MIDDLE EAST
Israel Displays Arms It Says Were Headed to Gaza
JERUSALEM — Israel’s seizure last week of a merchant vessel said to be carrying an Iranian arms shipment had two goals, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: to prevent the cargo from reaching Palestinian fighters in Hamas-run Gaza, and to expose what he called “the true face of Iran.”
With the first goal in hand, the Israeli government and military on Monday orchestrated a public relations spectacle in an effort to realize the second.
Mr. Netanyahu, accompanied by his minister of defense and the navy chief, toured a display of the seized weapons and munitions laid out at the naval base in the port of Eilat, Israel’s southernmost point, and then gave a news conference. The event was broadcast live on Israeli television.
For Israel’s leaders, the timing of the shipment — with which Iran has denied any involvement — was opportune, coming as world powers are engaged in talks with Iranian officials over the country’s nuclear program. Mr. Netanyahu has criticized the negotiation effort as being too friendly toward a country he maintains is resolutely seeking to develop nuclear weapons for possible use against Israel and the West, despite Iranian officials’ claims to the contrary.
On Monday, against a backdrop of rows of rockets, mortar shells and boxes of bullets, Mr. Netanyahu excoriated the international players in the Iran talks as engaging in hypocrisy.
“There are some in the international community who prefer us not to be holding this event,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “They do not want us to show the world what is really happening inside Iran. We exposed the truth behind Iran’s fake smiles. They want to continue nurturing the illusion that Iran has changed its direction, but the facts we see here, including those presented on these docks, prove the complete opposite.”
Rather than hearing international criticism of Iran over the arms shipment, Mr. Netanyahu said, “We have seen smiles and handshakes between representatives of the West and Iranian regime representatives in Tehran, precisely while these rockets were making their way to Eilat.”
Although Mr. Netanyahu did not specifically name Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, during the news conference, he did so a day earlier in Jerusalem. In remarks to his cabinet about the seized merchant ship, the Klos C, he said: “I call this to the attention of Catherine Ashton, who is now visiting Tehran. I would like to ask her if she asked her Iranian hosts about this shipment of weapons for terrorist organizations, and if not, why not.”
The military listed the weapons found on board, hidden behind sacks of cement, as 40 Syrian-manufactured rockets with a range of up to 100 miles, 181 mortar shells and about 400,000 7.62-millimeter rifle rounds.
Officials said that the 122-millimeter mortar shells found on board were of a type made in Iran. Some of the bags of cement bore the words “Made in Iran.” The military displayed magnified copies of the ship’s manifests, saying they showed a crude attempt to falsify the cargo’s provenance. The officials said that the papers tried to show that all 150 containers aboard had been loaded during a stop at a port in Iraq, when 100 of them had apparently been loaded earlier, at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas.
“We have clear-cut and incriminating evidence that Iran and the Quds forces are behind the smuggling attempt,” a senior Israeli intelligence official told reporters in a phone briefing on the condition of anonymity, in line with protocol. He was referring to an elite international operations unit within the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran.
The official also said Israel was “100 percent positive that the address of this shipment was the Gaza Strip.” He said that he could not reveal delicate intelligence to the news media, but that Israel would be sharing the evidence with colleagues in intelligence organizations abroad. Last week, the State Department said that the United States military had helped monitor the vessel and was prepared to take part in the interception, but that Israel had chosen to take the lead.
Still, many Israelis were skeptical that their government’s publicity campaign would do much to change opinions abroad.
“It is hard to see that the international community’s interests will change because of what Israel has shown today,” Yoaz Hendel, a former director of communications in Mr. Netanyahu’s office, said in a telephone interview. “But Israel has an obligation to show what it has.”
