Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July/August 2003, page 15

Neocon Corner

 

Israel Lobby Campaigns for Americans to Attack Iran

 

By Andrew I. Killgore

In November 1990, during the lead-up to the first Gulf war, Douglas Feith was doing public relations work for Turkey in Washington. He and a third participant were on a C-SPAN cable television program with this writer, who said he thought U.S. aid to Israel was excessive and unwise. Several telephone calls came through—all agreeing that Israel was getting disproportionate U.S. foreign aid.

When the program was over, a furious Feith accused me of being very unfair to Israel. I replied that he should have attacked me "on air," where callers could have agreed or disagreed with him, but that he had not.

Thirteen years later Israel-Firster Feith is now number three at the Pentagon as under secretary of defense for policy. There, according to the May 9 Financial Times, he and his fellow Israel-Firsters "are working hard on the Bush agenda before he [Bush] focuses completely on the economy ahead of the [2004] presidential election."

When he addressed the National Press Club on Dec. 12, 2002, Reza Pahlavi, son of Iran's late Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, spoke up for human rights and democracy. Now, according to the Financial Times article, he and Feith are working closely together on Iran-Israel. Israel-Firster Michael Ledeen was quoted as saying that young Pahlavi was "widely admired" and would be a suitable leader to bring Iran from dictatorship to democracy.

Prior to 1978 Israel had private but lucrative contracts with Iran. Psychologically the alliance with populous Iran made Israel feel safer vis-ö-vis the Arabs' huge population numbers.

The earlier Israeli-Iranian alliance worked well. The shah was anxious to play a bigger role in the region, while Israel sought a populous Middle Eastern ally that was Muslim but non-Arab. In sum, Iran got U.S. arms, and Israel got oil and contracts. All that ended, however, with the Iranian political cataclysm of 1978-79 which threw out the shah and brought in the Islamist regime of the ayatollahs.

Despite his protestations about democracy, the young Pahlavi is seeking backers in Washington. There the American Enterprise Institute, where Ledeen holds the "Freedom Chair," recently hosted a conference on Iran. AEI is home to several analysts who push the Pahlavi cause, as well as that of former Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, a favorite of Israel-Firster Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense. Wolfowitz, probably America's leading Israelist, has become better known by having a war named for him: the war on Iraq now is known as "Wolfowitz's War."

Although at the Press Club the young Pahlavi said he favored democracy, he told the Financial Times that he advocated a referendum in Iran on a return of the monarchy. Not only is it very doubtful he could win such a referendum, but no democratic regime in Muslim Iran could make an alliance with Israel.

Nevertheless, Feith and young Pahlavi have been seeking each other out, and are now allies. If, with American assistance, there could be a change of regime in Iran (an "axis of evil," in Bush-speak), Reza Pahlavi would be glad to play shah whether there had been a plebiscite or not.

With the Israeli-Turkish alliance in a state of uncertainty following Ankara's refusal to allow U.S. troops to open a "northern front" to Iraq, Israel is turning eagerly to Iran. It has cranked up a formidable array of Israel-Firsters to run interference for it in Washington and to blacken the current regime in Tehran. Feith is joined by Wolfowitz and Richard Perle in the Pentagon, in the media by Charles Krauthammer, and in Congress by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who is sponsoring legislation to beam calls for insurrection from the large Iranian community in Los Angeles to audiences in Iran.

Joining the clamor, the Israel-First Washington Post is doing all it can to turn Iran into a real "axis of evil." On May 15 it devoted a full-page article to the country's "secret" nuclear enrichment program and its efforts to produce pathogens.

The charges against Iran were made by the Mujaheddin-e Khalq, also known as the People's Mujaheddin, which is listed as a terrorist organization by the State Department. According to Alireza Jafarzadeh of the political arm of the Mujaheddin-e in America, Iran had recruited experts from North Korea, Russia, China and India.

Among the pathogens allegedly being "weaponized" were anthrax, aflatoxin, typhus, smallpox, plague and cholera.The Washington Post at least had the honesty to add that no nation was known to have produced smallpox weapons other than the Soviet Union, which had destroyed its stocks in the early 1990s. Others, however, show no such compunctions.

Andrew Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

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