The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (31 page)

Pearson’s meetings gradually moved from government buildings to the private homes of senior leaders. With the consultation of Murphy’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, with whom Pearson spoke regularly, the conversations turned from the mundane to the substantive.
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Privately, the Gulf leaders all conveyed their concerns about Iranian intentions and the calamity that would befall their regimes if Tehran defeated Iraq. They accused Iran of trying to establish a Shia crescent across the Arab world, stretching from Lebanon, across Iraq, and down through the “Arabian” Gulf, as they preferred to call the body of water. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, with their sizable Shia populations, voiced these concerns the loudest. Bahrain’s ruler, Sheik Isa, loathed the Iranians, whom he viewed as arrogant and intent on stirring up discontent among his Shia subjects. The powerful Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan, echoed similar warnings to Pearson. The United States and Saudi Arabia, he stressed, needed to support Saddam Hussein because he provided a buffer against Iran, and they needed to be ready to use military force. “They were all scared shitless of the Iranians,” Pearson succinctly summarized.

In June 1987, New Splendor achieved its first success with an agreement with Bahrain to defend the tiny emirate against Iranian attack. After lengthy meetings at the Bahrain Defense Force headquarters in Manama with defense minister Sheik Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and chief of staff of the armed forces Major General Abdullah bin Salman al-Khalifa, the United States agreed to
provide F-16s and other aircraft to jam Iranian communications and weapons systems in the event of an Iranian attack. To support the U.S. military, Sheik Khalifa promised to build a hardened command bunker near Manama (with the United States installing the communications suite) and a new airfield in the southern tip of the country especially for the U.S. military.
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Pearson obtained a similar agreement with Kuwait. Unlike Bahrain, Kuwait’s border sat astride the key front of the Iran-Iraq War, and with the capture of al-Faw, the rumble of artillery fire rattled the windows of the American ambassador’s residence in Kuwait City. With the government’s open support of Baghdad, the emir worried that the Iranian military might try to outflank the Iraqi defenders by simply going through Kuwait. Pearson agreed that the U.S. government would enhance the Kuwait air defense system by selling them Hawk air defense missiles to be stationed around Kuwait City.

Saudi Arabia proved the most difficult. A steady stream of diplomats and generals held labored negotiations with the Saudi delegation, headed by the strong-willed chief of staff of the Saudi Arabian air force, Lieutenant General Ahmad al-Buhairi, under the oversight of the powerful defense minister, Prince Sultan. They explored possible Iranian threats to the kingdom, including a large-scale ground attack by Iran and an Iranian air attack on Saudi oil facilities and oil tankers.
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At Weinberger’s urging, Crist repeatedly tried to get the Saudis to agree to permit pre-positioned American equipment and to allow access to Saudi air bases for U.S. combat aircraft. Each time, the Saudis politely changed the subject. While they made headway in solidifying the American AWACS integration into the Saudi air defense scheme and defense of the Fahd Line, the Saudis had little enthusiasm for anything formal. As Penzler recalled, they wanted to keep talking just in case Iran did attack and they needed American help, but otherwise preferred to keep CENTCOM at a distance. “It was just too much to ask of the Saudis before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait,” said General Russell Violett, who enjoyed a close relationship with the Saudi royal family.
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n October 1985, Admiral William Crowe replaced Vessey as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s top military man. A balding, bulbous Oklahoman, Crowe had risen through the ranks through his political acumen, not because he was a warrior. With a doctorate in political
science from Princeton, Crowe held a series of strategy and policy positions inside the Beltway, beginning with an early posting as an assistant to President Eisenhower’s naval aide. The one notable exception was in 1970, when he volunteered to serve as a senior adviser to the South Vietnamese riverine forces. His experience fighting the Vietcong in small patrol boats in the brown-water tributaries of the Mekong Delta left a significant impact on Crowe’s views of war. “I did not have a traditional naval officer’s view, but one more akin to the army or marines, shaped by fighting a guerrilla war,” Crowe would later reflect.
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In the 1970s, Crowe also served as commander of the small show-the-flag Middle East Force based in Bahrain. A purely diplomatic assignment, it had afforded Crowe insight into the political dynamics of the Persian Gulf and the Arab governments.

As the United States discussed Iran strategy, in 1986 Congress forced sweeping legislation down on a hidebound Pentagon. Officially called the Defense Reorganization Act, it was widely referred to by the names of its two sponsors, Barry Goldwater and William Nichols. Sam Nunn and Les Aspin, among others, looked into how best to integrate the separate services into a more effective joint war-fighting force. The need was real. Interservice rivalry plagued the Pentagon. Each branch independently procured and developed its own hardware. Key systems, such as air force and navy air defense radars, could not share data; radios were not compatible. Even such common items as wrenches differed from service to service. Over the objections of Secretary Weinberger and the service chiefs, Goldwater-Nichols passed, marking the first major restructuring of the Department of Defense since 1947. The legislation elevated the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as the principal military adviser to the president, rather than the corporate body composed of the chairman and the four service chiefs. It clearly delineated the military chain of command as running from the president to the secretary of defense to the unified four-star commanders in chief, or CINCs (pronounced “sinks”), such as Crist at CENTCOM, and provided the CINCs wide latitude to organize and employ the forces of all four services in their theaters. This effectively cut out all the service heads from any operational decisions and limited them to training and equipping their forces. The days of the chief of naval operations actually controlling the fleet had ended.
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Crowe’s first response to this new law was to issue a personal message to the unified commanders that he advocated a go-slow approach to this new policy. Crowe chose not to exercise his new authorities, but continued to defer
to the other Joint Chiefs for their input and worked at building consensus decisions.
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It would take time and a necessity for the new law to gain acceptance. Change comes painfully to conservative institutions like the U.S. military. Unfortunately for the generals and admirals inside the Pentagon, Iran would force this change. War was on the horizon and the Revolutionary Guard provided the test case for this new way of joint warfare.

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n the morning of June 18, 1985, Major General Colin Powell, the senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, sat at his desk in the plush, expansive defense secretary’s suite on the outside ring of the third floor of the Pentagon. A number of classified documents were stacked in Powell’s in-box for Weinberger, the most sensitive delivered by couriers using locked pouches. One document immediately caught Powell’s eye—a top secret “eyes only” draft National Security Decision Directive from the White House. These directives were some of the most important documents produced by the government. Intended for the president’s signature, they laid out U.S. foreign policy and served as principal guides to focus the entire U.S. government. The cover letter was signed by National Security Adviser Bud McFarlane and entitled “U.S. Policy Toward Iran.”

What McFarlane proposed was a drastic change in American policy toward Iran. “Dynamic political evolution is taking place inside Iran,” McFarlane began. “Instability caused by the pressures of the Iran-Iraq War, economic deterioration and regime infighting create the potential for major changes in Iran. The Soviet Union is better positioned than the United States to exploit and benefit from any power struggle that results in changes in the Iranian
regime.” The future presented a picture of growing unrest that gave Moscow a golden opportunity to exploit the turbulence. The strategic buffer provided by Iran protecting Persian Gulf oil would be gone, effectively opening up the entire region to Soviet control. It was a dire prediction and a grave strategic threat to the West if the United States did not develop a new strategy.

Rather than containing Iran as Weinberger advocated, the national security adviser proposed détente. McFarlane recommended using allies to sell Iran weapons as a means of undercutting Soviet leverage and in the process currying favor with “moderate” elements within the regime. This could pull Iran back into the Western fold and array it against the Soviet Union.

Since this was well above Powell’s pay grade, he dutifully sent the document in to Weinberger, writing on a small white buck slip with his letterhead, “SECDEF, This came in ‘Eyes Only’ for you. After you have seen recommend I pass to Rich Armitage for his analysis.”

Cap Weinberger was appalled. He had never forgiven the current regime in Tehran for seizing the U.S. embassy and holding the hostages for 444 days—an event he viewed as a national humiliation. “The only moderates are in the grave,” he thought. Now this man in the White House is trying to say we approach them in the spirit of forgiveness and based on the assumption there were some sort of fanciful pragmatists around Khomeini? “It was nonsense.”
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Weinberger sent the document back to Powell, scrawling across his military assistant’s white paper, “This is almost too absurd to comment on. By all means pass it on to Rich, but the assumption here is: 1) Iran is about to fall, and 2) we can deal with them on a rational basis. It’s like asking Gaddafi to Washington for a cozy chat.”

Armitage had the same reaction to the draft directive as his boss. “Bullshit,” he said, cutting to the quick.

What no one realized in June 1985 was that McFarlane’s proposal would embark the United States on a foreign policy path that would lead to the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration, Iran-Contra. Profits from secret arms sales to Iran were siphoned off to fund pro-American guerrillas fighting the leftist government of Nicaragua. Three government investigations with multiple indictments followed before the independent counsel finally wrapped up the last one in 1993, after a last-minute string of pardons by outgoing president George H. W. Bush ended the affair. In reality, Iran-Contra was actually two separate issues: one the attempt by the Reagan administration to resupply anticommunist guerrillas in Nicaragua, and the other the sale of
weapons to Iran in the vain hope of releasing seven American hostages being held by Hezbollah as a precursor to renewed diplomatic relations with the Islamic Republic. The two efforts merged in the White House under a self-righteous marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North.

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n the afternoon of July 3, 1985, David Kimche, the director general of the Israeli foreign ministry and a close friend to Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, stopped by Bud McFarlane’s office in the West Wing just down the hall from the Oval Office. After the usual pleasantries about the hot, humid Washington weather, Kimche asked to talk to McFarlane alone. McFarlane respected the Oxford-educated Kimche, who had a distinguished career with the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad. The two men had worked together two years before during the U.S. intervention in Beirut, and McFarlane found him highly intelligent and a kindred spirit on their views of the Middle East.
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When the other staff left the room, Kimche said, “You know, Mike Ledeen came and asked us whether we had any judgments about an Iranian opposition movement. We told them we do.”

Michael Ledeen was a loquacious, self-appointed Middle East expert whom the National Security Council kept on retainer. He frequently vacationed in Israel and had developed good contacts with senior government officials there. In early May 1985, Ledeen flew to Israel and met for nearly an hour with Peres. The Israeli prime minister expressed some displeasure with Israel’s intelligence on Iran and advocated that the two nations work together to improve both countries’ knowledge of Iran. Ledeen enthusiastically relayed this back to McFarlane.

“A year or so ago,” Kimche said, “we began talking with Iranians who are disaffected. We believe we have made contact with people who are both willing and able, over time and with support, to change the government.”

Kimche described an Iran close to collapse, with internal dissent rising. But the pro-Western moderates inside the government needed outside support, especially from the United States. To show their bona fides, they offered to release the American hostages in Lebanon, likely in exchange for some military equipment. “They are confident they can do this,” Kimche ended. It seemed almost too good to be true—a potential opening with Iranian moderates who could possibly steer Iran back toward the United States, in addition to the release of the Lebanon hostages.

McFarlane mentioned Kimche’s proposal to President Reagan a few days later. “Gosh, that’s great news!” Reagan responded. He instructed McFarlane to explore the matter further.

Kimche’s proposal was nothing new. The Israeli ambassador to Washington, Moshe Arens, had suggested a similar plan to use weapons to influence the Iranian government in October 1982. The Iran-Iraq War had put the two allies on opposite sides of the conflict. Despite Iran’s support for Hezbollah, Israel viewed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as the greater of the two enemies. The Israeli government strongly opposed the Reagan administration’s effort to secretly support Iraq and allow third-party countries to provide weapons. During the days of the shah, Israel and Iran had good relations, and many senior Israelis still harbored ideas of Iran’s being a natural ally against their common Arab foe. Israel repeatedly lobbied Reagan administration officials to endorse its arms-selling scheme as a means to improve relations with Iran.
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