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+---
+title: "Very Tightly Held"
+date: 2026-10-14
+status: published
+summary: "In September 1986 Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin offered Oliver North Soviet-bloc arms and a seized PLO shipment for the Contras; Poindexter called it a private deal 'that we bless.'"
+entities:
+  - "[[Yitzhak Rabin]]"
+  - "[[Oliver North]]"
+  - "[[John Poindexter]]"
+  - "[[Richard Secord]]"
+  - "[[Shimon Peres]]"
+  - "[[Contras]]"
+  - "[[Iran-Contra Affair]]"
+tags:
+  - IranContra
+  - Israel
+  - Contras
+  - ArmsTrafficking
+---
+# Very Tightly Held
+
+In May 1986 Israeli Defense Minister [[Yitzhak Rabin]] offered to provide Israeli military advisers for the [[Contras]]' southern front. In September he and [[Oliver North]] met again. According to North's notes, Rabin wanted "to know if we had any need for Sov Bloc weaps and ammo he could make avail," and asked whether North's ship, the Erria, had left the Mediterranean. North said it was in Lisbon. Rabin suggested that it dock at [[Haifa]] and "have it filled w/ whatever they cd assemble" of a "recently seized PLO shipment captured at sea."[^1]
+
+[[John Poindexter]] answered: "I think you should go ahead and make it happen. It can be a private deal between Dick [Secord] and Rabin that we bless." He later wrote that "[a]bsolutely nobody else should know about this. Rabin should not say anything to anybody else except you or me." On September 15 North told Poindexter that "orders were passed to the ship this morning to proceed to Haifa to pick up the arms. Loading will be accomplished by Israeli military personnel."[^1]
+
+Briefing President [[Ronald Reagan]] for a visit by Prime Minister [[Shimon Peres]], North wrote that Peres might raise the transfer of Soviet-bloc arms by the Israelis "for use by the Nicaraguan democratic resistance," and recommended: "If Peres raises this issue, it would be helpful if the President thanked him since the Israelis hold considerable stores of bloc ordinance compatible with what the Nicaraguan resistance now uses." Next to that sentence Poindexter penciled: "Rabin. Very tightly held."[^2]
+
+On the night of February 4, 1987, Rabin called the Senate intelligence committee's report on the Iran arms sales "highly inaccurate," said it "reached the wrong conclusions regarding Israel's role," and said he had personally rejected an appeal by a ranking White House aide for Israel to become involved with the Contras in any way.[^3]
+
+[^1]: U.S. Congress, *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair*, S. Rept. 100-216 / H. Rept. 100-433 (November 1987), ch. 3, p. 75.
+[^2]: *Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair*, ch. 3, pp. 75-76.
+[^3]: "Rabin Rejects Senate Report," *Jewish Telegraphic Agency*, February 6, 1987. https://www.jta.org/archive/rabin-rejects-senate-report