Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Tuesday there “is nothing to accuse Israel of” in connection with arms sales to Iran. The Premier did not deny there had been such sales. But he insisted that it was “in general … not Israel’s policy to sell arms specifically to Iran.” He added: “There is no secret conspiracy between Israel and Khomeinist Iran.”
Shamir was interviewed on Israel Television as reports came in from Washington of an apparently ever-deepening Israeli involvement in the public controversy in the United States surrounding the arms supply relationship with Iran.
Shamir said he thought the predictions that Israel would become embroiled in this controversy, and would suffer from it, were “exaggerated.”
He said that, in general, states which manufacture arms must sell them abroad in order to maintain their armaments industries. In general, too, the Premier added, these arms-producing states published almost nothing about their arms sales. Israel for its part was obliged to follow the same practices.
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