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

by David Crist

  Over the next month, nine more mines were discovered and destroyed by navy divers.13 Carefully laid to cover the channel, they were clearly not the result of haphazard mining by a few dhows, but a carefully planned attack on Kuwaiti shipping. Remarkably, when faced with an obvious Iranian military attack against Kuwait using naval mines, no one in either Tampa or Washington bothered to change the assumptions guiding the American convoy operations. Bernsen, Crist, and Crowe continued to believe that Iran would never dare to take such an overt action against the United States. Faith in the deterrent effect of the carrier and American firepower clouded every level of American thinking. CENTCOM took the modest step of requesting that a helicopter minesweeping squadron in Norfolk be placed on standby for the Persian Gulf. Some officers speculated that Iran might attack the convoys with suicide boats or conduct terrorist attacks against the Middle East Force, and additional marine security forces arrived to protect the Middle East Force headquarters in Bahrain. But no one wanted to believe that Tehran would mine beyond Kuwait Harbor, despite a growing body of intelligence that warned of more mining in the Gulf. The navy leadership pressured both Crowe and Weinberger to minimize the forces for Earnest Will, and this contributed to the complacency that gripped U.S. military leadership regarding Iran’s reaction to the United States protecting one of Iraq’s chief supporters. Saudi minesweepers arrived on scene, and as the date for the first convoy approached, the combined presence of Saudi and Kuwaiti vessels backed by U.S. expertise seemed adequate to deal with any further Iranian actions against shipping. Satisfied, Bernsen even recommended sending home some of the eighteen men, so as not to aggravate Kuwaiti sensitivities.

  The Iranian leadership worried about attacking the Americans directly. With their mining of Kuwait Harbor having failed to change the Kuwaiti emir’s mind about working with the Americans, a heated debate emerged within the Supreme Defense Council, Iran’s national security decision-making body. Senior officers in the regular Iranian military urged caution. They had spent much of their careers working with Americans and knew firsthand the destructive power the United States could bring down on Iran. But Revolutionary Guard commander Major General Mohsen Rezai dismissed their concerns. He believed the navy and air force officers still harbored an affinity for the Americans and were too enamored of technology. He pressed for a direct confrontation with the Americans and urged attacking U.S. warships.

  “The Americans cannot take casualties. Vietnam and Beirut showed that,” he told his colleagues during one meeting in Tehran in June. “Any losses and the Americans will flee the Gulf!” Rezai and other guard generals—whose military experience was limited to fighting against the anemic Iraqi army—largely dismissed the importance of American airpower. We have been able to contend with the Western-backed Iraqi air force for seven years; we can contend with the American bombers too, they argued.

  The ever pragmatic Hashemi Rafsanjani came down in the middle. Pressuring Kuwait into withdrawing support for Iraq was a necessity for an Iranian victory, and the American convoys only propped up Saddam Hussein, he stated. But American pilots were far better than Iraqi pilots; he pointed out that the Americans had been able to drop a bomb right down on Gaddafi’s house during the air attack against Libya in April 1986. The Americans could do the same to the supreme leader’s home. Naval mines, however, appealed to Rafsanjani. Covert mining against the Americans could inflict the losses needed to drive them out of the Gulf, but still lessened the likelihood of a massive American reprisal. Rather than attack them directly as Rezai advocated, how about surreptitiously mining the paths of the American ships? The final decision rested with Ayatollah Khomeini. In early July, the supreme leader sided with Rafsanjani, over the vocal objections of Rezai. He ordered a secret mining campaign against the forthcoming American convoys, but no overt attack on any U.S. warship.

  American intelligence knew nothing of the debate going on in Tehran. Instead, the chatter warned of an Iranian terrorist attack against Bernsen’s headquarters in Bahrain. Weinberger ordered U.S. personnel to avoid public venues and restrict themselves to their homes or work, and he detached additional marines to guard the base.14

  The U.S. military made preparations for the first Kuwaiti convoy. In order to meet the legal requirement of American ownership, the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company established a dummy company in Dover, Delaware—Chesapeake Shipping Inc.—and intended to reregister all eleven ships between mid-June and the end of August. Coast guard inspectors arrived in Kuwait to ensure the ships met U.S. safety regulations; many of the requirements were waived.15 Although most of the crew remained foreign nationals, Kuwait hired new American masters from the Gleneagle Ship Management Company in Houston. One of the first to report was a retired navy captain, Frank Seitz, Jr. He took over the largest ship and the first to be reflagged, the sixth-largest tanker in the world, the four-hundred-thousand-ton al-Rekkah, now renamed the Bridgeton.16

  In the first two weeks of July, General Crist traveled twice to Washington to brief the chiefs and Weinberger in the Tank.17 Bahrain had agreed to combined air strikes should Iran attack the island in retaliation for its support of the United States. Kuwait remained more reticent, despite the United States escorting their convoys, and would permit American combat planes in the emirate only in the event of an Iranian invasion. Should this occur, Crist expected the emir to request American combat forces.

  Crowe and Weinberger drove to Capitol Hill to brief congressional leaders on the classified details of the operation. Immediately after the hearing, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Les Aspin, held a press conference and proceeded to describe all the sensitive details of the operation, including the number of ships and even Saudi Arabia’s AWACS support.18 The next morning, the Washington Post printed even more details, including the specifics of sensitive overflight agreements with the emirates. Both Weinberger and Crowe were livid both at Aspin and about the damaging leak.

  A defensive Aspin phoned Crowe. “If it was a classified briefing, why wasn’t I told? No one ever told me it was a classified briefing.”19

  “I assumed you knew it was all classified. All ships’ schedules are classified,” replied a disbelieving chairman.

  “No one ever told me it was classified,” Aspin persisted. “I think I was set up!” Weinberger would later mockingly refer to Aspin’s gaffe as “Les’s lips sink ships.”

  On July 21, 1987, a flag-raising ceremony occurred on the fantail of the thousand-foot-long Bridgeton. In the sprawling Oman anchorage of Khor Fakkan, as dozens of ships sat waiting to transit the strait, a small gathering of Kuwaiti officials and military officers looked on as Ambassador Quainton hoisted the Stars and Stripes up the flagpole, where a strong breeze snapped it to attention in the hot, muggy summer air.20 The flag had been provided by a congressman from Kentucky, who had wanted to raise it himself, but in deference to Kuwaiti sensitivities and to keep this low-key, Quainton decided to do the honor himself.21

  Concerned that the leaks had tipped Iran to the start of the first convoy, Bernsen took additional precautions to remain distant from the other ships at anchorage. The U.S. warships manned their weapons in case Iran attempted to attack the convoy while anchored. Bernsen conferred with Crist that evening as to U.S. military response options in case Iran tried its own version of Pearl Harbor.22

  The anxious night passed uneventfully. With no sign of Iranians lurking off Oman, the next morning the first Earnest Will convoy headed for the Strait of Hormuz. Escorted by two American cruisers and a smaller frigate, it comprised two reflagged ships, the massive tanker Bridgeton and a smaller, liquefied-gas carrier, Gas Prince.

  The first ten hours of the two-day transit was seen as the most dangerous period. The convoy would be at its most vulnerable while within easy range of the Iranian Silkworm missiles ringing the strait, so CENTCOM orchestrated a complex ballet in the skies above the ships consisting of navy and air force surveillance planes, aerial refueling tankers, and fighters. A four-engine
P-3 code-named Reef Point and secretly staged on the Omani island of Masirah used advanced optics to look in on the Iranian missile sites. Fighters and bombers from the carrier two hundred miles out in the Gulf of Oman kept an overhead vigil, maintained aloft by airborne pit stops provided by three large air force refueling planes based on the small Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.23 The air force launched a sleek black SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance jet from halfway around the world. Taking off from Kadena, Okinawa, it was supported by no less than fifteen tanker jets stationed along the route. The Blackbird cut its way across the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf, flying at Mach 3 and on the edge of space at eighty thousand feet. Heavy cloud cover nearly scuttled the mission, but the skies cleared as the Blackbird arrived over the strait. Once it had taken its photos and its sensors had collected data on the Iranian missiles, the two pilots—Majors Mike Smith and Doug Soifer—did a wide, lazy turn over the northern Gulf before heading back to the other side of the globe at an estimated cost of $1 million for the exhausting eleven-hour mission.24 None of these aircraft saw anything unusual, and Bernsen gave the go-ahead for the convoy to proceed.

  For the next ten hours, both Crowe and Crist stayed in their respective command centers in Washington and Tampa, linked by an open secure telephone. Crist provided regular updates to the chairman, all the while sucking down one Carlton cigarette after another. The only tense moment came when the radar of one of the escorts, the USS Kidd, picked up an unidentified helicopter closing on the convoy. The warship fired a warning flare, and the helicopter abruptly turned away. It turned out to be carrying nothing more dangerous than the fourth estate: a team of reporters and photographers.

  Having entered the Gulf without incident, everyone relaxed until the convoy approached the next danger area, a base for Revolutionary Guard small boats around the Iranian island of Abu Musa. Again, the Iranian forces appeared apathetic, and the convoy continued northward. The only bellicosity came from Iranian radio. “If the big shots in Washington think they can make the Islamic Republic bow to their oppressive policies by military display and threats, much more bitter consequences than the experiences of Lebanon or Vietnam await them.”25

  Despite the supreme leader’s directive, Revolutionary Guard commander General Rezai still wanted to attack the convoy. On his own authority, he ordered the small boats at Farsi to attack the convoy when it passed Farsi Island on the night of July 23. However, someone in the Revolutionary Guard tipped off Ayatollah Khomeini, who immediately reined in his overeager commander, ordering him to keep with the agreed mining operation and avoid a direct fight with the American navy.

  Now a chastised Rezai abided by his orders. A small lighter left Farsi and headed due west some twenty miles until it found a prominent navigation buoy called Middle Shoals, and then it turned north along the tanker route for another ten miles. Here the tanker traffic narrowed as it turned to skirt around the Iranian-declared war exclusion zone. A special unit of the Revolutionary Guard, which had spent several weeks practicing for this mission, laid a string of nine mines, each five hundred yards apart, and then hastened back to Farsi.

  Just after sunset on July 23, American communications intercepts detected two fiberglass boats coming out of Farsi Island. Bernsen’s intelligence officer, Commander Howell Conway Ziegler, came to Bernsen’s stateroom on the La Salle and the two compared notes about what this development meant. The Iranian actions and a summary of the Revolutionary Guard’s chatter all seemed to indicate that Iran planned to attack the convoy with speedboats as it passed Farsi. Ironically, American intelligence had discovered Rezai’s aborted unauthorized attack but completely missed the actually mining operation that followed.

  After reporting this back to Crist, Bernsen ordered the convoy to take a different route to avoid the main channel into Kuwait and to slow its speed in order to pass Farsi Island the next morning, as daylight would permit better targeting of the attacking small boats.26

  At first light, Bernsen ordered a helicopter aloft to scout ahead of the convoy, and with the cruiser USS Fox in the van, the convoy proceeded past the menacing Iranian island without sighting a single attack boat or even a fishing dhow. Back in the Pentagon, Crowe greeted this news with relief. He called Weinberger and reported that the worst appeared to be over. The convoy was headed for Kuwait, and he expected to turn over the two tankers to their navy that afternoon. From the bridge of the Bridgeton, breakfast trays could be seen being passed to the crew on watch, down along the three-football-field-long deck of the supertanker.

  Suddenly the master, Captain Seitz, heard a metallic clank. An undulating shock wave rippled down the length of the ship as if someone had taken the edge of a rug and whipped it rapidly. When the wave reached the bridge, “it felt like a five-hundred-ton hammer hit,” Seitz recalled. The impact sent trays full of bacon and eggs flying as the men held on to keep from being thrown to the ground. “There wasn’t much question that we had hit a mine.”27 The mine had blown a fifty-square-meter hole in the side of the mammoth tanker. The Bridgeton slowed but, despite the damage, did not stop. Its cavernous empty hold could easily accommodate the flooding compartments. The much smaller U.S. warships, however, would not be so lucky if they hit a mine. They quickly scrabbled to take refuge behind the large tanker, the guards protected by their charge as they sheepishly traveled in the wake of the Bridgeton to avoid hitting additional mines.

  In the early morning hours, news of the Bridgeton mining rippled through the U.S. government as quickly as it had through the hull of the supertanker. Crist, who was monitoring the operation from his command center in Tampa, “literally came out of his chair” when he heard the news, one witness recalled. The duty officer in the National Military Command Center phoned a sleeping Admiral Crowe at his quarters at Fort Myer, notifying him of the Bridgeton’s plight. Crowe took an unusual action for the nation’s senior military officer: he picked up the phone and called straight down to Bernsen on his flagship in the Gulf. Crowe liked Bernsen. The two had met in Germany, and the chairman had been impressed by Bernsen’s grasp of Gulf politics and the complexities of the Kuwaiti convoy mission. Crowe had even endorsed Bernsen’s membership in the New York Yacht Club, and frequently called him directly, often without Crist’s knowledge.28

  “What the hell’s going on?” Crowe asked tersely.

  Bernsen filled him in on the details. The Bridgeton had hit a mine. There were no casualties, and the convoy was continuing up to Kuwait at half speed.29 Crowe summoned his driver, immediately threw on his uniform, and headed for the Pentagon.

  When the convoy had safely reached Kuwait, Bernsen sat at his desk in his stateroom. “It is a new ballgame and we are not playing games,” he thought. Bernsen penned a message for his boss in Tampa. “The events of this morning represent a distinct and serious change in Iranian policy vis à vis U.S. military interests in the Persian Gulf. There is no question that Iranian Forces specifically targeted the escort transit group and placed mines in the water with the intent to damage/sink as many ships as possible.” That the Bridgeton was the only victim was due entirely to the luck of the draw. Iran had made the calculation that either the United States would not retaliate or Iran could survive a strike similar to that inflicted on Libya, he said, referring to the U.S. bombing the year before in response to Gaddafi’s bombing of a disco in Berlin.30 But Bernsen cautioned against the knee-jerk air strike. The Iranian population was war-weary, and any attack on their mainland would serve to help rally the population behind the government. “We don’t need martyrs in Bandar Abbas.”

  That afternoon, Bernsen and Crist held a long phone call to discuss the way forward. Although neither man had expected such an audacious move by Iran, both agreed on the need to avoid dragging the United States into a war with the country. They mulled over other ways to respond, including a naval blockade or even mining Bandar Abbas. The first priority, however, was clearing out the mines. Crist ordered a halt to further convoys until they could get new force
s in to support Bernsen’s Middle East Force.

  The Iranian leaders gloated at news of the Bridgeton’s misfortune. They publicly attributed the mines’ sudden appearance to divine intervention, the work of the invisible hand of God. The day after the Bridgeton mining, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, praised those responsible as “God’s angels that descend and do what is necessary.”31 Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi added, “The U.S. schemes were foiled by invisible hands. It was proved how vulnerable the Americans are despite their huge and unprecedented military operation in the Persian Gulf to escort Kuwaiti tankers.”32 After the mission, the Revolutionary Guard commandos who’d laid the mines each reportedly received a gold watch, given by General Rezai and the chief of the Iranian navy, as a reward for their heroism.

  The mining had caught the Pentagon embarrassingly unprepared. That morning, a scheduled meeting with the president and his principals on Vietnam POWs went by the side as they talked about how to respond to Iran. The false assumption that Iran would not mine outside of Kuwait’s channel had been based more on the American desire to keep force levels small than on any credible intelligence. Considerably more ships would be needed, especially minesweepers. The most powerful navy in the world had been attacked by speedboats dropping mines, and the convoys could not resume until the mine hazard was addressed.

  Reagan set a circumspect tone at the opening: “Let’s take our time and determine what happened before taking any action,” the president said.