Some who were watching the situation unfold closely were convinced that doom lay around the corner. By the end of 1978, William Sullivan, the US ambassador in Teheran, dispatched a cable to Washington entitled ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’, urging that contingency plans had to be put in place immediately. This was ignored – as was Sullivan’s recommendation that ‘we attempt to structure a modus vivendi between the military and religious [leaders]’ at the first opportunity. He meant that the US should try to open channels of communication with Khomeini, before he took power rather than afterwards.4 Loud voices in the White House, however, continued in the belief that the US could control the situation, maintaining support for the Shah and backing a proposal made at the end of January 1979 by the Prime Minister, Shapur Bakhtiar, that Ayatollah Khomeini should be arrested if he flew into Iran.5
The blinkered futility of this thinking became apparent within a matter of days. On 1 February 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini touched down in Teheran fourteen years after being forced into exile. Enormous crowds gathered to greet him at the airport, following him as he made his way first to the Cemetery of Martyrs, twelve miles south of Teheran, where some 250,000 supporters were waiting. ‘I will strike with my fists at the mouths of this government,’ he roared defiantly. ‘From now on it is I who will name the government.’ Reporting this speech, the BBC estimated that 5 million people lined the streets as he made his way into the capital.6
Things moved quickly as Khomeini’s supporters took control of the country. On 11 February, the US embassy went into lock-down, as Ambassador Sullivan cabled home: ‘Army surrenders. Khomeini wins. Destroying all classified.’ Sensitive material was still being shredded three days later when militants stormed the embassy compound – although order was soon restored by Khomeini’s lieutenants.7 On 16 February, Ambassador Sullivan met with Mahdī Bāzargān, the newly appointed Prime Minister, and told him that the United States had no interest in intervening in Iran’s domestic affairs.8 Less than a week later, the US formally recognised the new government – which, following a national referendum, declared on 1 April that the country was to be known as the ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’. A second referendum held at the end of the year endorsed a new constitution, which stated that henceforward ‘all civil, penal, financial, economic, administrative, cultural, military, political and other laws and regulations in the country [are] to be based on “Islamic” criteria’.9
The US had bet heavily on Iran and on the Shah for decades. It now had to pay a heavy price for its gamble going wrong. The revolution sent shockwaves round the world, causing oil prices almost to triple. The effect on the oil-hungry economies of the developed world was disastrous as inflation threatened to gallop out of control. As panic set in, there were fears of the crisis spilling over: by the end of June alarming numbers of service stations across the US remained closed due to a lack of supply. President Carter’s approval ratings fell to the all but unknown level of 28 per cent – around the same level as Nixon at the nadir of the Watergate scandal.10 With the President’s re-election campaign about to get into gear, it seemed that regime change in Teheran might be a significant factor in the forthcoming presidential election.
It was not just the rising price of oil that threatened to derail the western economies. So too did the mass cancellation of orders and the immediate nationalisation of the industry. British Petroleum (BP), the heir of the original Knox D’Arcy concession, was forced into a major reorganisation (and share sale) after oilfields that accounted for 40 per cent of its global production disappeared at a stroke. Then there were the contracts to build steel mills, upgrade airport terminals and develop ports that were scrapped overnight, and the arms contracts that were annulled and torn up. In 1979, Khomeini cancelled $9 billion of purchases from the US, which left manufacturers with a painful hole in their accounts and sizeable amounts of stock to try to sell into other markets less keen to militarise than the Shah had been.11
As it was, Iran’s turgid economy meant that the nuclear programme had already been slowed down before the Revolution; after it, it was cancelled altogether. The cost of the loss of business to companies like Creusot-Loire, Westinghouse Electric Corporation and Kraftwerk Union – based in France, the US and West Germany respectively – was in the region of $330 billion.12 Some were admirably stoic in the face of adversity. ‘We must never forget how well we did out of the Shah’s regime,’ wrote the diplomat Sir Anthony Parsons, veteran of the Middle East and British ambassador to Teheran at the time of Khomeini’s return. ‘British business and industry made an enormous amount of money out of Iran.’13 He did not say as much, but it was clear that the good times had come to an end; it was better to celebrate what the past had yielded than to bemoan what the future would withhold.
For the US, however, the stakes went beyond the economic and political fall-out at home. It was some consolation that Khomeini and his fellow clerics had little time for the atheist politics of the Soviet Union, and little sympathy with – or affinity for – left-wing groups in Iran.14 But even though the fall of the Shah did not lead to the USSR gaining ground, the US was nevertheless pushed decisively on to the defensive; a series of footholds that had previously been secure became precarious or lost altogether.
After Khomeini had taken power, he immediately shut down the US intelligence facilities located in Iran that served as early-warning systems for Soviet nuclear attacks, and as listening posts monitoring missile-launch tests in Central Asia. This deprived the US of a vital means of gathering information on its rival at a time when doing so had assumed an added importance in the wake of intensive talks between the USA and USSR to limit the number of strategic ballistic missile launchers at existing levels. The closure of stations that played an important role in the verification process therefore threatened to compromise the series of strategic arms agreements that had taken years to negotiate, as well as to derail ongoing highly sensitive discussions.
It would take at least five years, the Director of the CIA, Admiral Stansfield Turner, told the Senate intelligence committee in early 1979, to restore the capability for monitoring Soviet missile tests and developments.15 A ‘real gap’ had emerged in US intelligence collection as a result of events in Iran, noted Robert Gates, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the USSR (and later Director of the agency, as well as Secretary of Defense). ‘Exceptionally sensitive’ efforts were therefore made to build new alliances elsewhere that would fill the void. These included high-level discussions with the Chinese leadership about building replacement facilities in western China, which led to a secret visit by Admiral Turner and Gates to Beijing in the winter of 1980–1, a trip that was only revealed to have taken place many years later (albeit with precious little detail).16 Sites were built at Qitai and Korla in Xinjiang by the Office of Sigint (Signals Intelligence) Operations, with the new facilities operated by the Technical Department of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army of China working closely with US advisers and technicians.17 Close co-operation between US and Chinese military and intelligence was a by-product of the fall of the Shah.
The Iranian Revolution meanwhile may not have helped the USSR politically, but it certainly did militarily. Despite the efforts in the American embassy in Teheran to shred important documents, the speed and strength of the wave of change that had transformed the country led to some damaging losses. The Shah had bought a fleet of F-14 Tomcat fighter aircraft, along with a state-of-the-art Phoenix air-to-air missile system, Hawk surface-to-air missiles and a range of hi-tech anti-tank weapons. The Soviets were able to acquire invaluable close-up visual images, and in some cases instruction manuals for this military hardware as well. This was not just an embarrassing loss; it had potentially serious implications for US national security as well as for that of America’s allies.18
The sense of a familiar world rapidly collapsing now swept through Washington – for it was not just Iran where things suddenly looked very different. The US had been keeping a wat
chful eye on the situation in Afghanistan, whose strategic importance rose further in the wake of Khomeini’s Revolution. In the spring of 1979, for example, a CIA team conducted a survey to assess the country as a possible replacement location for the intelligence sites lost in Iran.19 The problem was that the situation in Afghanistan was fast moving, and looked increasingly likely to mirror events in Iran.
The turbulence had begun when the chess-loving King Zahir Shah was deposed by his nephew Muammad Dāwud, who installed himself as President in his place in 1973. Then five years later Dāwud himself was ousted. His downfall did not come as a great surprise, given the increasing brutality of his regime, which saw political prisoners being routinely executed without trial, lying face down in the grounds of the notorious and chronically overcrowded Pul-i Charkhi prison just outside Kabul.20
The Communist hardliners who took Dāwud’s place proved to be equally ruthless – and relentlessly progressive as they set out an ambitious agenda to modernise the country. It was time, they declared, to improve literacy levels dramatically, to break the ‘feudal’ structure of the tribal system, to end ethnic discrimination, and to deliver rights for women, including educational equality, job security and access to healthcare.21 Efforts to introduce comprehensive changes provoked a furious response that was especially strong among Muslim clerics; just as it did in the early twenty-first century, attempts to reform succeeded only in uniting traditionalists, landlords, tribal leaders and mullahs who made common cause to protect their own interests.
Opposition quickly became vocal and dangerous. The first major uprising took place in March 1979 in Herat, in the west of the country, where those proclaiming national independence, a return to tradition and the rejection of outside influence took heart from events across the border in Iran. Rioters turned on any and every target – including Soviet residents in the city, who were butchered by a rampaging mob.22 Unrest soon spread to other cities, including Jalalabad, where Afghan military units refused to oppose the resistance, and instead turned on and killed their Soviet advisers.23
The USSR responded to these events cautiously, with the ageing Politburo concluding that support should be given to the troublesome and trigger-happy Afghan leadership, some of whom had long-standing personal connections with the Soviet Union, to help them face down the unrest that had spread to Kabul too. A series of measures were taken to boost the regime, led by the President, Nur Muammad Taraki, who was well regarded by Moscow and was thought of by some as ‘Afghanistan’s Maxim Gorky’ for his writings on ‘scientific socialist themes’ – high praise indeed.24 Generous shipments of grain and food were dispatched across the border, while interest payments for outstanding loans were waived. To help swell government coffers, the Soviets also offered to pay more than double what they had paid for Afghan gas for the previous decade.25 Although requests for chemical weapons and poison gas were turned down, Moscow did provide military support, dispatching 140 artillery pieces, 48,000 guns and nearly 1,000 grenade launchers.26
This was all noted in Washington, where the implications of the ‘gradual but unmistakable’ rise in Soviet involvement in Afghanistan were carefully considered. If the USSR were to provide direct military assistance to Taraki and send in troops, observed one high-level report, there would be consequences not only in Afghanistan itself but across the spine of Asia in Iran, Pakistan and China – indeed beyond.27 The uncertainty of what would happen next was made clear with the murder of the US ambassador to Kabul in February 1979. Just days after Khomeini had returned home, Ambassador Adolph Dubs’s armoured vehicle was car-jacked in broad daylight on the streets of the Afghan capital, at what appeared to be a police checkpoint. He was taken to the Kabul Hotel (now the luxury Kabul Serena Hotel), where he was held hostage for a few hours before being killed during a botched rescue operation.28
Although it was unclear who had been behind the ambassador’s kidnapping or what the motives were, it was enough to encourage the US to engage more directly with what was going on in the country. Aid to Afghanistan was immediately cut, and support given to the anti-Communists and others who opposed the new government.29 It marked the start of a long period during which the US willingly and actively sought to co-operate with the Islamists, whose interests in resisting the left-wing agenda were naturally aligned with those of the US. It took decades for the price of this deal to become apparent.
Behind this new approach were fears that Afghanistan might fall to the Soviets, who by the second half of 1979 appeared to be preparing for military intervention. The question of the USSR’s intentions rose to the top of the agenda in US intelligence briefings and became the subject of a rash of position papers outlining the latest developments – although this did not mean there was any insight into what was going on.30 One report presented to the National Security Council with the title ‘What Are the Soviets Doing in Afghanistan?’ provided a response that could not be faulted for its candour: ‘Simply, we don’t know.’31 While unpicking Moscow’s thinking was difficult, it was obvious that the fall of the Shah meant that the US had lost its principal ally in the region; it looked worryingly as if a domino effect was about to make the position even worse.
The Soviets were worried about precisely the same thing. Events in Iran had produced no benefit, and in fact were assessed by Moscow as being detrimental to the USSR’s interests as Khomeini’s seizure of power had reduced opportunities, rather than opened them up. Contingency plans were therefore drawn up by the Soviet military for a major deployment in the event that it became necessary to reinforce what General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev called ‘the Government of the friendly nation of Afghanistan’. The US monitored troop movements to the north of both the Iranian and Afghan borders, recording the dispatch of a unit of Spetsnaz special forces to Kabul, alongside a battalion of paratroopers that the CIA concluded had been deployed to secure Bagram airbase, the main entry point for Soviet supplies.32
At this critical stage, however, the future of Afghanistan suddenly came into play. In September 1979, a power struggle saw the removal of Nur Muammad Taraki by Hafizullah Amin, a man who was as ambitious as he was hard to read. He had been explicitly written off as a viable leader in editorials that had appeared in Pravda, the official mouthpiece that reflected the thinking of the Politburo in the USSR.33 He was now denounced in Moscow as an enemy of the revolution, a man who sought to manipulate tribal rivalries for his own ends, and ‘a spy for American imperialism’.34 The Soviets were also concerned about rumours that Amin had been recruited by the CIA – gossip that had been spread energetically by his enemies in Afghanistan too.35 Records of Politburo meetings show that the leadership in Moscow was intensely worried about the reorientation of Amin towards the US, and about the latter’s eagerness to support a friendly government in Kabul.36
The Soviets were becoming more and more concerned about the situation. Amin’s frequent meetings with the acting head of the US mission in Afghanistan before his putsch seemed to indicate that Washington was repositioning itself after the catastrophic failure of its policies in Iran. When Amin became increasingly aggressive in his dealings with the Soviets in Kabul while making a series of overtures to the US immediately after taking power, the call came for action.37
If the USSR did not stand firm and support its allies now, the logic went, it would lose out not only in Afghanistan but in the region as a whole. General Valentin Varennikov later recalled that senior officers ‘were concerned that if the United States were pushed out of Iran, they would relocate their bases to Pakistan and seize Afghanistan’.38 Developments elsewhere also concerned the Soviet leadership and gave the impression that the USSR was being pushed firmly on to the back foot. The Politburo discussed the way Washington and Beijing had improved relations in the late 1970s, noting that here too Moscow was falling behind.39
The US was trying to create a ‘new Great Ottoman Empire’ spanning Central Asia, senior Communist party officials told Brezhnev in December 1979; these fears were magn
ified by the absence of a comprehensive air-defence system across the USSR’s southern frontier. This meant that America could point a dagger at the heart of the Soviet Union.40 As Brezhnev put it soon afterwards in an interview in Pravda, Afghanistan’s instability represented a ‘very major threat to the security of the Soviet state’.41 The sense of having to do something was palpable.
Two days after the meeting between Brezhnev and leading officials, the order was given to devise an invasion plan based on an initial deployment of 75,000–80,000 troops. The Chief of the General Staff, General Nikolai Ogarkov, a hard-headed officer of the old school, reacted angrily. An engineer by training, Ogarkov argued that this force would be far too small to hold communication routes successfully and secure key points across the country.42 He was overruled by the Defence Minister, Dmitri Ustinov, a consummate political survivor prone to making ostentatious statements about the brilliance of the Soviet armed forces, whose fighting ability, he said, meant it could achieve ‘the accomplishment of any tasks set by the party and the people’.43
Whether he actually believed this is one thing; what mattered now was that he and his generation of Second World War veterans, whose grasp on the changing world around them was fading fast, were sure that the Americans were planning to supplant the USSR. Ustinov is reported to have asked late in 1979: ‘If [they can] do all these preparations under our noses, why should we hunker down, play cautious and lose Afghanistan?’44 At a Politburo meeting on 12 December, Ustinov, alongside a clutch of grey old men like Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Gromyko, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, gave the go-ahead for a full-blown deployment of troops in Afghanistan.45 It had not been a simple decision to take, Brezhnev was quoted as saying in Pravda a few weeks later.46
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