A banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen said the LDPR estimated the crowd at four hundred thousand. The Moscow police put it closer to a quarter of a million. But the discrepancies didn’t matter. Television and radio crews were beaming the speech to homes all across Russia and the former Soviet republics and to viewers around the world, all of whom now knew a firestorm was building in Moscow.
11
President Mustafa Al-Hassani turned off the television.
Mordechai tried desperately to control his emotions. He had just seen the horrifying coverage from Saudi Arabia.
How could Ibrahim Sa’id be dead?
It wasn’t possible. They had just had dinner together near Tel Aviv at the home of the U.S. ambassador to Israel a few nights before. They’d sat on the veranda at sunset, overlooking the glistening Mediterranean, smoking cigars, and strategizing ways of bringing the Saudis to the table. They’d stared out at mile after mile of offshore drilling platforms and marveled at the success of Medexco and toasted a future that just seventy-two hours ago had seemed so pregnant with possibilities.
How few brave ones there were left, thought Mordechai. How few were willing to do more than merely hope for peace. Without Sa’id, there would never have been a joint venture between PPG and Medexco; nor, of course, would there ever have been an Oil-for-Peace agreement with Israel. Could either survive his death?
“Do you think it is all connected?” asked Al-Hassani.
The question jarred Mordechai back into the moment.
In his shock and grief, the question had not yet crossed Mordechai’s mind. Could the Aeroflot hijacking and the assassination of the Palestinian prime minister be connected? There was no evidence, beyond the timing. Not yet, anyway. But did he really believe in mere coincidence? He did not.
If the events were connected, then someone was trying to blow up the peace process. But who? And where would they strike next? Mordechai forced himself to become an analyst again, to push back his roiling emotions, start processing what few facts he had, and begin looking for connections, however remote or obscure.
“Perhaps,” said Mordechai.
“Perhaps?” Al-Hassani scoffed. “There is no question they are connected, nor who is behind it.”
“Who?” asked Mordechai.
“I expected more from a former head of the Mossad.”
“Who?” Mordechai pressed again.
“Iran, of course.”
Mordechai was taken aback by the intensity of Al-Hassani’s conviction. Was he right? Did he know something Mordechai didn’t? Or was he trying to settle a score with an old enemy?
“The mullahs in Iran issued a fatwah against Sa’id the minute he signed the interim agreement with us,” Mordechai cautiously conceded. “But why blow up a Russian jetliner?”
Al-Hassani shook his head. “Need I remind you, Dr. Mordechai, that it was the Iranians who invented chess, that they are masters of plotting ten, fifteen moves ahead?”
“You think these are the opening moves of a larger Iranian game?”
“Come now, Dr. Mordechai. For the last two decades, the Iranians have been trying to build nuclear weapons. They have been buying the latest weaponry from Moscow. They have been planting sleeper cells in Oman and fomenting terror and instability in Yemen and Somalia and Ethiopia and Eritrea. They have built strategic alliances with Sudan and Syria. And I do not have to tell you how much they spent bankrolling Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and the West Bank.”
“Yes, but to what end?”
“You cannot see it for yourself?”
“I came to hear your views, Mr. President, not my own.”
“Then let me be perfectly clear: Step by step, Iran is surrounding the Arabian Peninsula, surrounding Israel, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The mullahs want your land, they want our oil, and they want the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina, which the Saudis presently control. Step by step they are preparing to rebuild the Persian Empire. It is only a matter of time before they strike.”
“So why hijack an Aeroflot jet?” Mordechai asked again.
“Perhaps to distract the Americans. Perhaps to decapitate them. It is too soon to say for certain. But mark my words, you will not find Iran’s fingerprints on this hijacking. Not directly. They are too clever for that. Do you remember a few years back when the Libyans were caught planning an assassination of the Saudi royal family?”
“Of course.”
“Do you really think the Libyans care that much about who runs Saudi Arabia? Of course not. It had all the earmarks of an Iranian operation. The Iranian mullahs are Shi’ites. The mullahs hate the Saudi royal family. They have been plotting the downfall of the House of Saud for years. Why? Because the royals are Sunni Muslims, which means they are apostates in the eyes of the mullahs. The Saudis are, by their very presence, desecrating the Islamic holy sites and polluting sacred Islamic soil. And if that were not bad enough, the Saudis are in bed with the Great Satan — the Americans — selling them cheap oil and, until recently, basing infidel forces on Muslim lands. I have no doubt the mullahs offered the Libyans money — or weapons — to assassinate the Saudi royals, so long as the operation could not be traced back to Iran.”
Mordechai pondered that for a moment, then asked, “Can you prove that?”
“Do I have a smoking gun?” asked Al-Hassani. “No, not yet. But the circumstantial evidence of an intensifying alliance between Tehran and Tripoli is mounting. I know the White House thinks Libya’s decision to give up its weapons of mass destruction was a masterstroke of American diplomacy. But I do not believe it for a moment. It turns out that almost all of Libya’s WMD programs were run by the Iranians. One team of weapons inspectors inside Libya found evidence of nearly one hundred signed contracts between Iranian companies and the Libyan government to build chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons facilities, as well as to build conventional weapons systems. They even found a previously unknown Scud missile factory, built entirely by Iran. Believe me, Dr. Mordechai, the Libyans hate us. They hate the Saudis. And they are not too happy about you, either.”
The two shared a laugh. “It is a tough neighborhood,” said Mordechai.
“It is indeed. But look, the Iranian-Libyan connection is just part of Tehran’s grand design. The mullahs are also trying to forge a strategic alliance with Turkey. Last year Iran signed a security pact with Turkey. The year before, they signed a major bilateral trade deal together. Not long before, they signed a landmark energy deal in which Iran agreed to sell $20 billion worth of natural gas to Turkey over the next ten years. Now, given the fact that Turkey imports nearly all of its energy needs — and Iran has just become the second-largest supplier of natural gas to Turkey after Russia — what kind of leverage do you think Russia and Iran now have over the Turkish government?”
Mordechai took a sip of coffee.
“Did you read the Reuters interview with Turkish president Kuzemir?” Al-Hassani continued.
Mordechai hated to concede he had not, but he had no choice.
“Understandable, of course; it just hit the wires,” Al-Hassani insisted, as though eager to spare his new Israeli friend any embarrassment. “I will have one of my aides get you a copy, but for now let me summarize it for you. The Turkish president said that while he is sympathetic to every country’s right of self-defense, ‘blowing an unarmed civilian jetliner out of the sky could be considered by some an act of war.’ Then he called for an investigation, conducted by the U.N., to avoid any ‘appearance of impropriety.’ ”