A Chronology of U.S.-Middle East Relations

September 16:

In an effort to forestall legislation to close both the PLO Observer Mission at the United Nations and the Palestine Information Office (PIO) in Washington, DC, the State Department ordered the closure of the PIO within 30 days in return for an agreement by leaders of 40 Jewish groups to cease lobbying for the legislation. PIO Director Hasan Abdel Rahman, an American citizen, vowed to fight the measure in US courts if necessary, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supported him. The closure order was later extended 45 days, to December 1.

September 17:

After four days of peace talks with Iranian leaders, United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said that he had received "very clear responses" to some of his inquiries in Tehran. However, Iran and Iraq subsequently resumed attacks on each other's oil facilities.

September 18:

After a Jerusalem meeting with 22 Black American leaders, the Israeli government adopted a package of economic and cultural sanctions against South Africa. Israel will no longer serve as a trans-shipment point for South African-manufactured goods, will not import South African steel, and will not seek loans from the apartheid state.

September 20:

In an interview in Damascus with Washington Post reporters, Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad welcomed the Reagan administration's decision to return its ambassador to Damascus and remove most of the economic sanctions it imposed on Syria. These sanctions had followed British charges of Syrian involvement in an aborted 1986 plot to blow up an Israeli flight originating in London. Assad reaffirmed his support for Iran in the Iran-Iraq war and confirmed that he had met with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Jordan in April.

September 21:

The American Jewish Congress urged Israel to find "realistic alternatives to its military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip," and supported the convening of an international peace conference on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The statement was unprecedented among mainstream American Jewish organizations. It was rejected by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, whose Likud Bloc opposes the international conference as well as any withdrawal from the occupied territories. Although other mainstream American Jewish leaders declined to support the statement, it was welcomed by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who is seeking to bring down the Israeli government over the issue of peace negotiations.

September 22:

Israel presented evidence to the congressional committee investigating the Iran-contra affair suggesting that Lt. Col. Oliver North indicated to Israeli officials in December 1985 that he was looking for a way to channel funds to the anti-Sandinista contra forces in Central America. North had previously testified to the committee that diversion of profits from Israeli sales of American arms to Iran was broached to him in January 1986 by Iranian-born Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom he knew to be an agent of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.

September 23:

US Navy helicopters attacked and disabled an Iranian vessel in the act of laying mines in Persian Gulf waters. US Naval officers took 26 Iranian sailors prisoner and captured intact mines on the vessel. Also recovered were parts of US-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that had fallen into Iranian hands. The prisoners and bodies of the Iranians killed in the attack were returned to Iran.

September 25:

After the White House received a letter, sponsored by Sens. Alan Cranston (D-CA) and Robert Packwood (R-OR) and signed by 64 senators, opposing a proposed $1.4 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, the sale of 1,600 Maverick anti-tank missiles was dropped from the package. The new arms package, submitted to Congress was valued at $1 billion and included 12 F-15 replacement jet fighters, 93 artillery ammunition carriers, and electronic upgrades for Saudi F-15s and M-60 tanks.

September 29:

In response to a Washington Post report that the US had imported over $700 million of Iranian oil last summer, the US Senate voted 98-0 to embargo all Iranian imports.

October 1:

The Washington Jewish Week, drawing extensively on Bob Woodward's just-published Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987, reported that then CIA Director William Casey gave Israel "almost unlimited" access to US Middle East intelligence. Although opposed by Admiral Bobby Inman, then deputy director of the CIA, Casey provided Israel with information on Iraq's nuclear reactor, which Israel used in its June 1981 air raid on the Iraqi reactor. Woodward wrote that Inman "didn't see how the United States could maintain any balanced policy if Israel was permitted to drop bombs all over the Middle East using American intelligence."

October 4:

Without an exchange of gunfire, Saudi Arabian jets and warships turned away some 60 Iranian armed speedboats which were headed toward a Saudi offshore oil facility.

October 5:

Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba named Interior Minister Zine Al-Abdine Ben Ali as his new prime minister. Ben Ali, who directed the recent crackdown on Islamic fundamentalists, was also named head of the ruling Socialist Destourian party, a position neither of Bourguiba's previous prime ministers had held.

October 5:

In an escalation of the Iran-Iraq war, Iraqi jets struck five oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and Iran fired a missile into Baghdad for the first time in eight months.

October 7:

US Navy helicopters sank three Iranian gunboats in the Persian Gulf.

October 8:

In the second armed clash in one week, four Palestinians and an Israeli Shin Bet security agent were killed in a shoot-out in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. On Oct. 1 Israeli soldiers had shot dead three Palestinians after their car crashed through an army roadblock at the entrance to a refugee camp.

October 9:

Senator Lawton Chiles (D-FL), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, endorsed Israel's request to refinance $1 billion of its existing $10 billion US debt, providing it did not serve as a precedent for other countries.

October 11:

In a speech before the Jordanian parliament, King Hussein blamed the current impasse in the peace process on the "intransigence" of hard-line forces in Israel. Hussein supported the "land-for-peace" formula of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the convening of an international peace conference.

October 11:

Palestinians and Israeli nationalists clashed near the Al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock mosques in East Jerusalem. The Israelis entered the area in violation of a 1967 agreement placing the area under the authority of local Islamic officials.

October 19:

After giving Iranian crews 20 minutes to evacuate, US Navy warships destroyed Iranian radar and communications station oil platforms near Bahrain in response to an Iranian attack against a US ship in Kuwaiti waters on October 16.