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

by David Crist

  WAR OR PEACE

  In 1995, the United States and Iran appeared headed for war. The CENTCOM commander, Army General James Henry Binford “Binnie” Peay, had decided to hector Iran with a series of amphibious exercises around the Persian Gulf. For a week in September 1994, two thousand marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit conducted an amphibious landing in Oman. A substantial contingent of elite army and navy special operations forces joined the marines, in addition to warplanes from an aircraft carrier. When this exercise finished, the marines quickly moved to the United Arab Emirates and conducted another exercise, labeled Iron Magic, which consisted of a series of quick amphibious raids duplicating a landing on one of the Iranian-held islands such as Abu Musa. CENTCOM had hoped it would have a deterrent effect on Iranian leaders. It backfired.1

  Tehran viewed this mock operation as a rehearsal for an impending American attack. When one of Tehran’s spies in the Gulf passed on spurious information that supported this assumption, General Mohsen Rezai of the Revolutionary Guard hastily convened a meeting in Tehran. He warned that the United States was preparing to take back the Gulf islands for the Arabs, perhaps as a prelude to invading and overthrowing the Islamic Republic. Iran began a massive buildup of military forces on the Persian Gulf islands, transforming them into virtual fortresses, building concrete bunkers with tanks and artillery and endless ribbons of trenches. On Abu Musa alone, Iran stationed four thousand troops armed with surface-to-air and antiship missiles. A move intended to intimidate Iran raised tensions to the boiling point.

  On March 1, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Shalikashvili, sounded the alarm in Washington. During a breakfast with reporters, the Polish-born army officer bluntly responded to a question about the Iranian buildup on the islands near the Strait of Hormuz. “The other day they started putting missiles on their launchers, which they have not done before,” he said worriedly in a pronounced accent, adding that it raised concerns about Tehran’s ability to disrupt the world’s oil supplies.2

  President Clinton publicly downplayed the Iranian actions: “There is no undue cause for concern at this moment,” Clinton told reporters after cable news outlets had repeatedly replayed Joint Chiefs chairman Shalikashvili’s comments. Conveniently absent was any mention of the American actions that had precipitated the Iranian military buildup.

  Defense Secretary William Perry quietly told the military to prepare a new war plan for Iran. The only military plan existing at CENTCOM was a holdover from Earnest Will, a long-standing requirement to keep the sea-lanes of the Persian Gulf open for commercial shipping. In a personal message for the CENTCOM commander, Shalikashvili directed him to expand this limited plan to include defending the Gulf Arabs from Iranian missile attack and to plan for air strikes on Iran proper.3

  Iranian president Rafsanjani tried to defuse tensions and improve relations between the two countries. With the approval of the supreme leader, Rafsanjani awarded a $1 billion contract to the American oil company Conoco to develop one of his country’s underwater oil fields near Sirri Island. When news of the deal reached Washington, both the State Department and the CIA supported it. The diplomats believed it could help defuse tensions while the spies hoped it would permit better access to information inside Iran.

  But that year a new Republican-controlled Congress swept into office. The Conoco deal galvanized those Republicans sympathetic to Israel and hostile to the Clinton administration. New legislation made its way through both houses designed to close down trade between the United States and Iran, which amounted to nearly $4 billion annually, and kill the Conoco agreement. Clinton quickly acquiesced. In the spring of 1995, he signed two executive orders that quashed the Conoco agreement and drastically limited trade with Iran. The State Department stepped up its efforts with Russia and Europe to drastically curtail selling Iran anything conceivably used by Iran’s military or nuclear program.

  Initially, Rafsanjani’s response to the Americans’ actions was muted. In a meeting with Russian reporters, he said the United States was the only loser with its trade embargo. He did not countenance the fears of some Iranian leaders as to American intentions to overthrow the Islamic Republic. “I do not tend to see at present any threat against the revolution and the political system internally or externally.” Rafsanjani added that a goodwill gesture by the United States would beget the same from Iran.4

  But then the new speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, a plump Georgian intellect and not one to shy away from the press, openly advocated overthrowing the Iranian regime. He argued that Clinton’s dual containment lacked any stick with which to beat the intransigent mullahs.5 While the Clinton administration immediately rejected the feasibility of overthrowing the Iranian government, Gingrich pushed through a very public $18 million plus-up for the CIA’s covert action budget for Iran. The agency did have a very modest program designed to get truthful information about the United States into Iran, but Gingrich’s additional funding added little to this nascent espionage effort. The money did not lead to an effort to destabilize the Iranian government. Langley set its sights low, conducting small operations such as the “Great Books” program, which sought to smuggle classics of Western literature into the country.6 While this guaranteed that students at Tehran University would have access to Kafka and Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, it had no impact on Iranian behavior. Gingrich’s public announcement of the funding guaranteed that any slim chances for a covert operation were now nonexistent. The speaker certainly knew this, but the debate itself sufficed, in his view. The mere discussion of a covert action against Iran served the same purpose as if there were an actual program.

  Gingrich’s CIA funding enraged the Iranians. CIA meddling in their internal affairs remained a sore point. Many assumed the CIA conducted such activities, but now they had a prominent American politician publicly pronouncing just such operations. While $18 million was small by American standards, it represented a significant percentage of Iran’s covert budget.

  “They saw it as an American declaration of covert war against them. The U.S. was not going to invade, but was going to do everything else,” said NSC official and former CIA officer Ken Pollack.7

  Deputy foreign minister Javad Zarif, a pragmatic diplomat who actually favored better relations with Washington, condemned the United States for violating international law and the 1981 Algiers Accords, which led to the release of the embassy hostages and whereby President Carter pledged “not to intervene, directly or indirectly, politically or militarily, in Iran’s internal affairs.”8 The supreme leader chimed in with his own condemnation of Washington. Addressing a graduation ceremony of newly minted army officers, Ayatollah Khamenei blasted America’s actions: “So long as beloved Iran continues to shine as an Islamic country among the other countries of the world, it remains the target of terrorist moves and shameless action of the enemies of Islam—that is to say, the CIA organization of America, Zionist agencies, and their evil-minded allies.”9

  Publicly, the Iranian parliament quickly approved its own $20 million to counter the CIA covert action—a plan that had as much chance of succeeding as Gingrich’s own idea. The Iranian government rounded up and hanged five men accused of being spies for both Iraq and the United States. In June 1996, Iran arrested three more men suspected as being CIA agents.10

  Iran excelled at covert war, and its intelligence services responded in their traditional way. The tiny Gulf state of Bahrain became its first target. Iran believed it had a base of support in Bahrain, with its majority population of disenfranchised Shia living under an autocratic Sunni emir. Iran flew several of its Bahraini agents to Lebanon for training and returned them as part of a sleeper cell called Hezbollah-Bahrain, which Tehran had formed three years earlier. In June 1996, Bahraini security forces uncovered an Iranian-led plot to overthrow the emir. In a meeting at the White House, the Bahraini ambassador presented the Americans with hard evidence, including photos of weapons caches and Re
volutionary Guard documents outlining the operation. Police rounded up twenty-nine conspirators, with others fleeing to Iran.11

  Iran had inspired a similar cell in Saudi Arabia from the Shia in the country’s eastern area. It had begun this recruitment drive in 1988, possibly in response to Saudi Arabia’s support for the U.S. military escort of Kuwaiti tankers.

  The leader of Saudi Hezbollah’s military wing was Ahmed al-Mughassil. A slight man with a black goatee, he was devout both to his religious beliefs and in his hatred for the Saudi monarchy. Living chiefly in Beirut, al-Mughassil developed close ties with Hezbollah’s older Lebanese wing. He funneled Saudi militants through Syria to Lebanon, where they received weapons and bomb-making training.

  A shadowy compartment of Iran’s Quds Force called Department 6000, headed by Brigadier General Ahmad Sharifi, managed the Saudi cell. Sharifi kept close tabs on al-Mughassil’s operations. He and his officers suggested U.S. bases and buildings for surveillance, even calling them on the phone to inquire about their progress and providing additional “targets” for Saudi Hezbollah to explore. To finance its operation, the Quds Force met with al-Mughassil in Beirut, frequently paying the Saudi with stacks of American hundred-dollar bills.12

  Syria became an important way station between Saudi Hezbollah and Iran. The Iranian embassy provided funding and logistical support for al-Mughassil’s operations. Iranian Quds Force officers frequently met their Saudi operatives at the Sayyida Zeinab shrine in southern Damascus. An imposing structure with a large courtyard and cloaked with brilliant blue tile and a shimmering gold dome, it is believed to be the burial location of Ali’s daughter and the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad. Thousands of Iranian pilgrims arrived there every year, making it easy for Quds Force officers to move in and out undetected. The Iranians met their Saudi operatives in quiet corners of a chamber and kept a lookout for new candidates to recruit.

  As early as 1993, al-Mughassil’s men began monitoring American installations, with their reports making their way back to Department 6000. While no attacks were in the offing, the Quds Force viewed this as prudent planning. Early on, the U.S. embassy in Riyadh drew their attention, and Saudi Hezbollah watched the comings and goings of its employees, including staking out a fish market frequented by Americans. In late 1994, at the request of General Sharifi, Iran passed a list of American facilities within the Saudi kingdom that they wanted al-Mughassil’s men to keep under surveillance. One of the targets listed was a housing complex for the American air force called Khobar Towers, which was initially built in 1979 for Bedouins, who refused to live there. The Saudis kept it to support the U.S. military, as it was located near the important air base at Dhahran in the Shia province of eastern Saudi Arabia. Khobar Towers was made up of high-rise apartment buildings, including two eight-story T-shaped buildings on the north end. After Desert Storm, some two thousand Americans called Khobar Towers home, at least during their deployments supporting operations over the skies of Iraq.

  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 1996.13

  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.14

  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.15

  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.

  The 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!”16 In four minutes the airmen cleared the top three floors of Building 131. Then they ran out of time.17

  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.”18 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.”19

  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.20