Yaacov Nimrodi

Yaacov Nimrodi (also Yaakov Nimrodi) was an Israeli arms dealer, businessman, and former Israeli military intelligence officer who died on July 2, 2016. He served as Israeli military attache in Iran from 1955 to 1968, during which time he developed extensive contacts in the Iranian government and military establishment under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. These contacts, maintained through the two decades following his return to Israel, made him a natural intermediary for the Iranian arms-for-hostages initiative that became the Iran-Contra Affair.¹

Iran-Contra Role

Nimrodi is consistently identified as one of the three principal Israeli facilitators of the Iran-Contra arms pipeline. Together with David Kimche (the senior Mossad officer and Foreign Ministry director-general) and Al Schwimmer (founder of Israel Aircraft Industries), Nimrodi formed what contemporaneous participants called a "troika" that managed the first stage of the Iranian arms-for-hostages channel in 1985.

The arrangement began when Kimche approached U.S. National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane in mid-1985 to propose that American weapons transferred to Iran via Israel could produce the release of American hostages held in Lebanon and open a channel to Iranian moderates. President Ronald Reagan agreed. Nimrodi's role was to leverage his Iranian network - including contacts from his years as military attache - to identify Iranian interlocutors and facilitate the first weapons transfers.

The first transfer, of 96 TOW missiles from Israeli stocks in August 1985, was managed through the troika. A second TOW transfer of 408 missiles followed in September 1985. A shipment of 18 HAWK surface-to-air missiles was attempted in November 1985, but the operation was badly mismanaged, the missiles proved to be a version the Iranians could not use, and the transaction's exposure began the chain of events that led to the scandal.²

Nimrodi stepped back from the operation by the end of 1985, as did Kimche, when the arms channel was handed off to Manucher Ghorbanifar, Oliver North, and Amiram Nir, whose management of the subsequent stages led eventually to public disclosure in November 1986.

Business Career

After his government service, Nimrodi established himself as a businessman with interests in telecommunications and media in Israel. He owned Maariv, one of Israel's major daily newspapers, from 1987 until its sale and eventual closure. His son Ofer Nimrodi was arrested in 2002 for commissioning the illegal tapping of a competitor's telephone - the "Kav 300 affair" - and convicted.¹