The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (71 page)

Following the cancellation of the Conoco deal and the new American trade embargo, likely on the orders of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, both the Iranian intelligence service, MOIS, and the Revolutionary Guard Quds Force stepped up their surveillance of U.S. military bases in the Middle East looking for prospective targets. In a meeting in his Beirut apartment, Ahmed al-Mughassil explained to one of his men—in Lebanon for rifle training at a Hezbollah range—that the goal would be to drive the Americans from Saudi Arabia. But it was clear that the when and where would be dictated by Iran. By mid-1995 al-Mughassil and the Iranians had settled on the sprawling complex of Khobar Towers as their target. Following the public plus-up for the CIA, the Quds Force leadership issued the order to carry out the attack in the spring of 1996.
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Saudi security officials uncovered part of the Iranian operations when a bomb-sniffing dog at a border customs checkpoint reacted to one car that turned out to be carrying over eighty pounds of plastic explosives. After brutal interrogation, the driver admitted he had come from Lebanon, and he intended to bomb the American barracks at Khobar Towers. He gave up the names of three accomplices, including one Lebanese Hezbollah adviser inside the kingdom. Convinced that it had nipped the terrorist attack in the bud, a complacent Saudi government never informed the Americans of the threat.
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Ahmed al-Mughassil assembled a small cell of fifteen members to execute the attack. They purchased a large tanker truck and hid it in a remote farm some twenty minutes’ drive from Dhahran. The men stashed five thousand pounds of plastic explosives, secretly ferreted in from Lebanon, in fifty-kilogram sacks, burying them in caches around the desert. They hid the more delicate items, such as detonators, in old coffee cans. Over the next three weeks they converted the truck into a massive rolling bomb.
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In early June, a fair-skinned, fair-haired Lebanese man with green eyes arrived at the remote farm. An explosives expert, he had been sent by Lebanese Hezbollah to double-check on the construction of the truck bomb. The mystery man spent a week working at the farm, staying at the home of one of the conspirators. His expertise ensured that the attack did not end in a fizzle. He returned to Lebanon, where he briefed both Hezbollah and Iranians from Department 6000 on the likely success of the “project.”

On the evening of June 25, six of the men, including al-Mughassil, met at the farm. They prayed and made their final preparations. A small caravan of vehicles departed for the twenty-minute drive to Khobar Towers, with al-Mughassil driving the explosives-laden tanker truck.

When Saudi guards turned al-Mughassil away from the main gate, he quickly switched to plan B. One terrorist driving a small Datsun had entered a large parking lot adjacent to the north side of Khobar Towers. The driver flashed his lights, giving the signal to al-Mughassil that the coast was clear. The tanker truck lumbered into the parking lot and stopped next to a chain-link fence that separated the public parking from the American compound. Barely eighty feet away stood Building 131—an eight-story apartment building housing airmen chiefly from the 4404th Composite Wing. Ahmed al-Mughassil set the timer, and he and his side rider leaped from the truck’s cab, ran to a waiting white Chevrolet Caprice, and sped off into the darkness. It was just before ten p.m.

T
he day so far had passed unremarkably for those living at Khobar Towers. The dedication of a new aerobics room at the base gym had been the day’s highlight; the base commander had cut the ribbon to open the new facility with much fanfare. Officers lounged about watching the old Dustin Hoffman movie
Marathon Man
while others did household chores or had already turned in for an early flight mission the next morning.

From the top of the roof of Building 131, three air force security officers watched the tanker truck park next to the fence line. Staff Sergeant Alfredo Guerrero immediately realized the danger when he saw the white Caprice speed off. The officers began running down the passages pounding on doors: “Get the hell out of the building. We have a situation with a fuel truck. You need to get out of the building now!”
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In four minutes the airmen cleared the top three floors of Building 131. Then they ran out of time.
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The tanker truck exploded with the force of twenty thousand pounds of TNT. It blew a thirty-five-foot crater and sheared off the entire north face of Building 131 as a massive concussion wave followed by a heavy brown dust cloud rolled over the compound.

“It felt like I was being sandblasted,” recalled Tech Sergeant George Burgess, who was cleaning out his refrigerator on the first floor of Building 131—closest to the blast. “It was like I was just in the stream of a sandblaster.
Then it stopped and it was like dead silence. Then you could hear water starting to run.”

Large picture windows disintegrated. Shards of glass sliced through humans who a moment earlier had been sitting quietly reading or watching television. Hundreds of yards away, in quick succession, the concussion shattered every newly installed mirror in the renovated gym.

One airman happened to test his alarm clock the moment the bomb went off. “I hit my snooze button and…that’s when everything blew up. It was like I’d pushed a button and everything blew up.” The force of the blast threw him across the room. “I could see that the walls were gone and everything was gone. And I realized that it was something more than just my alarm clock going off.”
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When the dust settled, 19 Americans lay dead, with 372 more injured.

The day after the attack, Richard Clarke, who headed counterterrorism at the White House, told the national security adviser, Anthony Lake, that Iran’s Quds Force had been behind the bombing. He was the only one in Washington with that firm of a conviction. Neither the CIA nor CENTCOM had any hard evidence of Iran’s culpability, and would not for months.

The FBI led the investigation. The bureau’s director, Louis Freeh, a veteran federal prosecutor, doggedly pursued the perpetrators. Unfortunately, Saudi authorities proved less than cooperative. Freeh grew irritated at the Saudi intransigence, writing a letter to Prince Bandar, who wielded influence as ambassador in yet another American administration. “Mr. Ambassador, the only way to move the investigation forward and arrest the terrorists who committed this heinous act is for our two countries to cooperate fully and effectively.”
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Initially, Bandar doubted Tehran’s involvement. “For Iran to officially sanction an attack in the Saudi kingdom would be very serious—a grave turn of events,” the prince told Freeh during one meeting at his home. Due largely to the personal intervention of Prince Bandar, FBI agents gradually gained access, first to the crime scene and eventually to the evidence. However, it took until September 1998 for FBI agents to gain access to suspects held in a Saudi jail. By the spring of 1997, evidence of Iran’s culpability had mounted. Two terrorists arrested in Syria and Canada had confessed, and Saudi intelligence uncovered further evidence of Iranian involvement. American communications intercepts confirmed the knowledge at the highest levels of the Iranian government and the approval of the supreme leader.
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Iran denied any involvement. The two nations had been secretly working to mend relations. The Iranian president tasked his trusted adviser Hossein Mousavian to head the Iranian delegation to talk with the Saudis. The first meeting occurred at the Saudi prince’s oceanside villa near Casablanca. Three more meetings followed in Jeddah, successfully concluding a large framework, including security guarantees, just three months before the attack. “This was a major strategic initiative,” recalled Mousavian. “Why would Iran risk it by attacking Khobar?”
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It would not be the first time, however, the left and right hands of the Iranian government were not in sync.

Two months later, contract security guards noticed individuals conducting surveillance on the large American logistics base west of Kuwait City called Camp Doha. It looked eerily similar to what had preceded the Khobar Towers attack, with the suspicious men especially interested in the location of living quarters of American service personnel. U.S. Army counterintelligence officers suspected they were Iranian agents, scoping out the base for a reprisal attack should the United States retaliate for Khobar Towers.

I
n September, a stocky, dark-haired marine arrived as the deputy chief in Tampa: Anthony “Tony” Zinni. A year later he moved up to take over as the new CENTCOM commander, in charge of all U.S. military forces in the Middle East.

Known by the call sign “the Godfather,” he was a graduate of Villanova University and the jungles of Vietnam. Politically a moderate Democrat, in his youth Zinni had campaigned for Jack Kennedy. He was charismatic and possessed an innate gift for public speaking, mixing humor with thoughtful analysis. He proved equally popular at CENTCOM. The long-serving command historian observed that “Zinni was the only commander the staff was actually
sorry
to see retire.”
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Iran kept Tony Zinni awake at night. Following the imposition of American trade restrictions in the spring of 1995, Iranian Revolutionary Guard small boats stepped up their harassment of American warships transiting the Persian Gulf. They repeatedly approached at high speeds, conducting mock attacks on American warships. “It was clearly orchestrated and planned,” said Zinni.
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One incident was typical. On May 1, 1997, the American destroyer USS
Paul F. Foster
was steaming in the northern Gulf enforcing UN sanctions
against Iraq by interdicting oil smuggling. An Iranian fast boat suddenly appeared in the distance. The boat headed straight for the American warship, turning away at the last minute, speeding past the alarmed American sailors at less than fifty yards. While the ship’s captain did not open fire, Zinni worried that other skippers would show less restraint.

“This outward hostility by the Revolutionary Guard might cause a spark and ignite a conflict,” Zinni wrote in a message after the incident. “Eventually some captain would open fire on an Iranian boat—who might have intended to bump him—but the ship’s skipper doesn’t know that the Iranian boat isn’t packed with explosives. Then we have a serious problem.”
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The State Department sent a warning through the Swiss to Tehran to rein in the guard, but it had no effect.

The Revolutionary Guard actions came from zealotry as much as national policies. Guard officers were expected to act with both initiative and aggressiveness. Those who showed these characteristics received promotions, and officers frequently pushed the envelope with the Americans. In the case of the
Paul F. Foster
, the likely cause was mammon. An irate Revolutionary Guard officer profiting from the illicit Iraqi trade objected to the U.S. warship interfering with his side business. However, the Iranian government encouraged these provocative actions, determined to maintain pressure on the U.S. military through harassment and terrorism.

Defense Secretary William Cohen ordered Zinni to develop a new military plan. “The goal of any military strike should be to impose such a steep cost that the Iranian regime will be loath to contemplate an attack on American personnel ever again,” Ken Pollack said in a talk before a Washington think tank, reflecting the administration’s views.
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CENTCOM came back in the late summer with a hasty plan code-named Iron Lightning. American aircraft and cruise missiles would knock out key Revolutionary Guard bases, including their naval bases at Bandar Abbas and their headquarters in downtown Tehran. Zinni offered other options, including bombing Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. Iron Lightning would be quick and punishing, he told the secretary.

In late 1997, Zinni began a new war plan for Iran. Unlike Iron Lightning, which had been hastily conceived in response to Iranian terrorism, this new Iranian plan required two years of intensive work to complete. Zinni’s plan would take the conflict with Iran to its logical conclusion: overthrowing the Islamic Republic.

“Gentlemen, we are going to assume that Iran responds with all of its capabilities,” he told the small, close-hold staff charged with the Iranian war plan. “I want you to take it full circle—from the start of a conflict to what it would take for regime change.”

Several months later, Zinni flew up to Washington to brief his preliminary findings in the Tank. “There was sticker shock,” he said, recalling the reactions of Secretary Cohen and the Joint Chiefs. “They thought it would be like Iraq, where we could take down the regime in nineteen days. This was far from the case with Iran.”
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Ironically, the United States faced many of the same natural obstacles that CENTCOM had hoped to use a decade earlier to thwart a Soviet invasion. U.S. forces would have to advance across the formidable Zagros Mountains along the same narrow roads, tunnels, and bridges that General Robert Kingston had intended to use to beat the Red Army.

Zinni predicted the Persian population would unite behind their government, making a protracted military campaign unavoidable. The war would spread throughout the Persian Gulf. Iran would strike at the Gulf Arabs providing bases for Americans. There would be massive protests in the Arab streets, destabilizing these same pro-American countries. “You can’t underestimate the propaganda value of another attack on an Islamic country,” Zinni said in a 2010 interview.