The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (63 page)

The navy commissioned a team to look at the Silkworm missile firing. While the team suspected that Iran had fired one in the northern Gulf as Iraqi forces were overrunning the battery, the analysts found no evidence of any missile having been fired in the southern Gulf at Dyer’s forces. The Silkworm reconstruction team summed it up as radar anomalies, false reporting, and errant missiles from Sammy Anderson’s attack on the C-130. When asked about the lack of evidence of Silkworms being fired at his ships, Dyer quipped, “Well, whatever it was, it was big and fast and came from Iran.”

Shortly after the fighting, General Crist wrote to the secretary of defense: “The proof of the planning was in the pudding, and we dined rather well on the 18th.” Praying Mantis was an unqualified success for the United States. In addition to the material damage done, it greatly reduced the Iranian navy as a major threat to tanker traffic. Attacks by Revolutionary Guards in speedboats ceased for the next month. The combination of the disaster of Praying Mantis and the ease of the Iraqi recapture of al-Faw stunned Tehran. The Revolutionary Guards defending al-Faw had not simply been defeated; they had collapsed. An examination of their positions after the battle revealed that many had fled from the moment of the first Iraqi assault. Hashemi Rafsanjani said afterward that Iran could not stand up to both the United States and Iraq, and time was no longer on the side of Iran. Iran later accused the United
States of ferrying Iraqi troops to al-Faw; though it was untrue, Tehran believed it.
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After the fight, Less met with the emir of Bahrain. “The Iranians don’t understand anything but power,” the royal leader told him. “Next time give it to them one thousand times harder!” As it turned out, Iran would not need another beating. The ayatollah was about to fold.

C
onspiracy theories abound in the Middle East in part because there frequently
are
so many conspiracies. To leaders sitting in Tehran, the seemingly combined American and Iraqi offensives on al-Faw and in the Persian Gulf reinforced their long-held opinion of collusion between their two enemies. The accurate Iraqi attack and newfound proficiency of Saddam Hussein’s army all showed the handiwork of the Great Satan. American spies appeared everywhere. Iran had uncovered the CIA’s paramilitary schemes, and a spy in their military had compromised the punitive attack on Saudi Arabia. New American-led efforts had made it increasingly difficult for Iran to purchase weapons and spare parts for its American-made equipment. Heavily in debt and its economy in shambles, Iran had been pushed to the breaking point by the combined force of Iraq and America. The war was nearing a tragic climax, and neither side would emerge unscathed.

T
he Pentagon’s own intelligence organization is housed in a massive gray building-block-shaped structure at Bolling Air Force Base, across the Potomac River from the Pentagon. The Defense Intelligence Agency reports to the secretary of defense and focuses its intelligence collection on foreign
military forces, working in tandem with its sometime rival at Langley. In the mid-1980s, Colonel Walter Patrick Lang headed the DIA’s Middle East and South Asia section. An Army Special Forces officer who served two tours in Vietnam, Lang transitioned to become a foreign-area officer, studying the Middle East and becoming the first Arabic studies professor at West Point. A skilled intelligence officer, he eventually rose to become the first director of the Defense Human Intelligence Service, which controlled all the Pentagon’s own spies. Pat Lang was an opinionated contrarian, especially regarding the Middle East. Acquaintances viewed him as too cynical to be a true Arabist. A frequent critic of Israeli actions, he had no great regard for Iran either, having found the Iranian students he met around the commons while in graduate school at the University of Utah to be pushy and arrogant—a view he held of the Islamic Republic’s leadership too.

The Iran-Iraq War consumed much of Lang’s time as defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, and he found himself frequently called upon to brief senior officials on the ebb and flow of the war. At the direction of Caspar Weinberger’s powerful assistant secretary, Richard Armitage, these briefings included the close confidant of many administrations, Saudi ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan. For his first meeting with Bandar, Lang traveled to the Saudi’s sprawling home off Chain Bridge Road along the Potomac, lugging a case of large classified maps of front lines. The two men spread the maps out across the floor of Bandar’s study, poring over them for the next three hours and carefully discussing the blue and red symbols that represented the armies of Iraq and Iran.
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Bandar liked the presentations and discussions so much that he asked Armitage if Lang could give the same talk to Jordan’s King Hussein. Armitage agreed, and Lang quickly found himself on a plane to Amman.

The king arrived a few minutes late. He had been out riding and appeared dressed in jeans, checkered shirt, snakeskin cowboy boots, and a belt with a large silver rodeo buckle in the shape of Texas. They cleared off a large marble coffee table, and Lang laid out satellite photos and maps and provided a detailed talk on the current military situation along the Iran-Iraq front lines.

At the end of his formal presentation, King Hussein asked, “Is there anything the Iraqis could do better—something they could fix?”

“Well, yes, Your Majesty, there is.” Pointing down to the map, he fingered two Iraqi units near Basra. “One has its front line on the riverbank and the other is deployed half a kilometer back. They are not tied in together at
all. If Iranian patrols discover this gap, they could exploit it and drive right between the two divisions.”

“How could they make such a mistake?” asked the king.

“I don’t know, but it needs to be corrected right away.”

King Hussein turned to the chief of Jordanian intelligence and asked in Arabic, “Can you fly to Baghdad and brief our brothers about this?” Quickly realizing that Lang understood Arabic, a sheepish King Hussein asked if they could take the map and brief the Iraqis on their ill-disposed army.

“Sir, my map is your map,” answered Lang. That afternoon a team of Jordanian officers arrived in Baghdad with Lang’s map, and by the time Lang arrived back in Washington, the Iraqis had moved their forces to close the vulnerable hole in their front line.

In early 1988, spurred on by Jordan, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, the White House renewed its help for Iraq. The DIA focused on helping the Iraqi air force. Lang established a dozen-man cell, replete with satellite imagery interpreters and air force targeting officers, near the director’s office at the DIA building at Bolling Air Force Base. Lang’s deputy was Major Rick Francona, a Middle East air force specialist fluent in Arabic. Francona became the point man for working with the Iraqis. Lang’s team focused on the key operational targets behind the Iranian front lines whose destruction would upend Iran’s ability to launch major offensive operations. These targets included division and corps headquarters, supply dumps, railroad bridges, boatyards where the Revolutionary Guard stored landing craft, and troop cantonments. The Iranians had no real appreciation for modern airpower. They carelessly built large supply bases far forward to support their attacks; most sat out in the open, without adequate protection and virtually undefended from air, or even artillery, attacks. Destroying these would scuttle any Iranian offensive before it began. Within days they had put together twenty target packages, each with multiple individual targets, to pass on to Baghdad. Each one consisted of beautiful hand drawings made from the satellite photographs, plus maps with the locations of nearby Iranian antiaircraft weapons.
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After receiving approval from both nations’ joint chiefs, Lang and Francona flew into Kuwait and drove up to the Iraq border, where the U.S. defense attaché in Baghdad, Colonel David Lemon, and a major in Iraqi intelligence greeted them. The Iraqi major greeted them warmly. “My orders are to take you anywhere you want to go on the way to Baghdad.” Lang decided to test his sincerity: “Okay, I want to see the Iranian front lines around Basra.”

The group drove straight up to Basra, ending at the riverbank near the Sheraton Hotel. Lang climbed up a nearby berm to get a better view and could clearly see the Iranian trenches in the near distance. After a couple of minutes the Iraqi major came up beside him. “Sir, the Iranians have seen you by now. May I suggest you get back down unless you want to die right here.” It was sage advice. As they drove off, their vehicle was straddled by six Iranian artillery shells, exploding uncomfortably close. The Iraqi driver froze in panic, his eyes as wide as saucers and hands clutching the steering wheel in a death grip. Colonel Lemon reached across and grabbed the steering wheel and jammed his foot down on the accelerator. They pulled away just in time to avoid the next six incoming salvos. They arrived at the al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad, and both Francona and Lang headed straight for the bar.

Lang and Francona met with a collection of Iraqi generals and colonels and briefed their proposed targets. As Lang expected, they were ecstatic. “We were greeted like long-lost brothers, or as the cavalry arrived to save the fort.” Lang told them, “We are going to give these intelligence packages to you. We can give you feedback after each strike and tell you whether you destroyed it or need to hit it again, but it’s up to you to prosecute these targets—we’re not going to do it for you. You need to knock them out by yourself.”
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The very next day the Iraqi air force began bombing the first of the twenty target sets, with the DIA back in Washington looking at the imagery following each strike to see what effect the Iraqis had achieved. Despite its large, modern air force and the United States giving the grid coordinates of the Iranian targets down to the meter, the Iraqi pilots displayed greater concern for self-preservation than for military effectiveness, often dropping their bombs from too high an altitude or simply not even approaching the target. As Richard Armitage later observed with open disdain, “They weren’t very good.” But with the DIA providing a steady stream of intelligence updates, the Iraqi pilots went back again and again, bombing the Iranians until they obliterated the bridge or troop cantonment, killing hundreds of soldiers and seriously disrupting Iran’s ability to mount any sort of large-scale attack.

Lang and Francona developed a good rapport with the Iraqis, exchanging ideas for new Iranian military nodes to bomb. By the time the war ended, in August 1988, the Iraqi air force had attacked thirty-five different target arrays provided by the United States. America’s proxy war against Iran proved a remarkable success.

The defense secretary did not authorize Lang to help the Iraqi army, but
when asked his military opinion by an Iraqi general, Lang gave it to him. On numerous visits to Baghdad or down to the front as a guest of one of the Iraqi Republican Guard divisions, over a hot cup of sweet tea, a senior Iraqi general would lay a map of the front line on the table in front of the army colonel. “We are looking at attacking here. What do you think of that?” Lang offered suggestions, such as attacking the Iranians from an exposed flank rather than head-on. The Iraqis invariably took his advice, and while it did not decide the war, the Iraqi Republican Guard battered the Iranian army in a series of tactical victories. Both Lang and Francona became minor celebrities in Iraq, including being invited as guests of honor of Saddam’s elite Hammurabi division.

Saddam Hussein was justifiably pleased with the American intelligence support. In payment, the Iraqis provided American intelligence officers access to dissect the latest Soviet tanks and missiles, and Francona was invited on a tour of captured Iranian trenches where the evidence of Iraqi chemical weapons littered the ground in the form of atropine injectors used by desperate Iranians to stave off the horrific effects of nerve gas. The U.S. Army analysts produced a detailed report on the artillery piece, classified with the highly unusual caveat: “Secret/Not Releasable to Foreign Countries except Iraq.”
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In honor of the United States, Saddam Hussein named a new Republican Guard mechanized division the Tawakalna Division, short for
Tawakalna ala Allah
, or “In God We Trust,” the motto of the United States. The division would be destroyed by American airpower three years later during Operation Desert Storm.

Saddam increased the pressure on Iran in his normal brutal way. Iraq rained dozens of missiles down on Iranian cities, sending at least two hundred screaming down into Tehran, including eleven in one day. Each missile cut a swath of destruction, killing or wounding scores of civilians. By the end of the war, these attacks had killed or injured twelve thousand civilians. The randomness of the destruction played on the population’s fears as the notoriously inaccurate Scud missiles hit schools, apartment buildings, commuters headed home from work. One Iranian living in the United States received a letter telling him that the nice old lady down the block who used to bake cookies was killed when her house took a direct hit from an Iraqi missile. Civilians stayed away from downtown and government buildings. A massive exodus of frightened people fled from the city to the countryside. In April and May 1988 protests began as people started questioning the continuation of the war. This led to clashes between police and rock-throwing students. One
of the demonstrations occurred following a Scud hit on a hotel that killed more than one hundred people who had been celebrating a wedding. Protesters started criticizing Khomeini himself, which was unprecedented even after eight years of war.