Back to Brief on Iran
[Excerpts from a commentary by Yossi Klein Halevi, a Senior Writer for the Jerusalem Report]
JERUSALEM - When the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin endorsed the Oslo peace process, his primary motive wasn't the need to reconcile with the Palestinians but to contain the Iranians. Rabin believed that Iran, whose fundamentalist leaders had turned the Arab-Israeli conflict into a holy war and Israel's existence into a religious crime, posed the only serious long-term danger to the survival of the Jewish state, which some day might well be forced to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. To prepare for that possibility, Rabin believed, Israel needed to neutralize potential Arab support for Iran by creating a Middle East alliance of moderates. Making peace with the Arabs would allow Israel and its new allies to prevent the emergence of a nuclear Iran.
The recent Iranian testing of a medium-range missile, apparently capable of hitting Israel as well as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, has brought Rabin's scenario considerably closer to reality.
Of all the dictator regimes still in a state of war with Israel,… the fundamentalist Muslim republic of Iran is considered by Israelis the most dangerous and unpredictable. The Iranian secret service was almost certainly behind the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, followed two years later by the bombing of that city's Jewish community center, resulting in 86 deaths. A government that would blow up a community center in a nonbelligerent country, Israelis argue, is the kind of government that might consider nuclear war a reasonable option against heretics…
Few Israelis believe that the recent changes in Iranian society are profound enough to justify international passivity as the mullahs gain access to nuclear weapons. The sentencing of the… former mayor of Tehran to five years in prison and a whipping, the hanging of a Muslim who converted to the Bahai faith and the execution of a member of the Jewish community accused of helping fellow Jews escape the country all indicate that Western expectations of imminent change in Iran were premature.
Even Iran's less repressive politicians have affirmed that no compromise is possible with the Jewish state. Indeed, the cultural moderates seem to be using hostility to Israel as a way of proving their Islamic credentials …
Mullahs' Terrorists Assassinate Iranian Kurdish Dissident, Iran Zamin News Agency, August 6
On Friday, July 31, at 23:15 local time, mullahs' terrorists gunned down Seyyed Mohammad Heidari, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran, at a party base in northern Iraq. He died in hospital the next day.
The assassination brings to 28 the number of Iranian dissidents murdered abroad by the clerical regime's hit-squads since Mohammad Khatami took office.
In a statement issues from Paris, the Nationa Council of Resistance of Iran called on international human rights organizations to condemn this terrorist crime and the freedom of action enjoyed by the mullahs' Guards Corps and Intelligence Ministry agents in northern Iraq.
"The world community's silence and apathy in the face of the crimes perpetrated by the ruling theocratic regime have emboldened the mullahs to continue their policy of suppression at home and export of terrorism abroad," the statement added.
Russian Security Says Caught Mullahs' Spies in 1997, Reuters, August 6
MOSCOW - Russia expelled 30 foreign spies and intercepted seven Russian citizens in the pay of foreign powers last year, Interfax news agency quoted the national counter-intelligence agency as saying on Thursday.
Alexander Zdanovich said the Federal Security Service (FSB) was also "closely monitoring" over 400 agents of foreign intelligence services and people suspected of links with these services.
Zdanovich said the agency had cut short an attempt by an Iranian industrial group to acquire data on Russia's most up-to-date aerospace, aviation, nuclear and laser technologies.
Plans For Closing Missions Abroad - Paper, Reuters, August 6
TEHRAN - Low oil prices are forcing Iran to slash the number of its foreign missions and cut its diplomatic corps as part of a government austerity program, the spokesman of the Foreign Ministry was quoted on Thursday as saying.
Mahmoud Mohammadi said the reduction in embassies and overseas staff would be carried out in those countries with poor political relations with Tehran, or where economic benefits were marginal.
"The plan for reducing the number of Iranian missions abroad and curtailing their staffs will be given top priority," Mohammadi told the Tehran Times newspaper.