Israel Seeks to Turn Iran Into Outcast

Emboldened by President Bush’s “axis of evil” speech, the Israeli government has launched an international campaign against Iran ahead of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s trip to the United States this week.

Israel charges that Iran is arming the Palestinians and Hezbollah, the Shiite Muslim militia in Lebanon, to further destabilize a region rocked by more than 16 months of bloodshed. In New York on Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres echoed Bush’s State of the Union assertion that Iran is developing weapons of mass destruction.

Iran denied the charges and countered with an unusually strong warning that any military attack by Israel would be met with “a response that will be unimaginable to any Israeli politician.”

Israeli officials said Tuesday that their campaign is diplomatic, not military.

“Israel never had and does not have any intention of attacking Iran,” Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh, a former deputy defense minister, told Israel Radio.

Sharon leaves for the United States today and is expected to discuss Iran and the Palestinian crisis during talks with Bush on Thursday.

Letter Being Readied for Israeli Ambassadors

The Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, is preparing a letter for Israeli ambassadors to present to foreign governments urging them to cut ties with Iran if it doesn’t stop developing missiles and nonconventional weapons. Israel also wants Iran to withdraw its Revolutionary Guards and weapons from Lebanon and to refrain from interfering in negotiations to end the Israeli-Palestinian violence.

“It is essential that we get the point across that the Iranian government is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” an Israeli official said.

Since the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in September 2000, Israel has feared a second front: on its northern border with Lebanon. The neighboring nation is supported by Iran, which doesn’t recognize the Jewish state.

The Israeli government was unsettled by warming ties between Washington and Tehran after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, when the Bush administration sought Iran’s help in the war against Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network and its hosts, the Taliban regime of Afghanistan.

The United States and Iran broke off relations in 1979 after Islamic militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 American hostages for 444 days. But reformist Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has been working to improve relations with the West, and the United States and Iran shared an enemy in the Taliban.

Israel worried that Washington might be willing to overlook Iranian support of Israel’s enemies as the U.S. pursued its own foes.

Israeli protests about Iran fell largely on deaf ears until last month, when Israel intercepted a shipload of weapons in the Red Sea that it said was supplied by Iran and bound for President Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority.

Iran and the Palestinian Authority have denied any official connection to the 50-ton arms shipment, but the United States has accepted Israel’s intelligence on the ship, called the Karine-A.

“The Karine-A linked Iran with the intifada [Palestinian uprising] and has been interpreted as an attempt by Iran to be an actor here,” a U.S. official said.

That view reportedly was reinforced by Jordan’s King Abdullah II during a recent trip to Washington. The London-based Arabic newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat reported Tuesday that Abdullah presented evidence to Bush and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that Iran was “directly and clearly involved” in at least 17 attempts by the Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch missile attacks on Israel from Jordanian territory.

The paper said Abdullah had confronted Khatami with the reputed evidence in two heated telephone conversations, during which Khatami said that he wasn’t responsible for the activity against Israel and that Iranian conservatives were trying to undermine his efforts to change his country’s foreign policy.

The United States, meanwhile, accuses Iran of trying to destabilize the post-Taliban interim government of Afghanistan by supplying weapons to a militia commander hostile to the U.S.-backed administration and by allowing Al Qaeda fighters to escape across its borders.

Iran, Lebanon Deny Israel’s Allegations

Iran, which has long competed with Pakistan and Russia for influence in Afghanistan, now apparently fears that the United States will turn Afghanistan into a permanent base of military operations for Central Asia.

Bush appeared to give up on closer ties with Tehran in his State of the Union address last week when he included Iran in an “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea.

Israel moved quickly to capitalize on the new alignment.

On Monday, Peres accused Iran of supplying thousands of medium-range missiles to Hezbollah, enabling the group to strike cities deep inside Israel, and of sending 100 Revolutionary Guards to Lebanon to train the militia.

Lebanon and Iran denied the charges.

“Israel is very skillful in inventing propagandist stories,” Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told a news conference in Tehran. “These allegations are part of the same stories and will not be the last either.”

Hezbollah used Katyusha rockets in a war of attrition against the 22-year Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon until Israel pulled out in May 2000.

In recent days, Hezbollah has shot antiaircraft missiles at Israeli fighter jets flying over the border into Lebanese airspace. On Monday, Israeli schools along the border sent students into bomb shelters when the militia fired missiles at the planes. No injuries or damage were caused.

During his trip to the United States, Peres has also called for international pressure on Iran to abandon a plan to arm itself with chemical and biological weapons and to pursue nuclear weapons capabilities.

Fearing that Israel intends to strike a nuclear reactor in Iran, as it did in Iraq in 1981, Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani responded on Qatar’s Al Jazeera television Monday night that his government would respond massively to any Israeli attack.

“If Israel carries out any military action against Iran, it will face a response that will be unimaginable to any Israeli politician,” he said.