General Mohammad Ali Jafari On 22 September 2012, General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, said that eventually a war with Israel would soon break out, during which Iran would eradicate Israel, which he referred to as a "cancerous tumour". Cooperation Business After the overthrow of the Shah in 1979, most oil companies left Iran and the Iranian government had major difficulties selling oil in the international markets. In the meantime, Marc Rich, an Israeli-Swiss businessman with international ties, entered Iran through his Glencore company headquartered in Switzerland. Rich ignored US and international sanctions on Iran and became the major trader of Iranian oil for 15 years. He claimed that the oil he bought from Iran was shipped to Israel and both countries were aware of this transaction. Rich provided the Iranian government with weapons and missiles through the Iran–Iraq War. For his actions, United States government found him guilty of more than 65 counts of criminal offenses including money laundering and violating Iran sanctions. Rich was on FBI most wanted fugitives for many years, until President Bill Clinton pardoned him on the last day of his office in 2001. This pardon was very controversial and Clinton later regretted this act in his memoirs. There have been reports that former Mossad heads, Avner Azulay and Shabtai Shavit both personally wrote to Clinton arguing for Rich's pardon. Furthermore, Rich's first wife, Denise Rich (née Eisenberg) personally donated more than 1 million dollars to Clinton charities. In 1998, the Seattle Times reported that pistachio makers in California were unhappy about the fact that Israel imported most of its pistachio from Iran. The head of Iran-China economic room, Asadollah Asgaroladi said in the article that such transactions are easily possible. Based on the article Israel imports only a quarter of pistachios from US and about half of its pistachios from Britain and Germany, whereas these two countries are not producers of pistachio at all and the source is very likely to be from Iran. Furthermore, in 1998 Israeli government punished the Hamama Brothers Co. for illegally importing 105 tonnes of pistachio from Iran. Israeli newspaper Ynet reported in 2007 that US government once again asked the Israeli government to stop importing pistachios from Iran. In 2008 US ambassador to Israel, Richard H. Jones wrote a letter to Israel's finance minister Ronnie Bar-on demanding Israel to stop importing Iranian pistachios