Iran and Israel: The Influence of the US State Dept?

The State Dept had a role in deposing the Shah and was opposed to establishing Israel. Has anything changed? 

By David Levy, INN

Ballistic nuclear missileISTOCK

Why is the United States – Israel’s “greatest ally “ – so obsessed with a nuclear deal with Iran if it is not effective, cannot be monitored and will ultimately hurt Israel and others in the region? Israel Kasnett, JNS, 28 February, 2022.

It is difficult to understand why President Joe Biden is and former President Barack Obama was determined to do a nuke deal with Iran.

The deal appears to involve puzzling concessions to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his regime. The regime has made clear its hatred and contempt for America. The chant “Allah is Greater, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse on the Jews, Victory to Islam “ leaves little doubt that Jews and the Jewish state are prime targets.

Is this the influence of the US State Dept, out to strengthen a deadly enemy of the world’s only Jewish nation?

A grant notice posted in February 2022 stated that $987,654 will be provided by the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour to an NGO to charge Israel with human rights abuses.

The current American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken understands what is expected of him. In public discussions via Twitter in November 2021 with Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch and Agnes Calla of Amnesty International, Blinken referred to both organizations as “human rights defenders.” Both are in fact dedicated and outspoken foes of the Jewish state.

In March 2022, during a speech to the Women’s National Democratic Club, the U.S. Director of Amnesty International, Paul O’Brien, confirmed that the organization’s goal is not human rights but the destruction of the Jewish State.

In March 2022, U S Ambassador Thomas Nides, a former U S State Department official, left little doubt that the key item on his diplomatic agenda was assisting the Palestinian Arabs.

There is a history.

A few weeks after Krtistallnacht in November 1938 FDR asked the Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles about finding a place for Jews. The response: British Guyana! Which is to say as far away from the Jewish Homeland as possible.

In 1947 the US State Dept along with Great Britain and the Arabs convinced the UN to reduce the dimensions of the proposed Jewish state as recommended by UNSCOP. One has the impression that in the past and currently the State Dept (henceforth “State:) is the source of much US administration-Israel friction.

In March 1948 Arab violence had succeeded in amplifying the doubt within State about Partition. Questions had emerged within State in January. It had produced a document claiming partition was unworkable and moreover a Jewish state was contrary to American interests. A supporter of partition, Truman had begun to waver. The American UN representative Warren Austin said that the Security Council ought not to force Partition on the Arabs. That same month the US considered suspending Partition, a notion that came from George Marshall, the Secretary of State.

The Arabs, it was observed, were jubilant.

No secret that State played a key role in driving the Shah out of Iran to be replaced by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Perhaps not the end but the beginning of the end of the Cold War might have occurred on 16 January 1979, the day Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, boarded a plane bound for Egypt.

A couple of weeks later the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah M?savi Khomeini was back in Tehran. Iranians voted by national referendum to become an Islamic Republic with Khomeini as Supreme Leader.

The Ayatollah owed his remarkable political success to the US State Department. State’s unremitting hostility to the Shah apparently dated from the tenure of Henry Kissinger in the mid-1970s. Said Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor: “…the power echelons at State, notably the head of the Iran Desk, were motivated by doctrine dislike of the Shah and simply wanted him out of power altogether.” This despite the fact that the Shah was a strong opponent of Soviet ambitions in the region.

Was the Shah’s friendly attitude to Israel the problem? Persian Jews were much indebted to the Pahlavis, father and son. Under the Pahlavis, the Jews of Persia were allowed equality before the law, much freedom and opportunities that had been denied them. State, on the other hand, understood that life under the Shah was no picnic, that faced with a choice between Savak, his secret police, and the mullahs, Iranians would likely turn to the mullahs.

It was said that James Earl “Jimmy“ Carter, no great fan of the State of Israel, was pretty sure that if one made nice with the Grand Ayatollah he would respond with good will and tolerance and, as someone put it, become Jimmy’s best pal. How to explain? There are hypotheses having to do with oil and opium.

A few years ago Carter’s Secretary of Agriculture Robert Bergland told me that at the time of the 1979-1980 Tehran hostage crisis, Carter’s single-minded priority was to get the hostages released and bring them home. The military strategist Edward Luttwak thought that that was entirely mistaken, that America needed to act decisively, that Carter’s failure to do so has been paid for in blood.

From Gabriel Noronha, former State Department Iran specialist, we get a picture of what the Biden Iran deal might look like.

– Termination of sanctions on Iran’s senior terror chiefs;

– Termination of sanctions on bodies and individuals associated with Supreme Leader Ali Khameni;

-Termination of sanctions on those involved in the torture and murder of Iranian citizens;

– Sanctions relief would provide Iran with a cash infusion of $90 billion and an additional $50-55 billion in oil and gas revenues that will enable Iran to expand its hostility to Israel and to its Sunni Arab neighbours;

– Iran will be able to move forward on the development of advanced centrifuges;

Largely unenforceable limitations on the nuclear program will be removed; Iran will become a nuclear armed state.

It has been suggested that U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s participation at the Negev Summit in late March 2022 was intended to dismiss criticism of the proposed Iran nuclear deal by raising the issue of the two-state solution. Seemed to work.

The Cassandra Prophecy, a new documentary by Israeli filmmaker Duki Dror, tells the story of the Obama administration’s decision to halt a US DEA operation dealing with Hezbollah drug-trafficking and money- laundering to advance the JCPOA, the Iran nuke deal.

In late May 2022 U.S. Special Envoy for Iran Robert Malley confirmed that the Biden administration is after a new nuclear deal with Iran that is both “shorter” and “weaker” than the original deal. Malley conceded that the Biden administration does not have a back-up plan to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which Iran claims it already has the ability to build..

David Levy is a journalist based in Montreal