Dale Brown - Shadows Of Steel

by Shadows Of Steel [lit]

  The Iranian Supreme Defense Council was the approving authority for all military matters in Iran. Along with its president, the Defense Minister, it consisted of the Prime Minister, Hasan Ebrihim Habibi; Buzhazi's friend, protege, and confidant and commander of Iran's air forces, Brigadier General Mansour Sattari; ground forces commander General Abdollah Najafi; commander of the navy Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani; chairman of the Majlis's Armed Services Committee, Qolam Adeli; and Hamid Mirzadeh, director of the Islamic Republic News Agency and the chief of war propaganda.

  "What in the name of God...?" Nateq-Nouri exclaimed under his breath, as he entered the cabinet room. Buzhazi noticed with delight that Nateq-Nouri had just realized that both Imams representing the Leadership Council were present for this meeting.

  The religious leaders of the Council, together with the Faqih, His Eminence the Ayatollah Khamenei, exercised ultimate political power in the government and ultimate spiritual power in most of the Twelver Shiite Muslim world. It was unusual to have anyone representing the mullahs here at a Supreme Defense Council meeting--everyone was here but His Holiness, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ali Hoseini Khamenei himself.

  "Is this a trial or an execution, Mr. President?" Buzhazi asked sotto voce to Nateq-Nouri.

  "I advise you to shut your insolent mouth, General," the President said as they took their seats at the cabinet table.

  Buzhazi saw with interest that a political crony of the Defense Minister, an old lingham-sucker named General Hosein Esmail Akhundi, was sitting behind Defense Minister Foruzandeh. So apparently they had already picked his replacement, Buzhazi thought with interest. Akhundi had no military education, no experience--nothing but money and political contacts, and had been awarded a commission and instant promotion to general with seniority by presidential decree. He represented Nateq-Nouri's slant away from the powerful, hard-line expeditionary military that Buzhazi was trying to build, and a clear movement toward a toothless dragon used merely to bully other Muslim nations.

  Just before he took his seat, Buzhazi turned to his aide and said, "Bring him here and wait for my command."

  The aide hurried off to do as he was ordered--this demonstration had been arranged in advance.

  Nateq-Nouri nodded to the two Imams present. "We are honored to have the representatives of the Leadership Council in our presence today. We are here to receive the report from General Buzhazi on the attacks against the Islamic Republic that occurred earlier this morning. As you all know, there were three separate incidents: an unknown air attack against Bandar Abbas; the mishaps aboard the aircraft carrier Khomeini that caused considerable damage to that vessel; and the assault on the security complex at Chah Bahar Naval Base."

  The Iranian President turned to Buzhazi. "General, we shall surely get to the matter of the Khomeini soon, and your theories about what happened to that ship and the Chinese destroyer. But I wish to query you on the attack at Chah Bahar first, since this was obviously an assault made by GCC and American forces. Your report states that our radar planes and ground radar stations detected the intruder almost two hundred kilometers from Chah Bahar, and yet not one fighter launched? How is that possible, General?"

  "The intruder aircraft was flying less than three hundred twenty knots, it was a single aircraft, and it was flying on an established airway," General Buzhazi explained. "Night intercepts are dangerous, and several fighters from Chah Bahar were on patrol searching for the attackers overlying Bandar Abbas, so no additional fighters were launched against this lone, non-threatening target. When the intruder did not answer any of our challenges, it was engaged by ground-based air at maximum range."

  "And it evaded all of them?"

  "The aircraft was equipped with very sophisticated defensive equipment, including chaff dispensers and threat warning receivers," Buzhazi noted. "The aircraft was shot down over the base..."

  "After shooting up more of our armored vehicles, even after dropping five paratroopers right on our security facility!

  ... and we have examined the wreckage of the aircraft," Buzhazi struggled on. "It was the personal aircraft of Sheikh Muhammad ibn Rashid all-Maktum himself, the son of the Emir of Dubai--a sentence of death should be placed on this infidel immediately. The aircraft was fully armed and was also equipped for low-altitude flight and precision navigation.

  "But the main factor was the state of the air defenses around Chah Bahar. As I said in my report, sir, the Hawks placed there were some of our poorest-maintained units. I have ordered SA-10 units and more Rapier air defense units, but my requests have been constantly overridden..."

  "There was no use in putting a costly SA-10 air defense site at a naval base that is still uncompleted after five years in construction and an oil pipeline terminal that is still uncompleted after ten years," Minister of Defense Muhammad Foruzandeh interjected. "Chah Bahar is nothing but random piles of concrete buildings, mostly vacant or in partial stages of completion, surrounding an obsolete air base and a shallow-water port facility that cannot accommodate anything larger than a tugboat, let alone a major warship or a supertanker. Your budget has been increased every year for the past three years to complete that base, and yet the projected completion date is moved back every year. Where is all that money going, General? To your private offshore bank accounts, your homes in Indonesia and South America, your private jets?"

  "How dare you insinuate that I have embezzled government funds!"

  Buzhazi retorted. "I demand an apology!"

  "Enough, enough!" Nateq-Nouri shouted. "The general will have his opportunity to answer all of these charges very soon, I guarantee it." He got to his feet and paced behind his desk. "So then a single aircraft shoots up the base, destroys the power plant and all base communications, then drops five"--he shook his head as if scarcely believing what he was saying--"... five paratroopers into a security compound with thirty-two armed Pasdaran guards on duty, kills or wounds each and every one of them, rescues all the American prisoners, then holds off an entire infantry company of Pasdaran shock troops until they are extracted by another single American aircraft? I cannot believe this, Buzhazi. The Islamic Republic will be the world's laughingstock by the end of the day."

  "Mr. President, we were unprepared for the arrival of those prisoners from the Khomeini," Buzhazi said. "The security facility had a normal complement of troops for the number of inmates already present, which were all low-risk disciplinary cases. The base commander already had orders to double the guards at the facility when he learned of the transfer of the prisoners."

  "That seems to be the reason for all that has happened in the past few hours, General--you were unprepared," Nateq-Nouri said. "You were unprepared for the assaults on Bandar Abbas or on the Khomeini carrier group, unprepared for the attack and assaults on Chah Bahar... So, you have a theory as to how all these attacks made it through your vaunted defenses, General?"

  "The same as the mysterious unidentified aircraft that 'attacked' Bandar Abbas, sir--they were cruise missiles, decoys, launched by American stealth bombers," Buzhazi said. He could see Nateq-Nouri, Foruzandeh, and most of the others roll their eyes in exasperation. "Yes, stealth bombers, gentlemen. The same as was reported by the MiG-29 pilot over the Gulf of Oman with the American KC-10 aerial refueling tanker. The Americans are conducting illegal, warlike reconnaissance flights over our country with stealth bombers, launching sophisticated decoy missiles over our forces that fool our air defenses into thinking we are under massive attack so we quickly expend all our weapons."

  "I see, I see," Defense Minister Foruzandeh said scornfully, clearly unimpressed by Buzhazi's explanation. "We are all going to blame this on shadows of steel, on bombers loaded with intelligent cruise missiles that fly with complete impunity over our radars and missile fields. General, you have said yourself that the American stealth program is a sham, a program foisted on the American people to benefit the aircraft manufacturers and to bankrupt the former Soviet Union by forcing them to spend
billions on weapons to defeat them."

  "The American stealth bombers and their new generation cruise missiles are real, Minister," Buzhazi said. "That is what I have been trying to prepare our country to defend itself against!"

  "This testimony will make fascinating reading at your court-martial, General."

  "Do not threaten me, sir!" Buzhazi shouted. "if you wish to relieve me of my office--if you have the stomach to try to remove me--you may do it at any time."

  Nateq-Nouri looked as if he were ready to kill his military chief of staff with his bare hands. "But you may not threaten me with punishment for trying to do my duty!"

  "It has been how you have tried to 'do your duty' that has bankrupted our country and forced us to the brink of war with the Americans," Nateq-Nouri said angrily. "It will continue no more.

  Dr. Velayati."

  Ali Akbar Velayati, the Foreign Minister, held up a communiqud, nestled in a blue diplomatic folder. "A message from the American Secretary of State," Velayati said to Buzhazi and the rest of the Defense Council, "received late last night. The United States accepts in principle the Islamic Republic's proposal to ban all land-attack warships from the Persian Gulf, including aircraft carriers, and to allow the Islamic Republic to maintain an equal number of warships in the Persian Gulf as Gulf Cooperation Council warships."

  "How dare they issue a statement like that, after wantonly attacking our air defense forces as they did last night?" Buzhazi retorted.

  "Silence, General Buzhazi," President Nateq-Nouri ordered.

  "Continue, Dr. Velayati."

  "The United States wishes to schedule a summit of all interested nations for this September, where a treaty will be signed," the Foreign Minister went on. "Secretary of State Hartman further recommends that this proposal be extended to the boundaries of the Gulf of Oman and the Gulf of Aden west of the sixtieth meridian..."

  "What?" Buzhazi retorted. "The sixtieth meridian? That is... that is just west of Chah Bahar Sir, do you realize that is almost the entire coastline of Iran!"

  "And that is the entire coastline of all of the Gulf Cooperation Council states," Nateq-Nouri said. "We shall have an equal number of warships as all of our adversaries in the oil-transit areas, but we will be free to sail expeditionary warships from Chah Bahar Naval Base if we so choose--but they will not be allowed to enter the Gulf of Oman, the Gulf of Aden, the Strait, or the Persian Gulf if they exceed the number of warships of GCC states."

  "This is utterly insane!" Buzhazi shouted. "You cannot do this!"

  "Pending successful treaty negotiations between now and September, ratification by the Majlis, approval by the Council of Guardians, and the blessing of the Faqih," Nateq-Nouri said, "we will sign such an agreement. We shall then seek a new treaty to limit similarly the number of attack planes over the Persian Gulf region." Buzhazi was completely speechless--he was watching his newly redesigned military going right down the drain.

  "As proof of our good intentions and our desire for peace and prosperity," Nateq-Nouri went on, "I am ordering that the aircraft carrier Khomeini and the destroyer Zhanjiang be returned immediately to the People's Republic of China. Their presence only exacerbates the tensions in the region. In return, the United States has promised not to send another aircraft carrier or marine aircraft assault ship into the Persian Gulf or Gulf of Oman. We are most heartened by these developments and feel this is the beginning of a new era of peace."

  "Peace! What peace?" Buzhazi exploded. "Did you not hear what I have said, Mr. President? I believe the United States overflew our country, violated our sovereign airspace, and attacked our cities and our aircraft carrier with stealth aircraft and cruise missiles. In return, we are agreeing to disarm ourselves? Sir, the Americans attacked our aircraft carrier because they knew what kind of threat it was to their security and the security of their Gulf Cooperative Council and Zionist lackeys. We cannot surrender to their blackmail and threats!"

  "It is already done, General--I have so ordered it," Nateq-Nouri said. "That monstrosity has always been an embarrassment to the Islamic Republic, General. The money we spent in so-called training can better be spent on our cities, on the needed infrastructure in the remote provinces, and on our people. We can spread the Islamic revolution easier with well-educated, successful citizens than we can by force. It is so ordered."

  One of the Imams, the Ayatollah Bijan Kalantari, raised his hand, and a crier behind the Imams ordered silence. "General Hesarak all-Kan Buzhazi," the old man said in a deep, surprisingly strong voice, "the loss of prestige in the eyes of the true believers around the world has offended the Faqih, and he has demanded an explanation. You may speak in the presence of Allah, his servants of the Leadership Council, and all those true believers present here, and may you be struck down by the hand of the righteous if you do not tell the truth."

  This was it, Buzhazi thought as he got to his feet. His days were numbered, his replacement was present, and the firing squad was undoubtedly waiting outside for him--his fate would be decided by the words he was to say right now "Our aircraft carrier, the city of Bandar Abbas, and the Chah Bahar Naval Base were attacked by the air and naval forces of the United States," Buzhazi said in a firm, loud voice, pointing a finger directly at a stunned President Nateq-Nouri, "as part of a conspiracy between our traitorous pro-West, pro-Zionist President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Nateq-Nouri, the American Central Intelligence Agency, the Gulf Cooperative Council states, and the United States government. Before Allah and all of you, I swear this is true--and I have proof."

  The cabinet chamber exploded in bedlam. Nateq-Nouri was on his feet in indignation, sputtering unintelligible words, shooting a shocked expression all across the room because, to Buzhazi's surprise, the allegation had hit home. The president looked as if he were ready either to kill Buzhazi or run out of the room like a madman--and the image was not lost on the rest of the Supreme Defense Council. Everywhere Nateq-Nouri looked, he saw another confused and suspicious face staring back at him.

  "Admit it!" Buzhazi shouted at Nateq-Nouri. "Admit the truth!

  Admit that you conspired with the United States to dismantle the Islamic Republic's navy!"

  "You will be silent!" Nateq-Nouri shouted at Buzhazi. "I will not dignify such outlandish claims with a denial! You are a liar and an inept despot seeking only glory and power for yourself-"

  "Admit the truth!" Buzhazi interjected. "Admit that you have been keeping regular contact with members of the U.S. State Department and the American President's National Security Advisor, informing him of our nation's military secrets and operations and in return receiving favors and tribute from the Turkish and American governments!"

  "That is another lie, Buzhazi!" Nateq-Nouri shouted. But his denial was not as strong as the first, and came after a brief hesitation, and that silenced the chamber almost as quickly and as surely as if Nateq-Nouri had admitted his guilt. Nateq-Nouri quickly added, "Well-known associates of members of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have had brief contacts with American bureaucrats, yes--but that is because we have no embassy in Washington, and a more direct form of communication was deemed necessary. That is all."

  "So you deny that your so-called associates--spies in your employ--spoke directly with General Philip Freeman, the American President's National Security Advisor and overseer of American Central Intelligence?" Buzhazi asked.

  "General Buzhazi, you are creating some kind of wild conspiracy fantasy. These were routine back-channel informational not government contacts by Iranian loyalists, and you know it. I will not tolerate this," Nateq-Nouri said angrily. "I am the President and commander in chief, and I order you to be silent or I will place you under arrest. I do not report to you, only the Faqih and the people..."

  "Very inspirational, very touching, Mr. President," Buzhazi went on, "but you refuse to answer my question or refute my charges.

  Are you or are you not in contact with the American Central Intelligence authorities? Are you or are you not working in con
cert with the corrupt and immoral United States and the Arab traitors to Islam in the Gulf Cooperative Council, to preserve your own power and position at the expense of the Islamic Republic of Iran's military forces? Did you or did you not know that the Khomeini battle group would come under attack, but did nothing to stop it and even ordered me to withhold my defensive forces and even to dismiss me, so that the attack against us could succeed?"

  "Silence, General, or I will have you placed under arrest!"

  Nateq-Nouri shouted. "I will not tolerate this any longer!

  The Ayatollah Kalantari held up his hand, and the crier shouted the order, "Silence all, the Imam shall be heard!" The cabinet room immediately fell silent.

  "Excuse me, Mr. President," Kalantari said, in a low, barely audible voice. "The charge of conspiring with the Americans and the Gulf Cooperative Council, two of our chief adversaries, is a serious one. General Buzhazi risks much by leveling such a charge against you. If he is proved false, he is disgraced before the Supreme Defense Council and is subject to immediate imprisonment.