Iran and Israel: A Parallel

By Andrew I. Killgore

Can an overly eager United States endanger its friends by pressing armaments upon them? The examples of Iran and Israel indicate the answer is "yes," when excessive supplies of arms are combined with an American policy of "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil," concerning those friends.

From 1972 to 1978 the United States and royalist Iran became involved in that kind of unhealthy relationship. Partly as a result, the Iranian regime weakened and ultimately collapsed. The U.S. and Israel now are involved in a similarly unhealthy relationship. Already there are unmistakable signs that the American military embrace is weakening rather then strengthening Israel. It is a matter which Israel's partisans in the U.S. might well ponder.

At the beginning of each relationship the U.S. kept its Israeli and Iranian clients on a tight military leash. Restraints on Israel were removed after 1967, and those on Iran in 1972.

Throwing Open the Arms Doors

However, it was the British decision to withdraw its presence from East of Suez, including the Gulf, that set the stage for America's fateful decision to sell Iran all the weapons it wanted—with the exception of nuclear arms. Israel's articulate U.S. lobby helped the U.S. to discover a fearsome "power vacuum" that would be left in the Gulf after the departure of the, by then, minuscule British forces. It was a "vacuum" that Iran was obviously eager to fill.

The U.S. never clearly identified the presumed threat to the Gulf and its oil supplies. Implicitly it seemed to be the Soviet Union, although no serious observer believed that even a militarily beefed-up Iran could ever hope to stop an overt Soviet attack if one occurred. The only effective deterrence to any such overt Soviet invasion of a country on its borders is the fear of U.S. retaliation, not necessarily in the Middle East, but rather where the Soviets are more vulnerable to U.S. weaponry.

Nevertheless, Israel and its zealous lobby in Washington advocated a massive Iranian military buildup. The goal was not to intimidate the Russians, but rather to keep the Arabs on the defensive.

The arms poured in: An almost unbelievable $25 billion worth from the U.S. alone between 1972 and 1978. No critical reports were filed from our embassy in Iran because these were unwelcome in Washington. A large percentage of Iran's skilled labor force was sucked into the military. Economic development languished. A botched agricultural reform program drove tens of thousands of peasants into the cities, particularly Tehran. Unemployment, inflation, and human misery increased until the situation was ripe for explosion. And explode it did with the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolutionary version of Islamic fundamentalism.

For years the U.S. had closed its eyes to violations of human rights by Iran's security services. Its silence on that sensitive subject was in contrast to effusive praise of the Shah's "white revolution" and everything pertaining to Iran. Following the lead of the Nixon and Ford Administrations, President Carter referred publicly to Iran as an "island of stability in a sea of turmoil" only days before demonstrations began in Tehran that were to destroy the regime. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil was the only basis of U.S. policy.

Israel, whose American supporters regularly extoll its Middle East intelligence capabilities, might have alerted the U.S. to the danger. Either it couldn't, or it wouldn't. Then, as now, it had its own agenda. Indeed, based on our experience, first in Iran and much more recently in Lebanon, the U.S. should look again at Israel's advice on anything pertaining to the Middle East. Perhaps never in recent history has a country so consistently misunderstood its immediate neighbors in any area of the world.

Ritualistic Praise of Everything Israeli

The parallels between the U.S.-Iranian and the U.S.-Israeli relationships are sobering. We see the same ritualistic praise of everything Israeli. Such cliches as "the only working democracy in the Middle East" and "valuable strategic ally" are routinely peddled in the American mass media and picked up in self-serving election-year speeches by donation-hungry U.S. politicians. Neither the media nor the politicians discuss Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights, although for many years these have been routinely documented by Amnesty International and even by the U.S. Department of State, among others.

Israel's military might will help keep Russia out of the Mideast, it is mindlessly asserted, even as the Israeli Army falls back in south Lebanon before the home-made bombs and ill-assorted handheld weapons of Shi’a villagers. American commentators fatuously demand that an Israel of 3.5 million Jews be kept militarily stronger than all of the Arab states combined, which have a total population of 180 million spread along a 4,500-mile are totally surrounding the tiny Jewish state.

The only security for Israel is to make peace with its neighbors. To avoid that, it sucks an unsustainable 30 percent of its gross national product into the military, while annual U.S. taxpayer gifts to Israel are so massive at $1,000 per Jewish Israeli that both U.S. and Israeli officials are embarrassed to mention them, or should be. A debilitating inflation rate of between 500 percent and 1,000 percent stifles the economy. Unemployment and emigration are increasing.

A powerful case can be made that the military burden is crushing Israel. Qualified observers, and a great many Israelis as well, see a territory-for-peace settlement with the Arabs as Israel's only way out. But a hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil U.S. policy regarding Israel ensures that country's ultimate destruction, just as it did with the Shah's Iran.

If the parallels between the excessive dependence of the Shah's Iran and of Israel oil U.S. arms bode ill for Israel, the one major difference should alarm Israel's American friends even more. Iran was at least able to use its oil revenues to pay for its military extravaganzas. Israel's are totally financed by the U.S. taxpayer, who inevitably will realize someday that he receives little but problems for the U.S. in return.

Will Americans who lavish only praise on Israel finally admit that they are Israel's potentially fatal problem? Will they learn that, for its own good as well as ours, we should treat Israel just as we treat any other foreign country, helping it when it merits support, and ignoring it when it does not? If they do not, history will judge those Americans not as the only friends of Israel, but rather as Israel's only real enemies.

Andrew I. Killgore, former U.S. Ambassador to the State of Qatar, was Counselor for Political Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran from 1972 to 1974. He is President of the American Educational Trust.