The image of twilight elicits a
bright day shrinking slowly into night.
As we see from Mossadeq to the hostages and from Iran-Contra to recent
cyberattacks, the relationship between Iran and the United States was born at
night and has struggled through the dark ever since. Upon reading David Crist’s 572 page history
that documents the three-decade long non-relationship, can anyone describe our
policies as anything but a needless and enduring failure? Crist, a historian for the federal government
and advisor on Middle East issues, has produced
The Twilight War: The Secret
History of America’s Thirty-Year Conflict With Iran, a clear arc from
tragedy to farce in this very special relationship.
Crist begins in the collapsing
scenery of Shah Pahlavi’s detested reign and ends with Obama’s success in
leading an international coalition towards comprehensive sanctions on a
thirty-three year old “Islamic Republic.”
His narrative is not just stuffed with excellent anecdotes about covert
activities (did you know that during the Cold War U.S. war planners hid caches
of weapons and explosives in Eastern Europe?) it exposes the inner workings of bad
and worse policymaking.
There are also
some delicious cameos: The US hawking
F-16’s to Sheik Hamad bin isa Al-Khalifa (the future king of Bahrain) as a
bulwark against Iran. The cat-clever
Kuwaiti emirs who manipulated both the Soviets and the U.S. And Moammar Gadaffi, insane as ever, sinking
sixteen ships in the 1980s by inexplicably mining the Red Sea.
And the details about our own leadership
are provocative as well. If William
Hartung’s excellent Prophets of War showed
Reagan napping as defense contractors feasted on the Treasury, Crist’s portrait
is of a dithering mooncalf. Upon
defeating Carter, Reagan refused to meet with the Joint Chiefs (a cheap snub)
and began pushing the CIA to supply resources to Iraq, Iran’s longtime foe. Crist cites the smug “realist” Richard
Armitage saying, ““Neither side [of the Iran-Iraq War] was a good guy. It’s a pity the war could not have lasted
forever.” With the help of U.S. and many
members of NATO, the gunrunners earned their cash, and the protracted conflict
ended with a whimper after eight years with nearly a million dead.
During the war, when the Iranian
ally Hezbollah kidnapped seven hostages, Reagan decided that he could do
business with Iran. After all, he had written
letters citing America and Iran’s mutual religiosity as a reason to ally
against the Soviets. (Of course, this was right before his administration
supplied fabricated Soviet invasion plans.)
But before Reagan's notorious,
unconstitutional arms-for-hostages scheme supplied guns to the mullahs and offered
American society the lachrymose speeches of Oliver North, Defense Secretary
Weinberger supplied the President an admonition: “This will undermine…our entire effort to
contain Iran. We will lose all credibility
with our allies. There are legal
problems here, Mr. President, in addition to the policy problems. It violates the Arms Export Control Act, even
if done through the Israelis. It
violates our arms embargo against Iran.
It is illegal.”
Reagan responded to Weinberger and other
critics, “Well, the American people will never forgive me if big, strong
President Reagan passed up a chance to free the hostages over this legal
question.”
Then on Nov. 13 he lied to the
public about the deal and his sordid role in the deal. As the great Alexander Cockburn once wrote of
Reagan, “Truth…was what he happened to be saying at the time.” Crist is less certain. “Whether the president deliberately lied or
was merely self-delusional remains debatable,” he writes, “but the United
States had not only negotiated with a declared terrorist regime, but sold
senior officers of the military arm of the Islamic Revolution—the Revolutionary
Guard—planeloads of advanced weapons that could easily be used for offensive
action. They had even provided [the
Iranians] a tour of the White House.”
The last minute pardons by Bush 41 nixed the multiple indictments that
would have exposed the shameful and illegal behavior of those sheltered by the
interstices of the national security state. Ironically, Khomeini would later turn
U.S. weapons on the superpower in minor clashes that Crist describes with
pointillistic detail.
It is the contradictions of our
position with Iran that are the most vexing about The Twilight War. It seems
that whenever U.S. policymakers were serious about a rapprochement—the mullahs
would shout vitriol that Americans pols would take too seriously. (And vice versa). “The U.S. saw threats everywhere,” Crist
writes. And the conservatives in Iran’s
leadership were even worse. Iran would
offer a “Roadmap” in 2003 that would address every issue of contention between
Iran and the US—agreeing to full transparency in its nuclear program and agreed
to halt its support for Hamas and take actions that would lead to a
demilitarization of Hezbollah.
What did the Iranians want? A stop to “regime change” policies, turn over
MEK members, and to recognize Iran’s “legitimate security interest in the
region.” They also wanted a statement
that withdrew Iran from the ‘axis of evil’.
Kharrazi, Iran’s ambassador to France said in a statement: “We are ready to normalize relations.” But all this went nowhere and was undermined
by narrow ideology, bogus preconceptions, lack of imagination, and bureaucratic
suspicion.
Oh, and terrible American
leadership.
George
H.W. Bush, for instance, communicated to the Iranians that “goodwill leads to
goodwill.” But as was his custom, Bush
lied and reversed himself for political expediency. The corrupt but pliable President Rafsanjani was
abandoned and the toughs in Tehran—the Revolutionary Guard, the supreme leader,
the Guardian council, and the parliament-- denounced moderation with
Americans. If Reagan set back the
relationship through contradictions and dithering, Bush worsened it through
cynicism and hubris. Then, unbelievably,
hoping for a deal with newly elected Bill Clinton, Rafsanjani awarded a $1
billion contract to Conoco to develop an underwater oil field. Contract on
America Republicans (along with the craven Clinton) killed the deal because
they wanted to rub elbows with Israel! As you may remember, Clinton’s eight
years were a nullity—save scandal and the Democrats deepening support for
corporations—his attempts at a legacy through talks with Iran went the way of
Hillarycare.
But
it was “The Decider” and his crew of fools, rowing up the Euphrates without a map, who went out of their way to worsen
relations with the Iranians. In Decision Points, he admits to leaving
the Iranian issue “unresolved.” (Though,
what resolution he ever sought escapes me.) In
2000, Bush was no internationalist. In
that campaign, he showed little interest in Iran or Iraq; isolation and
“realism” was his nostrum. After the
attacks, Bush snubbed the moderate President Khatami, a reformer who was
attempting to modernize a regressing country.
Khatami had hoped to light a candle to pay his respect to the victims of
the Sunni attack and was refused because Iran, Iraq, and Syria were seen by
administration hawks as equivalent evils in the “war on terror.”
Crist rightly declares this as a
lost opportunity for an alliance; by using the “natural divisions” within the
region, better policy could have been crafted for the U.S. and the peoples of
the Middle East. (As Bush will
undoubtedly claim credit for emerging economic growth in Iraq, this failure is
notable.) Instead, as Rumsfeld once
famously noted in his famous “snowflake” memos, all was swept up “things
related and not.” Iran was denounced as
totalitarian—though Washington’s own allies were no angels. The opportunity of exploiting the narcissism
of small differences dissolved. The
administration refused any consideration of Iran in a postwar role—despite the
obvious Shia majority within Iraq. And
by 2006 over 140 soldiers were killed by Shia militias. How much of this could have been prevented
with foresight from Bush’s “Vulcans” and the most basic of diplomatic
communication? Iran had cooperated
during the Gulf War—even helping evacuate hostages from annexed Kuwait. Why was it so unthinkable now considering the
overtures by Khatami and his own domestic reforms?
By
the time Obama reached the White House and offered to talk without precondition
to Iran’s leaders, it seemed too late.
Years of suspicion and mutual distrust (as well as the brutal and
erratic behavior of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad) jammed negotiations. The reckless behavior by the Basiji in 2009’s
stolen election pushed the pro-American youth underground and discredited
Iran’s leadership more than anytime since Khomeini needlessly prolonged the
conflict with Iraq.
Recently, Obama successfully cut
off Iran and the two countries now wander towards possibilities: Nuclear conflict, an Israeli strike during a
post-election interregnum, or an underground earthquake that could devastate
hidden nuclear material. (These are some of the more lurid ones.) But a protracted stalemate seems unlikely. The strength of The Twilight War is Crist’s ability to illuminate the shadowy
history; it illustrates the repeated incompetence of officials whose decisions
have led us into the uncharted dark.
