by David Crist
Harward had had an early brush with William Casey’s efforts to build a spy ring in Iran. While a midshipman, Harward had befriended an Iranian midshipman named Saeed Ahmadi, who was from modest means: Ahmadi’s father had been a postman in southern Tehran. Dark haired and a lover of disco, Saeed graduated from the Naval Academy with Harward. In the class yearbook, the Lucky Bag, a friend wrote affectionately in Saeed’s entry: “May fair winds and following seas always be with you. Smile like a man.”1 But squalls and a historic storm blew in Iran in 1979. While his American classmates headed off to begin their new careers, Saeed was ordered to return to Iran, with a veiled threat against his mother in Tehran if he refused.
As a recent arrival from the States with friends and classmates now in the American military, Saeed was an easy mark for CIA recruiters. One afternoon, then ensign Harward received a phone call from Iran.
“Your intelligence service contacted me and asked if I would work with them. Do you think I should?” Saeed asked, sounding excited.
Harward replied nervously, “I don’t know what you should do, but, man, you shouldn’t call me over this phone with something as sensitive as that.” Saeed agreed; after some brief small talk, he hung up.
What transpired then between the young Iranian officer and the CIA remains a mystery. Whether he turned down the agency or simply failed to complete the CIA’s formal indoctrination procedures is not clear, but Ahmadi never formally joined Casey’s new stable of agents. Around the time of the CIA’s overture, Ahmadi resigned his commission in the navy and joined the National Iranian Tanker Company. Unfortunately for American intelligence officers still hoping to recruit him, in 1984 an Iraqi missile struck his oil tanker as it shuttled a load of crude from the northern Persian Gulf oil fields. Saeed and two other sailors died instantly in the conflagration.
Harward learned of his friend’s demise when a photograph by Australian journalist Michael Coyne appeared in the July 1985 National Geographic as part of a story about life in Iran under the ayatollah. Serendipitously, Coyne had visited the sprawling Behesht-e Zahra cemetery southwest of Tehran, where many of the country’s soldiers and notables are laid to rest. Among the thousands of graves laid out in neat rows of headstones and white slabs, many adorned with photos of the young men who now inhabited this city of the dead, Coyne came across five women, all wearing black chadors and weeping around a fresh grave covered in flowers and fruit. He snapped a few shots of the mourners as one of the women held up a large photo of a young, clean-shaven naval officer. The image happened to be Saeed Ahmadi: either a strange coincidence or, as Harward suspected, a deliberate message from the shadowy world of spies.2
As the U.S. Army and Marines closed in on Saddam Hussein and Baghdad, Harward received a new tasking. The British army was cautiously closing in on the southern port city of Basra and wanted some of Harward’s heavily armed small boats on the Shatt al-Arab waterway to help isolate the city and keep Iraqi forces from escaping to the far riverbank. Meanwhile, the senior naval commander in the Middle East, Vice Admiral Timothy Keating, worried that Iraqi suicide boats might launch out from the Shatt al-Arab and threaten his fleet. To achieve both ends, Harward intended to transport four of his riverine boats—essentially large camouflage-painted bass boats made of bullet-resistant Kevlar and bristling with machine guns—up to the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab and then sail them up to join the British near Basra. How Iran would react to this maneuver remained unknown, and at the time, no one seemed concerned except for Harward.
Before sending the boats up the Shatt al-Arab, Harward ordered a small surveillance team to al-Faw. Comprising eight SEALs in two vehicles each resembling a beefed-up dune buggy outfitted with a heavy machine gun, they established themselves at a good vantage point looking out over the water from an abandoned Iraqi army post. On the opposite bank they could clearly see three Iranian outposts, each a concrete pillbox mounted on stilts. The SEALs did not have long to wait to find out Iran’s view of their presence. Three days after arriving, a small boat with armed Revolutionary Guardsmen closed to within thirty yards of the SEALs on the bank of the Iraqi side of the waterway. When the SEALs raised their weapons, the boat hastily headed back for Iran, raising a large Iranian flag in the process. At dusk, one of the Iranian guard posts opened fire. While not terribly accurate, this harassment continued every night, with stray bullets and mortar rounds exploding in the vicinity of the SEALs’ position. When Polish special operators relieved the SEALs, they received the same greeting from the Iranians. Several times, Iranian patrols crossed into Iraq, planting Iranian flags next to the road leading to the Polish position. None of this portended well for the next phase, moving the boats up to Basra.
As was described earlier, April 3, 2003, dawned bright and sunny in the northern Persian Gulf. Several miles from the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a massive gray-painted catamaran drifted, a crane slowly lowering the four American boats into the brown water. Known as the Joint Venture, the ship had been built in Australia as a high-speed ferry. Inside were extensive ramps capable of holding dozens of vehicles, and at its center sat an array of theater seating arranged around a bar, the beer now replaced with cases of bottled water and orange juice. The SEALs had converted this ship into a naval vessel and installed a sophisticated command center replete with radar, computers, and a large screen that showed unit locations in real time.
Harward jumped down into the lead boat. To try to demonstrate their benign intentions, he had an Italian flag turned sideways to resemble an Iranian flag draped over the starboard side of his boat facing the Iranian shore. With Harward at the bow as lookout, the four boats moved slowly in a lazy column up to the Shatt al-Arab and then, hopefully, up to join the British in Basra. The journey took time; the lead boat briefly ran aground as the most up-to-date U.S. charts proved to be woefully out-of-date, with the main channel having moved well to the east. A Farsi linguist with Harward raised an Iranian soldier on the radio. After he assured him that the United States would not enter Iranian waters, the Iranian soldier replied, “Good for you. Do you need any help?”
An hour later, as the four American boats turned into the Shatt al-Arab proper, a small blue-painted boat with three Revolutionary Guardsmen headed over and came next to the Americans. They were soon joined by two more boats, including one with a multiple-barrel rocket launcher affixed in its center. While the SEAL linguist explained their intention to stay in Iraqi waters, Harward ordered his flotilla to steer still farther west, away from Iran.
The situation suddenly escalated. A fast Swedish-built Boghammer speedboat outfitted with a twin-barrel machine gun on its bow came barreling over to join the other three Revolutionary Guard boats. With a rooster tail of white water, the Boghammer cut off Harward’s boat, stopping in its path while the other Revolutionary Guard boats took up positions around the Americans from the front and side. The Iranians began removing the tarps covering their machine guns and the multiple rocket launcher, and then trained their weapons directly at the lead American boat.
Harward grabbed the radio handset and tried to talk to the senior Iranian on the Boghammer. A heavy-set bearded man dressed in the dark fatigues of the Iranian military, he repeatedly cut Harward off, warning the American to turn around or “face the consequences,” before adding menacingly, “We will bomb and kill you!” As the SEALs jumped up to man their weapons, others listening on the nearby Joint Venture called for American airpower. Harward ordered no one to fire without his command and radioed back to his one-star commander asking for instructions. To Harward’s dismay, he was told to turn around. Rather than risk a confrontation, the American commanders decided to leave. With no recourse but to obey his orders, he commanded his boats to turn around and head back to the Joint Venture at a leisurely pace so as not to appear to be retreating. Privately, Harward fumed. Despite being in Iraqi waters, the Iranians had forced the Americans to back down.
Over the next few days, Harward proposed a number of ideas to reassert America
n control over the Iraqi side of this key waterway. He suggested having his boats (which had to be airlifted to Basra in order to support the British) come down from the north backed up by SEAL snipers stationed in helicopters overhead and marine attack helicopters should the Revolutionary Guard try to resist.
“We are going to assert our right of passage,” the commander of the naval force in the northern Gulf, Rear Admiral Barry Costello, told Harward, “but at a time and place of our choosing.” But that promise was never fulfilled. Instead, the United States simply conceded control of the Iraqi frontier to Iran, remaining content to round up the few Saddam loyalists loitering in a derelict ship.
“We are going to regret letting them get away with this,” Harward said when back on the Joint Venture.3
While Saddam Hussein had been Iran’s long-term nemesis, the prospect of a U.S. invasion unsettled the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. As the likelihood of an American attack increased in the winter of 2002, Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security met repeatedly to deliberate Iran’s options. Iranian leaders had long suffered from a paranoid self-delusion that every action taken by the United States was secretly aimed at overthrowing the Islamic Republic. The debate in Tehran was bathed in this fearful light. But the leadership seemed as divided as officials in Washington. The majority of the council, including President Khatami and Mohsen Rezai, the former head of the Revolutionary Guard and a close confidant of the supreme leader’s, argued that neutrality or even support for the Americans would demonstrate Iran’s peaceful intentions and lessen the chances of an American attack. It might also take off some of the American pressure against their burgeoning nuclear program. Perhaps Iran could even cooperate in a way similar to that in Afghanistan, by allowing U.S. planes to skirt its airspace and rescuing any downed pilots.
Iran’s military attaché in Bahrain relayed this message during a chance encounter with the American Fifth Fleet commander, Admiral Tim Keating. The Iranian effusively told a nearby officer, who in turn passed it on to the senior naval officer, that Iran would provide search and rescue for any American pilot who bailed out over their country.
Hard-liners—especially Major General Yahya Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, and Major General Qassem Suleimani, the recently appointed commander of the Quds Force—argued that they needed to take the fight to the Americans. The United States intended to move against the Islamic Republic after Iraq. The massive American army deployed in Iraq would be turned against the Iranians to overthrow the revolution. They needed to mobilize their army to repel the invasion. Further, they needed to move immediately into Iraq after the United States attacked. They needed to position the Revolutionary Guard to strike back at the U.S. military and position resources to ensure that the new government would be favorably disposed to Tehran.
The supreme leader hedged his bets by supporting a talk-and-fight strategy. He approved continued talks with the Americans and declared that Iran would remain neutral and provide aid to coalition pilots who parachuted into Iran. But he also ordered army units to the borders and proclaimed that they would vigorously defend Iran’s sovereignty. As soon as possible, MOIS and Quds Force operatives would move into Iraq to begin influencing the Shia population and working to ensure a pro-Iranian Shia government in Baghdad. Where feasible and without risking war, the Quds Force would create trouble for the Americans in order to prevent Iraq from becoming a staging base against Iran. Iran’s approach was very similar to that employed in Lebanon two decades earlier. It was a broad-based whole-of-government method that leveraged the military as much as the political and economic forces to advance its goals. Iran’s ultimate objective would be uniting the disparate Shia parties into a cohesive force to consolidate control over the new Iraqi government—one sympathetic to Tehran.4
The legacy of the Iran-Iraq War and the Shia religious connections created a thick web between the two countries ripe for Tehran to exploit. Iran supported a number of Iraqi exile groups. The Islamic Dawa Party, which advocated creating an Islamic state in Iraq modeled after the Iranian Revolution, had long been used by Iran to conduct terrorist attacks against Saddam Hussein and also against the U.S. embassy in Kuwait in 1983. Among their ranks were prominent future Iraqi politicians, including the future prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
The most potent force for Iran lay with the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its military wing, the Badr Corps. Its genesis went back to the 1970s, when prominent Shia religious leaders, including Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim and Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, formed a militant group of Iraqi exiles opposed to the secular Baath Party and Saddam Hussein. Maintaining its headquarters in Tehran during the eight-year Iran-Iraq War, the Badr Corps saw its membership grow with Iranian training and equipment to a division-size unit of nearly ten thousand fighters, all Iraqi Shia and many deserters from the Iraq army.5 While Baqir al-Hakim remained more of a religious leader, his brother Abdul Aziz al-Hakim led these fighters as they waged a mini civil war fighting for Iran against their own countrymen both in the conventional battles of the Iran-Iraq War and in behind-the-lines guerrilla raids into Iraq.6 Many of the corps’ officers had close ties to Iranian intelligence, including its commander and future minister of transportation in the post-Saddam Iraqi government, Hadi al-Amiri. The Iranian spy agency MOIS built the Badr Corps’ intelligence wing in 1989, and during the 1990s the group infiltrated into Iraq and attacked the Iraqi military.
Although Iran exercised considerable influence with these organizations, they were not puppets. Arab and Persian animosity runs deep. A haughty Persian attitude made many of these Iraq exiles feel like second-class citizens in Iran. In 2007, then ambassador Ryan Crocker recalled watching a speech by the Iranian president in which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needed a translator. Crocker expressed surprise, telling al-Maliki that he thought he might have learned Farsi during his long stays in Iran. The prime minister responded with disdain: “No. You don’t know how bad it can be until you’re an Arab forced to live with the Persians!”7
Iran’s counterinvasion of Iraq followed shortly after the American attack. Iranian MOIS and Quds Force officers arrived in southern Iraq on the heels of U.S. tanks driving north to Baghdad. The Badr Corps led the vanguard of pro-Iranian forces. Some six thousand armed fighters poured hodgepodge into Iraq from Iran. The Badr Corps smuggled in heavy weapons provided by Iran hidden under tarps in commercial trucks. While some came across as armed bands, other individuals intermingled with the thousands of Iranian pilgrims traveling to visit the Shia holy sites in Karbala and Najaf. U.S. intelligence soon suspected that more than a thousand armed Badr Corps soldiers had taken up positions within Najaf proper. As the Iraqi army disintegrated, no one manned the border crossing and the Iranian forces simply walked or drove into Iraq and intermingled with Iranians headed to the holy cities.
Soon MOIS officers were present in all of Iraq. This included the Kurdish city of Arbil, where they established the Majran Tourist Company for Shia pilgrims traveling to Iraq, which also served as a front company for their spy operations. Following the fall of Baghdad, the MOIS operated out of several safe houses in Baghdad and spied on U.S. forces. These operations would not be uncovered until the summer of 2004, when U.S. forces raided one house in Baghdad and arrested four Iranian agents working for the MOIS, all of whom had targeted the U.S. military.
While the MOIS operated as a traditional spy service, the Quds Force operated as a blend of U.S. Special Forces and the Peace Corps. Just after the American attack, more than fifty Quds operatives, including three Iranian general officers, moved into southern Iraq. They came with money and expertise to open medical clinics, rebuild city services, and revitalize religious shrines. To facilitate their operations, the Quds Force established a new headquarters in Mehran, Iran, with two satellite offices in southern and northwestern Iran. From these bases, weapons as well as building supplies and medicine arrived to win hearts and minds—and outfit newly formed militias.
They also carefully monitored American forces. Time magazine reporter Michael Ware claimed to have seen Quds Force reports from 2003 that logged U.S. troop movements in the city of al-Kut and claimed, “We are in control of the city.”8
All this proved lucrative too. The Revolutionary Guard had increasingly become a business venture as well as military force. The guard owns export companies, financial institutions, and construction companies. Iranian Quds Force operatives opened up side businesses inside Iraq, making money as they fomented hate for the occupiers.
The Iraqi National Congress aided the Iranian effort. During the U.S. invasion, they passed along the locations of U.S. forces. In theory, this was to avoid any misunderstandings that might lead to a confrontation between the two countries, but it gave Iran the ability to move its agents into Iraq around U.S. forces who might be on the watch for Iranian subversives. U.S. intelligence suspected that Ahmed Chalabi had even told the Iranians that the Americans were reading their sensitive communications, an incredible compromise of some of the United States’ most sensitive intelligence sources.9
The Bush administration found it convenient to ignore this. The silver-tongued Ahmed Chalabi, who maintained a home in Tehran and close ties to senior Iranian officials, continued preaching the gospel that the Defense Department and the White House wanted to hear: the virtues of a democratic Iraq; Baghdad as an ally in the war on terrorism and a bulwark against extremism, including in Iran; and even an Iraq ready to recognize Israel. The Iraqi exile had an American officer assigned to carry a secure phone for him to call back to Washington. On speed dial were two office numbers: Donald Rumsfeld’s and Dick Cheney’s.10 When Chalabi flew into southern Iraq on an American transport aircraft following the U.S. invasion, his large ragtag entourage included many who’d come from Iran, including Badr Corps soldiers.