolade to any other Middle East country although his law firm in Houston is counselor for Arab oil interests.
I have long looked on Israel not only as a nation that deserves our support on a moral stand point but I have long looked on Israel as a nation that deserves our support from a strategic standpoint, Connally began. “That clearly brings into sharp focus the strategic importance of the preservation and strength of the State of Israel today Nothing could be more important at the moment ### that.
“We recognize not only the moral commitment but the strategic necessity of maintaining the strength of Israel. This puts a new dimension, it seems to me, in the minds of a great many people who are dealing with the problem related to Iran and oil.”
Connally, who a few minutes earlier was defending himself as a lawyer for Arabs, went on to say that “we are going to have to encourage and to do in whatever way we possibly can, to bring a resolution of the Israeli-Egyptian problem as quickly as possible if indeed they can do it We clearly have shown our intervention is not the way it is going to be done but we are going to have to recognize that this move in Iran closes the pincer movement–or probably will result in the closure of the pincers on the oil in the Middle East.
In this situation, he said, “Soviet interests” now are controlling the “mouth of the Red Sea” emphasizing that “we are indeed in a crisis situation-I mean it.” Connally added “we need to move” not only in Iran “but in all the Middle East — what is left of the security and stability in the Middle East.”
SEES NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Connally acknowledged in response to a question that his Houston law firm, which he said has 208 lawyers, has Arab countries as clients but he said that would not create “a conflicts of interest” for him because “as a candidate I won’t be a member of the firm.”
“Let me assure you that they have our professional ability,” Connally said of the firm’s Arab clients. “They don’t have our philosophy or our conscience:”
Connally’s “preliminary organizational stereo committee” to assist his campaign chairman, former Postmaster General Winston Blouni, listed Rita House, the New York lawyer, among its 10 members. Connally was Secretary of the Navy to President Kennedy and Treasury Secretary for President Nixon after he changed from the Democratic to the Republican Party during the Nixon Administration. He also served in various capacities for Lyndon Johnson before Johnson become President and for President Ford.
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