America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (17 page)

Having at hand an immense and continually replenished arsenal did not improve Saddam’s aptitude for generalship, however. Seemingly viewing war as scaled-up terrorism, he used force profligately and indiscriminately, the more so as events on the battlefield tilted in Iran’s favor. If there was a method to Saddam’s madness, it was to strike out in all directions, vaguely hoping that some maximal threshold of violence would eventually induce his foes to relent.

So, using inaccurate 1950s vintage Soviet missiles, Saddam initiated random attacks against Iranian cities. Iran replied in kind. He employed chemical weapons first against Iranian troops—again, Iran replied in kind—and then against certain restive elements of his own population. And relying on an air force that enjoyed relative superiority, he struck at Iranian oil facilities alongside and within the Persian Gulf and at any ships, regardless of nationality, suspected of aiding the Iranian war effort. Iran responded by targeting tankers belonging to Arab nations that were bankrolling Iraq, lending Saddam billions so that he could continue to procure arms.

Was there a comparable logic to the Reagan’s administration’s madness in supporting Saddam Hussein? If so, it involved nudging Saddam toward a more focused and less haphazard approach to waging war. Although Arab oil money had bought Iraq a big army, more than money was required to employ that army to good effect.

For Reagan and his advisers, this defined the nub of the problem. Whether Iraqi actions satisfied some legal or moral standard did not trouble U.S. policymakers. That lofting volleys of SCUDs in the general direction of Tehran or blanketing enemy trenches with clouds of mustard gas seemed unlikely to forestall an ultimate Iranian victory did.

Especially egregious Iraqi misbehavior—chemical weapons use against noncombatants, for example—might elicit a pro forma American reproach.
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Once having gone through the motions of upholding moral principle, however, U.S. officials returned to the task at hand, which was to find ways of enhancing Iraqi military effectiveness.

At intervals during the decades that followed, the urge to build up Iraq’s army alternated with an equally emphatic U.S. determination to degrade or destroy it. At podiums in the White House and State Department, meanwhile, a reciprocal phenomenon occurred: When bolstering Iraqi military capabilities was the order of the day, U.S. government representatives soft-pedaled any criticism of Baghdad; when making the case that Iraq possessed altogether
too much
military power, they portrayed that country’s behavior as utterly unconscionable.

Throughout the 1980s, U.S. policy emphasized building up Iraq. Toward that end, the CIA in July 1982 had opened up a secret channel to provide Baghdad with sensitive intelligence, including satellite imagery. The aim was to give Saddam’s generals a clearer picture of the battlefield (even if doing so also revealed U.S. intelligence capabilities). In addition, the administration agreed to technology transfers intended to improve Iraqi communications and logistics. Waging war requires more than weapons. By allowing Iraq to purchase nominally nonmilitary equipment possessing direct military utility—examples included computers, helicopters, transport aircraft, and heavy trucks—the Reagan administration was contributing directly to the Iraqi war effort. The administration also approved generous loan guarantees to facilitate Iraqi purchases of U.S. commodities and manufactures, a boon to American farmers and to the U.S. economy more generally.
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The support afforded Saddam by the United States and other Western nations (plus the Soviet Union) enabled Iraq to avoid outright defeat. Yet it did not suffice to end the fighting. From one year to the next, the war ground on, Iran refusing to call it quits despite suffering and inflicting enormous casualties.
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Not unlike the Great War of 1914–1918, both sides demonstrated a remarkable capacity to persist.

Americans like to believe that it took Yanks under the command of General John J. Pershing—the American Expeditionary Forces—to end the bloodletting of 1914–1918. In the Persian Gulf War of 1980–1988, something similar occurred. The commitment of U.S. expeditionary forces under the command of CENTCOM’s General George Crist finally brought things to a conclusion—so at least Reagan administration officials persuaded themselves, even if that conclusion quickly came undone.

Back in 1917, the resumption of U-boat attacks on U.S. shipping had brought the United States into the war against Germany and alongside the Allies. In 1987, a devastating aerial attack on a single American ship accomplished something comparable
,
drawing the United States into a direct confrontation with Iran and on the side of Iraq. The comparison breaks down in one important respect: Iran did not perpetrate that attack. Iraq did.

An apparent paradox: A and B are at war; A attacks C; C holds B responsible and exacts punishment.

Explaining this paradox requires the following admission: While the foregoing account of the Reagan administration’s arms-length intervention in the Persian Gulf War on behalf of Iraq is true, the version of truth it offers is incomplete. Even as it was aiding Saddam Hussein, the United States was simultaneously engaged in a second arms-length intervention, this one engineered by the White House on behalf of Saddam’s sworn enemies in Tehran.

In what became known as the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan administration was secretly and illegally diverting U.S. weapons to Iran, with the government of Israel serving as obliging middleman.
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The motives behind this initiative, initially hatched in 1981 but fully implemented only in 1985, were twofold. First, members of the administration, very much including the president himself, hoped that weapons transfers might purchase Tehran’s assistance in negotiating the release of several Americans kidnapped in Lebanon and presumed to be held hostage in the wake of the failed U.S. intervention there.
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Further, fancying that a small deal might lead to something much bigger, they hoped thereby to establish contact with Iranian “moderates” who might welcome the prospect of ending the U.S.-Iranian estrangement and thereby restoring relations to some approximation of what had existed under the Shah.

Virtually nothing positive resulted from this bizarre episode. In November 1986, a bombshell article appearing in a Beirut-based periodical revealed that the Reagan administration had been surreptitiously arming—and providing battlefield intelligence to—a country whose leaders routinely denounced the United States as the “Great Satan.” A president who, in public, was adamantly opposed to negotiating with terrorists had secretly approved doing that very thing. Back home, a huge controversy erupted. Although Reagan managed to avoid impeachment, the ensuing scandal tarnished his reputation and resulted in the firing of several senior U.S. officials and the indictment of others.

The immediate relevance of Iran-Contra to America’s War for the Greater Middle East is simply this: By the end of 1986, if not earlier, Saddam Hussein had become fully aware that Washington had been playing a double game at his expense. In his world, double-dealing demanded retribution. Saddam proceeded to exact that retribution in a way that enabled him finally to regain the upper hand over Iran.

While the events of Iran-Contra were unfolding behind the scenes, Saddam had initiated what became known as the “Tanker War”—attacks on merchant ships transiting the Persian Gulf. This war within a war had a specific objective: to prevent Iran from exporting oil while interdicting materials useful in sustaining the Iranian war effort. Between 1984 and 1987, Iraq’s air force attacked 240 ships that ventured into an Iraqi-declared “exclusion zone.” Predictably, Iran struck back. During that same interval, relying primarily on mines and on small but agile patrol boats known as boghammers, it attacked some 168 ships, notably including tankers belonging to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
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At least initially, neither side possessed the weapons actually needed to sink a large ship. Causing minor damage and inflicting small numbers of casualties, the attacks drove up insurance rates and reduced profits but were annoying rather than decisive.
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Oil supplies remained plentiful. Indeed, during the Tanker War, oil prices actually fell appreciably.
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The handful of U.S. Navy ships operating in the Gulf did nothing to interfere, even though Iran and Iraq were both violating Jimmy Carter’s warning against any disruption of “freedom of passage of ships to and from the Persian Gulf.” Meanwhile, the Reagan administration had begun to contemplate the possibility of direct U.S. military action. In April 1984, the president ordered the Pentagon to “review possible escalation scenarios” and to enhance the military’s “near-term readiness to respond to sudden attacks on U.S. interests in the region.” Reagan wanted to know what additional forces might be required.
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For the moment, however, planning did not translate into action.

Yet even if the Tanker War hardly amounted to more than harassment, the harassed viewed it as unacceptable, none more so than oil-rich Kuwait. In December 1986, the government of that unloved and unlovely nation approached the United States and the Soviet Union, asking if either might consider volunteering to protect its fleet of very large tankers. Unwilling to allow the Kremlin, in Caspar Weinberger’s words, “to supplant us, thereby positioning themselves to become protector of the Gulf,” the Reagan administration accepted the invitation in April 1987.
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Yet along with Cold War–related calculations, a second factor also came into play: Assisting Kuwait might help repair the damage Iran-Contra had done to America’s standing among Arabs—implicitly apologizing for Washington’s misguided dalliance with Tehran.
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Here was a chance to demonstrate that the United States was not as feckless and untrustworthy as it had appeared. Arrangements to reflag eleven Kuwaiti tankers, making them eligible for U.S. Navy protection, began shortly thereafter.

While these preparations were underway, disaster struck—a maritime counterpart to 1983’s Beirut bombing. On the evening of May 17, the 4,100-ton frigate USS
Stark,
Captain Glenn R. Brindel commanding, was underway in the Persian Gulf, part of a small American flotilla intended to signal U.S. interests in the region. The ship was not engaged in any activity relevant to the ongoing hostilities between Iran and Iraq; it was, in fact, subjecting its main engines to a routine stress test.

At approximately 9:00
P.M.
, a French-made fighter jet purchased by the Iraqi air force fired two French-manufactured Exocet missiles at the American vessel. As the
Stark
did not react to this unprovoked and unexpected attack in sufficient time to mount an effective defense, both Exocets found their target. Although the first failed to detonate, the second “hit like God picked up the ship and slammed it into the sea,” punching a ten-by-fifteen-foot hole in the portside hull and causing massive damage.
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Rapidly taking on water and with fires burning out of control, the crippled ship filled with smoke. Emergency systems failed. Over the course of that night, heroic efforts kept the
Stark
from sinking. Two other destroyers, the
Conyngham
and the
Waddell,
rushed to the scene, bringing desperately needed medical and firefighting supplies and searching for crewmen from the
Stark
that the blast had thrown overboard. But by the time the crippled ship was towed to safety, thirty-seven American sailors were dead with twenty-one injured.
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Saddam Hussein immediately acknowledged Iraqi involvement. Yet he characterized the incident as a lamentable but honest mistake. The
Stark
had ventured into the Iraqi “exclusion zone,” Saddam claimed, which made it fair game. The pilot of the attacking aircraft had erroneously thought he was engaging a large oil tanker, the sort of misidentification that occurs when the fog of war thickens. To make amends, Saddam wrote President Reagan a personal letter of apology and even ordered a floral arrangement sent to the memorial service conducted for the deceased back in Florida.
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The Reagan administration found Saddam’s explanation fully persuasive and wasted no time in identifying the actual culprit. At a press conference held the day after the incident, the president announced that “the villain in the piece really is Iran.”
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Secretary Shultz agreed, attributing the assault on the
Stark
to a “basic Iranian threat to the free flow of oil and to the principle of freedom of navigation.”
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As Washington saw it, Saddam and his henchmen, who had launched both the Persian Gulf War
and
the Tanker War, were innocent parties; the mullahs in Tehran were to blame.

A subsequent U.S. Navy inquiry complicated matters ever so slightly. It rejected Saddam’s assertion that at the time of the attack the
Stark
had intruded into the Iraqi-declared exclusion zone, placing the ship in international waters some twenty miles outside of the exclusion zone. Even so, in assigning responsibility, the navy gave Iraq a pass, fingering the
Stark
’s captain as the fall guy.
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Cited for failing to defend his ship, Captain Brindel managed to avoid court martial but soon thereafter retired at a reduced rank.
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