On Wed, 3 May 2006, Doug Henwood wrote:
> ><http://www.juancole.com/>
> >
> > But, by the way, Khomeini sold oil to Israel, and Israel sold him
> > weapons and spare parts
>
> [this is rather amazing - I had no idea! - I presume this was to annoy Iraq?]
Yes, but it was deeper than that. Israel had been close with the Shah for decades. Back then Israel basically saw the Shia and Kurds as natural allies against "the Arabs." The oil for arms trade became very heavy between Israel and Iran after 1973, when Israel was ringed by secondary embargoes on top of the normal ones, and the Shah, flush with money, wanted to build an armory faster than the US would supply him directly. Then in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian revolution it wasn't at all clear who was going to come out on top and top Israelis really remained convinced for many years that Iran would eventually align with Israel against their "natural" common enemies. (This probably lasted until 1983, when the Shias who had welcomed Israelis into Lebanon with flowers -- they really did share a common hatred of the PLO -- formed Hezbolluh.) So the Israelis kept up their relations with the same Iranians they'd been dealing with all along, hoping to strengthen their hand.
The US was pretty pissed when they found out because it was US spare parts they were sending and it reduced our leverage in hostage negotiations.
Michael