Initial meetings were tetchy, difficult and uncomfortable. Determined to win over the Iranians, the Americans presented what was later revealed as being both ‘real and deceptive intelligence’ about Soviet intentions towards Iran, focusing above all on the USSR’s putative territorial designs on parts of the country in an effort to impress on Iran that aligning with the US had obvious benefits.122 As discussions progressed, however, so too did the information flow about matters that were of particular interest to the United States – such as about the combat-worthiness of Soviet equipment. The Americans always followed such matters attentively, and indeed paid $5,000 to acquire an AK-74 assault rifle captured in Afghanistan soon after it had been introduced by the Soviet army.123 The Americans listened closely to Afghan fighters in assessing the merits, limitations and vulnerabilities of the T-72 tank and the MI-24 ‘Krokodil’ assault helicopter; they learnt of the extensive use of napalm and other poison gases by the Soviets; and they also heard how the Spetsnaz special forces in operation across the country were singularly effective, probably as a result of the better training they received compared with regular Red Army soldiers.124 This provided a valuable primer two decades later.
There was a natural elision of interests between Iran and the US. The statements by Iranian negotiators that ‘Soviet ideology is directly opposed to Iran’s’ paralleled American attitudes towards Communism, which could be expressed equally emphatically. That the USSR was giving substantial military support to Iraq at this time was also crucial. ‘The Soviets’, one senior figure said during the discussions, ‘are killing Iranian soldiers.’125 In the space of a few short years, Iran and the US may not have gone from being the worst of enemies to the best of friends, but they were increasingly willing to put differences behind them and work towards a common goal. This attempt to plot a path through the middle of the rivalries between great powers was classic policy that would have been instantly recognisable to previous generations of Iranian diplomats and leaders.
Keen to cement the relationship, the US began shipping weapons to Iran in contravention of its own embargo and despite pressuring foreign governments not to sell arms to Teheran. Some were opposed to this development, including Secretary of State George Shultz, who remarked that the initiative might lead to an Iranian victory, and ‘a fresh burst of energy for anti-Americanism throughout the region’.126 There were others who were already arguing that it served US interests for Iran and Iraq to exhaust each other. Richard Murphy, one of Shultz’s deputies, stated at congressional hearings the previous year that ‘a victory by either [Iran or Iraq] is neither militarily achievable nor strategically desirable’ – sentiments that were echoed in comments by senior White House officials.127
The first consignment of 100 tube-launched, optical-tracked, wire-guided missile systems (TOWs) was sent in the summer of 1985. The arms were shipped via an intermediary eager to build up links with Teheran: Israel.128 The amicable relationship seems surprising from the standpoint of the early twenty-first century when Iranian leaders routinely call for Israel to be ‘wiped off the map’. But in the mid-1980s ties were so close that the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was able to declare: ‘Israel is Iran’s best friend, and we do not intend to change our position.’129
Israel’s willingness to participate in the US arms programme owed much to its desire to keep Iraq in a position where it was forced to focus its attention firmly on its eastern neighbour – rather than contemplate action elsewhere. Nevertheless, there were considerable sensitivities relating to the arrangement with Iran. The US proposal involved Israel shipping American ordnance and equipment to Teheran, before being compensated by Washington. As a result, the Israeli government asked for – and received – confirmation that the scheme had been cleared at the highest level in the United States. In fact, it had the direct and personal approval of President Reagan himself.130
Between the summer of 1985 and the autumn of 1986, Iran received several major shipments from the US, including more than 2,000 TOW missiles, eighteen Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and two consignments of spares for the Hawk systems.131 Not all were delivered through Israel, for it was not long before deliveries were made directly, though in the process the waters were muddied still further when the proceeds of the sales were used to provide funds for the Contras in Nicaragua. Ever since the Cuban missile crisis Washington had been spooked by the threat of Communism on the United States’ doorstep and was keen to fund dynamic groups capable of acting as effective bulwarks against left-wing rhetoric and politics – and would pass over their shortcomings in silence. The Contras, who were in fact a loose grouping of rebels often locked in fierce conflict with each other, were a major beneficiary of American anti-Communist doctrine – and foreign policy blindness. In a mirror image of how US private and public actions differed in the Middle East, aid was being passed to opposition forces in Central America despite legislation that specifically forbade the US government from doing so.132
Matters came to a head at the end of 1986, when a series of leaks revealed what had been going on. The scandal threatened to bring down the President. On 13 November, President Reagan took to the airwaves to make a primetime nationwide address about ‘an extremely sensitive and profoundly important matter of foreign policy’. It was a make-or-break moment, which required all his considerable charm to pull off. The President wanted to avoid apologising or sounding defensive; what was needed was an explanation. His comments encapsulated perfectly the significance of the countries of this region – and of America’s need to have influence at all costs.
‘Iran’, he told transfixed viewers, ‘encompasses some of the most critical geography in the world. It lies between the Soviet Union and access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Geography explains why the Soviet Union has sent an army into Afghanistan to dominate that country and, if they could, Iran and Pakistan. Iran’s geography gives it a critical position from which adversaries could interfere with oil flows from the Arab States that border the Persian Gulf. Apart from geography, Iran’s oil deposits are important to the long-term health of the world’s economy.’ This justified ‘the transfer of small amounts of defensive weapons and spare parts’, he said. Without specifying precisely what had been sent to Teheran, he stated that ‘these modest deliveries, taken together, could easily fit into a single cargo plane’. All he had been trying to do was to bring about ‘an honourable end to the bloody six-year war’ between Iran and Iraq, ‘to eliminate state-sponsored terrorism’ and ‘to effect the safe return of all hostages’.133
This performance did little to avert spectacular fall-out in Washington as it became known that the US had been selling arms to Iran in what looked like a direct trade for the return of American hostages. Things became even more toxic when it emerged that those closely involved with the Iran–Contra initiative had been shredding documents that bore witness to covert and illegal actions being authorised by the President himself. Reagan appeared before a commission appointed to look into the affair, where he pleaded that his memory was not good enough to recall whether or not he had authorised the arms sales to Iran. In March 1987, he made another televised address, this time to express his anger about ‘activities undertaken without my knowledge’ – a statement that played fast and loose with the truth, as Reagan himself now noted. ‘A few months ago, I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me otherwise.’134
These embarrassing revelations had consequences that ran deep through the Reagan administration, where a slate of senior figures were subsequently indicted on charges ranging from conspiracy to perjury to withholding evidence. They included Caspar Weinberger, Secretary of Defense; Robert McFarlane, National Security Advisor, as well as his successor, John Poindexter; Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of Defense; and a host of senior CIA officers, including Clair George, Deputy Director of Operations. The illustrious roll-call showed
how far the US had been prepared to go in order to secure its position in the heart of the world.135
So too did the fact that the charges turned out to be nothing more than window-dressing: all the leading figures later received presidential pardons from President George H. W. Bush, or had their convictions overturned on Christmas Eve 1992. ‘The common denominator of their motivations – whether their actions were right or wrong –’, read the citation, ‘was patriotism.’ The impact on their personal finances, careers and families, the President went on, was ‘grossly disproportionate to any misdeeds or errors of judgment they may have committed’.136 Several of those pardoned had already been convicted on charges ranging from perjury to withholding information from Congress, while Weinberger’s trial had been due to start two weeks later. It was a classic case of justice being elastic, and of the ends justifying the means. The ramifications went far beyond the Washington Beltway.
Saddam Hussein was apoplectic when news broke about US dealings with Iran – at a time when Iraq believed it was being supported by Washington against its neighbour and bitter rival. In a series of meetings held immediately after Reagan’s first televised address in November 1986 to discuss what the President had said, Saddam ranted about how the arms sales represented a disgraceful ‘stab in the back’ and how the behaviour of the United States set a new low for ‘bad and immoral behaviour’.137 The US was determined to ‘shed more [Iraqi] blood’, he concluded, as others agreed that only the tip of the iceberg had been uncovered. It was inevitable, commented one senior figure a few weeks later, that the US would continue to conspire against Iraq; this was typical of imperialist powers, concurred Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.138 The anger and sense of betrayal were tangible. ‘Don’t trust the Americans – the Americans are liars – don’t trust the Americans,’ one voice can be heard imploring on audio tapes recovered from Baghdad more than twenty years later.139
The Irangate scandal cost jobs in Washington, but it played a decisive role in the development of a siege mentality in Iraq in the mid-1980s. Let down by the US, Saddam and his officials now saw conspiracies everywhere. The Iraqi leader started talking about fifth columnists and cutting their throats if he found them; other Arab countries whose relations with Iran or the US seemed too close for comfort were suddenly regarded with deep suspicion. As a later high-level US report concluded, Saddam became convinced after Irangate that ‘Washington could not be trusted and that it was out to get him personally’.140
The belief that the US was willing to double-deal and double-cross was hardly unfounded. The Americans had been prepared to make friends with the Shah; now they were trying to cement ties with the regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Substantial military and economic support was given to an unsavoury group of characters in Afghanistan solely on the basis of long-standing US rivalry with the USSR. Saddam himself had been brought in from the cold when it suited policymakers in Washington – but then sacrificed when it no longer suited them. Putting American interests first was not in itself the problem; the issue was that conducting imperial-style foreign policy requires a more careful touch – as well as more thorough thinking about the long-term consequences. In each case, in the late twentieth-century struggle for control of the countries of the Silk Roads, the US was cutting deals and making agreements on the hoof, solving today’s problems without worrying about tomorrow’s – and in some cases laying the basis for much more difficult issues. The goal of driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan had been achieved; but little thought had been given to what might happen next.
The stark reality of the world that the US had created was all too obvious in Iraq in the late 1980s and 1990. Embarrassed American officials did their best after the debacle of Irangate to ‘regain credibility with the Arab states’, as the Secretary of Defense put it.141 In the case of Iraq, this meant awarding extraordinarily large credit facilities, developing initiatives to build up trade – which included loosening restrictions on dual-use and other hi-tech exports – and funding Iraq’s stuttering agricultural sector. These were all steps taken to try to rebuild trust with Saddam.142 In fact, they were understood quite differently in Baghdad: although the Iraqi leader accepted the deals he was offered, he thought this was part of another trap – perhaps a prelude to a military attack, perhaps part of an attempt to ratchet pressure upwards at a time when settling debts built up during the Iran–Iraq War was becoming a problem.
The Iraqis, declared the US ambassador to Baghdad, were ‘quite convinced that the United States . . . was targeting Iraq. They complained about it all the time . . . And I think it was genuinely believed by Saddam Hussein.’143 At the end of 1989, rumours began to spread through the Iraqi leadership that the US was plotting a coup against Saddam Hussein. Tariq Aziz told the US Secretary of State, James Baker, point-blank that Iraq had evidence that the US was scheming to overthrow Saddam.144 The siege mentality had developed into paranoia so acute that, no matter what step the Americans took, it was liable to be misinterpreted.
It was not hard to understand Iraq’s misgivings – especially when loan guarantees that had been promised by Washington were abruptly cancelled in July 1990 after White House attempts to funnel financial support to Baghdad had been derailed by Congress. Worse, in addition to withdrawing $700 million of funding, sanctions were imposed as punishment for Iraq’s past use of poison gas. From Saddam’s point of view, this was a case of history repeating itself: the US promising one thing and then doing another – and doing so in an underhand way.145
By this time, Iraqi forces were gathering in the south of the country. ‘Normally this would be none of our business,’ said the US ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, when she met with Saddam Hussein on 25 July 1990. In what is one of the most damning documents of the late twentieth century, a leaked transcript of the US ambassador’s meeting with the Iraqi leader reveals that she told Saddam she had ‘direct instructions from President Bush to improve our relations with Iraq’, noting with admiration Saddam’s ‘extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country’. Nevertheless, Glaspie told the Iraqi leader, ‘We know you need funds.’
Iraq was going through difficult times, admitted Saddam, who was ‘cordial, reasonable and even warm during the meeting’, according to a separate memorandum that has also subsequently been made public.146 Angular gas drilling, long-standing border disputes and the depressed price of oil all presented problems for the economy, he said – as did debts run up in the war with Iran. There was one potential solution, he said. Taking control of the Sha al-Arab waterway, a region over which Iraq was involved in a long-running dispute with Kuwait, would help resolve some of the current problems. ‘What is the United States’ opinion on this?’ he asked.
‘We have no opinion on your Arab–Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait,’ replied the ambassador. She went on to clarify what this meant: ‘Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the 1960’s, that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.’147 Saddam had asked for a green light from the US, and he had been given one. The following week, he invaded Kuwait.
The consequences proved catastrophic. Over the course of the next three decades, global affairs would be dominated by events in countries running across the spine of Asia. The struggle for control and influence in these countries produced wars, insurrections and international terrorism – but also opportunities and prospects, not just in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in a belt of countries stretching east from the Black Sea, from Syria to Ukraine, Kazakhstan to Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, and from Russia to China too. The story of the world has always been centred on these countries. But since the time of the invasion of Kuwait, everything has been about the emergence of the New Silk Road.
25
The Road to Tragedy
The invasion of Kuwait in 1990 triggered an extraordinary sequence of events that has defined the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Saddam had
once struck the British as a ‘presentable young man’ with an ‘engaging smile’ and none of the ‘superficial affability’ of many of his colleagues; he liked to talk ‘without beating about the bush’. He was a man, the British ambassador to Baghdad concluded in the late 1960s, ‘with whom, if only one could see more of him, it would be possible to do business’.1 Seen by the French as an ‘Arab de Gaulle’, a man whose ‘nationalism and socialism’ had been warmly admired by President Jacques Chirac, Saddam was someone the United States had also been willing to bet on in the early 1980s in a bid to improve what Donald Rumsfeld called ‘US posture in the region’.2
The attack on Kuwait, Saddam Hussein told his closest advisers in December 1990, was a form of self-defence in the wake of the Irangate scandal and the revelations of double-dealing by the US.3 This was not how the rest of the world saw things. Economic sanctions were quickly applied following the invasion, as the United Nations demanded an immediate Iraqi withdrawal. When Baghdad simply ignored the mounting diplomatic pressure, plans were drawn up to resolve matters decisively. On 15 January 1991, President George H. W. Bush authorised the use of military action ‘pursuant to my responsibilities and authority under the Constitution as President and Commander-in-Chief, and under the laws and treaties of the United States’. The opening sentence of National Directive 54, which approved the use of force by ‘US air, sea and land conventional military forces, in coordination with the forces of our coalition partners’, conspicuously did not mention Iraqi aggression, violation of the sovereign territory of Kuwait or international law. Instead, in a statement that set the tone for American foreign policy over the next three decades, the President stated the following: ‘Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to US national security.’4 Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait was a direct challenge to American power and interests.
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Page 61
