Middle East Research and Information Project: Critical Coverage of the Middle East Since 1971
For working people in the United States, April is the month for rendering unto Caesar. This is the time when we pay for things like the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, the aircraft carriers cruising the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and weapons to Israel, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and a host of other worthies.
Raja Shehadeh, Occupier’s Law: Israel and the West Bank (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1985).
Fouad Ajami, The Vanished Imam: Musa al-Sadr and the Shia of Lebanon (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986).
Jordan and Israel together have destroyed the post-Lebanon strategy of the Palestinian movement led by Yasser Arafat. King Hussein’s $1.2 billion five-year development plan for the Occupied Territories, unveiled in mid-July, provides the velvet glove to accompany Israel’s iron fist.
In early November 1986, just as the Iran arms story was breaking, Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave interviewed French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac. On November 7, de Borchgrave published a front-page story based on the interview highlighting Chirac’s suspicion, which the prime minister also attributed to West German leaders, that the well-publicized Syrian bomb plot against an Israeli jetliner was concocted by the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Israeli and American officials and media were then playing up the London trial of suspect Nizar Hindawi in order to distract attention from the Iran arms scandal and the capture of American mercenary Eugene Hasenfus in Nicaragua.
The US Navy calls it “violent peace.” One of its foremost academic boosters says it means “to fight without appearing to fight.” They are talking about low-intensity conflict. This is the term the US government uses to describe a strategy of fighting small, relatively cheap wars. Few US troops are involved, so there are few American casualties and there is no need for a draft. The US people may not even be aware of — let alone oppose — US involvement. The goal is to destabilize or overthrow “undesirable” Third World governments or to underpin the stability of “friendly” governments. As Col. John D.
Turkish government officials project spending some $15 billion over the next 12 years to bring Turkey’s military forces up to NATO standards. This would make Turkey’s arms industry one of the major growth sectors over the next decade. Military industries now employ over 40,000 people directly. Once current plans to manufacture equipment ranging from armored vehicles to military aircraft become a reality in the late 1980s, the number of people directly and indirectly employed by this sector will be counted in the hundreds of thousands. [1] With arms exports of some $400 million in 1985 and plans to build an arms industry geared to exports, Turkey may become the world's 14th largest arms producer in the next decade. [2]
Guns, Not Butter
US Corporation: AEL Industries, Inc.
Israeli Corporation: Elisra Electronic Systems (formerly AEL Israel)
Financial Relationship: AEL owns 58 percent of Elisra.
Military Products: Electronic warfare systems; telephone switching equipment. In 1984 approximately 50 percent of sales were for export. Awarded Israel Defense Prize in 1983 for collaboration with the Israeli navy on computerized battle systems. [1]
US Corporation: Astronautics Corporation of America
Israeli Corporation: Astronautics CA
Financial Relationship: Subsidiary.
Over the past two decades, a combination of factors has significantly reoriented the Israeli economy toward military production — weapons for Israel’s military and for export to juntas, minority regimes and dictators around the world.
Israeli officials justify this development of military industries and arms export markets on the need for independence from foreign suppliers and the consequent need to lower the per-unit cost to the Israeli military. Israel now appears to be the largest producer of armaments in the Third World. [1]
Forty years ago, arms production in the Middle East was limited to a few small factories producing rifles and ammunition. Today, arms production has become a very big business in the region, with annual output worth more than $4 billion and rising. Of the 23 Third World countries with extensive military production, five are in the Middle East. One Middle Eastern state, Israel, is the largest Third World arms exporter and has one of the largest arms industries in the world. Egypt and Turkey are the other two major arms producers in the region, followed by Iran and Pakistan. Munitions and small arms producers include Algeria, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan and Tunisia.
Arms and military goods have become Israel’s main export item, to the tune of well over $2 billion per year. [1] Israel has exported arms to more than 60 countries and an undetermined number of armed groups worldwide. A peculiar feature of Israel’s arms business is that up to one third of sales are conducted by a network of private dealers who net commissions of between 5 and 25 percent for their services.
The controversy over US-Iranian relations has implications as drastic for the government in Tehran as for that in Washington. The disputed character of the opening to Washington forced Majlis Speaker Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani to go public about the talks in early November. Even Ayatollah Khomeini himself has come under attack from Islamic radicals after his explicit support for talks with the US. Khomeini, although using the title "imam" or religious leader, has never claimed to be infallible, as the 12 imams of Shi&‘i Islam are supposed to be. But when a congress of radicals in December proclaimed that the imam was “not infallible,” this was designed to challenge Khomeini’s overall authority within the revolutionary regime.
Revelations about secret talks and arms deals between the United States and Iran have focused attention on the internal politics of the Islamic Republic. The Reagan administration justifies its policy as an 18-month effort to reach out to “moderate elements” in the Iranian government.
The scheme began to unravel last October 7. In Managua, the sole survivor of a downed American C-123 cargo plane full of weapons for the contras told a crowded press conference, “My name is Eugene Hasenfus.” In Washington, businessman Roy Furmark called on his old friend William Casey at CIA director’s hideaway office next to the White House. Furmark had been sent by Adnan Khashoggi; the Saudi tycoon said he had not been repaid more than $10 million he advanced for arms shipped to Iran. When Furmark returned to Washington on November 24, Casey phoned Lt. Col. Oliver North at the White House. “There’s a guy here who says you owe him $10 million on the Iran thing,” Casey said. Casey hung up and turned to Furmark.
Torture in Bahrain
Amin Maalouf, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes (London: Al Saqi Books, 1984).
Maalouf’s reconstruction of the Crusades (“Frankish invasions”) as seen by Arab historians and chroniclers is a fascinating and instructive narrative of that bitter conflict. He concludes his account with a reflective epilogue on the lasting impact of the Crusades on Arab culture and identity. Maalouf’s depiction is fluent and vivid, sensitive to the temper of the combatants and to the ironic details of the private lives behind the public facade. Unfortunately, his narration is rarely tainted by social and economic facts.
Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq, (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985).
Phebe Marr’s The Modern History of Iraq spans the period from the inception of the modern nation-state in 1920 to 1984. Marr has consulted, among others, the authoritative works in Arabic of
the Iraqi chronicler ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Hasani and the recent “official” biography of Saddam Hussein by Amir Iskandar. She also draws on the standard works by Hanna Batatu, Majid Kadduri, the Penroses, and above all makes use of extensive interviews with a number of informed Iraqis.
Laila Said, A Bridge Through Time: A Memoir (New York: Summit, 1985).
Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Learning and Power in Modern Iran (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1985).
Donne Raffat, The Prison Papers of Bozorg Alavi: A Literary Odyssey (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1985).
Haleh Afshar, editor, Iran: A Revolution in Turmoil (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1985).
Barry M. Rosen, editor, Iran Since the Revolution: Internal Dynamics, Regional Conflict and the Superpowers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
