by Jay Solomon
The Obama administration denied it was talked out of attacking Syria by either Iran or Russia. President Obama also hailed the agreement on dismantling Assad’s chemical weapons arsenal as one of his greatest diplomatic achievements. But the president’s decision not to bomb Syria permanently sucked the air out of Syria’s moderate opposition and gave life to the more radical elements fighting the Assad regime, including ISIS. The White House’s deal with Putin and the secret talks with Iran also fanned fears within the Sunni Arab states that the White House was shifting its strategic position in the region and entering into an informal alliance with Iran. Such a convergence posed an existential threat to the interests of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and the other major Sunni states, according to diplomats from these governments. This unease over Tehran’s rapprochement with Washington led to a growing flow of financial support for Sunni militant groups, such as al Qaeda and ISIS, which were challenging Shiite-dominated Iran, according to U.S. officials.
“The U.S. gave us the impression that they were going to do things in Syria that they finally didn’t,” the Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, a brother of foreign minister Saud al-Faisal, told me in a late December 2013 interview in Monaco. “The aid they’re giving to the Free Syrian Army is irrelevant. Now they say they’re going to stop the aid. OK, stop it. It’s not doing anything anyway.” On Iran, Prince Turki said his government felt betrayed. “What was surprising was that the talks that were going forward were kept from us,” the Saudi royal said. “How can you build trust when you keep secrets from what are supposed to be your closest allies?”
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SYRIA’S CIVIL WAR FED into the virus of fanatical Sunni extremism that first raised its head in the 1990s with the rise of al Qaeda. But unlike Osama bin Laden’s global operations, which yielded little in terms of territorial gains, Syria bred a much more lethal monster. The Islamic State used Syria’s violence and lawlessness to raise recruits from across the Arab world and funding from Persian Gulf Arab citizens eager to push back against Iran’s territorial gains through its alliances with the Assad regime and Iraqi government. ISIS eventually gained control of large swaths of northern and eastern Syria and expanded its presence into much of western Iraq. The organization’s gains served as a rallying call for global Islamist extremists, many of whom had appeared to be defeated or on the wane after the United States and its allies dismantled much of al Qaeda’s senior leadership in the years following 9/11.
Even though ISIS declared itself at war with the Syrian government, Iran, and the broader Shiite world, the Islamist movement actually benefited from the policies of Damascus and Tehran. Syrian rebel leaders and Obama administration officials claimed the two governments knowingly abetted the rise of the terrorist organization in a bid to safeguard Assad’s hold on power by portraying him as the lesser of two evils. Indeed, both Syria’s security services and the Revolutionary Guard have displayed a willingness in recent decades to work with Sunni militant groups, even elements of al Qaeda, if they were in conflict with the United States and its allies. The old axiom “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” appeared to rule their foreign policy.
“Is there a symbiotic relationship between Iran and ISIS? It doesn’t seem like ISIS is coming under direct attack by the IRGC or the Qods Force,” said a retired Pentagon official who plotted operations against Iran. He said Iran appeared to use the presence of ISIS in Syria and Iraq as “an excuse” to deploy troops in these countries without necessarily targeting them.
ISIS’s ideology was so radical that its war against rival Syrian militias was just as fearsome as its war against Damascus. Assad and his top advisors purposely didn’t attack ISIS positions in northern Syria during some stages of the civil war, according to Syrian and Iraqi officials, as the Damascus regime viewed the militia as capable of weakening the Free Syrian Army and other moderate or secular opposition groups. Some Arab officials allied with Assad publicly admitted that Syria’s leader ordered his military to stand down in order to gauge just how much damage ISIS could inflict on the FSA. “When the Syrian army is not fighting the Islamic State, this makes the group [ISIS] stronger,” Izzat Shahbandar, a top aide to Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Wall Street Journal in a mid-2014 interview after meeting Assad in Damascus. “Sometimes, the army gives [ISIS] a safe path to allow the Islamic State to attack the FSA and seize their weapons.”
While the Obama administration didn’t see any direct operational coordination between the Assad regime and ISIS, they did see financial ties. ISIS gained control of the oil-rich provinces in central and eastern Syria, such as Deir Ezzour and Hassaekh, and began selling some of its energy to the regime. The funds allowed ISIS to finance its rapid growth. “We have seen what appear to be credible reports…about deals between the regime and al-Qaeda linked terrorist groups in Syria concerning the sale of petroleum products,” said a senior U.S. official who closely tracked ISIS in early 2014. “It is a known fact that the regime has declined to hit the headquarters of the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State group…but they’ve hit plenty of other targets belonging to other armed groups in Raqqah.”
Iran too played a double game with al Qaeda and other Sunni militants operating in Syria. While Tehran publicly cited these terrorist groups as existential threats to Iran, U.S. intelligence officials began to note that the regime was facilitating the flow of al Qaeda fighters into Syria beginning in 2013 and continuing into 2014. Some of the al Qaeda leaders whom the Iranians allowed to establish bases in and around Tehran were key moneymen and logisticians for the organization. The Revolutionary Guard and Iran’s intelligence services closely monitored these men to make sure their operations were only targeting the West and Assad’s enemies, but otherwise allowed them free rein.
The Treasury sanctioned Jafar al-Uzbeki, a member of the Islamic Jihad Union, in early 2014 for using Iran to move fighters into Syria. The United States said Uzbeki was part of an al Qaeda network operating from Iran that has also brought fighters into Pakistan and Afghanistan, and which operated in Tehran with the knowledge of Iranian authorities. “The network…uses Iran as a transit point for moving funding and foreign fighters through Turkey to support al-Qa’ida-affiliated elements inside Syria,” the Treasury said, freezing any money the Uzbek warlord held in U.S. dollars.
ISIS’s growth across Syria and Iraq and its decimation of the FSA and other secular Syrian militias eventually posed a major territorial and political threat both to the Assad regime and to the Iranian government. The shift again provided the opportunity for the United States and Iran to cooperate in facing the challenge of Sunni extremism, as they had in Afghanistan more than a decade earlier. But it remained to be seen if the IRGC and Khamenei would work with the United States to contest a threat so close to Iran’s borders.
Meanwhile, ISIS’s growth was posing a much broader threat to the wider world and Europe. Millions of Syrian refugees flooded into Turkey, Jordan, and Lebanon to get away from the terrorist group’s genocidal wrath. And many of the displaced then traveled on to European countries such as Germany, France, and Austria in the hopes of finding a permanent safe haven. Europeans gripe that U.S. inaction in Syria was a primary reason behind the greatest refugee crisis in their region since World War II. And critics of the Obama administration said its hesitancy to act was driven by the White House’s desire to reach a rapprochement with Iran. A nuclear deal would be an achievement, but at what cost? Was it worth the hundreds of thousands dead in Syria?
Joseph Bahout, a French academic and diplomat who specializes in Syria and the Levant, said, “U.S. policies in Iraq and Syria were subjected to the pursuit of the Iran deal and not antagonizing Iran.” Even so, France was just one of many U.S. allies who didn’t realize how far Obama had gone in reaching out to Tehran.
CHAPTER 10
The Road to Vienna
Global powers couldn’t have known it at the time, but an unlikely Arab monarchy was creating an opening to Tehran, even as Iran and the Un
ited States were mired in Syria. Salem ben Nasser al-Ismaily was hardly a high-profile player on the global stage when President Barack Obama entered office. But the Omani businessman, academic, and diplomat found himself and his country in a unique position to be able to repair Washington’s thirty-five-year rift with Tehran.
Just months after Obama’s election, Ismaily traveled to Washington in 2009 as an emissary for Oman’s long-serving monarch, Sultan Qaboos bin Said al Said. The American-educated envoy had a proposition for the White House and one of the Obama administration’s top Middle East hands, Dennis Ross: Oman could serve as an intermediary between Tehran and Washington in an effort to heal their disagreements over the nuclear issue and other outstanding issues. The sultan had received the blessing of Iran’s top leaders to pursue this mission. The sultan saw it as his religious and sovereign duty to preempt a military confrontation between Iran and the United States that could destroy his region. Situated 150 miles from the Iranian coast, Oman would suffer both economically and strategically from a conflict.
But Ismaily conveyed to Ross and the White House that if they wanted to pursue this Omani channel to Tehran, there was a list of steps the Americans needed to take to show Tehran their goodwill. These included releasing Iranian prisoners held in U.S. jails, increasing the quota for Iranian students allowed to study in American universities, and targeting Iranian militias and organizations viewed as hostile to the Iranian regime. These steps could be the start of a conversation between Washington and Tehran, Ismaily told Ross. The ball was in Obama’s court.
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ISMAILY’S OFFICIAL TITLE WAS executive director of the sultanate’s investment authority, the Omani Centre for Investment Promotion and Export Development. The fifty-eight-year-old was among the closest aides of the sultan, and held an assortment of degrees from U.S. and British universities in everything from telecommunications and engineering to business administration. Ismaily sought to advance the sultan’s vision of making his tiny kingdom on the Persian Gulf a modern economic state that promoted religious tolerance and peace in a tumultuous Middle East. Ismaily normally appeared in traditional Omani dress, even with Westerners. This included a long, flowing white gown, called the dishdasha, and a colorful aqua turban that spoke to Oman’s pristine tropical waters. He wanted Oman integrated into the global economy, hopes he iterated in his American-accented English at World Economic Forum conferences and through books such as A Cup of Coffee: A Westerner’s Guide to Business Culture in the Gulf States and Messengers of Monotheism: A Common Heritage of Christians, Jews and Muslims. He was an Arab Renaissance man.
“The policy of peace is good for everyone,” Ismaily told a gathering of the World Economic Forum in Jordan in 2011. “You cannot lose [with] a policy of peace. It’s very important to create an environment that is conducive for doing business.”
Ismaily also played a unique diplomatic role in Sultan Qaboos’s royal court: special envoy to Oman’s powerful neighbor, Iran. This role was a sensitive one for Ismaily but also a testament to his abilities, and to Muscat’s historically close ties to both Tehran and Washington. Now seventy-five years old, Qaboos was indebted to Iran for his long rule, which was a result of the military support the shah provided in the 1970s. Communist insurgents had spilled over from Yemen and were close to taking Muscat in 1976 when the Iranian ruler sent in helicopter gunships and tens of thousands of his troops to push back the rebels. The military operation allowed Sultan Qaboos to survive and become the longest-reigning ruler among the Persian Gulf’s monarchs. Even after the shah was deposed, the sultan sought to keep cordial relations with Tehran’s Islamist rulers, despite their inherent hostility toward Arabs and monarchies. Iran’s revolutionary government was founded on the premise of overthrowing the regional order as well as expelling U.S. forces. Qaboos’s willingness to engage Tehran placed him regularly at odds with Arab leaders on a range of regional issues.
The United States, however, was also central to Oman’s security in a region where very few of the Arab emirs and sultans trusted one another, and none of them wanted to be entirely beholden to regional heavyweights Saudi Arabia and Iran. Uniquely, U.S.-Omani relations stretched all the way back to the early years after the American Revolution. In 1833, in a bid to secure its global shipping routes from pirates and hostile colonial powers, Washington and Muscat signed a treaty of friendship and navigation, the first of its kind between the United States and an Arab state. Oman, abutting the Straits of Hormuz, was crucial to securing the flow of U.S. energy exports heading across the Atlantic. In 1980, after the Iranian revolution, Sultan Qaboos agreed to allow U.S. warships and aircraft to use Omani military facilities. The deal was a hedge against any Iranian attempt to spread its revolution into Oman or disrupt the flow of oil through the strategic Straits of Hormuz, off Oman’s coastline. The sultan trusted Iran’s ayatollahs only so far.
“We always must walk a cautious line between Iran and the U.S.,” Ismaily told me in a May 2015 interview at a Dead Sea resort in Jordan. “For us, it’s best if relations between the two countries are stable. We want to serve as a bridge between the two sides.”
For a decade, Ismaily used his position on the investment board to promote business between Oman and Iran. The sultan was interested in building a gas pipeline from the Iranian coast to Oman, both to fuel his country’s economy and to develop an export platform for Tehran’s energy products. In 2010, Ismaily attempted to set up a $50 million joint venture with Iran to promote the sale of Omani goods and services inside Iran. The move piqued the interest of the American embassy in Muscat because of its potential to break U.S. sanctions laws on Tehran. Still, U.S. diplomats appeared sympathetic to Ismaily’s ambitions, even if they couldn’t support them. “Iran is a logical export destination as an historic trading partner and the inexpensive shipping costs given the proximity,” a U.S. diplomat in Muscat wrote back to the State Department about Ismaily’s trips. “It makes economic sense to pursue these ties.”
Ismaily, however, emerged as much more than a businessman, author, and would-be theologian as relations between the United States and Iran spiraled downward and fears of war grew during the Bush and early Obama administrations. Oman and Sultan Qaboos had long served as a back channel among Washington, Tehran, and the Arab countries. The ruler tried to mediate the release of the American hostages held in Tehran in 1980, according to U.S. officials. Qaboos had also served as a bridge between Israel and the Arabs at a time when most Muslim countries wouldn’t have any contacts with the Jewish state. In 1994, Qaboos hosted Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in a successful bid to forge limited diplomatic and trade ties, which focused on medicine, irrigation technologies, and agricultural products—an agreement that chagrined many of Oman’s neighbors. Muscat also helped gain the release of European and American sailors captured by the IRGC in disputed waters of the Persian Gulf in recent decades.
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ISMAILY’S ROLE AS PEACEMAKER took center stage just months after his first 2009 discussions with the White House. His emergence wasn’t initially tied to Iran’s nuclear program or the steady buildup of U.S. naval forces in the Persian Gulf. It was a humanitarian gesture focused on gaining the release of kidnapped American citizens.
Far off in the remote mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan in July 2009, three American hikers, Sarah Shourd, Joshua Fattal, and Shane Bauer, unintentionally crossed into Iranian territory. Shourd and Bauer had been living in Damascus, Syria, and using the country as a base for development work, journalism, and Arabic study when their friend Fattal visited. The three UC Berkeley graduates decided to take a vacation in Kurdistan that summer and make the hike to the famous Ahmed Awa waterfalls near the Iranian border.
Bauer, Fattal, and Shourd said they believed they were still on the Iraqi side when Revolutionary Guards beckoned them through a megaphone to come to an Iranian military base. The Americans were uncertain about the location, and the Iranians quickly arrested them. They were then transferred to Tehran’
s maximum-security Evin prison—which holds most of the country’s top imprisoned political activists and dissidents—where they were charged with espionage. Iran’s security services said the three Americans were working for the CIA and had secretly crossed into Iran to conduct surveillance activities and attempt to incite unrest among Iran’s minority Arab and Kurdish populations. The Americans and the U.S. government repeatedly denied the charges.
The Americans’ arrests came at a particularly delicate time in relations between the United States and Iran. Nationwide protests against Ahmadinejad’s reelection were in full swing in the summer of 2009, and Iran’s rulers accused the Obama administration of instigating the unrest, despite criticism back in Washington that the White House wasn’t doing anything to support Iran’s democracy movement. U.S. officials worried that Tehran might try to use the three hikers as bargaining chips to guard against Washington’s providing significant political or material support to the opposition Green Movement. Tehran had already arrested a number of Iranian Americans during Ahmadinejad’s tenure and charged them with espionage, though most would be released.
World leaders and celebrities, including UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon, boxer Muhammad Ali, and singer Yusuf Islam (formerly Cat Stevens), all publicly called for the release of Bauer, Fattal, and Shourd. But Tehran failed to respond, providing Ismaily with an opening to prove his and the sultan’s bona fides to both the Americans and the Iranians. Ismaily’s years of cultivating relationships in Washington and Tehran were about to bear fruit, but he’d need to reach out to the highest echelons of the Iranian supreme leader’s office and the Revolutionary Guard to achieve his goal. He’d be in regular contact with the White House and State Department to coordinate his efforts.