The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (59 page)

At the same time, some nine hundred miles south of Washington, General Crist met with his “board of directors” at his headquarters in Tampa to discuss possible retaliation against Iran. General Crist called Less to say that if he found the suspected Iranian ship, “I’ll ask permission to sink her.” But he was anticipating a call from the chairman or the secretary of defense, and he wanted to have several courses of action ready, from a single target to a large-scale retaliation. “The plan has to be flexible enough to respond to any Iranian escalation.” The most obvious choices, once again, were the platforms that sat astride the convoy routes. But Crist wanted something bigger. He had advocated taking the three-square-mile chunk of rock and sand named Abu Musa Island. Strategically situated within the Gulf on the approach to the Strait of Hormuz, it was fast becoming a major hub for Revolutionary Guard Boghammer and small-boat attacks, which threatened to seriously undermine the entire American effort.
²⁶

But Crowe had his own idea of what they should do. “Get a ship!” he told Crist. Tehran had deliberately tried to sink a U.S. warship and had very nearly succeeded in doing so. The only response, he believed, was to put one of Iran’s ships on the bottom of the ocean. To paraphrase a line from the movie
The Untouchables
: It was the Chicago rules. They put one of ours in the hospital; we were going to put one of theirs in the morgue.

Less too wanted to respond aggressively. He had a powerful armada with which to respond. Thirteen naval combatants sat within the Gulf or just outside, including two cruisers and the aircraft carrier USS
Enterprise
with its embarked carrier air wing of some sixty combat aircraft. Recently a force of four hundred marines arrived on the USS
Trenton
to conduct raids and attacks on Iranian islands and platforms. Two full SEAL platoons were on the two mobile sea bases.

Less proposed augmenting his navy air complement with B-52s from Guam or Diego Garcia, which would then fly in toward Bandar Abbas from over eastern Iran and bomb it from “behind,” where Iranian air defenses were not arrayed.
²⁷
He raised the idea of using Tomahawk cruise missiles to hit fixed targets such as the Iranian navy headquarters at Bandar Abbas.
²⁸
Less called Rear Admiral Guy Zeller, commander of the carrier battle group in the Gulf of Oman, about possibly striking targets at Bandar Abbas, especially the naval headquarters and port facilities that enabled the Iranian navy to operate in the southern Gulf.
²⁹
Zeller met with carrier wing commander Captain Bob Canepa, an experienced fighter pilot with one previous air wing command under his belt. He and his deputy, Commander Arthur “Bud” Langston, had considerable combat experience—Langston with two Distinguished Flying Crosses and more than 270 combat missions, many over North Vietnam.
³⁰
The carrier crew knew well the targets in Iran. They had conducted twenty-seven exercises targeted at Iranian warships, hitting targets such as Silkworm sites around the Strait of Hormuz and even dropping air-deliverable mines as part of the long-standing CENTCOM contingency plans. Extensive planning had been done on ordnance selection, developing strike packages for over twenty different sets of targets around Bandar Abbas and all the way up to Bushehr.
³¹

After receiving Zeller’s input, on April 15, Less sent Crist a proposal to use aircraft to mine the entrance to Bandar Abbas Harbor, effectively bottling up the Iranian navy. Less also recommended destroying the naval district headquarters building in Bandar Abbas.
³²
Meanwhile, U.S. forces would destroy three platforms—Rakhsh, Sirri, and Sassan—in the central and southern Gulf. The only apparent complicating factor was that Sirri remained an active oil producer, pumping 180,000 barrels per day.
³³

Early the next morning, the chiefs met in the Tank. Crowe explained to the assembled brass that there was a consensus within the administration to retaliate for the damage done to the
Roberts
, but beyond that members of the
administration had very different ideas of just what exactly that should entail. With CENTCOM’s proposal in hand, Crowe told them, “Crist wants heavy retaliation. Carlucci wants no loss of life on either side and a very restrained retaliation—little more than a couple of platforms.” Crowe made known in no uncertain terms his own feelings that he wanted to sink an Iranian ship in response to the mining. One ship in particular raised the chairman’s ire: the
Sabalan.
Reading reports over the past months of the tanker war, he grew increasingly irritated at the antics of Captain Manavi. As a sailor, he was appalled at the Iranian’s deliberate targeting of crewmen, seeming to delight in killing as many as possible. Here was a ship and a skipper that deserved to be sent speedily to the bottom of the ocean.

Neither Carlucci nor Powell had much enthusiasm for a large attack against Iran, and both advocated moderation in the American military response. “No one had been killed,” Powell cautioned during a meeting in the White House Situation Room. “We don’t want to expand this conflict.” He brought up the possibility of grave environmental damage to the Gulf should one of the Iranian platforms be destroyed and tens of thousands of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf. Carlucci seemed to agree with his old NSC deputy, and expressed an almost obsessive concern with avoiding casualties, both American and Iranian. He insisted that any U.S. attack needed to be preceded by a warning, allowing enough time for the Iranians to abandon their ship or platform.

Normally cautious during such meetings, Admiral Crowe bucked his usual noncommittal stance and voiced strong objections to the line of reasoning being espoused by his boss and the general turned national security adviser. This time, he argued, they had gone too far, and a mere tit-for-tat response was not enough: “We have to let Tehran know that we are willing to exact a serious price,” Crowe said, forcefully arguing to sink a ship. His logic eventually swayed both Powell and Carlucci, and the two agreed on adding a ship to the target list. No one, however, supported an attack on the Iranian mainland. The only condition in which they would attack Iran proper would be if the Iranians launched their Silkworm missiles against U.S. ships, at which time all bets would be off and the secretary of defense would authorize a very strong retaliation.

Afterward, Powell briefed Reagan. After some discussion, the president agreed to the recommendations to sink a ship and attack the Sirri and Sassan platforms, and if need be one other. Should the
Charak
venture out, or
whichever ship had laid the mines, Crowe said they wanted to sink that as well, and Reagan agreed. With the decisions made, Reagan flew off that afternoon to Camp David in the hills of western Maryland for a weekend of horseback riding.

The meeting adjourned and Crowe’s driver took him back across the river to the Pentagon. Once again, he called Crist in Tampa. “I just got back from the White House, and they want a combat ship.” If the
Sabalan
was at sea, Captain Nasty would be sent to the bottom of the Gulf. To drive the point home in a conference call that evening with Crist, and Less, Crowe ended the conversation addressing Less directly: “Sink the
Sabalan
. Put her on the bottom.”
³⁴

Less’s force would form three surface action groups (SAGs), each comprising three warships. SAG B would attack the westernmost target, the Sassan platform. Commanded by Captain James Perkins of the navy, it comprised two destroyers plus a four-hundred-man marine raid force embarked upon the amphibious ship
Trenton.
³⁵
SAG C would attack the Sirri platform to the east of Sassan, commanded by Captain David Chandler in the aged cruiser USS
Wainwright
.
³⁶
Due to her enhanced command and control suite, the
Wainwright
would also serve as the anti–air warfare commander, meaning that any aircraft from the
Enterprise
coming into the Gulf to strike a target had to check in with the ship before being cleared to attack any target inside the Strait of Hormuz. Finally, SAG D, commanded by Captain Don Dyer, comprising two destroyers and a frigate, would operate in the Strait of Hormuz. It was assigned to find and sink the
Sabalan
.
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To provide a cover for the impending attack, Less’s joint task force and CENTCOM devised a deception plan to fool the Iranians into believing that the buildup of forces in the Gulf was merely part of a forthcoming Earnest Will convoy. U.S. intelligence suspected an Iranian mole within the Kuwaiti oil ministry. The United States relayed to the Kuwaitis a plan to go ahead with a large inbound convoy and to bring some more ships into the Gulf to support it, hoping this word would get back to Tehran to avert suspicion of the true nature of the force buildup. On April 17, three combatants detached from their carrier and entered the Persian Gulf, joining their respective surface action groups. Meanwhile, the
Enterprise
launched standard reconnaissance missions over the Strait of Hormuz and surface and air patrols in the Gulf of Oman, all routine prior to a convoy. Whether the Iranians bought the ruse, however, remained uncertain.
³⁸

Additionally, both CENTCOM and the State Department worked channels to get Saudi Arabian agreement for AWACS and tankers to air-refuel the navy aircraft over Oman, which had been included in an agreement signed the previous year, although Muscat’s approval was not formally received until the operation was already under way.
³⁹

As U.S. forces positioned themselves, American officials were stunned when Iraq launched a massive offensive to retake the al-Faw Peninsula. Moving their forces at night, the Iraqi buildup had gone relatively unnoticed in CENTCOM. In an amazing coincidence, Iraqi forces attacked Iran on land as the United States attacked at sea.
⁴⁰
Iraq launched a well-planned attack on the Iranian positions on al-Faw, labeled Ramadan Mubarak or Blessed Ramadan. Iraqi artillery opened with a short but intense barrage of a mix of explosive and chemical munitions. A rapidly dissipating, nonpersistent nerve agent was used on the Iranian frontline troops, while a longer-lasting blistering mustard gas was dropped on Iranian rear echelon forces. An estimated fifteen hundred 122-mm rockets filled with nerve agents fell in rapid succession on the hapless Iranian front lines.

While one brigade conducted an amphibious attack on the southern tip of al-Faw, flanking the Iranian positions, two Republican Guard divisions in chemical protective gear simultaneously struck the Iranian positions, supported by two regular army divisions. The Iraq air force finally proved its worth; it conducted three hundred sorties closely coordinated with the ground forces, bombing Iranian command and control, logistics, and reserve forces.

The Iraqi advance was both rapid and methodical. Once the lead Republican Guard units achieved the breakthrough, a third division passed through their lines and proceeded to seize the remainder of the peninsula. With a liberal use of chemical weapons, including deadly nerve-agent gas, it would take only thirty-six hours to overrun the ill-equipped Iranian defenders, who died by the hundreds, desperately injecting atropine to counter the effects of the nerve agent, leaving the empty injectors scattered around their trenches.
⁴¹
Never again would Iran threaten Basra or Saddam Hussein’s survival.

The next day, the United States would launch its onslaught in the Persian Gulf in an operation called Praying Mantis.

R
eveille sounded shortly after four a.m. on April 18, 1988. Nerves and last-minute planning had kept most of the men up throughout the night. After a traditional breakfast of steak and eggs, the marines grabbed their weapons and gear and made their way down the flight deck, where they cued up to load on board four helicopters. At seven fifty-five a.m. the
Trenton
began broadcasting in English, Farsi, and Arabic: “Gas-oil separation platform Sirri, this is U.S. Navy Warship. You have five minutes to evacuate your platform. Any actions other than evacuation will result in immediate destruction.”
¹
The marines had arrived in February as part of Crist’s desire to take islands and more platforms in case Washington allowed more aggressive actions against Iran. It was a compact force of four hundred men and eight helicopters embarked on one ship, the USS
Trenton
, commanded by Colonel William Rakow. Before arriving in the Persian Gulf, they spent nearly five months training for the mission, including working with the FBI and civilian oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico about how to attack oil platforms without causing an environmental disaster.

The
Trenton
and two other ships of Surface Action Group B, commanded by Captain James Perkins, sat five thousand yards away from the Sassan gas-oil separation platform, one of the larger ones operated by Iran. It comprised
seven separate multileveled platforms, each a maze of pipes, ladders, wells, and equipment of every size and variety, all linked by catwalks running fifty feet above the water. Each served a different functional requirement, from crew billeting to pumping to one holding four large tanks containing deadly hydrogen sulfide gas, commonly referred to as sewer gas, an unpleasant natural by-product that is separated from the oil and natural gas as it is extracted.
²
After the brief reprieve from Captain Perkins for the Iranians to evacuate, the USS
Merrill
opened fire, sending seventy-pound shells hurtling toward Sassan, where they burst overhead in large puffs of black smoke raining red-hot metal down on the complex. In response, the defenders of Sassan came to life, and the twin-barrel antiaircraft gun on the southernmost platform returned fire with audible
pop-pop
sounds, sending large high-velocity rounds in the direction of the
Merrill
. All fell into the water well short of the warship. The navy shells pummeled the gun and the platform, and the gun went silent as its crew fled for the safety of the lower levels or, in the case of at least one Iranian, leaped into the water to avoid the deadly cascade.
³