Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (4 page)

 
          
Khamenei
seemed surprisingly relaxed as he heard the news— well, probably
not
surprising. It wasn’t from divine
inspiration that he’d first heard about it, Buzhazi knew, but from his contacts
in the VEVAK, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Buzhazi had no
control of that group—they reported directly to the Council of Guardians and to
Khamenei. “What kind of damage was sustained? What casualties?” Khamenei asked.

 
          
“Few
casualties, thanks to Allah, and only a handful of injuries,” Buzhazi said
dismissively. “The attack was directed against the Silkworm and Sunburn
anti-ship missile emplacements, and the major port facilities. Unfortunately,
the attack caused some damage.”

 
          
“My
information says the damage was considerably more than that,” Khamenei said.

 
          
It
had been less than an hour since the attack, Buzhazi reminded himself, and
Khamenei already had a briefing from his intelligence people—very efficient
work for a pious holy man. This man did not sit contemplating his navel in an
ivory tower. He was fully engaged in the operation of the government.
“Regrettably, that is true,” Buzhazi said. “But island defenses will be
restored by the end of the day, and until then, we have naval and air forces on
the scene to maintain security.” “How fortunate,” Khamenei said, almost in a
whisper, like the hiss of a snake’s tongue. “But your defensive strategies for
Abu Musa seem to have been somewhat shortsighted. ...”

 
          
“Eminence,
with all greatest respect, that was not the case,” Buzhazi said. “The defensive
systems I placed on the island were designed to protect the defensive anti-ship
missile emplacements from high- and low-altitude air threats as well as massed
maritime threats. The island was under surveillance by long-range radars from
Bandar Abbas and by short-range radars from
Abu
Musa
Island
itself. In addition, we have seven thousand
troops on that island to defend against amphibious assaults, all very much
aware that our enemies were seeking to destroy those weapons and take those
islands from us at any time. All island defenses were fully functional and on
full alert.”

 
          
“And
so why were these defenses so easily destroyed, General . . . ?”

 
          
“Because
President Nateq-Nouri countermanded my general orders to launch on alert,”
Buzhazi said angrily, “and instead ordered that, unless the island was
unmistakably under direct attack, that all launch orders be issued by the
Defense Ministry in
Tehran
, not by the on-scene commanders. It was madness! I argued against that
policy and appealed to reverse the order ...”

 
          
“The
Council of Guardians has not received any such notification or appeal,”
Khamenei pointed out.

 
          
“I
was going to present my arguments in person with your representative at the
next meeting of the Supreme Defense Council,” Buzhazi lied, knowing full well
that Nateq-Nouri had never countermanded any of Buzhazi’s orders. The policy of
“launch on alert”—fire without warning on any vessel or aircraft that crossed
Iran’s claimed borders or boundaries—had never been an official peacetime
policy of the Iranian government except over Iran’s most highly classified
research centers, bases, or over the capital or the holy cities. The simple
fact was that Iran possessed few trained individuals and workable air defense
systems for very low-altitude air threats; even if the forces on Abu Musa had
had “launch on alert” orders, they probably wouldn’t have been able to stop the
attackers.

 
          
“It
appears to be a moot point now, does it not, General?” Khamenei commented.

 
          
“My
point, Eminence, is that I should be given the tools to do my job if I am to
defend the Republic properly from attack by our enemies,” Buzhazi retorted.
“Abu Musa Island and Greater and Lesser Tumbs belong to Iran, not to Sharjah or
the so-called United Arab Emirates or the Gulf Cooperation Council or the
United Nations or the World Court. I was given the task of defending the
Republic, but my hands were tied by a President, his Cabinet, and a parliament
afraid of stirring up resentment and hatred overseas, afraid of losing
investors and popularity. What more do we surrender? Do we surrender
Kermanshahan and Kurdistan to the murderous Kurds? Do we surrender the Shatt al
Arab to the Butcher of Baghdad? Perhaps Turkmenistan would like the holy city
of Mashhad?”

 
          
“Enough,
General, enough,” Khamenei interrupted, with a weary tone in his voice. “Why do
you not take this matter up with President Nateq-Nouri? The task of
commander-in-chief was delegated to him by His Holiness the Imam Khomeini.”

 
          
“Eminence,
the Presidents inaction in defense matters is plainly obvious to everyone,”
Buzhazi said. “He has reduced the budget of the Pasdaran to less than what we
need for training and proficiency, and chosen to give it instead to the Basij
militias as a form of public welfare and to buy votes for himself. We purchase
advanced weapons, but no money is spent for spare parts or for building our own
military infrastructure—again, the money goes to public-welfare programs to
bribe factory owners and wealthy landowners who support him. Military base
construction is at a standstill because he coddles the labor unions. The
outcome was inevitable, despite all my warnings and precautions: Abu Musa
Islands defenses have been destroyed, and the base is in danger of being
retaken by American and Zionist sympathizers.”

 
          
Khamenei
could obviously recognize Buzhazi’s flowery exaggerations, but he paused in
thought. The conflict between the military and the civilian government had been
brewing for some time, he thought, and this early-morning meeting was perhaps
the wake-up call to action he had been anticipating—perhaps dreading. It was time
for
Iran
’s clergy to take sides in this dispute: Support the government or
support the military?

 
          
The
Grand Ayatollah had known Ali Akbar Nateq-Nouri, the former speaker of the
Majlis-i-Shura, Iran’s Islamic Consultative Assembly, and former President
Hashemi Rafsanjani’s handpicked successor, since before the Revolution, and had
watched General Buzhazi’s meteoric rise in power, and so knew that the only
difference between them was their uniforms. Both men were intelligent,
opportunistic, single-minded, power hungry, and ruthless. Both gave lip service
to the role of Islam in the government, but neither truly believed that the
clergy should have a strong voice in day-to-day affairs—an opinion that
happened to be shared by many in Iran. “What is it you would have us do?”

 
          
“I
have spoken of my plans many times, Your Holiness,” Buzhazi said. “First and
foremost, Iran and its territories must be protected. This is our most
important goal, and we must do all we can to ensure it is done.” He paused,
then said, “We must prohibit all non- Arab warships from entering the Persian
Gulf. No aircraft carriers, no guided-missile cruisers, no submarines carrying
Tomahawk missiles. These are all offensive vessels, designed to wage war on
those who call the Persian Gulf home.

 
          
“The
Khomeini
carrier group must be made
fully operational and deployed immediately to the Gulf of Oman to screen for
foreign warships,” Buzhazi went on. “As we have seen, even with proper warning,
it still takes far too long for land-based aircraft to respond to an attack on
the islands—only the carrier can properly defend the islands against very
low-altitude attackers.”

 
          
“The
Chinese aircraft carrier? The rusting piece of flotsam in the harbor at Chah
Bahar?” Khamenei said scornfully. “I thought we were using that to house the
Chinese advisers, prisoners, Basij volunteers, and jihad members working on the
base-construction project.”

           
“The
Khomeini
is operational, and it is ready to help defend our
rights,” Buzhazi said. “We have a full complement of sailors, fliers, and
weapons aboard, and the carrier’s escort vessels are also ready to set sail. I
had ordered the carrier to Abu Musa Island to assist with island defenses, but
as all of our military forces, they were unprepared for this treacherous
attack.”

 
          
The
Ayatollah Khamenei paused to consider that request. The
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
aircraft-carrier project had been a
pie- in-the-sky project from the very beginning. The Russian aircraft carrier
Varyag
had been laid up at Nikolayev,
Ukraine, since 1991, completely stripped of all essential combat systems; it
had no radar, no communications, no aircraft, no weapons, only its nuclear
power plant, a flight deck, and more than three thousand watertight
compartments. The People’s Republic of China had purchased the 60,000 ton
vessel and made it an operational warship, but the world’s political
consternation at China owning and operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier
in the fragile South China Sea and Sea of Japan region had been too great—if
China had a carrier, Japan wanted five, and the United States wanted to base
five more in the region—so those plans were shelved.

 
          
At
the time, Iran had concluded a $2 billion arms deal with China, and relations
between those two countries had been at an alltime high. The carrier had been
moved to Iran’s new military and oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman called Chah
Bahar, where it had once again been laid up in floating storage. No definite
plans had emerged for the ship: some said it was to be cut up as scrap, then as
a floating hotel, then as a floating prison.

 
          
General
Buzhazi had other ideas. Over the next eighteen months, the Iranians had begun
to install new, relatively modern weapon systems on board the ship, including
Russian anti-ship missiles, Russian aircraft, and state-of-the-art sensors and
equipment from all over the world—all the while insisting to the world that
they were “experimenting” or “assisting”
China
with its plans to convert the carrier for
other uses. Then Iranian MiG-29 and Sukhoi-33 fighter crews had begun
practicing carrier landings. Since early 1996, both Chinese and Iranian crews
had been training aboard the
Varyag
in carrier deck and flight operations in the Persian Gulf. At the same time,
Chinese and Iranian crews had begun firing anti-ship missiles from the carrier,
including the huge SS-N-19 Granit supersonic missile, which was designed to
sink a carrier-class ship over 200 miles away. In effect, both countries shared
the cost of a completely combat-ready aircraft carrier.

 
          
“This
aircraft carrier, it is ready to fight?” Khamenei asked.

 
          
“It
is, Eminence,” Buzhazi replied. “Twenty fighter aircraft, six helicopters,
twelve long-range anti-ship missiles—it is one of the most formidable warships
in the world. With our new Russian, Chinese, and Western surplus warships as
escorts, the
Khomeini
can ensure that
we will not lose our rights to the Persian Gulf.”

 
          
“It
will cause much fear among those who travel the Gulf,” he pointed out.

 
          
“If
it is Allah’s will,” Buzhazi responded. Normally he didn’t care to use the real
religious fundamentalist expressions with others, but of course it was necessary
and proper to do so with the mullahs. “We fear only Allah, Holiness. Let others
fear the Islamic Republic for a change. Your Holiness, we have a right to
defend what is ours, and the
Khomeini
is the best weapon with which to do so. It has been * in shakedown status far
too long—we are ready to put to sea. Give the command, and we shall need worry
no longer about protecting our Gulf from attack.”

 
          
Buzhazi
paused for a moment, then added, “Oil prices will of course be affected by
this, Eminence.”
That
got Khamenei’s
attention. His political fortunes were tied directly into the price of oil, and
for the past several years both had been in a steady decline. “Even if we are
not ultimately successful in closing off the Gulf from all foreign warships—if
the Majlis and President Nateq-Nouri conspire against your wishes and the loyal
people of the Islamic Republic— we will still benefit from the rise in oil
prices. Iran can of course continue to ship oil to its Gulf of Oman terminus at
Chah Bahar, but oil shipments from Gulf Cooperative Council states will be
greatly curtailed.”

 
          
Khamenei
paused once again, but he had decided. The insurance companies would double,
perhaps triple the premiums on supertankers transiting the Gulf, and the
shortage of oil would shoot prices to heaven. The rewards would be great. But
the risks .. . The Faqih nodded. “It shall be ordered,” he said. “But we must
be in the right always, General. World public opinion may favor Iran because we
have been attacked by the oil-hungry West and their Gulf lap- dogs, but we must
not allow the world to ostracize us once again. We are for peace, Buzhazi,
always peace.”