Israel's Tehran connection
Richard Silverstein
April 4, 2008 12:00 PM
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_silverstein/2008/04/israels_tehran_connection.html
If you've ever wondered about the definition of hypocrisy you'll find the
answer right here.
Last month the Swiss foreign minister visited Iran and, together with
President Ahmadinejad,
attended the signing of a multi-billion euro contract for Iran to supply
Switzerland with large
amounts of natural gas over the next 25 years.
The US State Department immediately condemned the deal and said it would
be investigating
whether it breached the Iran Sanctions Act. Israel complained too,
describing the Swiss
minister's visit to Tehran as an "act unfriendly to Israel". Various
Jewish groups also joined
in the protests, including the World Jewish Congress.
This righteous indignation was entirely predictable but more than a little
odd nevertheless. On
March 30, the Swiss newspaper Sonntag retaliated with the revelation that
Israel, supposedly
observing an ironclad boycott of all things Iranian, has been buying
Iranian oil for years.
The story is in German but Israeli journalist Shraga Elam has provided me
with a translation
which I'll quote from here.
"Israel im****ts Iranian oil on a large scale even though contacts
with Iran and purchasing
of its products are officially boycotted by Israel. Israel gets around the
boycott by having
the oil delivered via Europe. A reliable Israeli energy newsletter,
EnergiaNews, re****ted this
last week [March 18] ...
"EnergiaNews got the information about the Iran trade from sources
with ties to the
management of Israeli Oil Refineries Ltd ... According to EnergiaNews the
Iranian oil is liked
in Israel because its quality is better than other crude oils.
"The re****t by EnergiaNews editor Moshe Shalev states that the
Iranian oil reaches various
European ****ts, mainly in Rotterdam. It is bought by Israelis and the
necessary European bill
of lading and insurance papers are supplied. Then it is trans****ted to
Haifa in Israel. The
im****ter is the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co (EAPC), which keeps its oil
sources secret."
EAPC was established in 1968 as a joint Israeli-Iranian company to
trans****t oil from Iran to
Europe. After the fall of the Shah, Iran ceased to play an active role in
its affairs and there
are ongoing legal disputes between the two partners.
The Swiss re****t continued:
"It is not clear if the Iranian ex****ters know about Israeli
purchases of their oil. At
the other end, the Israeli buyers and governmental offices are well aware
of where the
high-grade oil comes from, although it is a blatant defiance of the
boycott. The EnergiaNews
article even made it through Israeli censor****p, which asked only for some
changes in the text.
The fact that the re****t cleared the censors increases the credibility of
the information. In
the past, such re****ts were forbidden.
"When questioned by Sonntag, an energy expert of one of the leading
Israeli papers
confirmed the EnergiaNews re****t: Israel has been im****ting Iranian oil
for many years. The
expert stressed, however, that the purchases were made on the free market
and not directly from
Iran."
Sonntag quoted a spokesman for Oil Refineries Ltd as denying that his
company im****ts and
processes Iranian oil. However, Sonntag pointed to a re****t in Haaretz
newspaper last October
which said that an Israeli energy company called Paz would be refining
Iranian oil and
supplying it to the Palestinian Authority from the start of this year.
This begs the question: if Iran is, as Bibi Netanyahu argues, an
existential threat to Israel,
why does the government allow such trade? Would Israel have the US attack
Iran's nuclear
programme and provoke a potential region-wide conflict while it cannot
seem to wean itself from
high quality Iranian crude? You'd think if Israelis are cowering in fear
from an Iranian bomb
and the arch antisemite Ahmadinejad, they wouldn't want to trade with such
an enemy.
When is a boycott not a boycott? When it's in your ****d economic interest
to cir***vent it,
apparently. But one should ask: if Israel doesn't honour its self-declared
boycott of Iran, why
should the rest of the world honour its boycott of Hamas and Gaza? If
Israel doesn't honour its
own boycott, then why should members of Congress vote with AIPAC when it
proposes a measure
that even Israel honours only in the breach?
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_silverstein/2008/04/israels_tehran_connection.html
It's interesting to note from a discussion (in Hebrew) on the Kedma
website that Israel does
not formally define Iran as an "enemy nation" and therefore in a strictly
legal sense such
trade is permissible. Ironically, Iran too has a boycott against Israel in
place and is
violating its own measures in that regard. Furthermore, the same commenter
notes that Israel
last week dismissed attempts to engage Syria in a diplomatic process as a
failure because Syria
refuses to renounce its ties with Iran. Do I hear the word "hypocrisy"?
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