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

by David Crist

  The CENTCOM commander opposed striking Iran. General John Abizaid believed it would create even more problems, expanding a conflict with Iran at a time when the Sunni-based insurgency was at its height.33

  The replacement for Abizaid at CENTCOM took things a step further. Admiral Joseph “Fox” Fallon came to Tampa from the four-star job at the Pacific Command, where he had impressed President Bush. He shared the navy’s view that Iran did not pose a significant threat. CENTCOM had exaggerated the country’s military capabilities. Self-assured in the extreme, Fallon put a halt to the planning begun by Abizaid. He believed CENTCOM needed to show more restraint and not expand a conflict that largely did not exist. He was not ignorant of the Iranian Quds Force activities and had authorized U.S. Special Operations Forces to move against some of its operations in Afghanistan, but Fallon offered no real prioritization of effort for the command and became mired in prerogatives. As one admiral commented, “Painting parking lines took on as much priority as Iran.”

  In case the order ever came, Fallon’s naval commander developed a very surgical list of fewer than five discrete targets inside Iran. Using only standoff cruise missiles, the navy could easily hit all the targets at once, with a minimal prospect for collateral damage. Whether they were the right targets to halt the Iranian EFP activity remained a question in his mind, however. “These buildings did not have signs on them that said ‘Iranian EFP factory.’”34

  While the U.S. government had not taken military action off the table to stop Iran’s nuclear program, Fallon publicly called these sorts of “bellicose comments” unhelpful. This angered Vice President Cheney. In his memoirs, Cheney recounted comments made by a visiting diplomat that echoed his concerns: “If you guys are going to take the military option off the table, couldn’t you at least have your secretary of state do it? When the CENTCOM commander does it, they take notice.”35

  According to Cheney, Defense Secretary Gates shared a similar view of the wisdom of military action against Iran. The vice president became incensed when Gates told the Saudi king that Bush would be “impeached if he took military action against Iran.” This was not the news that either Dick Cheney or King Abdullah wanted to hear, and it “removed a key element of our leverage and convinced allies and enemies that we were less than serious about addressing the threat.”36

  But news of the deliberations over striking Iran leaked out. It created a frenzy in the media as articles appeared in Time and the New Yorker, among others, all reporting the United States was set to attack Iran and would use the excuse of Iraq to destroy its nuclear facilities. The recently established Office of Iranian Affairs at the State Department looked like a son of Shulsky’s Office of Special Plans in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.37 In truth, attacks on the nuclear sites were never seriously contemplated; the debate centered on a limited military response to Iranian-sponsored attacks inside Iraq. But this distinction failed to make it to the public debate, as detractors of the administration such as reporter Seymour Hersh touted the drumbeat of the next war. “Like a clock, Hersh is right twice a day,” said Elliott Abrams dismissively.

  America’s aggressive actions in Iraq did bring Iran back to the bargaining table. Beginning in late 2006, Iran relayed through the Iraqi government a desire to talk with the Americans. Iran hoped to get more official recognition for its interests in Iraq and end the U.S. Special Forces onslaught on its agents. Whether to accept the offer to talk divided the administration. Rice thought Iran could help stabilize Iraq, as it had Afghanistan in 2001. Cheney expressed reservations about talking to Iran, seeing it as a reward for its bad behavior in Iraq. But Rice convinced the president to endorse this diplomatic effort, in tandem with Prime Minister al-Maliki, to broker an agreement, and Washington agreed to the talks. “The purpose is to try to make sure that the Iranians play a productive role in Iran,” said a White House spokesman.38

  For the Americans, the task of heading up the talks fell to Ryan Crocker, ambassador to Iraq and a veteran of Iran negotiations. Crocker had arrived at the embassy in Baghdad in March 2007. His first impression of the situation in Iraq was that it looked eerily like the Lebanon he had left in the 1980s, with Iran and Syria strategically collaborating against the United States. But Iraq was not like Lebanon. While al-Maliki remained friendly with Iran, he hated the country at the same time. “It was another example of the complexities of the Iran-Iraq War, where most of the fighting was done by Shia for a Sunni Arab regime against a Shia Persian one,” Crocker observed.

  Crocker knew of the discussions about military strikes against Iran but never viewed them as serious and would have opposed them. If the United States wanted to impact the regime, it could exploit the ethnic divisions by supporting the Kurds or Baluchis. “That would have really terrified the Iranians.” Others outside the government, such as Michael Ledeen, thought the U.S. government never would approve that strategy. But Crocker fully backed the effort to round up the Quds Forces inside Iraq.

  On May 28, 2007, Crocker met with his Iranian counterpart, Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi, in Prime Minister al-Maliki’s office. Al-Maliki introduced the two men, and they moved to a conference room. Al-Maliki sat at the head of the polished table as moderator, with Crocker and Qomi squaring off on opposite sides. Qomi had served in the Revolutionary Guard, and his appointment indicated the commanding role that the Quds Force and Suleimani played in Iraq.39 Crocker held out little hope for the talks. They lacked the openness that marked his previous meetings in Geneva, and the Iranian ambassador operated under a tight rein. Any time Crocker raised an issue that was not on his talking points, Qomi asked for a break to call back to Tehran for instructions. Muddled American objectives undermined the talks too. The United States wanted to gain Iran’s assistance in supporting the Iraqi government while chastising it for the Quds Force operations in Iraq. The two contradictory goals confused the Iranians. The Iranian ambassador raised the detention of the Quds Force fighters only one time, doing so in a lecture positing that “the totally unwarranted detention of these businesspeople was an indication of America’s hostile attitude.”

  Crocker repeatedly tried to talk about Iran’s unhelpful actions inside Iraq. “They need to cease,” he said. But Qomi refused to accept the premise of Crocker’s argument. Iran countered with a proposal to form a trilateral mechanism including Iran, Iraq, and the United States to coordinate security issues in Iraq. And Qomi offered Iranian support to rebuild the Iraqi military. Crocker agreed to forward the ideas to Washington, although he knew they would be a nonstarter at the White House. At the end of the meeting, both sides held separate press conferences and agreed the talks had been polite, but little else.40

  On July 24, the two diplomats met again at al-Maliki’s office. Iran sent its deputy national security chief—a Revolutionary Guard officer—who stayed in al-Maliki’s offices one floor up, so when Qomi had a question, he paused the talks and scurried up to ask him. The unvarnished talks failed to produce any headway. While both sides professed support for a democratically elected government in Baghdad, each side accused the other of fomenting the violence in Iraq. Once again they adjourned without any progress. Both sides discussed a third round of talks, but the Iranian delegation kept shifting the date, agreeing to one one day and changing its mind the next. In the end, talks about talks faded away.41 The failure of the talks frustrated al-Maliki. He confided to Crocker that Iran had not taken the talks seriously.

  To try to undermine the Americans, the brother of the Revolutionary Guard commander, Salman Safavi, tried to work the American embassy in London. In August 2007, he participated in a group discussion and expressed the guard’s interest in talking about security and the nuclear program. While he admitted that Iran had provided material aid to Shia in Iraq, he offered Iran’s support to help in security. But he said that any American designation of the guard as a terrorist organization would preclude cooperation. This transparent ploy did not impress the Americans, and Safavi failed to haggle Iran’
s way out of further sanctions.42

  As Secretary Gates had predicted, Iran overplayed its hand in Iraq. In the aftermath of the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, in which the Iranian-backed militia performed well, a self-assured Quds Force decided to expand the distribution of weapons in Iraq in hopes of inflicting grievous losses on the United States.43 The Iranian-backed Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq eagerly stepped up its attacks. Iran formed new special groups comprising four to ten men under the command of long-term Iranian agents, who frequently did Iran’s bidding but just as frequently freelanced or operated as assassins for hire.44 Iran miscalculated. As Iranian weapons flowed in, they fueled inter-Shia fighting. In 2007, fighting broke out in Karbala between rival Shia groups armed by Iran. Two Badr-affiliated governors were assassinated with Iranian-provided EFPs. Quds Force commander Suleimani stepped in to ease tensions. Al-Maliki appealed to the Iranians to halt the weapons flow and rein in al-Sadr’s Jaysh al-Mahdi militia, which was frequently uncooperative with the Iraqi government. Iran denied providing weapons, but Suleimani ordered weapons provided only to select trusted groups.45

  In March 2008, al-Maliki lost his patience with the lawlessness in Basra and sent ten thousand troops against al-Sadr. With no coordination with the Americans, the resulting battle turned into a stalemate until American and Iraqi reinforcements arrived and al-Maliki continued the offensive. His forces uncovered caches of newly arrived Iranian weapons; one stash alone had more than a thousand mortar rounds and thirty-three blocks of plastic explosives. A cease-fire occurred when Iran stepped in to broker a deal. During two days of meetings in Tehran, Suleimani negotiated a cease-fire between al-Sadr and al-Maliki. Crocker noted the irony of it all: Suleimani had been asked to “sort out the chaos that he has been instrumental in creating and perpetuating.”46

  But al-Maliki viewed Iranian actions as designed to undermine his government and pressed both Tehran and Washington to cut off funds for the Iranian-backed special groups. In October 2008, Iraqi forces engaged in a firefight with five likely Quds Force operatives who had recently infiltrated across the border, wounding two.47 This hardly ended Iran’s significant role behind the scenes in Iraq and in the government. But Iran’s role in fueling the violence among the Shia had been exposed, forcing both Suleimani and the Iranian government to scale back their operations and temporarily cut funding for pro-Iranian political parties in Iraq.

  The U.S. Special Operations Forces never fully shut down the Iranian networks. They killed Iraqi militia at the cyclic rate, seriously disrupted their operations, and destroyed their safe havens. Many fled to Iran. On September 20, 2007, the U.S. military rolled up another Quds Force officer during a raid at a hotel in the Kurdish region; the man had been involved in smuggling EFPs into Iraq. Suleimani ordered his officers to keep a lower profile and withdrew some back into Iran to avoid capture. But by the end of 2008, at the close of the Bush administration, they began trickling back into Iraq as the surge ended. U.S. soldiers continued to run across their handiwork, uncovering Iraqis trained in Iran as snipers and bomb makers.48 But the ties that bound the neighboring Shia remained too strong. As the United States withdrew forces, Iran’s surrogate network remained.

  “I regret that I ended my presidency with the Iranian issue unresolved,” President Bush wrote in his memoirs. “I did hand my successor an Iranian regime more isolated from the world and more heavily sanctioned than it had ever been.” But he remained confident that his efforts would inspire Iranian dissidents and help “catalyze change.”49 The administration had provided a guide to continue the broad containment of Iran. While Iraq teetered between the two sides of the conflict, CENTCOM had positioned itself to deal with any eventuality. But the Bush policies to isolate Iran and “delegitimize” the regime had failed. The invasion of Iraq had placed Iran in a much stronger strategic position than it had been before with Saddam Hussein in power. Efforts at negotiations had proved equally fruitless. While the Iranians extended a halfhearted hand to cooperate in Iraq, they refused to entertain any talk about their killing of American soldiers. It fell to a new administration to pick up the pieces and continue to pursue peace or plan for war.

  Twenty-Seven

  AN EXTENDED HAND AND A CLOSED FIST

  On Wednesday, January 7, 2009, three former presidents of the United States joined the White House’s current and forthcoming occupants in front of the president’s imposing wooden desk. After a few remarks by President Bush, they adjourned for lunch. In less than two weeks, Barack Obama would be sworn in to join the world’s most exclusive club. President Bush had organized the gathering as a show of national unity and support for the president-elect. As the two men warmly shook hands, Bush said, “We want you to succeed. Whether we are Democrat or Republican, we all care deeply about this country.”

  Bush had another, less public reason for wanting to meet with Obama. Before the formal gathering with the former commanders in chief, the two men met alone for thirty minutes, sitting next to each other in the Oval Office’s blue-and-gold-striped upholstered chairs. Bush had avoided new foreign policy actions in his waning days as president that would commit Obama to courses that he might not support. But Bush wanted to talk with Obama in private about one exception: Iran.

  “I have tried not to tie your hands,” Bush began. “But regarding Iran, I have approved a number of actions that commit you to certain things, and I want you to be comfortable with them and to understand why we are doing them.” Bush then proceeded to lay out the broad details of his programs aimed at delaying and undermining Iran’s nuclear program, and he explained its various components, from military options to public messaging. Bush told Obama about some of the covert and overt operations under way, among them ones so close-hold that only a handful of senior officials were read into them. Many required time to play out, Bush said, and some of the more esoteric actions, such as those that lay in the world of cyber warfare or relied on other hidden tools available to the U.S. government, needed the new president’s support in order to succeed. Bush was under no illusion that any of these efforts would halt Iran’s nuclear program, but they might buy eighteen months to two years. This would give Obama and his administration enough space to get their feet on the ground and devise their own strategy for Iran and its nuclear ambitions. “I want to give you time and options,” Bush said to Obama.

  Obama listened intently. He knew many of these issues, having been briefed already by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General James Cartwright. The president-elect confided the details of the conversation with his new national security adviser, another onetime marine general, James Jones. Bush had wanted to transcend the hyperpolitical environment of the time and pass the Iranian policy baton cleanly to the next runner in order to forge a consistent American policy in response to the threat from Tehran. While Barack Obama grasped the importance of Bush’s words, the new president would decide for himself what to do regarding Iran.

  From the outset, the Obama administration recognized that Iran would be one of its most important national security challenges. During the campaign, Barack Obama had been openly critical of Bush’s Iran policy. During the primaries, Obama had stood out for his astute criticism that the invasion of Iraq had opened the door for greater Iranian influence in the Middle East. While he too called Iran a dangerous threat and a nuclear Iran unacceptable, candidate Obama argued that, as during the Cold War, the United States needed to have the strength of its convictions and talk to its adversaries. He called for a dialogue with Iran, proclaiming that he would sit down and meet with Iranian leaders without preconditions. “Demanding that a country meets all your conditions before you meet with them, that’s not a strategy. It’s just naive, wishful thinking,” Obama had said.1

  On the surface, the transition went well. President Bush and national security adviser Stephen Hadley had gone to great pains to brief the incoming national security team on Iranian policy. The fact that Robert Gates stayed on as secretary of defense and
William Burns continued on at the State Department only further smoothed the transfer. But tensions almost inevitably accompany a change of parties and administrations, and this transition was no exception. The new deputy national security adviser, Tom Donilon, was a smart and aggressive lawyer, but he was a Democratic Party political operative and not a foreign policy professional. In his first meetings he repeatedly stressed that this had to be Obama’s Iran policy and thus there was a need to eliminate any hint of “Bushism,” even if the policy had not substantively changed. This grated on the senior generals and CIA officers present, who had to sit mum and remain nonpartisan.

  Despite Bush’s effort to bridge the two administrations, Obama and his appointees came to office concerned about Bush’s use of covert action in the war on terrorism. CIA rendition operations and the prison at Guantánamo Bay had been hot political issues during the campaign. On his first full day in office, the president signed an order to close the prison in Cuba.2 Under the rationale of better presidential oversight, in the first few weeks after the inaugural the White House conducted an exhaustive review of all the presidential findings, including those related to Iran. During this process the president canceled several that Donilon and he viewed as inappropriate or unworkable. All this frustrated Bush’s appointed CIA director Michael Hayden and other career holdovers. They had been instrumental in developing these operations and now had to justify their earlier decisions while “educating” a new crop of senior appointees. Although Obama rejected a number of Bush’s plans, he embraced covert operations and expanded their use. CIA drone attacks against al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen and Pakistan increased by three fold under the new president.3