I had heard much about a book titled, “Profits of War” (translated into farsi, under the title “Pol-e-Khoon”) written in 1992 by a fugitive Israeli-Iranian intelligence operative named Ari Ben-Menashe, yet I did not get around to reading it until just recently. What most caught my attention in reading the book, other than the revelations of an official Israeli policy of clandestine military support and supply to the molla regime of post-revolutionary Iran in its war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (including high level procurement meetings between Ben-Menashe and individuals identified as official Iranian co-ordinator Sayeed Mahdi Kashani and Iranian defense minister Colonel Jalali, ostensibly acting on behalf of and on orders from Hashemi-Rafsanjani), was an incident that I can only describe as disturbing and utterly callous. Namely, Ben-Menashe relates how in the mid-1980’s, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war, when hundreds of thousands of Iranian youth and volunteers were being maimed and killed at the fronts (at the urging of the mollas who, to the exclusion of their own sons who were nowhere to be found near the frontlines, were offering these brave men and boys worthless plastic keys to heaven), the Israelis were offering Iran thousands of TOW anti-tank missiles which at that time cost Israel $3,000 a piece to Iran for $13,000 a piece, ONLY TO BE ASKED BY KASHANI TO MARK THEM UP AN ADDITIONAL $800 A PIECE TO $13,800 A PIECE, again ostensibly on behalf of and on orders from Hashemi-Rafsanjani! Granted that a country at war, especially one like Iran that was reckless enough to jeopardize its relations with its primary arms supplier the United States, may be forced to acquire spare parts and supplies from whomever and at whatever price they become available, but what possible justification or explanation can be given to sooth the fury of the Janbaz (veterans) and the fathers, brothers and sons of the Shahids (martyrs) when they learn that their blood and tears and sacrifice, and that of their loved ones, was used to line the pockets and satisfy the greed of a handful of corrupt people at the helm of the regime? Mr. Ahmadinejad once complained that Iran was sanctioned in such a manner during the Iran-Iraq war that it could not even procure barbed-wire; my response to Mr. Ahmadinejad is that, unlike certain dubious high-ranking personalities in the Iranian regime, a man of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s integrity just didn’t know where (and how) to shop.
PS: In an interesting passage Ben-Mensahe describes a secret meeting, at which he was present, that Ayatollah Mehdi Karroubi held in Paris in 1980 with a number of American political personalities. Seems like Karroubi is a renaissance man of sorts, having worn a suit -with no tie- to the meeting and being conversant in both English and French.
