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

by David Crist

  The chairman would like you to call him,” said Captain Kevin Healy to his boss, Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, during a short break between meetings. The executive officer did not consider the request by Admiral William Crowe anything remarkable. Since the crisis had begun with the Bridgeton, Crowe spoke daily to his longtime acquaintance in Hawaii. The chairman wanted new ideas on how to respond to the Iranian mining.

  Lyons served as a useful coadjutor to Crowe. Since Lyons worked for Crowe in the 1970s, Crowe had tapped Lyons, looking for ideas on fighting the Soviets and for ways to get things done, frequently outside of the normal channels. “Ace Lyons had a great mind,” Crowe said years later. “He loved imaginative and unorthodox solutions.”1 For Crowe, Lyons was a man who could get things done militarily in a way the more politically minded Crowe never could, all the while offering the chairman plausible deniability if things turned out ugly.

  Lyons picked up the phone as Healy went to his desk to listen in on another line. “Any ideas?” Crowe asked. “You’ve got access to me directly if you need to pass any information.”

  Lyons always had a suggestion. “A window of opportunity is coming up later this month.” There would be two carriers turning over outside the Gulf and the battleship Missouri would arrive in the Middle East. “We may well be in a position to exert a considerable amount of power against the Iranians,” Lyons told Crowe. “Keep it very, very quiet.”

  The prospect of drubbing the Iranians appealed to Crowe. He had been privately advocating seizing Farsi Island with special operations forces, but Colin Powell as deputy national security adviser did not support such an aggressive move. But these were the type of ideas he liked from Lyons. “Okay,” Crowe answered. “Work out a code word and you say whatever it is and you go.”

  “Write me a letter,” Crowe directed, asking for Lyons’s thoughts about striking back at Iran.

  Ace Lyons already had an Iran war plan, appropriately called Operation Window of Opportunity. Beginning in late 1986, he’d designed a top secret plan outside of the normal military channels. Without General Crist’s knowledge at CENTCOM, Lyons crafted a U.S. Navy–only operation comprising two days of punishing attacks on Iranian military sites all along the Iranian coast—from Chah Bahar outside the Gulf working up to Bushehr. Convinced that Iran could not stand up to a sustained American attack and that military force might bring down the regime, Lyons planned to hit dozens of Iranian military units, including headquarters, airports, ports, and missile sites—all pummeled by the combined firepower of two aircraft carriers and the World War II battlewagon USS Missouri, lobbing salvos of two-thousand-pound shells. But Lyons did not stop with destroying Iran’s military. The second day of his grand design targeted Iran’s economy by destroying its oil storage at Kharg Island, Iran’s only gasoline refinery, and its major harbors. U.S. jets would destroy Iranian docks, and mines would be laid to close the large Iranian ports of Bushehr and Bandar Abbas. “Mining of Bandar Abbas and Bushehr and destruction of the port facilities essentially eliminates Iranian capacity to receive refined petroleum products and essential war matériel,” Lyons noted. The admiral even intended to reduce the two partially completed light water reactors at Bushehr to concrete rubble and twisted rebar.2

  Lyons had been pushing this idea for months. A month before the first convoy, in June 1987, Ace Lyons had briefed the secretary of defense on his idea. On June 18, Caspar Weinberger and Richard Armitage stopped in Honolulu on a swing through Asia, and Lyons saw an opportunity to get his plan to take down the Khomeini regime in front of the Reagan administration. At three p.m., Weinberger paid an office call on Lyons. With the two men sitting around a table, and Armitage and Lyons’s executive officer Kevin Healy in the background, the bulldog admiral pulled out his Iran plan and leaned forward in his chair.

  “Mr. Secretary, we have an opportunity,” he began. On August 26, the carrier Ranger would be relieving the Constellation on station in the Gulf of Oman, giving a brief overlap when two of the battle groups would be available. Additionally, the Joint Chiefs had just decided to send the battleship Missouri and five more warships to the Gulf about the same time. Lyons then pulled out his fourteen-page Window of Opportunity plan. There had never been so much firepower available near the Persian Gulf, he added. “We can cut 70 percent of their imports and exports. The objective of these strikes is to facilitate freedom of navigation and apply pressure to Iran to enter into serious negotiations to end the Iran-Iraq War.”

  Weinberger listened politely but took no notes. Weinberger had no intention of bombing Iran without a provocation or of getting the United States mired in a war and alienating many Gulf allies. He viewed Lyons as an activist, and this performance was in perfect keeping with Ace’s personality, trying to take advantage of his visit in order to get his agenda pushed to the top. Several times the defense secretary tried to get out of his chair, but Lyons kept gesticulating forward to keep him seated. After an hour, Weinberger left without comment. Armitage just shook his head. “It was typical bullshit from Ace. The secretary had no intention of starting a war with Iran.”3

  Undaunted, Lyons pitched his plan to any senior official who came to Hawaii. When Secretary of the Navy James Webb swung through, Lyons received a more positive response. Lyons did not think much of the thirtysomething secretary, but he offered to keep him informed of his other thoughts and views. Webb gave him the green light: “If you ever need to speak with me, call me directly.” Lyons interpreted the message as a clear sign not to worry about the chain of command.4

  Not that Ace Lyons had ever worried too much about the formalities of obtaining his boss’s permission. His relationship was strained with his senior at Pacific Command, Admiral Ronald Hays, and naval operations chief Admiral Carl Trost had grown alarmed at some of Lyons’s antics designed to intimidate the Soviets, especially some provocative mock air attacks directed at the Soviet forces at Petropavlovsk. He feared Lyons intended to start a war with the Soviets. “Ace had no concept of a chain of command if it did not fit his needs. He was making U.S. policy and setting the means to execute that policy without any guidance from those above. I think guys like that are dangerous,” Trost said.5

  Now, following Crowe’s solicitation for ideas, Lyons composed a letter for Crowe. On August 11 he sent a six-page document typed on Lyons’s four-star stationery, offering many suggestions for the chairman on how to run the Persian Gulf operation. “I have come to the conclusion,” he began, “that no amount of ships and aircraft will deter Iran as long as its leaders believe we will not respond to isolated attacks.”

  He advocated using his Window of Opportunity plan. Lyons included an updated version that added the Missouri’s 16-inch guns pulverizing the Silkworm sites ringing the Strait of Hormuz and marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit storming the beaches to seize the small but strategically placed island of Abu Musa. Lyons stressed for the chairman, “Our response needs to be vigorous and decisive. Half measures and gradualism will not do if we are to ever get their attention,” he wrote in the opening paragraph of the plan.6 Lyons suggested to Crowe that the best time for the strike would be August 29, when the battleship, two carriers, and a marine amphibious force would all be near the Gulf. “We will not have a similar opportunity for some time,” he wrote.7

  Since Lyons distrusted the security of normal communications channels, he dispatched his lawyer, Captain Morris Sinor, to hand carry the letter plus the latest version of his Window of Opportunity plan back to Washington and drop it off in Crowe’s office at the Pentagon. Despite Lyons’s general disdain for navy lawyers, he trusted Sinor, and his long-suffering lawyer had a reciprocal respect for his boss: “Admiral Lyons could be rude, crude, and arrogant, but he was the most brilliant naval officer I ever met.”8 Sinor dutifully complied, leaving the classified package with Crowe’s executive officer and fellow navy captain Joseph Strasser.

  Crowe called Lyons the next day after reading his letter. “That is a lot to ask of the U.S.
government and the president,” Crowe said.

  With the Iran-Contra congressional hearings in full vigor and the Reagan administration being raked over the coals every night on the evening news, Lyons responded, “Bill, it’s going to save the president.”9 The chairman kept the letter and Lyons’s plan in his files, but never shared it with either Crist or Trost.

  Crowe and Lyons did, however, conspire on slipping the large amphibious ship USS Guadalcanal past the Iranian Silkworm missiles around the Strait of Hormuz and into the Gulf, where it would be used to support helicopters clearing Iranian mines.

  “Do you have any thoughts as to how she should go through?” Crowe inquired, then adding, “We don’t want any messages.”

  “I will work out the details and only you will know,” an enthusiastic Lyons answered. “We can’t tell anyone or it will leak.”

  “Okay,” said the chairman. That same day Lyons formulated a scheme to disguise the nineteen-thousand-ton ship as a freighter by rigging lights to mimic that of a commercial ship rather than a warship carrying navy and marine helicopters.

  Lyons worried about press leaks, believing many stemmed from inside the Pentagon, so he devised another ruse to fool the U.S. military. He issued a false message that the Guadalcanal had electrical problems and would be delayed four days before heading to the Persian Gulf. Lyons called the scheme Operation Slipper, and the only men privy to the fact that the message was false were Crowe and the Seventh Fleet commander, Vice Admiral Paul David Miller. Two days later, Lyons updated Crowe on Slipper. “It will transit the straits on the night of the fourteenth. It will look like a container ship going through,” he told Crowe’s assistant, a colorless toady, Vice Admiral Jonathan Howe. “Keep this information with the chairman and yourself,” Lyons added. “Don’t let anyone else know—don’t need a lot of questions out of Tampa.”10

  Operation Slipper fooled the American generals and admirals. The Guadalcanal sailed under strict radio silence with its lights and camouflage netting configured to make it appear to be a large cargo ship. All the while CENTCOM, the Joint Staff, and Crowe’s own operations deputy briefed both the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Weinberger every morning that the electrical problems were delaying the Guadalcanal’s departure. The two four-stars in charge of the Middle East and the Indian Ocean remained oblivious too. Unaware of Crowe and Lyons’s machinations, Crist and his counterpart at PACOM, Ron Hays, worked on their own protection scheme for the Guadalcanal. Crist suspected something was amiss when he learned that the Guadalcanal had left Diego Garcia, and he queried Crowe. The night before the Guadalcanal was due to transit the Strait of Hormuz, Crowe had his assistant call Lyons asking to let the CENTCOM commander in on the deception plan.

  “Okay,” Lyons answered. “He can tell Crist only. You know, no one at CINCPAC [i.e., Admiral Hays] knows. Make sure the chairman understands.”

  “Okay—he knows,” Howe responded.

  The Guadalcanal passed through the Strait of Hormuz on the night of August 14 without incident. As they normally did, the Iranian navy hailed the unidentified ship (the Guadalcanal’s bridge watch refused to respond), but the Iranian military showed little interest in the oddly configured container ship. While there is no evidence that Iran ever considered attacking such a high-visibility ship, Lyons remained pleased. “We slipped it right past them!”

  The ramifications of the self-deceit reverberated around the most senior levels of the Pentagon. Unwitting to the chairman’s role, Crist viewed it as more of Ace Lyons’s meddling in his command. When Ron Hays learned of the Guadalcanal’s unexpected arrival in Bahrain, the normally composed admiral was livid. He immediately called Lyons.

  “Don’t talk to me. Crowe was the one who ordered it,” Lyons dismissively told Hays.

  Hays could not believe that Crowe would have gone behind his back; he called the chairman and complained about Lyons’s “cutting him out.” Crowe sympathized but never let on that he had directed Ace’s machinations.11

  As the Americans engaged in tomfoolery, the vitriolic warnings from Tehran increased. “They had better leave the region; otherwise we shall strike them so hard they will regret what they have done,” said Iranian president Ali Khamenei. The United States took the rhetoric seriously.12 The Central Intelligence Agency issued an intelligence alert warning that Iran would likely conduct more mine attacks to stop the Kuwaiti convoy operation.

  Sheik Abdul Fattah al-Bader, the chairman of the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, pressed Bernsen to get the reflagged ship Gas Prince and its load of liquid petroleum gas to sail due to important contractual obligations. Bernsen cautioned against this move. While he did not share this with al-Bader, American intelligence had solid evidence of an Iranian spy inside al-Bader’s company. This agent had tipped off the Revolutionary Guard to the Bridgeton convoy and would do the same again. Until they had some minesweeping capability, another convoy seemed too risky.

  Reluctantly, Bernsen bowed to al-Bader’s needs and hastened a convoy out of Kuwait—the same day as Khamenei’s threat. Two U.S. warships rendezvoused with the Gas Prince and escorted the ship south, hugging the Saudi coastline as they passed Farsi Island and with the Saudi military both sweeping ahead for mines and providing two F-15 fighters for cover. To throw off the Iranians, the navy liaison officer in Kuwait passed a false convoy route to the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, with the convoy commander telling the master of the Gas Prince the real route only after they had set sail from Kuwait. To avoid Iranian mines, the convoy cut across the Iranian exclusion zone, with Iraq notified beforehand to avoid another attack like that on the Stark.

  The United States saw threats everywhere. An Iranian four-engine P-3 approached to within twenty-five miles before the USS Klakring, on picket duty in the central Gulf, locked on to the aircraft with its fire control radar, sending the P-3 heading off swiftly in the opposite direction.13 An Iranian frigate shadowed the Americans. As the weather cleared, Iranian small boats appeared on the horizon and approached to within a few miles of the convoy, close enough to conduct suicide or surprise attacks, one admiral later wrote. Eight Iranian warships were under way—the bulk of Iran’s operational fleet.

  U.S. fears seemed justified when the USS Kidd detected a Silkworm targeting radar, perhaps a precursor to launching one of its thousand-pound missiles. A U.S. electronics jet from the carrier Constellation immediately jammed the Iranian radar. The phones lit up between Washington, Tampa, and Middle East Force as the United States braced for a possible Iranian attack. The carrier strike group commander, a gruff, aggressive, decorated combat veteran aptly named Lyle Bull, ordered additional aircraft launched, ready for a strike against the Iranian missile sites. As tense minutes passed, however, Iran launched no missiles and the radar emissions ended. The U.S. convoy steamed safely without incident into the open waters of the Indian Ocean.

  To Lyons and his simpatico strike group commander, Rear Admiral Bull, the Iranian actions demonstrated hostile intent and the United States should respond with force if they tried it again. Bernsen viewed it as far less menacing, more akin to Tehran tweaking the American nose.14

  On August 4, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard began a weeklong exercise under the dour name “Martyrdom” in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran radio repeatedly warned ships and aircraft to “avoid approaching the area of the maneuvers,” adding, “The Islamic Republic of Iran will not be held responsible for the danger to these planes and ships that approach, due to the use of missiles and shells.”

  Even more alarming had been Iran’s instigation of an uprising during the annual hajj. As punishment for Saudi Arabia’s support to the United States and Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the Revolutionary Guard to start an uprising in Mecca during the July 1987 hajj. Hundreds of guardsmen began quietly flying into Saudi Arabia disguised as pilgrims. They carried guns and knives stashed on board the Iran Air jets. The plan called for a massive, choreographed demonstration against Saudi Arabia and the United States, designed both to embarrass
the king and to create turmoil inside his kingdom.15

  Reza Kahlili was still working as part of William Casey’s spies run out of the CIA station in Frankfurt. One of Kahlili’s friends came up to him excited at having been picked to participate in an operation of such importance. “Everything is in place and the Saudi monarch is going down,” he told Kahlili, adding, “These Arabs are the servants of America, and they will pay big this time.” Writing on the back of his specially treated paper, Kahlili wrote a hidden message back to the CIA: “Thousands of Guards have been sent as pilgrims and flown by Iran Air. The plan is to incite the Muslims for a demonstration condemning American and Israeli policies. They intend to escalate the demonstration to an uprising against the Saudi kingdom.”16

  The CIA tipped off Saudi authorities, who interdicted most of the guardsmen and their weapons. When the orchestrated uprising occurred on August 1, the Saudi security forces were poised and ready. When the first Iranian pulled out a weapon, the Saudis opened fire with automatic weapons, cutting down 275 Iranians, both Revolutionary Guards and innocent pilgrims. That afternoon the ever bellicose Prince Bandar called Crowe: “They call us wimps yet we shot down their plane [the F-4 downed in 1984] and now killed about three hundred Iranians! The Iranian problem,” Bandar added, “is going to get worse.”17

  Crowe and Crist conversed on the afternoon of August 7. A number of intelligence reports had raised concern about Iranian intentions. The Office of Naval Intelligence had just issued a dire threat alert predicting that within the next seven to ten days Iran would take “combat action against U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf.”18 Crowe emphasized to Crist the growing concern in Washington about neither starting a war nor repeating the Stark incident. It was a political tightrope, he said, which fell to individual ship commanders to straddle.19

  Both Bandar and the intelligence predictions proved correct. Iran’s real purpose behind the Martyrdom exercise soon showed itself. Amid all the publicity surrounding their swaggering exercise, the Iranian ship Charak, normally used for resupply operations, sailed from Bandar Abbas, broke away from the exercise, and headed for the anchorage at Khor Fakkan, the major port supporting all the shipping entering the Gulf and the assembly location for the Bridgeton convoy. On either August 8 or 9, the Charak laid a string of sixteen large M-08 mines in the middle of the tanker anchorage and then scurried back to Iran.