Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (65 page)

These two lines of argumentation would dominate the U.S.-Israeli dialogue over Iran for the rest of my tenure as secretary, though there was not much difference in our intelligence assessments of how far along the Iranians were in their nuclear program, nor in our views of the consequences of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons. Whether (and when) to act militarily and the consequences of an attack would remain contentious.

The last gasp of Obama’s engagement strategy with Iran was an ingenious proposal, developed by the United States in consultation with our allies in October 2009, that Iran ship about 80 percent of its known 1.5 metric tons of low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be enriched, then sent to France for conversion into fuel rods, and finally sent back to Iran for medical research use in the Tehran Research Reactor. According to the experts, once used in the research reactor, the uranium would be extremely difficult to convert for other purposes—such as nuclear weapons. The proposal was seen as a way to get most of the low-enriched uranium out of the country and rendered useless for weapons, while acknowledging Iran’s right to use nuclear reactors for peaceful purposes. France, Britain, China, Germany, Russia, and the United
States supported the proposal, and tentative agreement was reached with Iranian negotiators in Europe on October 22. Iran backed out the next day, having second thoughts about giving up its big bargaining chip—the low-enriched uranium—without, in their view, gaining any strategic benefit. Given French president Sarkozy’s open loathing of the Iranian regime, I believe the Iranians also had no intention of putting their uranium in French hands.

The failure to make a deal had significant international consequences. The Obama administration, including me, had seen the deal as a way to get the low-enriched uranium out of Iran and thus buy more time for a longer-term solution. Ironically, but as I had believed it would, the diplomatic effort to reach out to Iran was critical to our success in finding more willing partners in a new, tougher approach.

Central to the new approach would be getting international agreement. The Deputies Committee had met several times in early November and agreed that the United States should first pursue a UN Security Council resolution imposing new economic sanctions on Iran, then widen the net of pressure. The president chaired a National Security Council meeting on November 11—just preceding the important NSC session on Afghanistan—to consider next steps. He said we had to pivot from engagement to pressure as a result of the Iranian rejection of the Tehran Research Reactor initiative, the Iranians’ lack of full cooperation with the IAEA inspection of the Qom enrichment facility (a secret facility, the existence of which we revealed to put Iran on its heels and to build support for more sanctions), and their unwillingness to pursue negotiations with the six big powers (France, Germany, Britain, Russia, China, and the United States).

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, felt we were unlikely to get a strong new resolution out of the Security Council. I said that the clock was ticking on both the progress of the Iranian nuclear program and Jerusalem’s patience. We needed a new resolution as a foundation for stronger sanctions, and because we didn’t expect much anyway, I thought we should accept a diluted resolution if we could get it passed quickly. Then we could develop additional sanctions and other punitive actions beyond the strict terms of the resolution. Militarily, I thought we needed to prepare for a possible Israeli attack and Iranian retaliation and figure out a way to use our actions to send the Iranians a message in parallel to economic pressures.

I had hoped for UN action in January or February; the resolution passed in June 2010. The resolution was better than nothing, but it demonstrated that Russia and China remained ambivalent about how hard to push Tehran. China was leery of losing the significant amount of oil it bought from Iran and, in any event, was in no mood to do anything remotely helpful to the United States after we announced the sale of $6.5 billion in arms to Taiwan at the end of January 2010. Russia, I think, still harbored hopes of future economic and political influence in Iran.

Bush and Obama had said publicly that the military option to stop Iran’s nuclear program remained on the table, and it was our job at the Pentagon to do the planning and preparation to ensure that it was not an idle threat. U.S. military leaders were increasingly worried that either the Israelis or the Iranians might take military action with little or no warning and that such an action could require an immediate response from U.S. forces in the Gulf. There would be no time for protracted meetings in Washington or for the president to consult anyone but me, the next person in the chain of command. Other than the U.S. response to a small-scale Iranian “fast-boat” attack on one of our Navy ships, there had been no discussion in either the Bush or the Obama administrations—other than private conversations I had with each president—about momentous decisions that might be required within minutes if serious shooting broke out in the Gulf. It was my view that such a discussion was long overdue.

Accordingly, on January 4, 2010, I sent Jim Jones a memo recommending a highly restricted meeting of the principals to discuss the possibility of a conflict with Iran with little or no advance notice. I wanted to discuss actions we ought to take to strengthen our military posture in the Gulf for Iran-related contingencies, as well as military actions we ought to consider—short of the use of force—to keep the pressure on. I asked in the memo, if Israel attacked Iran, would we help Israel, hinder it, take no action, or conduct follow-up operations (especially if Israel failed to destroy the nuclear sites)? If Iran retaliated against Israel, would we come to Israel’s defense? If Iran were to hit U.S. troops, facilities, or interests in retaliation after an Israeli strike, how would we respond? What measures should we take to deter Iranian military actions, to maintain “escalation dominance” (to overmatch any Iranian military action and try to keep the situation from spinning out of control)? Should we emplace forces in advance? How would we respond to closure of the Gulf, terrorism,
manipulation of oil prices, and other Iranian responses? Many of these questions and issues had been framed for me by the deputy assistant secretary for defense, Colin Kahl, and his team, whom I greatly admired and relied upon heavily. The questions I posed, and the answers, had not been discussed—in part, I think, because the consequences of a leak could be explosive, both literally and figuratively.

A little over three months later, on April 18,
The New York Times
ran a front-page story asserting that in my January memo I had warned that “the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability.” A source characterized as a “senior official” described the memo as a “wake-up call.” It seemed likely that the authors’ (David Sanger and Thom Shanker) source apparently did not provide them with any of the questions I had posed but rather characterized the memo as dealing with policy, strategy, and military options.

Geoff Morrell gave NSC chief of staff Denis McDonough a heads-up about the story before it appeared, and needless to say, he, Donilon, Ben Rhodes (the NSC’s strategic communications director), and others at the White House went into a tizzy over a story suggesting that the White House was not properly prepared to deal with Iran. I thought it would be silly to deny the existence of the memo and, in consultation with Morrell, Robert Rangel, and McDonough, agreed to issue a statement clarifying the purpose of the memo. The national press gave the
Times’
story prominent coverage and, regrettably, paid little attention to my statement that the memo was not intended (or received) as a wake-up call but instead had “identified next steps in our defense planning process where further interagency discussion and policy decisions would be needed … it presented a number of questions and proposals intended to contribute to an orderly and timely decision making process.” (Much later others alleged that the memo called for “containment” of Iran rather than preventing them from getting a weapon. That assertion was also wrong.) The
Times
story was pretty accurate overall, but it did misrepresent my intent and—fortunately—did not deal with the militarily sensitive concerns I had raised.

Three days later I went through many of those concerns in the Oval Office with the president. Biden, Mullen, Jones, Donilon, Brennan, and Tony Blinken, the vice president’s national security adviser, were there. I told Obama he needed to consider the ramifications of a no-warning
Israeli attack or Iranian provocation, either of which likely would require a U.S. military response within minutes or hours. I said that the principals had not “chewed” on these issues, and they should. To be better prepared for any eventuality in the Gulf, I told Obama I wanted to take several military steps by November 1, including deploying a second aircraft carrier there, adding better missile defense and radar capabilities, sending a third Aegis destroyer, and forward-positioning other equipment. I asked that the policy issues and added deployments I recommended be addressed urgently, in particular because the military moves required significant lead time. Obama said we should look at options, but he would make no concrete decisions now.

I was put off by the way the president closed the meeting. To his very closest advisers, he said, “For the record, and for those of you writing your memoirs, I am not making any decisions about Israel or Iran. Joe, you be my witness.” I was offended by his suspicion that any of us would ever write about such sensitive matters.

Toward the end of May, we discussed the implications of an Israeli attack on Iran, though not as thoroughly as I would have liked. The administration did, however, proceed fairly quickly in important areas mentioned in my memo. It further strengthened our military relationships with key states in the region by providing (or selling) enhanced missile defense capabilities and advanced weapons and made proposals for closer military cooperation. In early February, I traveled to Turkey, where I met with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. We had a long discussion about Iran, during which he said that no country should be denied the right to nuclear technology for peaceful means; he said that he had encouraged the Iranians to be more transparent and cooperate with the IAEA. He was skeptical of the value of further sanctions and thought the Tehran Research Reactor proposal was still a possible course of action. I agreed about the right to peaceful use of nuclear technology “if properly safeguarded” but, in my usual subtle diplomatic way, warned him that if the Iranians proceeded with their nuclear weapons ambitions, proliferation in the region would be inevitable, military action by Israel would be likely, and he would have a war in his neighborhood. I told him it was necessary to proceed with sanctions in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table. Erdogan was interested in missile defenses that would provide coverage of Turkey but wanted to be sure that any initiative was cast in terms of “common security” among allies and not
based on a specific threat (such as Iran). I felt I had made little progress with Erdogan; he was just too wary of anything that might provoke the Iranians.

That was plainly not the case at my next stop, to see President Nicolas Sarkozy in France. Sarkozy reminded me of Rahm Emanuel, lithe and short and full of energy—they both sort of explode into a room. Sarkozy went straight to the point: “The Iranians are liars and have been lying from the start.” The extended U.S. hand, he said, had been seen in Iran as a sign of weakness. It had led to “a great deal of wasted time.” He regretted that new sanctions had not been put in place the preceding fall and asserted, “We are weak. This will all end badly.”

In the middle of our meeting, Sarkozy’s personal cell phone rang. He answered, holding his hand over his phone and mouth as he talked with his wife, singer and former model Carla Bruni. I had never heard of or experienced a head of government interrupting a meeting to take a personal call. The incident did, I admit, later that evening provoke some amusing commentary between my staff and me.

In early March, I resumed my anti-Iran tour, visiting Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Outside Riyadh, I met with the crown prince and deputy prime minister as well as King Abdullah at the king’s “farm.” I grew up in Kansas, and this wasn’t like any farm I had ever seen. We had dinner inside a tent—with crystal chandeliers—that could have held the entire Ringling Brothers circus and then some. The huge, horseshoe-shaped table sat at least a hundred people, and as with Condi Rice’s and my dinner with the king a few years earlier in Jeddah, there were at least forty or fifty dishes in the buffet, not counting dozens of desserts. The king and I sat at the head of the table with no one seated near us, but a large television right in front of us was airing an Arab news show. I thought it a bit strange to have the TV on during dinner—until I realized the wily old guy wanted white noise in the background so he and I could speak without being overheard by anyone.

After dinner, we talked privately for a long time about Iran, as I explained to him the president’s pivot from engagement to pressure, which the king heartily welcomed, having been opposed to any kind of outreach in the first place. As we talked about sanctions, I encouraged him to consider an overture to the Chinese, proposing that they sharply cut their purchases of Iranian oil, which Saudi Arabia would replace. I made no formal request, and he made no commitment. We discussed
upgrading the Saudis’ Patriot missile defense systems, and we agreed to discuss further their acquisition of other, more advanced missile defenses. I promised to send the head of the Missile Defense Agency to Saudi Arabia quickly to brief the king and his ministers on these capabilities, which would also make the Saudi missile defense interoperable with our own and that of other countries in the Gulf. We talked about modernization of the Saudi navy.

In that private meeting, the king committed to a $60 billion weapons deal including the purchase of eighty-four F-15s, the upgrade of seventy F-15s already in the Saudi air force, twenty-four Apache helicopters, and seventy-two Blackhawk helicopters. His ministers and generals had pressed him hard to buy either Russian or French fighters, but I think he suspected that was because some of the money would end up in their pockets. He wanted all the Saudi money to go toward military equipment, not into Swiss bank accounts, and thus he wanted to buy from us. The king explicitly told me that he saw the huge purchase as an investment in a long-term strategic relationship with the United States, linking our militaries for decades to come. At the same time, Abdullah was very cautious about any kind of overt military cooperation or planning with the United States that the Iranians might consider an act of war.