Word: tehran
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other foreign country, fell into the hands of the Ayatullah's revolutionary government after the collapse of the Shah's regime in February 1979. To promote ties to the moderate government of Mehdi Bazargan and the armed forces, the Carter Administration conducted secret negotiations with Tehran, creating a framework for the subsequent delivery of most of the $5 billion worth of military supplies ordered by the Shah. Explains a former high U.S. intelligence official: "We were desperate for any contact...
...offered to repair Iran's Hawk defensive system. The Carter Administration also authorized some major U.S. arms manufacturers to continue sales of military equipment to Iran covertly. This, in turn, encouraged private arms dealers to continue supplying Iran. All official cooperation with Iran ended when the embassy in Tehran was seized. Carter impounded $300 million worth of spare parts that the Shah had paid for, and ordered a complete boycott of American trade with Iran...
...President's decision had little effect on the world's arms merchants. In the week after Carter announced the boycott, some 300 U.S. and Western European companies contacted Tehran with offers to sell munitions and other banned items. After the Iraqi invasion in September 1980, the Iranian air force set up an office in London's exclusive Kensington district to coordinate its purchases...
Ironically, although the Ayatullah and his followers are violently anti-Israel, one of the countries that has violated the U.S. boycott most blatantly is Israel. When Iraq invaded Iran, the Tehran regime urgently needed U.S. supplies. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski confirmed in his recently published memoirs that the Carter Administration clandestinely offered to supply spare parts to Iran in return for the hostages' freedom. "We learned, much to our dismay," he wrote, "that the Israelis had been secretly supplying American spare parts to the Iranians, without much concern for the negative impact this was having...
According to documents seen by TIME, Israel handled most of its sales through Faroukh Azzizi, an Iranian arms merchant who lives in Athens. The papers show that Azzizi purchased U.S.-made Tow missiles from Israel in November 1982. The shipment went to Amsterdam before reaching Tehran. Says a senior Western diplomat in Brussels: "Israeli and American claims that Israel made only a single, isolated sale are pretty disingenuous." The Israeli government firmly denies any wrong doing. Said Defense Ministry Spokesman Nachman Shai last week: "We have not violated any agreement between the U.S. and us that forbids selling American-made...