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

by David Crist

  Begin accepted the American cease-fire in name, but he refused to halt the army’s advance northward, calling it a “rolling” cease-fire. “Show us in the president’s message where it says ‘in place’?” Begin demanded of Habib following the latter’s arrival in Tel Aviv from Damascus, having secured al-Assad’s backing for the cease-fire.

  “What are you talking about?!” an incredulous Phil Habib asked the prime minister during a tense meeting. “A cease-fire is a cease-fire in place!”11

  Begin finally agreed to the cease-fire, but not before Sharon drove one column into Syrian-controlled Lebanon, where the forces manhandled an armor division that had been moved to try to block the Israeli advance. In just eight days, the Israelis linked up with Gemayel’s forces, trapping in West Beirut not only the PLO, but Syrian military personnel. The Israelis imposed a blockade and began shelling the PLO-controlled West Beirut in an intense bombardment that on one day rained a thousand hundred-pound artillery shells down on a densely packed area of only six square miles.

  The wanton carnage and the Israeli deception about the true scope of their war aims raised the ire of President Reagan. CIA Director William Casey recommended cutting off intelligence support to Israel, which Weinberger supported. Richard Armitage suggested the United States should consider suspending “normal” diplomatic relations and push for a Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli attack. When Begin came to Washington on June 21, the president chastised the prime minister for Israel’s actions.

  Haig harbored no such desire to rein in the Israelis. With Yasser Arafat cornered, he shared Sharon’s impulse to kill the quarry. “By God,” said a furious Al Haig after Reagan’s dressing-down of the Israeli prime minister, “I’m going to tell Begin to go into Be-rut and finish the job.”12 Haig countered that the United States needed to support Israel, force the Syrians out, and help Gemayel form a new government in Lebanon. The secretary advocated deploying a large peacekeeping force of perhaps fourteen thousand men to help prop up the new Phalange government.13 “The quick Israeli victory posed an opportunity to strengthen our position,” he wrote to Reagan.

  Weinberger and General John Vessey steadfastly opposed sending any American peacekeepers into the boiling cauldron of Lebanon. “Any introduction of U.S. forces without an agreement would put U.S. lives at risk in a possible continuous low-level warfare from every extremist faction in the area.” Both feared it could lead to greater Iranian or Syrian involvement.

  The haughty secretary of state chafed at both the Defense Department’s views and their meddling in Lebanon policy. His personal relationships quickly deteriorated within the administration, including with the White House staff. On June 25, the thin-skinned Al Haig resigned, citing differences on foreign policy. While Reagan actually leaned toward Haig’s views at the time, he was not sorry to see the imperious general go. Writing in his diary, Reagan noted, “Actually the only disagreement was over whether I made policy or the secretary of state did.”14

  The president replaced Haig with a former combat marine and Republican stalwart, George P. Shultz. The new secretary of state shared many of Haig’s views on the Middle East, but had a less prickly persona. Smart, serious, and composed, he was slow to anger, but when he did get angry, his eyes narrowed conspicuously as his voice grew stern. In bureaucratic infighting, Shultz proved stubborn, every bit the equal of the mule Caspar Weinberger, and the two men were soon at loggerheads on a host of policy questions, including Lebanon.

  Habib brokered an agreement to evacuate the PLO. Arafat and his five thousand PLO fighters left for Tunisia, embarked on Western ships, as U.S. Marines and French and Italian peacekeepers deployed around Beirut to provide a buffer between the antagonists until the PLO’s departure. It was not an easy sell to the Israelis, requiring another threatening communiqué from Reagan to Begin to bring it about: “There must be an end to the unnecessary bloodshed particularly among innocent civilians. I insist upon a cease-fire now and until the PLO have left Beirut. The relationship between our two nations is at stake.”15

  Neither Weinberger nor Vessey supported the Habib plan. “By putting U.S. forces between the PLO and the Israelis we might as well be pouring burning gasoline on an already difficult situation rather than putting oil on troubled waters,” General Vessey wrote to the defense secretary.

  With Arafat gone, the peacekeeping troops were withdrawn, but the situation around Beirut remained tense. Sharon champed at the bit to get into West Beirut, and he remained convinced that many PLO fighters had stayed behind in the city and in the Palestinian refugee camps south of Beirut. While Arafat had escaped his noose, Sharon’s grand design to remake Lebanon appeared within reach. Only American intransigence prevented him from seeing it to completion.

  Despite the president’s anger at Begin, to bring stability back to Lebanon, the Reagan administration plan largely parroted Sharon’s scheme. Washington would prop up the Lebanese government by strengthening its army, traditionally the least sectarian organization within the country. As the Lebanese military capacity increased, it would gradually expand its control outside of Beirut. And the man the United States backed as the new Lebanese president was none other than Bashir Gemayel.

  Although he espoused national unity and an end to the civil war, Gemayel operated more as Tony Soprano than as Abraham Lincoln. Gemayel ordered the killing of his chief Christian rival, Tony Frangieh. His Phalange militia had the reputation as the executor of some of the worst atrocities of the civil war. “Bashir, when he wasn’t murdering people, was a likable man,” recalled American ambassador to Lebanon Robert Dillon. “He had great boyish charm.”16

  “A murderous thug” is how one retired CIA officer who worked Lebanon during the early 1980s described the Lebanese president. Nevertheless, Reagan threw his support behind him.

  This decision immediately alienated many Lebanese Shia. Up to this point, American diplomats had a good rapport with this growing population in Lebanon. An experienced Middle East hand, Nathaniel Howell recalled traveling throughout their squalid neighborhoods, listening to their concerns and offering American goodwill. His actions typify those of American diplomats even during the dark days of the civil war. But the Israeli invasion severely strained these ties, and the bargain with the Phalange leader Gemayel ended them.

  At four p.m. on Tuesday, September 14, 1982, Bashir Gemayel arrived at the Phalange headquarters in East Beirut to give a speech to his followers. Looking on was a twenty-six-year-old Maronite Lebanese, Habib Shartouni, a member of the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party. Motivated by President al-Assad’s desire for revenge against Israel, Shartouni waited until he believed the Phalange leader had arrived at the podium, then went to a nearby rooftop and pressed a button, remotely detonating a powerful bomb he had previously planted in his sister’s apartment directly above the meeting room.17 Gemayel died in a flash of cordite and crumbling concrete, along with twenty-six other senior Phalange members.

  Sharon now had his excuse. The Israeli army occupied West Beirut. Sharon met with Phalange commanders atop a five-story building that served as an Israeli forward command post located a few hundred meters from the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila.18 They agreed for the Phalange fighters to move into that camp as well as another nearby Palestinian camp, Sabra, in order to root out the Palestinian fighters Sharon thought remained. Over the next two days, under the apathetic eyes of the Israeli military, the Phalange fighters exacted revenge. Rather than eradicating PLO soldiers, it was a slaughter of the innocents. The Phalange methodically moved through the two camps executing between eight hundred and two thousand civilians—elderly, women, and children—in one of the worst acts of terrorism committed in the modern Middle East.19 The resulting international outcry led to the dismissal of Ariel Sharon.

  Shocked by the massacre, on September 29, Reagan sent the marines back into Beirut as part of a force of British, French, and Italian peacekeepers. Their mission was a nebulous tasking called “presence.”
The State Department’s director of political-military affairs, Jonathan Howe, best defined this as “to support the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese armed forces by their presence. That presence provides the Lebanese government clear evidence of international concern for Lebanon and an element of needed stability and confidence which reinforces its pursuit of national recognition.”20 Overall, the American plan remained the same. The marines would provide the Lebanese government with reassurance and the breathing space needed to rebuild its army, which would allow it to gradually reassert its control over the entire country. The United States now threw its support for Lebanese president behind Bashir’s younger brother, Amin Gemayel, a man who lacked the brains and gravitas of his older sibling.21

  The U.S. Marines undertook their vague presence mission with their customary vigor. Based around the airport, they conducted patrols to maintain visibility among the Lebanese population. Prudent defensive precautions such as entrenchments, earthen berms, and antivehicle ditches were openly discouraged by senior generals and admirals as they would isolate and reduce the marines’ visibility. For the first six months, the marines got along reasonably well with all the warring factions, including the Shia populace around the airport, who provided a number of tips about impending threats to the Americans.

  The foundation for the American plan to save Lebanon rested on a canard. Despite its reputation as an organization inclusive to all the country’s faiths, the Lebanese army suffered the same factional malaise that plagued the entire country. The rank and file retained more loyalty to their respective religious camps than to the national army. The officer corps was dominated by Maronite Christians. Amin Gemayel’s actions only compounded the divides. He used the armed forces’ intelligence service to focus on Muslim opponents and formed an army special force to attack his opponents. He formed a new army brigade that comprised only members of his own Phalange militia. In December 1982, he appointed Ibrahim Tannous as the army’s senior general. While the newly arrived marines viewed Tannous as nonpartisan, he had a long history of involvement with the Phalange Party and had been Bashir Gemayel’s chief military adviser. While Tannous did try to build a multiconfessional force, his pro-Israeli sentiment alienated many factions in the country. As one retired CIA officer stationed in Lebanon during the time observed, “We went out of our way to distinguish between the government of Lebanon and the Christians/Phalange, but it was a distinction without a difference, certainly as far as the Muslims were concerned.”22

  As the United States strengthened the Lebanese army, it chipped away at the perception of American neutrality. When the Lebanese army decided to strike at Shia and Druze militias as part of their inkblot expansion of control around Beirut, its artillery supported the attack from positions inside the U.S. Marine Corps perimeter at the airport. Marines manning joint checkpoints with Lebanese soldiers immediately found themselves the targets of those resisting Gemayel.23 In a press conference, their powerful leader, Walid Jumblatt, said as much: “The mere fact that they [the marines] are providing the Lebanese factional army with logistical support, expertise, and training is enough to consider them enemies.”24

  Secretary Shultz’s peace initiative compounded this neutrality gap. He shuttled among Israel, Syria, and Lebanon trying to reach an agreement to get both Israel and Syria to withdraw their forces and to get Lebanon to accept peace with the Jewish state. But the senior American diplomat never broadened his talks to include national reconciliation and excluded major sectional factions, especially the Shia and Druze. He managed to get Gemayel to agree to a largely Israeli-dictated peace settlement on May 17, 1983. However, it quickly foundered when the Syrians refused to withdraw their forces, which was a precondition for the Israeli pullout.25 News of the secret deal between Israel and the Lebanese government confirmed the perception in the squalid refugee camps and back alleys of Beirut that the Lebanese government was little more than a tool for the Christians and Israelis. As Weinberger noted, “If the LAF [Lebanese armed forces] is seen to be operating…as an instrument of the Maronite Christian Faction no amount of U.S. support can develop the consensus needed for a sovereign nation.”26

  In the spring of 1983, the newly arrived marine commander at the airport, Colonel Timothy Geraghty, found himself in the middle of his government’s dichotomous policy. A decorated Vietnam veteran with a characteristic marine “high and tight” haircut and ramrod bearing, he understood the danger his troops faced in Lebanon. Geraghty’s mission remained presence and visibility, while at the same time providing support to the Lebanese armed forces. Although his forces were arrayed in static positions in the flat lowland around the airport, erecting berms and ditches was seen as incompatible with his peacekeeping mission. The increasing support by the Americans for the Lebanese army made marines the obvious target of those opposing Amin Gemayel.27 In retrospect, as Geraghty observed, “Conducting a comprehensive training program for the Lebanese armed forces while simultaneously participating in a peacekeeping mission is inherently contradictory.”28

  Nevertheless, the marines clung to the illusion of nonalignment. “Our commitment here is really a peacekeeping role,” Geraghty told a marine corps historian in May 1983. “It is highly political with the diplomatic side and the political side overshadowing the tactical side.” He eschewed using force and continued to have his men carry unloaded rifles, worried more about accidental discharges than the Druze or Shia. This was especially true after one freakish accident when a marine’s rifle inadvertently discharged and the bullet struck the legs of two Lebanese soldiers jogging together along the perimeter road around the airport.29

  As the United States became associated with one faction of the civil war, shells increasingly fell around the airport. The marines maintained restraint, but they no longer jogged; instead, the nation’s premier warriors dug more bunkers and filled more sandbags, adopting a molelike existence, not venturing out unless in extremis.30

  Despite the deteriorating situation, Secretary Shultz continued to advocate for the marines to stay in Lebanon. “They are an important deterrent, a symbol of the international backing behind the legitimate government of Lebanon,” said Shultz before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. “To remove the marines would put both the government and what we are trying to achieve in jeopardy.”31

  In response to Geraghty’s plight, the Joint Chiefs did nothing. No one in Washington thought to change the restrictive rules of engagement that governed Geraghty’s actions, and during months of discussions in the Tank about arming the Lebanese army, the impact of this policy on the safety of the marines at the airport rarely came up for discussion. The steady stream of generals and Pentagon civilians who visited Geraghty’s headquarters, just off the main road to the airport terminal, recognized the marines’ vulnerability, but remained committed to the existing course. The Pentagon briefly considered sending in another thousand-man marine battalion, which would have allowed the marines to expand their perimeter, giving them some breathing room, but neither Weinberger nor Vessey wanted to expand the ground commitment.32 While the Joint Chiefs, including the new marine corps commandant, P. X. Kelley, recommended avoiding becoming involved in the growing intramural fighting, they also offered no change in the marine peacekeeping mission or its defense posture.33

  But Geraghty did not help his position. On one occasion, when Vessey was out of town, acting chairman Admiral James Watkins personally called Geraghty asking for his assessment. “Was there anything he would like to do differently or anything else he needed? Did he need a change in mission?” Geraghty answered no to each inquiry from Watkins.34

  In late July of 1983, Deputy National Security Adviser Robert “Bud” McFarlane arrived in Beirut as the new presidential envoy, replacing Philip Habib. The forty-six-year-old Naval Academy graduate and retired marine corps lieutenant colonel had a promising career as an artillery officer, with two tours in Vietnam before becoming the first marine White House Fellow and then military assistant to H
enry Kissinger during the heady days of the China opening. Like many other military officers, once exposed to the White House and the exhilaration of Washington, he found it hard to go back to the dull chores of the barracks.

  McFarlane soon fleeted up to be Reagan’s third national security adviser in as many years. Yet he did not exude confidence to his contemporaries. He spoke with a ponderous, monotone voice. McFarlane’s melancholy demeanor reinforced this opinion. Although cordial, he appeared tormented and gripped by self-doubt. The two administration potentates—Weinberger and Shultz—questioned the depth of his foreign policy pedigree. “McFarlane is a man of evident limitations,” summed up the dismissive defense secretary.35

  The Cold War guided much of McFarlane’s understanding of the conflict. Settling in at the American ambassador’s residence in East Beirut, he saw the Syrian hand, and by extension the Soviet Union’s, behind much of the opposition to the Lebanese government. The fact that Syria’s support for the Druze had more to do with local power politics, and not any wider agenda by Moscow, did not affect his calculations. McFarlane immediately wanted to expand the American military mission to prop up the fledgling Lebanese army. He called for another battalion in order to expand the marines’ control into the strategic hills west of the airport and proposed embedding American advisers into the Lebanese army.36

  Geraghty opposed this overt shift from neutrality to combatant. When sophisticated army radar arrived to help the marines to detect incoming shells, McFarlane wanted these to support the Lebanese army. Both Geraghty and his senior commander, Vice Admiral Edward Martin, expressed serious reservations about this mission creep. Martin, an experienced combat pilot who’d spent six years as a prisoner in North Vietnam, replied with a prescient message: “The finely balanced position of neutrality with regard to the various factions is in jeopardy, and should one of the factions believe that this info is assisting a rival in targeting their weapons, the U.S. Multinational Force will become a target for their frustrations.”37