The Final Move Beyond Iraq: The Final Solution While the World Sleeps
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Following directives from their mentors, Iran and Syria, Hezbollah terrorists repeatedly tested Israel’s resolve and defenses. Katyushas were fired into Northern Israel from outposts in Southern Lebanon, roadside bombs targeted Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) patrols inside Israel, attempted kidnappings were regular occurrences, Israeli Arabs were kidnapped and interrogated to obtain information about Israel, sniper attacks were common, and Israeli civilians were murdered.16 Hezbollah had no lack of armaments made available by Iran and Syria: heavy artillery as well as thousands of missiles and rockets, including the longer-range Fajr-3 and Fajr-5. The Fajr rockets are manufactured in Syria, thus eliminating the possibility that Syria could claim ignorance in the jihad against Israel. Supplies transported into Lebanon also included the Zelzal-2 with a range that would allow attacks on Tel Aviv. Not only did the rockets have longer-range capabilities, the warheads were larger. There was also an influx of Revolutionary Guard–trained fighters and longtime Al Qaeda members.
Syria and Iran were ready should the United States attack Iraq—not to join in the immediate fray but to step in and create chaos and confusion following the removal of Saddam Hussein. The plan to humiliate the United States and drive coalition forces out of Iraq would allow Syria to carve out the Sunni region for itself and Iran to take possession of the Shiite region and either to overrun the Kurds or allow them self-governance. Given their past hatred of one another, the question of how to turn an Iraq devastated by war into a pro-Iranian entity would still be a challenging one. In preparation for such an eventuality, three Iraqi opposition leaders met in Tehran in December 2002. Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), Ahmad Chalabi of the INC (INC), and Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) held meetings with each other and with top Iranian leaders.17 Chalabi’s overtures to the Iranians were a surprise for the Bush administration, as they had initially handpicked him as the Iraqi leader to replace the soon-to-be ousted Saddam Hussein.
In discussing how to fashion a postwar Iraq into a country that would most benefit Iran and Syria, Supreme Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and then Iranian president Mohammad Khatami determined that a government in Iraq must be easily persuaded to support Iran’s regional interests. The two reached one conclusion: Iraq was unsuitable for a Khomeini-type upheaval and a Shiite-dominated theocracy. In The Secret History of the Iraq War, Yossef Bodansky wrote at length about Khamenei’s rhetoric leading up to the Iraq confrontation. Khamenei was certain that:
The arrogant and imperialist United States has not realized its objectives in Palestine and Afghanistan, and its stupendous financial and human outlays have brought it nothing but loss. It will be the same story in the future, God willing.18
Bodansky says, “In mentioning ‘neighboring nations,’ Khamenei for the first time alluded to Iran’s direct role in confronting the United States [in Iraq].”19
Apparently, the two Iranians were convinced that Ahmad Chalabi would implement Iran’s plan for a speedy election in Iraq once the United States had disposed of its archenemy, Saddam Hussein. It would be in Iran’s best interests to have a pro-Iranian Shiite such as Chalabi in a position of power. In fact, according to a Newsweek report:
Before the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress maintained a $36,000-a-month branch office in Tehran—funded by U.S. taxpayers. INC representatives, including Chalabi himself, paid regular visits to the Iranian capital. Since the war, Chalabi’s contacts with Iran may have intensified: a Chalabi aide says that since December [2005], he has met with most of Iran’s top leaders, including supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his top national-security aide, Hassan Rowhani. “Iran is Iraq’s neighbor, and it is in Iraq’s interest to have a good relationship with Iran,” Chalabi’s aide says.20
Chalabi, the golden boy, became tarnished and would, ultimately, be investigated for fraud. Charges were later dropped due to lack of evidence.
ISRAEL’S ROLE
While the United States was hard at work building a coalition in advance of a possible attack in Iraq, Israel was making war preparations at home. During the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein had hinted at including payloads of chemical weapons in his Scuds targeting Israeli cities. This time Israel would be prepared to retaliate at the first sign of a missile launched in its direction. Having been asked to keep a low profile, as in 1990, Israel provided assistance in other ways. According to USA Today, Israeli commandos provided intelligence services to the United States, as well as:
…conducted clandestine surveillance missions of Scud missile sites in Western Iraq…. Infantry units with experience in urban warfare…helped train U.S. Army and Marine counterparts…for possible urban battles in Iraq….[Israel also] “reserve[d] the right to defend itself against an unprovoked attack.”21
As defense preparations continued, new concerns arose; the Palestinian Authority’s leader, Yasser Arafat, had a new toy. He became enamored of toy airplanes—literally. The Iraqis had allegedly taken toy airplanes, operated by remote control, and retrofitted them to carry explosives. A gleeful Arafat ordered that toy stores order large supplies of the model planes, bound ostensibly for children in hospitals in the PA. Not surprisingly, no child received a toy airplane. The planes were said to have been paid for by funds designated for humanitarian projects. The planes were converted into mini-bombers capable of carrying explosives—another means to kill innocent civilians in Israel.22
Israel’s hopes of being able to defend itself were dashed when, on December 22, 2002, senior officials in the Bush administration “told Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz that the U.S. has decided that Israel will not be involved in the war against Iraq even if Iraq launches a missile attack against Israel.”23 Mofaz also reassured the Israeli people that the Israeli Air Force was prepared to defend the country. In fact, by January 2003, the Israeli Air Force was flying reconnaissance forays over parts of Iraq.
In an attempt to sidetrack the United States from its focus on Iraq, Saddam Hussein pushed his Palestinian allies to launch a series of attacks against Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported that one major suicide attack was thwarted when police discovered a car filled with gasoline canisters and 300 kilograms of explosives. The vehicle was successfully detonated with no harm to anyone. Hezbollah stepped up attacks as well, sending a barrage of antitank missiles and mortar rounds into the Mount Dov region. Not to be outdone, Hamas jumped into the melee with Qussam rocket attacks into southern Israel.24
The increased activity caused Israeli officials to question whether or not the United States possessed a contingency plan based on all possible worst-case scenarios in Iraq. A New York Times article outlined some of the same concerns and nightmarish possibilities expressed by the Israelis:
In the last war Saddam Hussein blew up almost all of Kuwait’s oil wells; in the next he could blow up Saudi Arabian wells, with significant repercussions for the international economy…[or if he] goes after Israel with the chemical or biological weapons…Israel…will retaliate, perhaps even with nuclear weapons. Just over the horizon lies Pakistan, a Muslim country armed with nuclear weapons and permeated by extremists. Pervez Musharraf…is unlikely to survive politically should there be a nuclear attack by an American ally on Iraq’s Muslims. Islamists…would take control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal; lacking the ability to launch missiles that would reach Israel, they would turn on India, their more proximate enemy. A nuclear attack would set off global chaos.25
Whether or not the United States had these plans in place, it was on March 17, 2003, that President Bush gave his final ultimatum: “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.”26
On March 20, 2003, at approximately 02:30 UTC, explosions were heard in Baghdad. The “shock and awe” air campaign to cripple Iraq’s defenses had begun. Within roughly twenty days, coalition forces captured
Baghdad and were greeted by Iraqis cheering and pulling down a statue of Hussein, whose twenty-four-year rule had come to an end. By April 15, Tikrit, Hussein’s hometown, was under coalition control. At that time it appeared the major fighting of the invasion was effectively over. On May 1, President Bush declared the cessation of major combat operations, and the occupation of Iraq, with the aim of establishing democratic self-rule, began.
Who would have imagined that in the next forty-two months we would suffer nearly twenty times as many casualties as during the time of the major combat operations? Little did anyone think at the time that over three years later, there would still be no end in sight to the major U.S. presence in the country, except perhaps the forces Hussein had enlisted to fight the real war in Iraq—the terrorist/guerrilla war that would be born the same day the occupation began.
Chapter Five
THE REAL BATTLE FOR IRAQ BEGINS
They intended to spread Islam and in the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad, you can see that. He thinks there is going to be a second coming and that before that second coming can happen there has to be a clash of civilizations.1
—CHRIS HAMILTON,
senior fellow of Counterterrorism Studies,
Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Since the revolution by Khomeini, the view of Iran is to try to spread the Muslim revolution all over the world. To ruin whatever smells democratic, to ruin whatever seems democratic, and on the remnant of those democratic walls to build a new entity—an extreme Islamic regime that will be operated according to the Sharia Law which is the Islam leaders’ codex of laws. What they want to see is a new world where Islam is in control, and all entities will be like Iran, meaning they will be controlled and ruled by the ayatollahs, by the spiritual leaders, the clerics.2
—GEN. DANI YATOM,
former head of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad
and chief of staff under Prime Minister Ehud Barak
Once it became apparent to Hussein that his bravado was not going to deter the U.S.-led coalition from an attack, he began to order the disbursement of trainees from the various terrorist training camps around Iraq, most notably in Nasiriyah and Fallujah. The trainees were provided money, arms, explosives, and transportation. Teams of terrorists were assigned the job of penetrating Saudi Arabia’s borders with the assignment to carry out terrorist attacks. One team was able to murder a Saudi judge, Abdul Rahman al-Suhaybani, known for combating subversive activities in his province. The team members then went underground to join the vast terror networks—Al Qaeda, al-Muwahhidun, Hezbollah, and others—so that they could one day emerge to kill again.
With the U.S. air and ground offensives in full swing and coalition troops steadily advancing on Baghdad, Hussein began to lose confidence in the outcome of the war. It is thought that Hussein began to put into effect several possible escape plans. One involved calling in markers from his friends in Belarus. Hussein asked for charter flights to transport cargo and members of his family out of Iraq. A plane identified as a Belarusian IL-76 transport allegedly took off from Saddam International Airport and traversed Iranian airspace on its flight to Minsk, Belarus. There was initial speculation that both Hussein and his sons were on board the flight.3 Another exile-of-choice location was Paris, and indeed a group of Hussein’s handpicked scientists were among the first to be transported from Iraq to Paris via Damascus. This was yet another example of French cooperation with Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Another arrangement involved Hussein joining a convoy of Russian diplomats from Baghdad to Damascus. When it was suggested that there might be a safer route through Amman, the Russian delegation declined and insisted on going to Damascus. With the convoy was Russian ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Titorenko. It has been reported that Hussein donned a disguise and joined the convoy carrying some twenty-five Russians. Just outside Baghdad, the convoy came under fire; five diplomats were wounded, some seriously, said Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko. Although the U.S. Central Command maintained that there were no coalition forces near where the attack occurred, Secretary of State Colin Powell contacted Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov to express his sincere apology for the incident. Powell did not admit any U.S. culpability, though.4
As the ground fighting around Baghdad began in earnest, Lt. Gen. John Abizaid, CENTCOM deputy commander, reported, “Regular Iraqi army units seemed to vanish as the coalition advanced. Low numbers of Iraqi prisoners indicated that the regular army units were avoiding the fight…. Regular Iraqi forces [along with senior officers] ‘have just melted away.’”5
With coalition troops entering Baghdad, the city fell into chaos. Various Iranian-armed and funded militia groups began to make their presence known in the city. The Shiite faction was, from all accounts, the most well armed and organized of the groups. The popularity of the anti-American, anti–Saddam Hussein groups grew as it became known they could provide food and medicine to the neighborhoods they controlled. One such area became known as Sadr City, a low-income suburb of Baghdad and home of some two million Shiite Muslims.
It looked as though advance preparations by Iran and Syria to make Iraq virtually uncontrollable were in full swing. The rage and antipathy of the Muslim world was directed at the “Great Satan.” Decree after decree and fatwa after fatwa were issued, calling for jihad against the United States. One came from Dr. Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, sheikh of Al-Azhar. He rallied the Iraqi people to continue their “Jihad in defense of religion, faith, honor, and property, because Jihad is a religious ruling of Islam aimed at opposing aggressors,” and encouraged Arab and Islamic volunteers to travel to Iraq, “to support the Jihad of their oppressed brethren there, because resistance to oppression is an Islamic obligation, whether the oppressor is Muslim or not.”6
In meetings between Iran’s Khamenei and Khatami and Syria’s al-Assad, the leaders determined that the United States should be met with violent resistance from the various Iraqi factions and from jihadists imported for the purpose of creating pandemonium for the coalition troops. The men called on the radical Islamic forces in the region to oppose an American occupation by every means possible. Again, Yossef Bodansky reported that Majlis (Iranian parliament) deputy Majid Ansari, in a briefing prior to the summit between Khamenei and al-Assad, outlined Iran’s position:
Even if they [the Americans] succeed in capturing Iraq…they will still face difficulties…. We [the Iranian leadership] are hoping that the Americans would be bogged down in Iraq and fail to realize their expansionist politics…. Even if America were to become victorious in Iraq for a short time…such a victory will be the beginning of serious problems for America’s warmongering and expansionist politicians.7
Both leaders were well aware that they were unable to forestall an American attack but could create havoc within Iraq once Saddam Hussein was deposed. The call for Islamic fanatics—terrorists, all—went forth and was answered by volunteers from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Palestinian Territory, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iran, and Syria, among others. The question for the coalition troops now became one of how to identify peaceful Iraqi citizens from the influx of terrorists bent on killing them in any way possible.
Outside Baghdad, Shiite enclaves that had been suppressed under Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime welcomed liberation by the coalition troops. In al Najaf, a long-repressed Iraqi leader and exile, Abdul Majid al-Khoi, was among the first to return to throngs of ecstatic townspeople. It was al-Khoi who first contacted Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and persuaded him to issue a decree to the Shiite population not to resist the American troops.
Iran was incensed, and retribution soon followed. Al-Khoi was attacked outside the Grand Imam Ali mosque by a death squad, his body hacked to pieces. It was widely intimated that the attack was carried out by a squad of the Mahdi army controlled by Iran-supported Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr, whose family represents itself as the champion of the Shiite majority.
All the mee
tings, the conversations, and the proposals flying between Tehran and Damascus were for one purpose only: to stop the spread of democracy in the Muslim world. Tehran specifically saw the tide of democratic change as a direct threat to the continuance of its Islamic revolution. At that time, no Middle Eastern country—particularly Iran—possessed the weapons to effectively challenge the United States. Furthermore, if the United States could not be stopped in Iraq, would Iran be next in the crosshairs of democracy? The mullahs were desperate to find ways to further advance Iran’s interests.
Spurred on by Iran’s influence, and in direct defiance of Ali al-Sistani, “another Iraqi exile in Iran, Kadhem al-Husseini al-Haeri, issued a religious edict urging Iraqi Shiites ‘to seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration in Iraq.’”8 Indeed, as coalition troops withdrew from largely Shiite towns and villages, Iranian proxies were rapidly filling the void. It was not difficult to trace the point-of-origin of some of the infiltrators, especially when a Syrian missile (Syria, of course, being Iran’s “axis of evil” compatriot and the homebase of Iranian proxy Hezbollah) was used to bring down an Air Force A-10 over Baghdad.
The United States began to realize the seriousness of Syrian involvement in the continuing upheaval in Iraq and began to make plans to put a stop to it. Some in the Bush administration made conciliatory comments denying a possible move against Syria, and Britain’s Tony Blair assured al-Assad that he would not support such a move.