Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1987, page 22

Facts For Your Files: A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

January 2:

The Jerusalem Post reported that " a thorough overhaul of Israel's propaganda efforts abroad is now in the works, with the new material highlighting a soft (Israeli) line on the Palestinian problem."

January 4-8:

Assistant US Secretary of Defense Dov Zakheim met with Israeli officials and tried unsuccessfully to convince them to abandon the Lavi jet fighter project. If manufactured, the Lavi would compete directly with US-manufactured jet fighters. Most of the Lavi's estimated $1.2 billion research and development costs have been covered by US military aid to Israel.

January 6:

Secretary of State George Shultz said Iran's revolution was "a fact of life" and that because Iran and the US shared a number of strategic concerns, including Soviet threats to the region, there was the possibility that the US and Iran could "work together" on certain issues.

January 6:

The Justice Department filed a pre-sentencing memorandum on convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Jay Pollard. The memo said that Pollard had provided thousands of pages of top secret US documents to Israel, but that Israel had only returned 163 photocopied documents.

January 9:

Iranian forces, which crossed into Iraqi territory south of Basra in late December, continued to advance towards Iraq's second largest city. The offensive, possibly a part of Iran's long-awaited "final offensive," involved several hundred thousand men and was aided by the recent delivery of billions of dollars of new armaments to Iran. The Pentagon estimated that 45,000 Iranians and 20,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded since the offensive began in late December.

January 11:

The Washington Post published President Reagan's January 16, 1986, intelligence "finding" which authorized the sale of arms to Iran, in anticipation that American hostages would be released. The "finding" makes repeated reference to the arms-for-hostages deal as "the Israeli plan."

January 12:

Thomas R. Pickering, US Ambassador to Israel, told Israeli leaders that when the White House released President Reagan's intelligence "finding", it was not meant as a criticism of Israel. Israeli leaders had also expressed irritation at what they felt were inaccuracies in the Senate Intelligence Committee's draft report on the arms-to-Iran affair. Regarding this draft report, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said, "everything attributed to Israel has no basis in reality."

January 12:

Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy returned to the US after a six-day trip to Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Murphy discussed the peace process with these leaders, and he reassured Jordanian and Egyptian leaders that the US remained neutral in the Iran-Iraq war.

January 16:

Robert McFarlane, President Reagan's former National Security Advisor, said that when the US was trading arms for hostages with Iran, the US had virtually no independent intelligence on developments in Iran. Consequently, McFarlane said, US officials used Israeli intelligence almost exclusively.

January 20:

The Reagan administration formally requested the extradition from West Germany of Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who is suspected of being involved in the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 and the murder of a US navy diver. Hamadi had been arrested by West German authorities on January 15 when he tried to enter West Germany with materials that could be used as explosives.

January 20:

Alfred Schmidt, a West German engineer, was kidnapped in West Beirut, Rudolf Cordes, a West German businessman, was kidnapped on January 17. The West German government saw both kidnappings as a retaliation for the arrest of Mohammed Ali Hamadi in West Germany. Terry Waite, the Anglican Church envoy, disappeared after he was scheduled to meet with members of Hezbollah.

January 20:

The Reagan administration announced that it intends to sell F-16 jet fighters to Bahrain as part of a $400 million arms package. This is the first time the F-16 has been offered to any Arab country.

January 21:

Secretary of State Shultz, in close-door hearings before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that State Department officials stopped meeting with Iranian contacts in early December when the Iranians indicated they wanted to continue trading arms for hostages. Shultz also noted that CIA officials continued to meet with Iranian contacts in Europe until at least mid-December.

January 23:

The US Army Inspector General concluded that the Pentagon committed an "honest error" when it undercharged the CIA by $2.5 million for the TOW anti-tank missiles and Hawk anti-aircraft missile systems the CIA later sent to Iran.

January 24:

Alann Steen, Robert Polhill, Jesse Turner, and Mithileshwar Singh, all professors at the Beirut University College, were kidnapped by a group called Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine. This group later said the hostages would be killed unless Israel released several hundred Palestinian prisoners.

January 28:

The US increased its naval presence in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, and the State Department barred American citizens from travel to Lebanon.

January 29:

The Islamic Conference's four-day summit in Kuwait ended with no progress toward the resolution of the Iran-Iraq war. However, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was received officially by other Arab heads of state, the first time an Egyptian leader had met officially with other Arab leaders since 1979, when Egypt signed the Camp David peace accords with Israel.

January 29:

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its preliminary report on the Iran-contra affair. The report said that Amiram Nir, an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, first proposed diverting funds from the Iranian arms sale to the anti-Sandinista contras. The report also indicated that Israeli officials and pro-Israel individuals in the Reagan administration kept the arms-for-hostages program going after it drew sharp criticism from the Secretaries of State and Defense.

February 5:

Treasury Secretary James Baker returned from a three-day trip to Saudi Arabia in which he discussed currency fluctuations with Saudi leaders and reassured them that the US "will remain strictly neutral in the Iran-Iraq war."