The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Amiram Nir.md

category	tags	summary	born	died	location
Intelligence & Government	Person IranContra CIA Israel Military	Nir resigned from his TV job to work as a public relations adviser for Peres during the 1981 elections.	1950-12-08	1988-11-30	Israel

Amiram Nir was a former Israel TV newsman and a counterterrorism adviser to Shimon Peres. He was originally a military officer in the tank corps and lost an eye in a training accident. He married Judy Moses, the daughter of the owner of Yediot Ahronot, a major Israeli newspaper chain.¹

Nir resigned from his TV job to work as a public relations adviser for Peres during the 1981 elections. After Peres became prime minister in 1984, he appointed Nir as his counterterrorism adviser. Nir found documents related to Rafael Eitan United States spy network and the Iran-Israel Joint Committee arms sales to Iran.¹

A note of January 4, 1986 by Charles Hill, a George P. Shultz aide, records John Poindexter saying that Nir had come to see him to revive the hostage idea.² The 1987 congressional report describes Nir as Peres's adviser on counterterrorism and lists, among the occasions on which Israel acted to keep the Iran initiative moving, "Nir's January 1986 proposal to keep the initiative moving forward at a time when U.S. interest appeared to be flagging."³

Peres and Nir faced challenges from the Likud Party-controlled intelligence community and the lack of financial power within the Labor Party. Peres decided to open a competing arms channel, run by Nir, to gain control over the profitable Iran arms sales and to undermine the existing intelligence-community channel. Nir, despite his lack of experience in intelligence or business, sought support from individuals like Al Schwimmer and Yaacov Nimrodi.¹

Nir met with Robert McFarlane in Washington, D.C. and threatened him with exposure if he did not cooperate with the new channel. This led to McFarlane connecting Nir with Oliver North and John Poindexter of the National Security Council. Nir, North, and Poindexter gained the support of William J. Casey, then head of the Central Intelligence Agency, and George H.W. Bush tacitly ignored the operation.¹

Nir's operation, however, struggled to make significant inroads into the arms trade. In April 1986, North initiated a sting operation, the Hashemi sting, to discredit the original channel and its members. Nir was also involved in the leaking of the Jonathan Pollard story to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to further undermine the Likud Party's credibility.¹

According to Ari Ben-Menashe, in May 1986 North, McFarlane, and Nir traveled to Tehran disguised as Irish technicians, carrying TOW missiles and Hawk missile spare parts, were detained, and had the military equipment confiscated. He wrote that this incident, along with the delivery of outdated Hawk missiles with Israeli markings, effectively killed off the Iran end of the second channel.¹

The independent counsel Lawrence Walsh wrote that by May 1986 Nir had replaced David Kimche as the Israeli official in the arms dealings. When the McFarlane party left Washington on May 23, 1986, by way of Frankfurt and Israel, Richard Secord and Nir joined the group in Israel, and only a portion of the HAWK spare parts the Iranians expected was loaded onto the aircraft that took the party to Tehran. The party arrived in Tehran on May 25, 1986; according to North's notes of a secure message, "We have been treated politely, though heavily escorted by Rev[olutionary] Guard types who are also physically and technically surveilling our rooms." On the evening of May 26, North, Howard Teicher, George Cave and Nir met without McFarlane with an Iranian foreign affairs adviser to the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, a meeting Teicher described as "our most serious meeting." On the evening of May 27 the Americans discovered that all day the plane "was not refueled," and the party left Tehran at about 9 a.m. on May 28, while the plane carrying the remainder of the HAWK parts turned back in mid-flight.⁴

According to Ben-Menashe, Nir also faced problems with his plans for supplying the Contras, as Yitzhak Rabin refused to cooperate. The congressional Iran-Contra report records that in May 1986 Rabin offered to provide Israeli military advisers for the Contras' southern front, and that in September 1986 he and North discussed an Israeli transfer of Soviet bloc weapons to the Contras, which Poindexter sanctioned as "a private deal between Dick [Secord] and Rabin that we bless."⁵ On the night of February 4, 1987, Rabin said that he had personally categorically rejected an appeal by a ranking White House aide for Israel to become involved with the Contras in any way.⁶ According to Ben-Menashe, a mysterious $10 million contribution from the Sultan of Brunei to North's group, wired through Bruce Rappaport, was leaked by the Joint Committee, further exposing the second channel.¹

Nir was due to be a major witness in North's trial and knew a great deal about Ihsan Barbouti chemical operation in Miami. He was killed in a plane crash in Mexico in November 1988, an event that Israeli intelligence believed was a CIA operation to prevent his testimony from embarrassing Peres, Ronald Reagan, or Bush.¹

Footnotes

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1. Ben-Menashe, Ari. Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network. Sheridan Square Press, 1992 (TrineDay reprint, 2015). ↩︎

2. Lawrence E. Walsh, Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters, vol. I, ch. 24 ("The Investigation of State Department Officials: Shultz, Hill and Platt"), n. 206 (Hill Note, January 4, 1986, ANS 0001255-56). https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_24.htm ↩︎

3. U.S. Congress, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, H. Rept. 100-433 and S. Rept. 100-216 (1987), pp. 526-27, "The Israeli Connection." https://archive.org/details/Iran-ContraReport ↩︎

4. Walsh, Final Report, vol. I, ch. 1 ("United States v. Robert C. McFarlane"), on the May 23 to 28, 1986 trip (North Note, May 25, 1986, AMX 001128; Teicher Note, May 26, 1986, AKW 005421; Teicher Note, May 27, 1986, AKW 005452; Teicher Note, May 28, 1986, AKW 005452-53). https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/chap_01.htm ↩︎

5. Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, S. Rept. No. 100-216, H. Rept. No. 100-433 (November 1987), ch. 3, pp. 75-76, "North Expands His Special Operations," citing North's notes and Poindexter's messages of September 1986. ↩︎

6. "Rabin Rejects Senate Report," Jewish Telegraphic Agency, February 6, 1987. https://www.jta.org/archive/rabin-rejects-senate-report ↩︎