The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (101 page)

On March 4, 1946, Rossow observed Soviet forces moving south from Tabriz, appearing to menace the Iranian capital of Tehran. An American army captain, Alexis Gagarine, who served as a military attaché to the shah’s government, reported seeing a column of twenty-five Soviet tanks headed to Tehran. The following day, British prime minister Winston Churchill issued his famous Iron Curtain speech in Fulton, Missouri, although, arguably, his remarks reflected more upon circumstances in Eastern Europe than in northern Iran. The United States objected forcefully, but in measured terms, convinced that Moscow was unwilling to go to war over Iran. Later that month, an Iranian delegation headed by Iranian prime minister Ahmad Qavam arrived in Moscow for talks. After the Iranians agreed to a joint venture to explore for oil in northern Iran, with a slice for Moscow of any oil discovered, Joseph Stalin agreed to withdraw Soviet forces. In May, Soviet forces withdrew.

The crisis alarmed Washington. In October 1949, the Truman administration adopted NSC 47/2, which would guide American policy in the Persian Gulf for the next four decades. In short, NSC 47/2 advocated three main courses of action: 1) promote Western ties with regional leaders, 2) prevent Soviet penetration in the region, and 3) ensure that regional disputes did not undercut the United States’ ability to oppose Soviet aggression. American officials viewed the Persian Gulf, with its oil and warm-water ports, as too important to tolerate any Soviet penetration in the region.

6.
Henry Kissinger,
White House Years
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 1264.

7.
Ambassador Theodore Eliot, Jr., Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, Virginia, April 24, 1992.

8.
Consul General Morris Draper, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, February 27, 1991.

9.
In support of this strategy, Cyrus Vance developed a strict criterion for U.S. arms sales to the Middle East, mandating that any new arms had to “uniquely strengthen the requester’s ability to perform military function” and could not be achieved with less sophisticated weapons.

10.
William Odom, “The Cold War Origins of the U.S. Central Command,”
Journal of Cold War Studies
, Spring 2006, p. 61; Zbigniew Brzezinski, exit interview, February 20, 1981, Carter Library and Museum, at
www.jimmycarterlibrary.org
, accessed May 24, 2007.

11.
Marilyn Berger, “Cyrus R. Vance, a Confidant of Presidents, Is Dead at 84,”
New York Times
, January 13, 2002,
www.nytimes.com/2002/01/13/world/cyrus-r-vance-a-confidant-of-presidents-is-dead-at-84.html?pagewanted=all
, accessed March 23, 2009.

12.
Overall, Vance abhorred the use of military force, despite, or perhaps because of, his own service as a junior officer on a destroyer during the Second World War. Having witnessed the Vietnam debacle unfolding on his watch at the Pentagon during the Lyndon Johnson administration, Vance was unenthusiastic about another similar scenario in the Middle East.

13.
Harold Brown, quoted in Paul Starobin and Robert Leavitt, “Shaping the National Military Command Structure: Command Responsibilities for the Persian Gulf,” Case Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 1985, p. 2. These differing views within the administration revealed themselves sharply with respect to arms sales to the shah and made for a schizophrenic Iranian policy. At the urging of Secretary Vance, the United States began reducing arms sales to the shah, in the process irritating the Iranian monarch by rescinding a pledge by President Ford to sell him advanced F-18 combat aircraft, a deal largely conceived between the shah and the plane’s manufacturer before it had even progressed through the appropriate U.S. government offices. In August 1978, Vance blocked a proposal to sell Iran thirty-one additional F-4 Phantom fighters. However, both Secretary Brown and National Security Adviser Brzezinski persuaded President Carter to continue the flow of arms to Iran, with the
United States promising to provide Iran an astounding 648 artillery pieces to be delivered beginning in the early 1980s. Furthermore, the United States now agreed to replace the F-4 with more advanced F-16 fighters and to sell Iran highly advanced E-3 AWACS surveillance aircraft, which had only recently been deployed to NATO and European bases. The AWACS sale was later withdrawn after congressional opposition, joined by CIA Director Stansfield Turner, who testified that the sale posed a security risk if the Soviets induced one of the Iranian crews to defect.

14.
Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “The Future of Iran: Implications for the U.S.,” January 28, 1977, pp. 1, 3.

15.
Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr.,
A Concise History of the Middle East
(Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996), p. 332.

16.
Draft NIE, September 1978; Defense Intelligence Agency, “Assessment of the Political Situation in Iran,” September 1978.

17.
John Stempel memorandum for Ambassador Sullivan, “While You Were Away…The place really didn’t turn to crap but it might have looked like it,” August 22, 1978, p. 1.18.

18.
Gordon Winkler, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, March 23, 1989.

19.
Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, “Iranian Dissidence on the Increase,” January 29, 1978, p. 1.

20.
Ambassador Sullivan message to Warren Christopher, “GOI Discernment of Dissident Political Action,” April 25, 1978, pp. 1–3; Charles Naas message to State Department, “Uncertain Political Mood: Religious Developments, Tougher Royal Line on Demonstrators,” August 1, 1978, p. 2.

21.
Stempel memorandum, “While You Were Away,” p. 2.

22.
National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, “PRC Meeting on Iran, November 6, 1978,” November 3, 1978, p. 2.

23.
Ibid., p. 3.

24.
Mohsen Sazegara, interview with author, May 2009.

25.
Ibid.

26.
Henry Precht, interviewed by Charles Stuart, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, March 2000.

27.
Consul General Charles McCaskill, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, July 7, 1993.

28.
Interview with retired CIA officer, August 15, 2007.

29.
Central Intelligence Agency (hereafter CIA), Human Resources Committee, “Focus Iran Part II: Action Review,” December 27, 1976, p. 3.

30.
Interview with retired CIA officer.

31.
CIA Human Resources Committee, “Focus Iran: Intelligence Committee Review of Request by Human Resources Committee for the United States Mission in Iran,” November 4, 1976, p. 2.

32.
Lawrence Altman, “Dr. Jean A. Bernard, 98, Dies; Found Cancer in Shah of Iran,”
New York Times
, April 30, 2006.

33.
Warren Christopher memorandum for President Carter, September 13, 1978, p. 2.

34.
President Jimmy Carter letter to the shah of Iran, September 28, 1978.

35.
Ambassador Sullivan message to Secretary of State, “Iran: Understanding the Shiite Islamic Movement” (031012Z), February 1978.

36.
Sullivan message to Vance and Brzezinski, “Recommendations for President to Shah letter,” August 29, 1978, pp. 1–2. Initially, Sullivan believed that the shah too recognized these realities. On August 29, 1978, Sullivan, who had just returned from an inopportune two-month vacation in the United States, wrote to Vance and Brzezinski: “In the few days that I have been back in Tehran, it has become clear to me that the shah has made a fundamental political decision to transform his authoritarian regime into a genuine democracy.” Military and security officials, he wrote, were going along with it despite their trepidation regarding “The Great Beast, the people of Iran.”

37.
CIA, National Intelligence Daily, Situation Report: Iran, January 6, 1979; Henry Precht letter to William Sullivan, December 19, 1978, p. 1.

38.
Stansfield Turner memorandum for the Deputy Director for National Foreign Assessment, “Meeting with Dr. Brzezinski,” October 27, 1978.

39.
CIA, “Prospects for a Military Government,” November 1978, pp. 1–4.

40.
William Sullivan message to Secretary of State, “Looking Ahead: The Military Option,” November 2, 1978.

41.
Steven Ward,
Immortal: A Military History of Iran and Its Armed Forces
(Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009), p. 214.

42.
Precht interview, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.

43.
Stanley Escudero, interview with author, October 5, 2006, and May 24, 2007.

44.
Ibid.

45.
Embassy Tehran message to Secretary of State, “Meeting with Ayatollah Shariat-Madari” (101740Z), January 1979, pp. 1–2.

46.
CIA, intelligence memorandum, “Iran: Radicals in the Opposition,” January 12, 1979, p. 1.

47.
Henry Precht memorandum to Harold Saunders, “Seeking Stability in Iran,” December 19, 1978.

48.
George W. Ball, “Summary Memorandum for the President, Issues and Implications of the Iranian crisis,” December 12, 1978. As the crisis deepened, the State Department ordered the evacuation of American dependents. U.S.
military transports flew out more than nine thousand dependents over the next few weeks, while the Pentagon began plans to evacuate between forty thousand and sixty thousand other American citizens living in the country. In his 1983 memoir
Power and Principle
, Brzezinski asserted that the State Department’s order had hastened the collapse of the shah’s regime by undermining confidence in his continued rule. But with oil exports stopped due to antigovernment strikes and massive demonstrations in every major city, the U.S. evacuation of its embassy dependents in Tehran had no more impact on the fall of the shah than the U.S. evacuation of its embassy in Saigon had on the demise of the South Vietnamese regime three years earlier. It merely reflected reality. Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977–1981
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983).

49.
Norb Garrett e-mail to author, April 16, 2010.

50.
Paul Henze memorandum to Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Thoughts on Iran,” November 9, 1978.

51.
William Sullivan letter to John Golden, December 24, 1978, p. 1.

52.
Huyser,
Mission to Tehran
, p. 18.

53.
William Sullivan message to Cyrus Vance, “USG Policy Guidance,” 101820Z, January 1979, pp. 1–2.

54.
Huyser,
Mission to Tehran
, pp. 78, 99.

55.
Brzezinski,
Power and Principle
, 376–78; Huyser,
Mission to Tehran
, pp. 48–63.

56.
Said Zanganeh, interview with author, June 20, 2007.

57.
The shah’s navy took delivery of thirteen Harpoon missiles before the revolution curtailed further deliveries from the United States. Two recent Arab-Israeli wars had vividly demonstrated to the shah the power of the missile age. In October 1967, armed with just two Russian Styx missiles, a small Egyptian patrol boat had sent the destroyer
Eilat
—a ship more than ten times its size and the flagship of the Israeli navy—along with forty-seven of her crew to the bottom of the Mediterranean. Six years later, the Israelis exacted revenge. Six French-built patrol boats, outfitted with smaller—but no less lethal—Israeli-made Gabriel missiles and advanced electronic countermeasure systems, foiled incoming missiles and decimated the Syrian and Egyptian naval forces in a series of dramatic engagements in the eastern Mediterranean. The following year, 1974, Iran purchased twelve similar French-built Combattante II missile patrol boats. All were to be armed with the even more advanced American-made Harpoon surface-to-surface missile. See Abraham Rabinovich,
The Boats of Cherbourg: The Secret Israeli Operation That Revolutionized Naval Warfare
(New York: Seaver Books, 1988).

58.
Bruce Laingen message to Secretary of State, “Meeting with PM Bazargan” (121002Z), August 1979; also American Embassy message to Secretary of State, “Meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yazdi,” undated.

59.
Bruce Laingen, Foreign Affairs Oral History Program, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, 1992–1993.

60.
General George Crist, USMC (Ret.), interview with author, February 22, 2007.