Iraqi Leader’s Overture to Iran is Source of Concern for Israel

Saddam Hussein’s sudden peace overture toward Iran has heightened concern here that two of Israel’s most implacable foes may act jointly to embroil it in the Persian Gulf crisis.

Defense Minister Moshe Arens said Wednesday that he did not see how Iraq’s move could have a direct influence on Israel. Nevertheless, in a briefing for members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, he outlined scenarios that could involve Israel in war with Iraq.

Housing Minister Ariel Sharon, a former defense minister and retired Israel Defense Force general, said he did not believe the “eternal enmity” between Iraq and Iran would evaporate merely as the result of an expedient gesture by Saddam Hussein.

Hussein, in a letter to Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani read on Baghdad Radio, said Iran was accepting Teheran’s terms for a peace treaty formally ending their eight-year war, which began with Iraq’s attack on Iran in 1980. A cease-fire but no peace treaty was signed in 1988.

Specifically, Hussein agreed to withdraw Iraqi troops from Iranian territory, free Iranian prisoners of war and accept the 1975 U.N. Security Council resolution that assigned the eastern half of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway to Iran.

It was in order to seize the entire waterway for Iraq that Hussein sent his armies into Iran, sacrificed hundreds of thousands of men and devastated the Iraqi economy.

It was partly to recoup his economic losses by gaining control of oil prices that Hussein invaded and annexed his oil-rich, but militarily weak, neighbor Kuwait on Aug. 2.

A CRUSADE AGAINST ISRAEL

His willingness now to accept Iran’s terms is clearly a tactical move aimed at freeing all of his million-man army to confront the mainly American international ground forces rapidly building up in Saudi Arabia and the naval blockade aimed at punishing Iraq for the invasion and possibly rolling it back.

Israeli interests are not directly affected by quarrels among the Gulf states, all of which are in a technical state of war with Israel.

But Israel felt easier when Arab Iraq and the non-Arab, Islamic fundamentalist Iran were locked in mortal combat. Now that their war is over, Hussein has threatened several times to destroy Israel with chemical weapons.

What worries Israelis most now is Hussein’s apparent interest in transforming his aggression against Kuwait into a crusade against Israel.

Were Israel to be involved in active hostilities with Iraq, Hussein might well succeed in turning the Arab League states now arrayed against him into his allies against their common enemy, the Jewish state.

Some Israelis fear Iran may now try to help Iraq achieve those aims.

Meanwhile, Arens told the Knesset committee that U.S. air power in the Gulf region is already on par with Iraq’s and will soon exceed it.

He repeated that Israel would respond “harshly” to an Iraqi air attack and would “not acquiesce” in an Iraqi penetration of Jordanian territory.

“Saddam Hussein knows full well what we would do” if either of those “red lines” established by Israel was crossed, the defense minister said.

But he said he doubted that either of those scenarios would unfold in the context of Iraqi military action in the Gulf region.

Arens also noted that the rapprochement between Egypt and Syria occurred before the Gulf crisis and that now the two former rivals find themselves on the same side against Iraq.

The Israeli defense minister expressed hope that Egypt, the only Arab country that has a peace treaty with Israel, will draw Syria into the peace process as their relationship develops.

Arens also raised a troubling prospect in his appearance before the Knesset panel.

He said the enormous expenditure entailed by the deployment of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf may force the American administration to cut foreign aid if it is strapped for cash. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid.