The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran

by David Crist

  In December 1980, Undersecretary Komer released a study on the potential use of nuclear weapons to defend the Persian Gulf. The first objective remained, Komer said, to deter Soviet aggression in Iran. But if deterrence failed, the use of nuclear weapons would signal to Moscow the American resolve to defend the Gulf. Komer approved three options for employing nuclear weapons against the Soviets in Iran. The first two options used nuclear weapons only within Iran, with the objective to block Soviet forces by destroying the mountain passes on the Iran-Soviet border and the Zagros Mountains, which would impede Moscow’s movements southward toward the Gulf. If Soviet troops were already in Iran, American bombers would hit Soviet rear echelon units entering Iran, while the U.S. Army’s tactical artillery nukes would devastate frontline ground forces attacking U.S. forces. The third option expanded American nuclear attacks to bases and nuclear missile sites in the southern Soviet Union, striking Soviet nuclear headquarters, logistics bases, and conventional forces. The goal, a Pentagon plan summarized, would be to destroy Moscow’s ability to “sustain military operations in Iran.”

  Komer’s preference for nuclear weapons in Iran was, in the best Dr. Strangeloveian speak, known as the “passive option.” U.S. Special Forces would detonate nuclear devices in key mountain passes, tunnels, and roads into western Iran from the Soviet Union. The resulting nuclear detonation would collapse mountains and spawn avalanches, and thus prevent Soviet tanks from moving into Iran. Because time was the Achilles’ heel of the U.S. rapid deployment force, Komer’s study noted, “Closing the passes in front of the initial invasion would significantly impede a Red Army advance, and, if the Soviets did not respond in kind, could provide additional time for the U.S. to deploy forces.” Furthermore, it had the added advantage of not directly targeting Soviet troops, which otherwise might lead to rapid escalation in a nuclear war. The Pentagon allocated over twenty atomic demolition munitions for this task in Iran. Popularly referred to as “manpack nukes,” they had been in the U.S. inventory since the 1950s. Each device weighed less than 163 pounds and easily could be parachuted or clandestinely smuggled in by a small special forces team. The small nukes were to be buried and set with a variable yield, which could create either a relatively small explosion to destroy a large tunnel or a massive detonation to collapse an entire mountain pass.43

  The one downside, Komer noted, was that this strategy necessitated the first use of nuclear weapons. This preemptive use of nuclear weapons “bears the risk of uncontrolled escalation,” he wrote. Even with the “passive option,” the Soviets might respond in kind and obliterate the ports of Bushehr and Bandar Abbas to deny them to arriving American forces. But neither the Joint Chiefs nor Komer viewed this response as particularly bad. In the harsh calculations of the Cold War, Komer wrote, “the net effect could be, at least in the short-term, to produce a militarily neutral situation with respect to U.S.-USSR ground forces.” If neither side could get into Iran, the United States would still achieve its goal of safeguarding the oil fields. No one reflected on how the Iranians might view such a scenario.

  The political winds did not blow in President Jimmy Carter’s favor in November 1980. The voters tossed the Democrats out in a hurricane that came in the form of Ronald Reagan, who won forty-four of the fifty states in an electoral landslide. Implementing the Carter Doctrine would fall to his successor. But Carter’s State of the Union speech on that cold January night had put into motion an important new American strategy for the Middle East. After floundering through one Middle East crisis after another, in his final year in office President Carter’s fractured foreign policy team finally coalesced around a new plan to defend Middle East oil.

  In his last month in office, Carter continued to modify his Middle East strategy. On January 7, the president signed a secret directive staking out the American policy of freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. Specifically, Carter authorized the Pentagon to use force to prevent Iran from closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil exports. Just five days before leaving office, Carter signed his last directive laying out Brzezinski’s Persian Gulf security framework. Written largely for the new administration, it encapsulated the decisions hashed out over the previous year. Carter had set down a marker: the United States would use force to prevent Iran from hindering the free flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.44 The U.S. government moved to develop closer military ties with the pro-Western Arab states ringing Iran and reached tacit agreements to facilitate the operations of America’s new military limb designed specifically to intervene in the Middle East. The first military plans had been refined to combat the Soviets. While Reagan’s supporters touted the dawn of a new, firmer stance against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, in fact it had been Jimmy Carter who laid the foundation for American grand strategy for the next decade.45

  Three

  BARBED-WIRE BOB

  On January 20, 1981, the day Ronald Wilson Reagan became the fortieth president of the United States, Jimmy Carter spent much of his last morning in office finalizing the release of the American hostages in Iran. It was a bittersweet day for Carter; the new president had already taken the oath by the time the hostages departed Tehran airport for their flight to Algeria and freedom.

  At sixty-nine, Reagan was the oldest man ever elected president. Despite the creases of age showing in his long face, he was as energetic and vernal as his jet-black hair indicated. Perennially upbeat, he rarely displayed anger. The new commander in chief had a strong sense of right and wrong. Reagan famously avoided the intricacies of policy particulars. Instead, he provided an unwavering broad world vision: the moral righteousness of the free world’s confrontation with an expansionistic evil Soviet empire.

  Reagan hated personal confrontations, sought to avoid face-to-face disagreements, and tended to defer unpleasant decisions, especially if they involved his longtime acquaintances serving in the administration. While this made for genial staff meetings, it also resulted in important national security sessions adjourning without anyone having the foggiest idea of what the president had actually decided.

  At first appearance, the new president stood in stark contrast to his predecessor. Carter came across as a scolding headmaster; Reagan appeared winsome. Where Carter delved into the nuances of policy, Reagan remained a generalist, aloof from the sausage making. Carter had a clear view of the way forward in the Middle East with the Arab-Israeli peace process and the rapid deployment force; Reagan came to office with no firm convictions. Carter had been slow to recognize the threat posed by Soviet adventurism in the Middle East; Reagan came to the Oval Office determined to confront Soviet expansion.

  U.S. Marine Corps commandant General Robert Barrow liked the new president. A tall, courtly Southern gentleman from Louisiana, Barrow had won the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest military medal, as a company commander during the epic retreat from the Chosin Reservoir in Korea. Although he had considerable respect for the intellect of Defense Secretary Harold Brown, Barrow harbored misgivings about many of Carter’s defense policies, which he thought had left America weak and vulnerable to the Soviet Union. The yearlong trauma of the hostage crisis and the debacle of the failed rescue mission only added to Barrow’s melancholy. Reagan’s campaign promise to increase defense spending came as a welcome balm, soothing the anxieties of Barrow and many of his fellow generals.

  During the marine commandant’s first meeting with Reagan on the reviewing stand during the inaugural parade, a military formation carrying the American flag passed by. The president turned to Barrow and asked if it would be okay if he returned their salute even though he was a civilian.1

  “Yes, sir. You’re the commander in chief, Mr. President,” Barrow answered in his Louisiana drawl. Reagan did so, establishing a precedent that continues to this day.

  The political appointees who comprised the new Republican administration arrived distrustful of any holdover from the Carter years. During the transition, they showed little interest in being briefed on Carter’s def
ense initiatives and displayed open disdain for anyone who had gone along with Carter’s perceived weak-kneed policies against Iran and the Soviet Union. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General David Jones, bore the brunt of the new civilian team’s disrespect. The Republicans believed he had been too willing to go along with Carter’s policies, such as giving up American control over the Panama Canal and cuts in defense programs such as the B-1 bomber. President Reagan considered firing Jones, who still had a year left in his term as chairman. But the president decided against it, concerned that it would set a bad precedent. Reagan’s solution was simply to cut the chairman out of any serious deliberations until he could appoint a general more to his liking. For the first year of his presidency, Reagan refused to go to the Pentagon and meet with the Joint Chiefs. It was an exceptional snub, and one that left no illusions in Washington about what the new administration thought of those in uniform who had worked for Carter’s Defense Department. It had no less a political impact on the military than if Reagan had replaced Jones.2

  In June 1982, David Jones retired on schedule, and Reagan appointed Army General John “Jack” Vessey as the new senior military adviser. Unpretentious, Vessey was a muddy-boots soldier. He had risen through the ranks, having received a battlefield commission at the bloody battle of Anzio in Italy during the Second World War. Lean with graying hair, the new chairman was a religious man. Contemporaries never viewed Vessey as an intellect, but he was respected within the military and had the deserved reputation as being both honest and apolitical, both traits that appealed to President Reagan. For Vessey, war was not an academic exercise. Having experienced combat up close in three wars, he remained reticent about risking young men’s lives. Military force, Vessey believed, should be the option of last resort.

  While they were loath to admit it, the Reagan foreign policy team continued many of Carter’s Persian Gulf defense policies. Early in the administration, the Joint Staff produced a new study on additional construction for U.S. forces from Morocco to Somalia that reflected Carter’s conclusions. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger liked it, and the Reagan administration pushed through an additional $700 million for base construction in the Middle East to support the rapid deployment force.3

  On September 30, 1981, Reagan’s national security team met in the Cabinet Room, next to the Oval Office, to finalize a decision directive for the president’s signature outlining the administration’s approach toward Iran. The release of the hostages had not led to improved relations between Tehran and Washington. That would depend, National Security Adviser Richard Allen wrote to the secretary of defense, on “Iran’s willingness to demonstrate by specific action its restored respect for international law and civilized usage.”4 This new policy document reiterated the importance of preventing Soviet domination of Iran’s oil and laid out steps to increase intelligence gathering inside Iran, prevent the expansion of the Islamic Revolution, and cultivate pro-Western moderates within the Iranian government.5 These remained the cornerstones of American policy toward Iran for the next eight years of Reagan’s presidency.

  Caspar Weinberger, the new secretary of defense, was a slight, impeccably dressed, affable bulldog. The California native was a close political and personal friend of Reagan’s as well as a Republican stalwart, having served as President Nixon’s budget director and secretary of health, education, and welfare. Unlike his immediate predecessors as defense secretary, “Cap,” as most within the Reagan White House called him, had seen war. He’d served in the Pacific during the Second World War as an infantry officer and later as an intelligence officer on MacArthur’s staff. Weinberger’s brief military service affected his outlook in his new role.

  When Weinberger arrived in his Pentagon office on the third-floor outer E ring, he immediately removed a large formal portrait of dour-looking James Forrestal, the first secretary of defense, who’d suffered from depression and committed suicide by throwing himself out a top window in the imposing tower at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Weinberger replaced it with a more uplifting four-hundred-year-old Titian painting of a Catholic cardinal bestowing his beneficence upon an abbot, a colorful piece that the new secretary found soothing. Two bronze busts adorned his expansive office, one of Weinberger’s wartime boss Douglas MacArthur, and the other of an infantryman. “I also wanted to make it clear that our administration was not worried about being too militaristic,” Weinberger later wrote.6

  In policy, Weinberger was a cautious man. He viewed military force as a last resort and not a first. “He liked to have the power, but did not really want to use it,” remarked noted military historian Steven Rearden. Weinberger’s philosophy was best summed up in a speech he gave at a luncheon held November 28, 1984, at the National Press Club, just down the street from the White House. In what became known as the Weinberger Doctrine, the defense secretary outlined a series of criteria for committing the U.S. military to combat: only for vital national interests, with clearly defined goals for victory, and only if supported by the American people.

  This view reflected the beliefs of those the secretary surrounded himself with, especially his two most important confidants, his senior military assistant, Major General Colin Powell, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage.7

  Powell had impressed Weinberger from when he’d briefly served under him as a White House Fellow during the Ford administration. Powell was easy to like. He displayed many of the best traits of an army leader: smart, precise in his verbiage, with an infectious smile and a good sense of humor. Powell inspired loyalty and respect from superiors and subordinates alike. But Colin Powell could never be described as a muddy-boots soldier. The consummate political general and Beltway insider, he stood in sharp contrast to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs John Vessey. Powell had first arrived in Washington as a midgrade officer in September 1969, and with the exception of obligatory short command tours needed to check the box for promotion, he’d never left. By the time he took the job as Weinberger’s senior military assistant, he’d already had nearly a decade under his belt of working the corridors of the Pentagon, including the same billet as military assistant for the number two man in the Defense Department during the Carter administration.

  In many ways Richard Armitage was an anomaly in Washington. In a city of smooth politicians, lobbyists, and lawyers, Armitage had been formed from a different mold. A former navy officer, he’d served multiple tours in Vietnam. An avid weight lifter, he trekked every day down to the Pentagon Officers Athletic Club, or POAC, a dingy maze that sufficed as the Pentagon’s gym. Here Armitage, then in his forties, routinely bench-pressed more weight than most of the far younger servicemen. Direct, blunt, and unpretentious in manner, balding and barrel-chested, he resembled Uncle Fester on the TV show The Addams Family, with the exception of his bright blue eyes that revealed a quick mind and an unlimited reservoir of energy. He was a close confidant of Weinberger’s and arguably the most influential man in the Pentagon. “If you wanted something done,” said one four-star general at the time, “you went through Rich.”

  On his first day as the new defense secretary, Weinberger found a letter on his desk from General Volney Warner. The army general had drafted a series of recommendations intended to pull under Warner’s command both Paul X. Kelley’s rapid deployment headquarters and the elite counterterrorism headquarters known as Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg.8 Weinberger had followed the contorted history of the rapid deployment force. He found the idea of a major land war in Iran unrealistic and sided with those who believed that what the military needed was not an interventionist force for the Middle East, but a deterrent capability. However, he faced the same dilemma as Secretary Brown: the military remained hopelessly divided on how to deal with Iran and the Middle East.

  Weinberger’s brief military experience had taught him about the dangers of unit boundaries, the problems presented where two friendly units came together. “I had seen some of the difficulties where boundaries
of command came together,” Weinberger said. “The enemy tried to exploit these seams between our units.” In the Middle East, Weinberger noted, you had just such a boundary between two massive four-star commands—European Command and Pacific Command—running through the most volatile region in the world. In Weinberger’s mind, the rapid deployment force only compounded the problem about who was really in charge in the event of a war in the Middle East. “We need one man in charge over the whole area,” Weinberger thought. The letter from Warner spurred him to action.

  In early April 1981, Weinberger met in the Tank with the Joint Chiefs to discuss the future of the rapid deployment force. Not one of the five flag officers present supported retaining the organization. “Operations in the Persian Gulf would extend the two fleets enormously,” Weinberger recalled of the chief of naval operations’ views.9 Caspar Weinberger brushed aside the opinions of both the Joint Chiefs and Volney Warner and sided with P. X. Kelley. The secretary ordered the rapid deployment force into a new four-star headquarters. This would be a new unified command, as the Pentagon termed it, and would control all U.S. military forces, regardless of service, throughout the Middle East.

  The defense secretary’s decision only added to the polemical discussions by the five gray-haired gentlemen in the Tank. They wrangled over what units to assign to the command and which countries should be included (Egypt and Israel being the major bones of contention). Even the name of the new four-star headquarters occupied a staggering amount of mental energy on the part of the Pentagon’s leadership. One suggestion was Crescent Command. Someone else proposed Commander in Chief, Middle East, Africa, Southwest Asia, shorted to the acronym CINCMEAFSWA. Kelley’s replacement at the rapid deployment force, Lieutenant General Robert Kingston, recommended the name United States Central Command, as it had a ring of significance. However, the Joint Chiefs did not like this name, as it was unclear to them what the command was central in relation to. They countered with Southwest Asia Command. But others within the bureaucracy objected to this on the grounds that it sounded too much like an interventionist force, which of course was the command’s raison d’être. At one point, one of Weinberger’s military assistants wrote to the secretary, “I did hear someone mention WEINLUCCICOM but I don’t understand what the letters stand for.”10 And so it continued, month after month.