Page:Documents from the Den of Espionage.djvu/18

 CONFIDENTIAL

TO : POL- Mr. Toussiant

FROM : L. Douglas Heck

SUBJECT : Visit of Mr. Ben-Yohanan of the Israeli Mission

Mr. Ben-Yohanan tells me that he has been in Tehran for about two and a half months. He came here from eight years in Israel, and he said he was pleased to have a change from assignments within Israel. He spent five years in Israel attached to the Prime Minister's office as a Political Assistant and the last two years in the same capacity with Foreign Minister Eban. He said the latter job took him on numerous missions before with the Foreign Minister and he had little time at home. Before this assignment he served with the Israeli Mission in Helsinki. He considers himself a career foreign service officer.

Ben-Yohanan was not very forthcoming on the state of Iran-UAR relations. He said that economic relations were improving with Israel landing on increasing number of contracts for construction, etc., in Iran. Politically he said that relations had not changed much one way or the other in the last five or six years.

On the question of Iraqui forces in Jordan he had no information suggesting that Xing Hussein was being successful in ousting them. In fact, the failure of the Iraqui forces to participate in the recent conflict between Jordan and the Palestinians might make it more difficult for King Hussein to arrange for their removal from Jordan.

Ben-Yohanan said there were approximately 3,000 Jews left in Iraq. He doubted there was much hope of their early departure from that country. Things were increasingly unstable in Iraq and there were rumors of new executions, but he had no definite information.

CONFIDENTIAL

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