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

by David Crist

  In Bush’s State of the Union speech following the invasion, Chalabi was accorded a place of honor, sitting next to the First Lady in the gallery. The next day, during a White House meeting, with Bush still aglow from the heady congressional reception the night before, the president asked, “Who invited Chalabi to sit next to Laura?” No one sitting around the table answered, and the president did not press the subject. Richard Armitage, sitting in for Colin Powell, who was out of the country, shook his head. “The only person with that kind of clout in the administration was the vice president, and he sat there and never said a word.”

  In fact, rather than worry about Iranian influence, the United States embraced Iran’s surrogates. On March 30, 2003, CENTCOM issued an edict for its troops to disarm any Badr Corps soldiers who appeared carrying weapons out in the street. It was not enforced. During the chaotic occupation of Baghdad, U.S. Marines operating in the sprawling Shia suburb of Sadr City (then called Saddam City) allowed Shia militias to remain armed. They roamed around the city rounding up Sunni and Baathist officials under the notion that they could tell the good guys from the bad. They certainly did. They rooted them out, killing many. In one instance, with marines nearby, a Sunni official was encased in tires and thrown alive into a burning building. When the on-scene marines learned of it, they treated it with little more interest than halting the pervasive looting throughout the city, the smoke from which cast a pall over the Iraqi capital.10

  The Saudis and Kuwaitis raised the alarm over the influx of Iranians. Neither country showed much enthusiasm for the American invasion. Both feared the invasion would expand Shia influence and they believed it would remove a barrier to Iran by replacing the Sunni government with a Shia one. On April 13, Kuwaiti ruler Sheik Sabah al-Sabah expressed his anxiety about the increased turmoil in the Iraqi Shia community, urging the United States to provide security for the holy shrine in Najaf. If the United States failed to do this, Iran would step in and assume the prestigious role as the guarantor of safety of the key Shia shrines.11 At the urging of the State Department, more American forces were moved to safeguard Najaf and Karbala. But Iran knew the language and culture far better than the well-intentioned American soldiers. While U.S. troops safeguarded Shia pilgrims, Iranian operatives moved among the populace and cultivated the emerging Shia groups.

  Iran’s sudden appearance in Iraq did not go unnoticed by the U.S. military. “We need to stop the Iranians from trying to influence Iraq,” Rumsfeld wrote to Doug Feith in a May 1, 2003, “snowflake” memo. “Let’s come up with a plan of four or five things to do, so we get some success. They need to know we are serious.” After conferring with Joint Chiefs vice chairman Peter Pace, Feith responded with the now familiar line on Iran. They needed to sever any support for terrorist groups—as defined by the United States, dismantle the Quds Force, end its nuclear and missile programs, and support a Middle East peace process that maintains Israel as a Jewish state. Feith also suggested that the United States adopt a multifaceted approach similar to that of the Iranians. He recommended a list of different actions: closing down Iranian intelligence operatives and arresting the fifty to seventy-five Quds Force officers inside Iraq, providing security for senior Shia clerics, and developing a propaganda campaign that would highlight moderate Shia leaders and Iran’s malign influence in Iraq. Feith also suggested the United States could expel the Badr Corps troops, although at nearly five thousand fighters, this would take considerable military muscle, and Feith offered no idea of where they would be expelled to.

  Rumsfeld tasked both Joint Chiefs chair Richard Myers and CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks with countering Iran’s growing influence. He liked the idea of targeting the Quds Force through arrests or harassment. But Rumsfeld ordered Franks to come up with a plan to arrest the four known Quds Force generals in Iraq. Franks agreed and tasked his special forces operators from Task Force 20, currently looking for the high-value men like Saddam and his two sons, to come up with a quick snatch of the four generals operating in Basra and Baghdad. CENTCOM issued a new directive to its commanders to detain by force any Badr Corps soldier found carrying a weapon or “engaging in conduct incompatible with good order and detrimental to creating a law abiding society.”12

  “I have no doubt that USCENTCOM forces will exercise their full authority when dealing with Badr Corps members,” Myers wrote back to Rumsfeld.

  American proconsul L. Paul Bremer too raised concerns about Iran and the Badr Corps with Rumsfeld in his first two weeks in Baghdad. “Iran is committing serious assets in Iraq, and it is time to move against what is a concentrated Iranian long-term strategy.” Bremer recommended rolling up Iran’s intelligence service and closing its embassy. He held a meeting with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the brother of the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). Bremer told him that the U.S. government was concerned about Badr Corps activities and that the Iranians were up to no good in Iraq. Al-Hakim protested on both accounts, but listened.

  Bremer postponed the planned June elections in Najaf in part to prevent the ISCI from winning the local elections through force of arms and intimidation. In an e-mail to Rumsfeld regarding Najaf, Bremer laid out his concerns: “Elements of the Tehran government are actively arming, training and directing militia in Iraq. To date these armed forces have not been directly involved in attacks on the Coalition. But they pose a longer term threat to law and order.”13

  Bremer asked the British commander to step up his forces along the border and raised the alarm with Rumsfeld that the Polish and Ukrainian forces arriving to relieve the U.S. Marines in southern Iraq were not up to the task of containing the Iranians.14

  Bremer’s comments about delaying the redeployment of the marines did not go down well with the Pentagon. In a note to the careerist and secretive army colonel who ran the chairman’s Iraqi planning office, Kevin Bergner, Abe Shulsky commented on Bremer’s meeting with Iraqi political leaders and his attempt to counter pro-Iranian elements in Najaf and Karbala: “Pretty strong language…definitely does not sound like he is on board with Polishled MND [multinational division] taking over that sector.”

  Relations between Rumsfeld and Bremer had already turned sour, with Bremer’s independent style aggravating the defense secretary. Going after the Badr Corps and Shia militias was a sensitive subject in the Pentagon, and Chalabi and the INC views held sway. The U.S. military could go after Saddam loyalists but not the Shia. In a phone conversation on May 20, Rumsfeld cautioned his four-star general that any dealings with Iran would be controlled by the National Security Council and the White House. “The NSC wants to be the center of gravity for all Iranian contacts,” the secretary said. This included any dealings with the MEK. He ordered Franks not to take any action against Iranians inside Iraq without Rumsfeld’s personal approval.

  Harward also raised the alarm about Iran following his near shoot-out in early April. The SEAL commander had his intelligence section focus on the Iranian problem, and it quickly unmasked Iran’s campaign to infiltrate forces into Iraq. The aggressive actions by the Revolutionary Guard small boats had been designed to try to prevent the Americans from interfering with one of their main routes into southern Iraq. One of Harward’s intelligence officers was a direct-commission navy reserve lieutenant named Thomas Mahnken. The dark-haired Mahnken held a doctorate from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and when not in uniform he taught strategy at the Naval War College in scenic Newport, Rhode Island. He began analyzing the Iranian and Badr infiltration routes, termed “rat lines” by the SEALs. In short order, he uncovered several key routes following traditional smuggling trails leading into Basra and Baghdad. One of the key cities in the Iranians’ movement into Iraq was Amarah, strategically situated on the Tigris River and only thirty miles from the Iranian border. With a population of some three hundred thousand, mostly Shia, the Badr Corps soldiers along with some troops from the Iranian Quds Force arrived in force and occupied the old Baath Party facilities, effectivel
y taking control of the city. Based upon the information gleaned by Mahnken, Harward proposed deploying SEAL teams to interdict the Iranian rat lines. While Harward hoped to avoid an armed confrontation, the SEALs could at least detain Iranian agents and round up many of the weapons flowing in with the Badr Corps soldiers.

  Harward met resistance from the United Kingdom too. With southern Iraq, including Amarah, in the British area of responsibility, the Queen’s soldiers had to approve any operations by Harward’s SEALs. Mahnken drove up to the headquarters of the British division near Basra to discuss options to counter the Iranians. Rather than support the Americans, Mahnken was told by the senior British intelligence officer that they were overreacting. The gunfire by Iranian soldiers had been directed at smugglers, and Iran was doing a good job of controlling its borders. Moreover, the British found no evidence of Badr Corps troops moving across the border. Mahnken tried to argue the point, but the British simply refused to accept his intelligence. “I believe you are overreacting; the Iranians are not a problem.”15

  Despite snowflakes and memos, in the end Rumsfeld’s intent to counter Iranian influence ran contrary to the defense secretary’s own desire to withdraw forces quickly. In an e-mail to his subordinate army commander Lieutenant General David McKiernan, Tommy Franks ordered him to “take as much risk getting out as you did getting in.” Rumsfeld did not want the military tied down in a large occupation. “Recock” became the word of the day at CENTCOM. The United States would get out of Iraq and prepare for the next war in the global fight against terrorism, with rumors circulating that Syria was next. The U.S. military concurred. The short war of Desert Storm was the generals’ model and no one in uniform wanted a long occupation. Franks was happy to leave the details of post-war Iraq to the Pentagon civilians. With Iranian influence growing and the security situation in chaos, rather than address the impending crisis and engage the British on the merits of the intelligence, American special operations troops packed up and left Iraq. Harward’s ideas to counter the Iranians went to the shredder, and by mid-May the SEALs and Harward’s command were back in California. Franks had taken a risk and left Iraq open for the Revolutionary Guard.

  The early success in Iraq gave renewed impetus within the Bush administration for a strategy regarding Iran. Once again senior officials gathered around the table in the confined White House Situation Room to discuss what the U.S. policy should be toward Iran. On April 25, 2003, Condi Rice chaired a video teleconference with senior officials. The disembodied faces from across the globe all agreed that they should try to discredit the Iranian clerical rule, stop its nuclear program, and call for it to be a good neighbor to Iraq. But the group seemed no more united on how to achieve these ends than they had the previous October, when Rice shelved the idea of a presidential decision directive on Iranian policy. Over the ensuing six months, the national security adviser had not tried to force the issue with Bush either. Now, as Iran moved into the vacuum of post-Saddam Iraq, the U.S. government fretted and held more meetings.

  Rice floated another paper outlining broad goals. The paper referred to “democratic transformation as opposed to regime change” as the American goal. The United States would maintain unrelenting pressure on Tehran to end its nuclear program and nefarious activities in Iraq, and held out the possibility of military action to rein in Iran. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would keep Iran on the defensive, the White House surmised.

  The paper circulated among senior officials, and its lack of specificity made most everyone happy. In a June 25, 2003, principals meeting, Rice said the paper obviated the need for a more formal document and that she intended to give it as a memo to the president. “We should make it very clear that we will do anything to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, supporting terrorism, and disrupting our Iraq strategy.”

  Powell responded, “Student demonstrations indicate a desire for a better life, but we shouldn’t push for regime change—we don’t know what we’ll get.”

  “I agree the paper lays out generally the right policy,” Rumsfeld added. “But we should encourage the demonstrators, perhaps through IO [information operations]. We should tell the Iranian people the regime is harboring al-Qaeda personnel in order to embarrass the regime.”

  Rice added that the United States should encourage people-to-people exchanges, an idea Powell liked. Rumsfeld dissented. He suggested it would open the door to spies inside the United States and opined that talking with Iranian academics was a waste of effort. “We will be talking with people with no power,” he said.

  Toward the end of the meeting, Vice President Cheney added his opinion: “I am not sure that the paper reflects the dangers and the opportunities in Iraq. We are not using our enhanced posture enough. It is not aggressive enough.” Cheney objected to taking regime change off the table as an option. Further, he argued that the U.S. invasion and swift dispatch of Saddam Hussein presented an opportunity. Iran was nervous that it might be next. U.S. forces were poised on two sides of Iran, and Washington needed to leverage this to pressure Iran into acquiescing to America’s wishes. Cheney had no use for talking to the Iranians, and this coercive window of opportunity would not stay open forever.

  “We don’t know what will happen if we have regime change. Need to be careful moving forward,” Powell retorted.

  “We can’t just do nothing,” Cheney threw back at Powell. “We need to determine targets, especially if they hit us. We need options to take advantage of this window.”

  Again, the administration was at an impasse. Rice refused to engage and shifted the subject to needing a diplomatic effort to isolate Iran, while Rumsfeld screeched about the need for actionable intelligence. Without any agreement, and lacking an unequivocal presidential edict, nothing happened. America’s Iran policy drifted on an endless river of point papers and discussions.

  However, the fact that the American military achieved in three weeks what Iran failed to do in eight years of war scared the supreme leader. Administration hard-liners like Cheney and Luti had been correct: American military force had successfully intimidated Iran. While continuing low-level enrichment of uranium, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program out of fear of provoking an American attack.16 The supreme leader, hedging his policy bets, decided to again open a dialogue with the United States. Iranian leaders understood the divisions within the U.S. government and looked for a new channel beyond those in Geneva. Khalilzad had made it clear that the United States was unwilling to expand the talks beyond the narrowest focus as a one-way lecture on American demands. So the Iranians turned to the one recognized, official means of communicating with the United States: the twenty-year-old channel through the Swiss embassy. Perhaps this would get their message to senior officials disposed to talk.

  On May 4, 2003, a mysterious two-page fax arrived at the U.S. State Department. Delivered by the Swiss foreign ministry, the document originated from its ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann. On the second page, under the heading “Roadmap,” the Iranians presented an astounding agenda, a way forward to address every issue of contention between the Islamic Republic and the United States. Breaking down U.S. and Iranian aims into a series of bullets, Iran agreed to full transparency for its nuclear program and agreed to halt its support for Hamas and to take actions that would lead to a demilitarization of Hezbollah. In return, the Iranians wanted the United States to stop trying to change their political system, to turn over MEK members, and to recognize “Iran’s legitimate security interests in the region.” They also wanted a public statement that Iran was not part of the axis of evil. To achieve these goals, the two nations would engage in a series of confidence-building measures, beginning with issuing joint statements on the need to meet with “mutual respect,” moving to direct meetings and the establishment of working groups to hash out the details of a permanent arrangement that would end the thirty years of estrangement.17

  Guldimann was a respected diplomat. When his five-year posting to Tehran ended, h
e moved up to a plum assignment as ambassador to Germany. His last few years in Iran had been marred by personal hardship. His wife had been diagnosed with cancer, requiring her to move to Hamburg, with Guldimann shuffling back and forth to visit her as she underwent lengthy but ultimately successful treatment.18

  But the American State Department under Colin Powell had not been overly happy with Guldimann. Officials expected Guldimann, as the official conduit for démarches between the United States and Iran, to simply provide a messenger service without comment. Richard Armitage viewed him as too much a cheerleader for rapprochement, going beyond his mandate of simply relaying messages to actively working to resolve the diplomatic impasse. Those within the administration who opposed any talks with Iran, such as Elliott Abrams at the NSC and John Bolton at State, had even harsher words for Guldimann, recommending to the Swiss that he be fired.19

  On April 21, Sadeq Kharrazi, Iran’s ambassador to France and former deputy foreign minister, met with Guldimann, and the two discussed a draft road map for improving relations that the Iranian had developed. Kharrazi had clout within the Iranian government, with his sister married to the son of the supreme leader. Over the next two weeks, Kharrazi met several times with Ayatollah Khamenei to discuss the points in the proposed road map. The discussion remained a state secret, with only the supreme leader, President Khatami, and Kharrazi present at those meetings.

  Ambassador Zarif, who now happened to be in Tehran for consultations and to see his family, reviewed the draft of the road map. He made numerous changes to the Microsoft Word document, his red tracked changes marking up the document, adding in the words “mutual respect” and the need for a democratically elected and fully representative government in Iraq. Zarif’s input looked remarkably similar to those points he had discussed the previous fall with American Iranian Council president Hooshang Amirahmadi during their ultimately failed efforts to achieve a breakthrough in December 2002.20