‘Case for Glee at Reagan’s Comeuppance’

It is very sad, indeed, when the first executive of the greatest country on earth has to resort to deception and covert tactics in order to carry out his foreign policy, the American people feel deeply angered by the Iran arms deal episode because it demonstrated the political and the moral bankruptcy of the Reagan Administration.

The independent council will have to probe deeply into the Israeli connection and the nature of the relationship between the national Security Council men and the Israeli Mossad whose involvement dates back to December, 1980. The initiative seems to have originated from the Israelis who suggested the contacts with the Iranians and the President’s advisers were naive enough to catch the bait. The Administration had failed, miserably, to see the full implications of its policy and could only see the limited political gains. This aspect of the Reagan foreign policy had been described as the Israelization of the White House under which the Administration took simplistic solutions to complicated Middle Eastern problems; the disastrous Lebanon policy was one, the Libyan misinformation campaign another, and giving arms to the Iranians was the third. There is a common pattern in all of these mishaps--it is the ignoring of all the political institutions that have the experience in the Middle East and were opposed in one way or another to Reagan’s policies and appealing to the political hegemony of Israel in our capital.

SAM N. NIAZI

Redondo Beach

Niazi is president of the Council of Arab-American Organizations of Southern California.