The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (79 page)

Hadley then phoned both George Tenet and Richard Armitage: “Do you mind—the Defense Department believes they have some sources in Italy with information on terrorism. Do you mind if they go to Rome and interview them?” Both men agreed without giving it too much thought. While this lay more in his purview, Tenet did not wish to be seen as parochial just two months after 9/11. Hadley failed to mention to either that the information came from Michael Ledeen, which would have elicited a howl of protest from Armitage, who still vividly recalled the Iran-Contra scandal from his days as a senior defense official under Caspar Weinberger.
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Rhode and Franklin broke away from the Crocker talks in Bonn over Afghanistan and flew to Rome. On December 10, they met in an apartment in Rome arranged by Ledeen using his contacts with Italian intelligence. Ghorbanifar brought two Iranians with him: one was an exile living in Morocco who claimed to be a former Revolutionary Guard officer, and the other self-reported to be a high-ranking official with Iranian intelligence. The CIA later determined that the latter was an information peddler who sold his memory to the highest bidder. For the next three days, Ghorbanifar and the two Iranians regaled the two American officials with stories on just about anything the U.S. government would have wanted to know. They described
the political and economic conditions within Iran, growing discontent within the populace, Iran’s relationship with the Palestinians, its illicit weapons, and of course, Saddam Hussein. One of their more sensational items was a description of Iranian hit teams dispatched to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan. When Franklin asked for more details on the hit teams, the Iranian claiming to be in the intelligence service provided names and a photograph that he claimed to be one of the team members.
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But Ghorbanifar had his own ideas of where these talks should lead. Late one night in the hotel bar, he outlined his plan for overthrowing the Iranian government on a cocktail napkin. He suggested executing a series of operations designed to create havoc and general unhappiness with the Iranian government. He would begin with a simultaneous disruption of traffic intersections all around Tehran, which would create panic and paralyze the city. Not surprisingly, Ghorbanifar wanted the United States to pay for his caper, with an initial payment of $5 million as seed money and another $20 million once he had snarled Tehran’s already congested traffic.

As the meetings in Rome continued, on December 12 Ledeen had breakfast with the American ambassador, Melvin Sembler. Ledeen bragged that he was in Rome meeting with two Iranians under the auspices of the Department of Defense. Although Sembler remained friendly with Ledeen, this clandestine meeting in his country without his or the CIA station chief’s knowledge alarmed the ambassador. It looked like the beginnings of a covert action, and he knew of no presidential finding authorizing any such operation. Sembler began making inquiries, but it would take until February before the role of Ghorbanifar became known to senior officials in Langley and Foggy Bottom.

Ghorbanifar’s plan was too much even for those within the Defense Department who agreed with regime change. Franklin recommended to his boss, Bill Luti, against Ghorbanifar’s war on Tehran’s commuters. Luti’s boss, Peter Rodman, raised eyes at the $25 million price tag floated by the Iranian exile. But Franklin claimed that the information provided “saved American lives,” which Luti touted as justification for keeping the channel open. Rodman recommended to Wolfowitz that they should continue meeting with Ghorbanifar and the two Iranians for the intelligence value, but it should be carried on through normal intelligence channels by the DIA, which would keep the CIA out of the picture.

On February 9, with the full measure of Ghorbanifar’s role now known, both the CIA and State Department raised strong objections. A visibly irate Richard Armitage called Hadley: “If Ghorbanifar sets one foot in an embassy, he’ll be arrested,” he said sternly. “This is the man who almost single-handedly brought down the president’s father, and you are responsible for having him feed us misinformation again. We knew then and we know now that he is an Iranian agent!”
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Hadley reluctantly agreed to shut the talks down.

But Ledeen retained friends within the Defense Department and continued to find the doors open in the Pentagon to relay his dubious information derived from Ghorbanifar. He contacted the vice president’s office about enriched uranium buried in Iraq that had been moved to Iran. On August 6, he met with senior Pentagon intelligence officials on the location of once buried uranium.
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It turned out to be spurious. As late as 2003, Rhode met again with Ghorbanifar in Paris on returning from a trip to Turkey, but nothing came from the meeting. Powell had won this round.

A
s momentum built for invading Iraq, some within the military questioned why Iran should not be the next target in the global war on terrorism. In April 2002, Tom Milton, an army colonel working Iraq policy in the Pentagon, built on these ideas by floating a think piece entitled “Getting to Baghdad through Tehran.” Echoing some of Newbold’s views, he argued that moderate Arab support was vital for success in the war on terrorism, but Arab support for the American policy on Iraq was limited: “They do not see Iraq as a major regional threat.” The better strategy would be to shift the focus to Iran, which posed a greater danger and had a much longer track record of using terrorism. Overthrowing the regime in Iran, the officer believed, would unite the Arabs behind the United States and actually undercut Saddam Hussein, leading to his demise as well.

Others in uniform agreed. In a memo for Abe Shulsky, another colonel contended “the most urgent threat is arguably Iran.” Iran had “direct links to terrorism worldwide and directly supported Hezbollah…. From a WOT [war on terrorism] perspective, Iran is the most urgent.”

The civilians within the secretary of defense’s office did not necessarily disagree with these officers’ logic, but Iran posed a far different challenge than Iraq.
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In the days after 9/11, Feith’s subordinates drafted PowerPoint
briefings that lumped Iran in as part of the war on terrorism. But as Abe Shulsky later noted, “Iran was a much more difficult country militarily than Iraq, a harder target. With Khatami still in office and a vibrant opposition movement, the United States had other means to bring about regime change in Iran short of war.” Shulsky and Richard Perle both worried that attacking Iran would bog down the war on terrorism. An invasion of the massive country of seventy million people would require all U.S. military resources and end any follow-on operations, while invading Iraq permitted the United States to “maintain momentum” in the war.
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It was best to grab the low-hanging fruit of Iraq—or even Syria—before tangling with Iran.

Even hard-liners like Luti shied away from sending tanks and troops into Iran. Covert means to overthrow the government offered a better alternative, he argued, especially since the Iranian people already clamored for change. Besides, removing Saddam Hussein would have a “salutary effect” on Iran.
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The Iranian government was fragile and unpopular; change could come from within. “The establishment of a representative government in Iraq would invigorate anticlerical forces in Iran,” Feith wrote in May 2002, in a memo entitled “Strategic Timing.”

“We understood that removing Saddam would have major impact on Iran,” Feith said. While it could open the door to greater Iranian influence, an alternative scenario also seemed possible to the Pentagon’s civilian leadership. Empowering the Shia in Iraq could have a significant impact on Iran. The sight of Iraqi Shia electing their own leaders might have a subversive effect on Iranians who could question why they did not have the same opportunity. Further, a free Iraq could provide an alternative voice to the world’s Shia. There was no way to know whether Saddam’s removal would eventually end up helping or hurting the Iranian regime’s interests. “It was not inevitable that overthrowing Saddam would over time strengthen the Iranian regime’s hand in Iraq,” said Feith.
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Feith’s office drafted another paper that circulated around the Pentagon, entitled “What Happens When We Succeed?” It asked other government agencies to examine the effects of overthrowing Saddam Hussein, speculating that it might lead to a transformation of the Arab world, including revolution in Iran. These other agencies agreed. At a minimum, it would put Iran on the defensive and might lead them to cease their nuclear and missile programs.

The military, however, remained divided, especially between the colonels
and the generals. A June 2002 paper prepared under the auspices of the chairman’s strategy and policy office predicted that overthrowing the Iraqi regime would have little impact on Iranian behavior, especially its support for terrorism or its ballistic missile program. At best, an invasion of Iraq would put Tehran on the defensive and lead to “temporarily” halting overt support for external groups. At worse, it might fuel Iranian paranoia, for Tehran already believed that the United States wanted to encircle and overthrow the regime.
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One midlevel air force officer, Tom Billick, viewed overthrowing Saddam as an opportunity for Tehran. In a March 1, 2002, paper on possible Iranian reactions to a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Billick wrote, “Iran’s rhetoric in response to U.S. action against Iraq will be harsh. However, Iran will quietly view the removal of Saddam’s regime as an opportunity to influence post-Saddam Iraq. Iran could actually increase in strength and influence with the removal of their chief rival.”
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But both Joint Chiefs chair Myers and his deputy, Peter Pace, supported or at least went along with the Pentagon civilians. “The Iraqis were not Persians,” Myers explained. “They are nationalistic, and I did not think they would come under Iran’s sway.”
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Pace agreed with another paper churned out from his staff: “Bottom line: a successful campaign to disarm Iraq of WMD, remove Saddam’s regime and replace it with a broad-based representative government will fundamentally change the geo-political landscape in the region.” Iran would see this as a direct threat to the clerical power in Tehran. This direct military and diplomatic pressure could compel or coerce Tehran to change its policies of support for terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.

Even retired CENTCOM commander Tony Zinni agreed with Pace. No friend of either Feith or the neocons, Zinni believed that Iran would be scared to death should Iraq become closely aligned with the United States.
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T
he idea of going after Iran as the third installment in the war on terrorism appealed to some civilians in the Pentagon. Bill Luti made repeated pronouncements about taking down the Iranian government. Larry Franklin, who shared his boss’s view, called Iran a “hostile regime that harbors, finances, and exports terror even while oppressing Iranian people’s hopes for freedom.” He strongly advocated for Iran as the next target after Iraq.

Despite conspiracy theories of secret plans to invade Iran, neither
CENTCOM nor the Joint Staff nor Bill Luti’s office prepared for any such attack following the invasion of Iraq.
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While some in the Pentagon harbored those opinions, point papers are not military plans. Had the war in Iraq gone well, Iran or Syria may well have come to the forefront for military planners. But Washington could handle only one war at a time. Rumsfeld was too seasoned to think you could just tick off countries. As the Middle East political landscape changed after Saddam, the Iranian calculus would change too, and the administration would reevaluate its options. The lead-up to invading Iraq consumed all the officials’ energy, and after the invasion the insurgency sucked all the adventurism out of the pursuit.

The only serious discussion about Iran occurred right after a January 2003 briefing for President Bush by Tenet and Rumsfeld. Responding to the optimistic assessments from Feith’s staff, Rumsfeld asked General Myers to look into what could be done if success in Iraq had a “cascade effect” and destabilized Iran. The chairman sent a warning order directing General Tommy Franks at CENTCOM to develop “proactive, as well as reactive, options” that would bring about regime change in Iran. With typical Rumsfeld impatience, Franks had only thirty days to come back with a plan, including military targets in Iran that the United States could attack to help foster the downfall of the Islamic Republic.

“This is bullshit,” General Franks told General Myers over the phone in his usual colorful way. The intelligence did not support the premise and his staff was already stretched with one war in Afghanistan and planning for another in Iraq. Myers agreed. He convinced Rumsfeld to hold off issuing the order to Franks, at least until after Iraq.

In all the back-and-forth deliberations about the impact on Iran of an American invasion of Iraq, no one bothered to test the theories. For an American military that prides itself on its planning prowess, surprisingly little had been done beyond the initial drive up to Baghdad. The opening gambit, as the marines called the march to Baghdad, was rehearsed for nearly a year; what happened after reaching Baghdad received little more attention than a massive CENTCOM PowerPoint presentation and two small staffs hastily assembled just before kickoff. But even that cursory swag had not been done regarding Iran. No Red Team was established to explore the ramifications of the removal of Iran’s archrival. CENTCOM never war-gamed how Iran would react to another American invasion on its borders. The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain examined how to avoid an unintended skirmish with the Iranian
navy in the northern Gulf, but beyond that senior officials merely opined and looked to peripheral issues.