Israel May Yet Lose Its Giant Grab for U.S. Funds to Underwrite Its Current Alliance With Turkey

By Andrew I. Killgore

After the 1967 Arab-Israel war, during which Israel seized large Arab territories, it sought close relations with a populous, non-Arab Middle Eastern Muslim country to offset the Arab preponderance in manpower. Iran had all these attributes, and for seven years, from 1972 until 1979, Israel and Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi’s Iran were quiet allies.

Brokered by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, the informal Iran-Israel deal brought something for both sides. Iran was assured of all the American weapons it wanted to buy, other than nuclear arms. Implicitly the ambitious but foolish shah became America’s surrogate in the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

In turn, Israel got big contracts in Iran and secret supplies of Iranian oil to circumvent the Arab petroleum boycott against Israel. The Iranian “security blanket” was doubly satisfying to the leaders of Israel’s Labor government because they knew that the Persians had never liked the Arabs anyway.

But the shah, surrounded by yes men and corrupt relatives who assured him that everything was going well within Iran, neglected his economy and overspent tenfold on weapons. In 1978 and 1979, despite frantic efforts by his brutal Israeli-trained secret police (SAVAK) and increasingly reluctant army officers and rebellious soldiers, his country blew up in his face, and he lost his throne.

In turn, Israel lost its security blanket, and in 1980 Jimmy Carter lost the White House over the debacle that followed the hostage-taking by Iranian revolutionaries.

The Iranian experience should be an object lesson for American presidents who go along with short-term panaceas dreamed up by Israel with little regard for regional realities and no regard whatsoever for their negative effects on long-term U.S. interests in the Middle East or throughout the Islamic world. But I wouldn’t bet any money on it, although that’s exactly what American taxpayers repeatedly are required by Israel’s powerful U.S. lobby.

Israel now pays heavy court to the military establishment that runs Turkey, regularly ousting democratically elected governments that threaten to get out of hand. That means the U.S. is also a suitor, because “Israel Loves Turkey” lacks credibility unless Israel includes its powerful influence in Washington as part of the deal. For its part, Israel is getting some contracts in Turkey, military use of Turkish air space to outflank Syria, and the same kind of security blanket it got from Iran, meaning if necessary it can count on Turkey to reduce or cut off entirely the flow of waters from the Euphrates and Tigris rivers that are essential to all of Iraq and much of Syria.

Israel hasn’t yet fully “delivered” Uncle Sam.

In turn, Turkey gets all the sophisticated American weaponry it wants, much of it at U.S. taxpayer expense. And Turkey also gets the services of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s principal Washington, DC lobby, to run interference for it with the U.S. Congress, U.S.-dominated international lending agencies, and in the U.S. media.

At issue now is a pipeline to bring oil from the Caspian Sea of Central Asia to a seaport from which it can be shipped to world markets. Turkey and Israel and, therefore, the United States government want the pipeline to run from Baku in Azerbaijan via Georgia and, skirting around Armenia, to the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea.

Contrary to the Israeli-designed, U.S. government-backed plan to ship the oil from a Turkish port, the major oil companies, including American producers, want a pipeline route through Iran because it is much shorter and will make marketing the Caspian oil much cheaper.

A Financial Times article of April 19 estimates the cost of using the Baku-Ceyhan route at $2.4 billion to $3.7 billion. Experts at Washington’s Petroleum Finance Company say the cost of that Turkish route could even reach $4.4 billion. The oil companies don’t have that much to spend on a route that makes no economic sense, so the question is where will the extra money come from to fund the longer route that will take the oil to a Turkish rather than an Iranian port?

The Israel Lobby generally gets what it wants from the United States, and in the Clinton administration (and potentially with a Gore administration as well) it is stronger now than ever. This is because every senior policymaking position dealing with the Middle East, whether at the State Department or at the White House, now is filled by pro-Israel political appointees who are products of that lobby or who have little trouble persuading themselves that any policies that favor Israel are in the U.S. national interest as well.

Packed Policymaking Positions

Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Martin Indyk, the State Department’s top policymaker for the Middle East, is a former lobbyist for Israel who “fathered” the disastrous “dual containment” policy which, besides helping to reduce Iraq to worse than Third World status, has produced sanctions designed to prevent Iran from modernizing and revitalizing its oil and gas industries, which have languished since the economic chaos that followed its revolution against the shah.

Indyk and the other Israel-oriented State Department and National Security Council policymakers have few “Arabists” or Arab Americans around them, and absolutely no Muslim Americans anywhere near them who might say, “Hey, wait a minute, this isn’t working and here’s why.” So all indications are that American oil companies, which already have lost the opportunity to join the profitable rush to help expand Iranian oil production, will also lose the Iran route and their chance to participate in marketing Central Asian petroleum to South and East Asia, only because Israel needs its new Turkish ally.

Nevertheless, Israel hasn’t yet fully “delivered” Uncle Sam. Congressionally mandated U.S. sanctions against foreign companies spending more than a certain amount on oil and gas development in Iran are not being enforced because, if they are, they will set off a foolish and mutually destructive trade war between the U.S. on the one hand and the European Union, Canada and other countries on the other. In fact, the U.S. would lose if it pursued its made-in-Israel position in the World Trade Organization.

Consultants at the Petroleum Finance Company believe that under these conditions it’s “only a matter of time” before America’s “let’s-hate-Iran” policy fades away. So it is just possible that, despite packing the foreign policymaking positions in the Clinton administration with friends of Israel, and conspicuously barring the doors to all others who don’t conform, the Israel lobby may yet lose its greatest raid yet against American national interests, American businesses overseas, and the American taxpayer.

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