Rooyesh

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert flew to Moscow on Thursday in a surprise visit to discuss Iran’s nuclear program with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who just returned from talks with Iranian leaders in Tehran.

The two leaders also were expected to discuss an arms deal that Russia is to sign with Syria, and Russia’s role in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking efforts. Olmert’s one-day visit was announced only after Putin had returned from Iran, where he vowed Tuesday to support Iran’s pursuit of nuclear energy and warned “outside forces” — hinting at the United States — against using force against Tehran. Olmert “will be very clear on the Israeli position that in no way can Iran achieve nuclear capability, that Iranian nuclear capability threatens the world, including Russia,” Israeli government spokeswoman Miri Eisin said Thursday.

In announcing the one-day trip Wednesday, she said it had been scheduled several days earlier. Israel considers Iran to be a threat to its existence, while Russia is a major provider of technology for Tehran’s nuclear program, which the West strongly suspects is directed at the development of nuclear weapons. President Bush said Wednesday that he wanted to get a readout directly from Putin about his visit to Iran and issued a stark warning that a nuclear-armed Iran could trigger World War III.

While in Tehran, Putin made an unspecified proposal concerning Iran’s nuclear program to the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported. Officials close to hardliners within Iran’s ruling Islamic establishment said they believed the proposal involved a “timeout” on sanctions if Iran suspends uranium enrichment. On Thursday, however, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Putin “did not say any word” about the nuclear program during his meeting with the supreme leader, IRNA reported. Olmert’s talks with Putin also were expected to address new arms deals — reportedly Iranian-funded — under which Moscow would supply Syria with advanced surface-to-air and anti-aircraft missiles that Russia has not previously sold to other countries. Israel says Russian arms sold to Syria and Iran have been used by Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.

Another possible item on the agenda could be last month’s airstrike deep into Syria, in which the Israeli aircraft slipped past Russian-made Syrian air defense systems, hit their target and then left unchallenged. Syrian President Bashar Assad has said Israel bombed an “unused military building” in the Sept. 6 raid. Israel has been extremely secretive about the affair and only recently relaxed censorship to allow Israel-based journalists to report that Israeli aircraft attacked a military target deep inside Syria. The visit was announced as visiting Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Israeli and Palestinian leaders as part of preparations for a U.S.-hosted peace conference in November or December. Rice was heading for London seeking support from Jordan’s King Abdullah II for the conference after telling Israelis and Palestinians they have a new “moment of opportunity” to forge peace, despite the obstacles.

Source: Time magazine

European governments are deeply divided over how far and how fast to go in imposing new sanctions against Iran, in what could undermine a new U.S. effort to mobilize allies to act outside of the United Nations, according to European officials.

At a meeting in Brussels on Monday, European Union foreign ministers agreed to consider modest steps but not necessarily the kind of dramatic moves that Washington is now considering, the officials said. The session over what Europe should do to pressure Iran was described by officials as “fractious,” “intense” and with “a bit of blood left on the carpet” from the debate. Britain and France, which initiated the call for joint European action, back tough new multilateral sanctions outside the U.N. Security Council. But other countries, notably Italy and Austria, want significantly less serious steps. Germany fell somewhere in between, said European and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the debate is not public.

Squeezing Iran through diplomatic pressure and sanctions has become one of the Bush administration’s top priorities because of questions about Tehran’s nuclear objectives. “My intent is to continue to rally the world, to send a focused signal to the Iranian government that we will continue to work to isolate you in the hopes that at some point in time somebody else shows up and says it’s not worth the isolation,” President Bush said in a news conference yesterday. But the Bush administration has been increasingly concerned about the international community losing momentum, since Russia and China — which both wield vetoes on the Security Council — have delayed a third U.N. resolution, originally expected to happen this summer, until the end of the year or early next year.

Moscow and Beijing also oppose U.S. efforts to significantly increase pressure on Tehran after it failed to comply with two earlier resolutions demanding suspension of a uranium-enrichment program that can be used both for nuclear energy and to develop the world’s deadliest bomb. In response, Washington and Europe last month signaled their intent to organize a parallel process for tougher steps against Tehran. The Bush administration also hopes to bring in other major powers that do business with Iran, such as Japan, Australia and Canada. But there are already cracks across the Atlantic. While the United States is considering a package of actions that will effectively punish Iran for its intervention in Iraq as well as for its suspected nuclear program, the Europeans do not want to “confuse” the two issues, said a well-placed European official familiar with the debate. Bush administration officials, for example, want to designate Iran’s elite Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism under a presidential executive order.

But in European eyes, the Quds Force is linked mainly to arming, training and funding militant factions in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. “We want to keep our eyes on the nuclear file,” said a second European official. The 27-nation European Union is also unlikely to move with the speed preferred by the Bush administration, which fears time will work in Iran’s favor if it is developing a nuclear weapons capability. The European Union will not even introduce proposals until its next meeting in mid-November and a vote may not happen this year, European sources added. A senior administration official said yesterday that Washington was not trying to “foist” a specific formula. “We have not suggested that they emulate exactly what we may or may not do,” he said. A senior U.S. official in Europe said there is no U.S.-European split. “They’re accepting our premise and just haggling over the details,” he said, but he acknowledged differences over specific steps.

Source: Robin Wright, the Washington Post

Iran’s firebrand President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received the worst possible welcome in New York, yet he managed to walk away the winner. He should dedicate his victory to Lee Bollinger,

the President of Columbia University whose infantile introduction of Ahmadinejad provided the Iranian hardliner with an undeserved opportunity to present himself as a defender of academic integrity and freedom of speech.

As Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh commented: “I think it’s generally a good idea when you’re inviting people to your university not to tell them upon arrival that they’re not welcome, because then you look crazier than Ahmadinejad.”

Yet, the main point Ahmadinejad scored was the media’s willingness to let the limelight exaggerate his power and importance. For a few days, the media spoke of Ahmadinejad as if he actually determined Iran’s nuclear policy, as if he was in charge of the Iranian army and as if it was up to him whether Tehran would seek Israel’s destruction or not.

While the former Tehran mayor questioned the veracity of the Holocaust in New York, ordinary Iranians were glued to their TVs to watch a completely different drama – an Iranian series about the Holocaust, the suffering of the Jewish people and the heroic efforts of Iranian diplomats to help French Jews escape the Nazis by providing them with Iranian passports. The contrast with Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric could not have been any clearer. Apparently, the Iranian President even lacks the power to enforce his Holocaust theories on Iran’s state-run TV.

The contradiction between Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust rhetoric and the Iranian TV-drama exemplifies the dangers of the media’s infatuation with the Iranian hardliner – and all hardline statements coming out of Tehran. Not only does the unwarranted media attention make Ahmadinejad appear more powerful than he is, it also takes attention away from another side of Iran; one that doesn’t question the Holocaust, that understands the dangers of playing the anti-Israeli card to score points on the Arab streets and that is far more concerned about making friends with the US than making permanent enemies with the Jewish state.

Iran’s National Security Advisor Ali Larijani has carefully avoided echoing Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric. Iran’s Foreign Minister Manuchehr Mottaki’s has denied that Iran seeks the destruction of Israel. Their posture is far less sensational than Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric, yet much more indicative of Iran’s real policy.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Iran’s position on Israel isn’t ideologically driven. Though the ideological component of Iran’s foreign policy is undeniable, it is secondary to Iran’s geostrategic considerations.

Ideology and geopolitics

Throughout the existence of the Islamic Republic, the Iranian theocracy has adopted a harsh, provocative and uncompromising rhetoric on Israel to boost Iran’s credentials as a leader of an imaginary Islamic bloc and use the anti-Israeli card to bridge Iran’s difficulties with the Arab states.

But the rhetoric has only been translated into actual policy when Tehran deemed that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincided. When these two pillars of Iran’s foreign policy have clashed – as they did in the 1980s during the Iraq-Iran war when Tehran quietly sought Israel’s aid and the Jewish state made many efforts to get Iran and the US back on talking terms – Iran’s geostrategic concerns have consistently prevailed over its ideological impulses.

Today, Tehran believes that its ideological and strategic imperatives coincide in regards to the Jewish state. On a strategic level, Iran opposes Israel due to a perception that the Jewish state seeks Iran’s prolonged isolation and exclusion from regional affairs. Whether in Washington or in Ashkhabad, Iran perceives Israel to be countering its interest. On an ideological level, the Islamic Republic’s pretense to leadership in the Islamic world compels it to pursue a line that often times make Iran more Palestinian than the Palestinians.

The key to changing Iran’s behavior vis-à-vis the Jewish state lay in the dynamics between ideology and geopolitics. If these two forces of Iranian foreign policy once again can be arranged to counter each other, the force behind Iran’s belligerence against Israel can be put to rest.

This, however, cannot be achieved solely by increasing pressure or by making threats of war. Only through a larger US-Iran accommodation can Iran’s foreign policy impulses shift away from its current stance on Israel.

To explore this strategic opportunity, Israel must first adopt a more sober analysis of Iran; one in which it sees through Iran’s deliberately misleading hyperbole and pays attention not only to the dangerous rhetoric but also to the less sensationalist voices in the Iranian government. Iran’s pragmatists may not be friendly towards the Jewish state, but neither are they apocalyptic. By only focusing on the most extreme and radical notions coming out of Tehran, we let
radicals win. And their victory is a loss for all.

Source: Trita Parsi, YNet News

The heads of state of all five Caspian littoral states — Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Iran, Russia, and Turkmenistan — arrived with pressure mounting to finally solve the problem of whether the biggest inland body of water is a sea or a lake.

That issue is key to clarifying the Caspian’s legal status and establishing how to best exploit — and export — the vast energy reserves that lie under the Caspian seabed.

In their declaration at the end of today’s summit, they simply pledged closer cooperation but left any specifics for future talks. They also pledged to refrain from some unilateral activities “until there is a definition of the new legal status of the Caspian.”

The question of the Caspian’s legal status has aggravated relations among the five states since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — when suddenly five, not two, countries’ shores were washed by its waters. In the absence of any new deal, relations and cooperation is still guided by treaties signed in 1921 and 1940.

Moscow was essentially able to call all the shots in both of those treaties, and there was little attention devoted to any eventual exploitation of fossil fuels like natural gas and oil.

A Sea Or A Lake?

The central question — whether it is a lake or a sea — quashed any real progress at the first Caspian summit more than five years ago.

If it’s classified as a sea, then the bigger a country’s coastal area, the greater the share it can expect to control and develop. Such a deal would greatly favor Kazakhstan — not simply because it has the longest Caspian coastline but also because the rich Kashagan oil field and other potentially lucrative fields would presumably lie within its territorial waters. Kashagan is regarded as the largest oil field to have been discovered in decades.

Iran would be the biggest loser if the Caspian is defined as a sea, because its sector in the southern Caspian would be among the smallest and — according to exploratory work — its most energy-poor.

Not surprisingly, Tehran favors its definition as an inland lake. That would leave all littoral states sharing equally in the riches of the Caspian. As a result, profits from Kazakhstan’s multibillion-dollar Kashagan oil field would be distributed equally among all five countries.

Moscow has traditionally favored labeling the Caspian a sea — not merely because Russia’s sector is the largest after Kazakhstan but also because Russian businesses are active on Kazakhstan’s Caspian shore. But as indications emerged at today’s summit that the sides failed to fully agree on all issues, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Caspian’s “territory should not be covered with state borders, sectors, and exclusive zones. The less area they occupy, and the more the waters and the surface remain for common use by the Caspian states, the better.”

Putin’s comment appear to signal that Moscow would like each country to retain limited territorial waters extending only a few kilometers from the shore, not to a midpoint where it met another country’s territorial waters.

Blocking Off National Interests

Also speaking at today’s summit, Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov said that his country “has always followed the path of seeking mutually acceptable solutions, based on international law, that promote understanding and take measures to ensure the sovereign rights and lawful interests of the Caspian Sea states.”

Berdymukhammedov became Turkmen president in December 2006. It was joked that his predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov, changed his view on the Caspian frequently — sea or lake — depending on which other Caspian leader he had met with most recently. One constant in Niyazov’s approach was that no disputed sector should be developed until an agreement was reached about who controlled that sector. This was due to a dispute with Azerbaijan about who owned an oil field that is called by Azerbaijan “Kapaz” and by Turkmenistan “Serdar,” which lies somewhere along the midpoint between the two countries’ coasts.

A further comment by Berdymukhammedov indicated that despite a warming of relations with Azerbaijan since Berdymukhammedov came to power, his country’s policy regarding the disputed Caspian oil field has not changed. “The practice of unilateral actions in the Caspian Sea remains unacceptable for Turkmenistan,” he said, “primarily the conducting of oil operations at sites that are not covered by agreements between the parties.”
Russian President Putin also represented his country’s interests today when he spoke about larger projects that would involve two or more Caspian neighbors. “I believe that projects that could be ecologically harmful to the entire Caspian Sea should not be, and must not be, implemented without mandatory preliminary discussion [by] the Caspian 5 and by adopting consensus decisions in the interest of the common Caspian Sea,” he said.

Putin’s statement appears clearly aimed at talks of trans-Caspian pipelines to carry oil and natural gas from eastern Caspian states Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and further west. Such projects are backed by foreign businesses, not the least of whom are countries from the United States and Western Europe.

Another of Putin’s comments again aimed at outside influence in the Caspian region, where currently Russian military might is undisputed. “It is also important that we talk about the impossibility of providing our own territory for other countries in case of aggression or some other military actions against one of the Caspian Sea states,” he said.

The United States and other countries have been contributing to the fledgling naval forces in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, and to a far lesser extent Turkmenistan and the United States just a few years ago identified the Caspian as an area of strategic interest for Washington.

Source: Radio Farda

Russian leader Vladimir Putin met his Iranian counterpart Tuesday and implicitly warned the U.S. not to use a former Soviet republic to stage an attack on Iran.

He also said countries bordering the Caspian Sea must jointly back any oil pipeline projects in the region. At a summit of the five nations that border the inland Caspian Sea, Putin said none of the nations’ territory should be used by any outside countries for use of military force against any nation in the region. It was a clear reference to long-standing rumors that the U.S. was planning to use Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as a staging ground for any possible military action against Iran. “We are saying that no Caspian nation should offer its territory to third powers for use of force or military aggression against any Caspian state,” Putin said.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also underlined the need for solidarity. “The Caspian Sea is an inland sea and it only belongs to the Caspian states, therefore only they are entitled to have their ships and military forces here,” he said. A State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said the United States is not planning military action against Iran. “We are pursuing a diplomatic course with respect to Iran that includes with respect to its nuclear program as well as with respect to its support for terrorism and other issues that are out there,” he said. Putin refused to set a date for the start-up of Iran’s first nuclear power plant, to be built by Russia. “I only gave promises to my mom when I was a small boy,” Putin told Iranian reporters, when asked whether he could promise that the plant that Russia is building would be launched before his term ends next May.

At the same time, he said, “We are not going to renounce our obligations.” Putin’s careful stance suggested that Russia is seeking to preserve solid ties with Iran without angering the West. A clear pledge by Putin to quickly finish the plant would embolden Iran and could complicate international talks on the nuclear standoff. Putin, whose trip to Tehran is the first by a Kremlin leader since World War II, warned that energy pipeline projects crossing the Caspian could only be implemented if all five nations that border the sea support them. Putin did not name a specific country, but his statement underlined Moscow’s strong opposition to U.S.-backed efforts to build pipelines to deliver hydrocarbons to the West, bypassing Russia. “Projects that may inflict serious environmental damage to the region cannot be implemented without prior discussion by all five Caspian nations,” he said.

Other nations bordering the Caspian Sea and in attendance at the summit are: Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. The legal status of the Caspian — believed to contain the world’s third-largest energy reserves — has been in limbo since the 1991 Soviet collapse, leading to tension and conflicting claims to seabed oil deposits. Iran, which shared the Caspian’s resources equally with the Soviet Union, insists that each coastal nation receive an equal portion of the seabed. Russia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan want the division based on the length of each nation’s shoreline, which would give Iran a smaller share. Putin’s visit took place despite warnings of a possible assassination plot and amid hopes that personal diplomacy could help offer a solution to an international standoff on Iran’s nuclear program. Putin has warned the U.S. and other nations against trying to coerce Iran into reining in its nuclear program and insists peaceful dialogue is the only way to deal with Tehran’s defiance of a U.N. Security Council demand that it suspend uranium enrichment.

“Threatening someone, in this case the Iranian leadership and Iranian people, will lead nowhere,” Putin said Monday during his trip to Germany. “They are not afraid, believe me.” Iran’s rejection of the council’s demand and its previous clandestine atomic work has fed suspicions in the U.S. and other countries that Tehran is working to enrich uranium to a purity usable in nuclear weapons. Iran insists it is only wants lesser-enriched uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that would generate electricity. Putin’s visit to Tehran is being closely watched for any possible shifts in Russia’s carefully hedged stance in the nuclear standoff. The Russian president underlined his disagreements with Washington last week, saying he saw no “objective data” to prove Western claims that Iran is trying to construct nuclear weapons. Putin emphasized Monday that he would negotiate in Tehran on behalf of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — and Germany, a group that has led efforts to resolve the stalemate with Tehran.

Source: The Associated Press

On October 7, the state-run Iran Statistics Center published a report saying the national jobless rate has fallen to 9.9 percent. While government supporters see the news as reflecting favorably on the government,  

whose economic performance has faced criticism from both conservatives and reformists, others question the figure or its significance, saying it might not reflect the realities of Iran’s job market.

The Interfax news agency cited sources in the Russian special services saying a gang of suicide bombers would attempt to kill Mr Putin in Tehran.

Iran’s foreign ministry dismissed the reports as “completely baseless”.  A Kremlin spokesman told Reuters there were no plans to cancel the trip to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. During his visit, Mr Putin will also attend a summit of Caspian Sea nations.

He will be the first Russian president to travel to Iran since Joseph Stalin attended a summit of the Allied Powers in 1943. Mr Putin is currently in Germany meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel and is due to fly on to Tehran on Monday night.

‘Erroneous reports’

Interfax reported that Russian special services said several groups of suicide bombers had been set up for the attack in Tehran. The services had relied on information received from several sources outside the country, the agency said.

Kremlin deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters the trip was still going ahead as far as he was aware.

“The information is being dealt with by the secret services… The president has been informed,” he said.

A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Mohammed Ali Hosseini, said the reports were completely baseless and “part of a psychological war waged by enemies to disrupt relations between Iran and Russia”.

“Such erroneous reports will have no effect on the programme already decided upon for Mr Putin’s visit to Tehran,” he said.

Correspondents say Moscow and Tehran have good relations and Russia is helping to build the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southern Iran.

‘Radical organisations’

A member of the Russian parliament’s security committee, Gennadiy Gudkov, said the reports were likely to have a “fairly high level of reliability” “For me this report has not come as a big revelation, because, unfortunately, today there are enough radical organisations, forces and movements of an extremist nature, oriented against Russia, which would like to settle a score with the Russian president,” he told the state-owned Russian news channel, Vesti TV.

“There are certainly organisations of this kind in Tehran, which in recent times has unfortunately been a stronghold of radical Islamic organisations,” he said.

Russian officials have said several plots to assassinate Mr Putin on foreign trips have been uncovered since he became president in December 1999. Shortly after his election, Ukrainian security services said they had foiled an attempt to kill Mr Putin at an informal summit of former Soviet republics in Yalta. In 2003, police in London said they had arrested two men in connection with another plot to assassinate him.

Source: BBC News

Iran arrested on Sunday a prominent rights activist who has campaigned against the death penalty on charges of spreading propaganda and publishing secret documents, his lawyer said. 

Emaddedin Baghi, who heads the Committee for the Defence of Prisoners’ Rights, has already served several jail terms in Iran and received awards from Western countries for his work.

“He is charged with spreading propaganda against the regime and publishing secret government documents,” his lawyer Saleh Nikbakht told AFP.

According to the charges, Baghi obtained secret information from prisoners detained in security prisons and then disseminated this information during seminars organised by his group, the lawyer said.

Baghi is a former journalist who served a three-year jail term between 2000-2003 over his writings in several pro-reform newspapers.

Over the last months, he has publicly protested against the wave of hangings, many in public, that have swept Iran as part of a campaign by the authorities they say is aimed at improving security in society.

In September he wrote an open letter to the heads of reformist parties — including former president Mohammad Khatami and ex-parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi — complaining of their silence over the increased hangings.

At least 207 executions have been carried out in the country so far this year, already well above the figures for 2006.

In 2005 Baghi was awarded a prize for human rights by France for his work campaigning against the death penalty.

He has been particularly prominent in cases in the western Khuzestan province, which has a substantial Arab population and has seen a spate of executions following deadly bomb attacks in 2005 and 2006.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, serious drug trafficking and adultery. The Islamic republic is believed to be currently second only to China in the number of executions carried out annually.

Nikbakht said a bail of 500 million rials (53,500 dollars) had been set but it was then decided to imprison Baghi as he still had a one year jail term to serve from a previous conviction.

The lawyer also confirmed reports from Western rights groups that Baghi had been sentenced to three years in prison earlier this year over his activities. However he has yet to serve this sentence, which remains the subject of an appeal.

“He has appealed and now the case is in the hands of the court,” he said.

The lawyer said that in the same case his wife Fatemeh Kamali Ahmad Sarahi and his daughter Maryam Baghi were also each handed three year suspended sentences.

Source: AFP

Such games have been taking place for years. Israel’s intelligence community tries to obtain information about the development of Iran’s nuclear program, and is preparing in case it has to attack Iran; while Iran tries frustrate these efforts.

But alongside this routine game, Israel and Iran are working feverishly in an entirely different area: Iran is trying to locate property and assets belonging to the Israeli government and three Israeli oil firms abroad, and Israel is trying to thwart it. This affair arises from an international arbitration that determined more than three years ago that the Paz, Sonol and Delek oil companies must compensate the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) hundreds of millions of dollars.

The three companies were government-owned in the 1970s, but since then have been privatized. The oil companies have appealed the arbitration decision and are trying to create a delay, and are succeeding for now. The NIOC has not yet succeeded in enforcing the ruling and in collecting the debt. Parallel to this appeal, legal proceedings are still continuing in another two arbitrations on similar issues.

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All these legal proceedings have been taking place in Europe (in Switzerland and Holland) for more than 20 years, and are related to the activity of a legal entity called Trans-Asiatic Oil. This was a top-secret partnership that existed between the Israeli government and the NIOC during the period of the Shah. This partnership operated the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company, the oil terminals in Eilat and Ashkelon, and a large fleet of giant tankers for transporting oil. After the Shah was expelled from Iran and Khomeini came to power, in February 1979, the Islamic Republic cut off all ties with Israel and stopped shipping Iranian oil.

In 1985, the NIOC filed huge lawsuits (today worth several billion dollars) against Israel and the oil companies. The lawsuits were discussed in three separate arbitrations. The NIOC claims that Israel owes it huge sums for the partnership. Haaretz first reported on the Iranian victory in December 2006, and now Prof. Uri Bialer of Hebrew University in Jerusalem is publishing a study on the circumstances under which Trans-Asiatic Oil was established.

Bialer’s study, “Fuel Bridge across the Middle East - Israel, Iran, and the Eilat-Ashkelon Oil Pipeline,” is based on documents that have been declassified in the Israel State Archive and in the British National Archives, and on interviews with leading figures involved in the issue. It provides a rare glimpse at a particularly interesting chapter in the history of the State of Israel. The study was published in the latest issue of the periodical Israel Studies.

Until the mid-1950s, Israel received its oil from the Soviet Union, Kuwait (under British rule) and international oil companies. But in 1955-1956 these ties were severed, and Israel was forced to find new sources. Israel maintained secret ties with Iran, and wanted to turn it into its main oil supplier. Iran hesitated, for fear of undermining its relations with the Arab world, but after the 1956 Sinai Campaign, the Iranians were convinced and agreed to supply oil to Israel.

With the help of pumps and pipes “confiscated” - meaning stolen - from an Italian company and a Belgian company operating an oilfield in Ras Sudar in Sinai, Israel built a pipeline from Eilat to Ashkelon. The pipe, 40 centimeters in diameter, was paid for by Baron Edmund de Rothschild. The initiative was called Tri-Continental. By demand of the Iranians, who wanted to conceal their involvement in selling oil to Israel and in the joint company, the parties established a secret partnership called Fimarco, which was registered in July 1959 in the tax shelter of Lichtenstein. Iran owned 10 percent of the partnership. Tankers transported the oil from Iran to Eilat, and from there it was sent to Ashkelon through the pipeline.

But over the years Israel’s needs increased, and the Finance Ministry formulated a plan to replace the small pipe with a large 40-inch (106 centimeter) pipe and to set up a genuine partnership with Iran. Foreign minister Golda Meir, who secretly visited Tehran in August 1965, brought up the subject with the Shah and with Fatollah Nafici, one of the directors of the NIOC and the person in charge of the company’s clandestine ties with Israel. In order to demonstrate the seriousness of its intentions, Israel appointed Felix Shinar, one of the architects of the reparations agreement with Germany, as the project manager. Working with him were deputy defense minister Tzebi Dinstein; Dov Ben Dror, who was involved in the energy market; and Mossad operative Avigdor Bauer. NIOC president Manuchar Akbal joined the negotiations on behalf of Iran. The talks were conducted in Israel, Iran and Switzerland.

According to Bialer’s article, the turning point in the talks came after Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and the closing of the Suez Canal. The Shah, who was referred to by the code name “Landlord” in the Israeli correspondence, was persuaded to establish a fifty-fifty partnership between the Israeli government and the NIOC. The company was called Trans-Asiatic Oil and was registered in Switzerland, at Iran’s request, in order to conceal the Israeli partner and to make it appear to be a foreign company.

After the Shah gave his consent, the main problem was finding funding for the initiative, which was expected to cost $85 million, a huge sum in those days. Baron de Rothschild refused to fund the project, claiming that it would not be profitable, but the Iranians thought that he said no because he was insulted Israeli representatives had kept him in the dark about two years of contacts with Iran. An Israeli attempt to interest American oil billionaire David Rockefeller, the Chase Manhattan Bank president, also failed.

In the end, thanks to his connections, Shinar obtained funding from the German Deutsche Bank, through which some of the reparations money had been transferred to Israel in the 1950s and the 1960s. Shinar and Nafici met in Geneva and Zurich with Hermann Josef Abs, chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank, and discussed the loan conditions with him. Abs had a Nazi past: He was responsible for the bank’s foreign operations from 1938, and after World War Two he had been imprisoned for several months. Apparently, however, this did not prevent Israeli representatives from enjoying close, friendly ties with him.

Early in 1968, the German bank agreed to give a low-interest, $22 million loan to finance the project. On February 29, 1968 a contract establishing the company was signed; its exact details are still considered a state secret. The contract was signed by then-finance minister Pinhas Sapir on behalf of the Israeli government and by Akbal on behalf of the NIOC. The operational contract was set for a period of 49 years. In 1969, the pipeline between Eilat and Ashkelon was completed, and huge tankers were purchased to transport the oil. In December 1969, Iranian oil began flowing through the large pipe. A small percentage of the oil was earmarked for Israel. Most of it, however, was loaded onto tankers at the Ashkelon terminal and sent to consumers in Europe, mainly Romania, the only Soviet bloc country to continue maintaining diplomatic ties with Israel.

In 1970, 162 tankers brought 10 million tons of oil to the pipeline. That was the pipeline’s peak year, but the ambitious goal of 50 million tons a year was never achieved. At the end of 1978, with the fall of the Shah, the oil stopped flowing, and the ties between the two countries deteriorated into the hostility that characterizes them to this day. The NIOC has sued for payment for the last three months of oil and for the value of shared assets, such as oil tankers; Israel counters that it is owed money because Iran broke its contract.

For the Shah’s Iran, the initiative had financial value only and was even a political burden. But for Israel it was a national enterprise, another vision produced by the Mapai government (the forerunner of Labor), and its main importance was strategic.

Trans-Asiatic, which still operates the pipeline, informed Haaretz that the arbitration decision concerns the oil companies. The oil companies, for their part, refused to respond to this article.

Source: Haaretz