The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (82 page)

Although Iran exercised considerable influence with these organizations, they were not puppets. Arab and Persian animosity runs deep. A haughty Persian attitude made many of these Iraq exiles feel like second-class citizens in Iran. In 2007, then ambassador Ryan Crocker recalled watching a speech by the Iranian president in which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki needed a translator. Crocker expressed surprise, telling al-Maliki that he thought he
might have learned Farsi during his long stays in Iran. The prime minister responded with disdain: “No. You don’t know how bad it can be until you’re an Arab forced to live with the Persians!”
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Iran’s counterinvasion of Iraq followed shortly after the American attack. Iranian MOIS and Quds Force officers arrived in southern Iraq on the heels of U.S. tanks driving north to Baghdad. The Badr Corps led the vanguard of pro-Iranian forces. Some six thousand armed fighters poured hodgepodge into Iraq from Iran. The Badr Corps smuggled in heavy weapons provided by Iran hidden under tarps in commercial trucks. While some came across as armed bands, other individuals intermingled with the thousands of Iranian pilgrims traveling to visit the Shia holy sites in Karbala and Najaf. U.S. intelligence soon suspected that more than a thousand armed Badr Corps soldiers had taken up positions within Najaf proper. As the Iraqi army disintegrated, no one manned the border crossing and the Iranian forces simply walked or drove into Iraq and intermingled with Iranians headed to the holy cities.

Soon MOIS officers were present in all of Iraq. This included the Kurdish city of Arbil, where they established the Majran Tourist Company for Shia pilgrims traveling to Iraq, which also served as a front company for their spy operations. Following the fall of Baghdad, the MOIS operated out of several safe houses in Baghdad and spied on U.S. forces. These operations would not be uncovered until the summer of 2004, when U.S. forces raided one house in Baghdad and arrested four Iranian agents working for the MOIS, all of whom had targeted the U.S. military.

While the MOIS operated as a traditional spy service, the Quds Force operated as a blend of U.S. Special Forces and the Peace Corps. Just after the American attack, more than fifty Quds operatives, including three Iranian general officers, moved into southern Iraq. They came with money and expertise to open medical clinics, rebuild city services, and revitalize religious shrines. To facilitate their operations, the Quds Force established a new headquarters in Mehran, Iran, with two satellite offices in southern and northwestern Iran. From these bases, weapons as well as building supplies and medicine arrived to win hearts and minds—and outfit newly formed militias. They also carefully monitored American forces.
Time
magazine reporter Michael Ware claimed to have seen Quds Force reports from 2003 that logged U.S. troop movements in the city of al-Kut and claimed, “We are in control of the city.”
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All this proved lucrative too. The Revolutionary Guard had increasingly
become a business venture as well as military force. The guard owns export companies, financial institutions, and construction companies. Iranian Quds Force operatives opened up side businesses inside Iraq, making money as they fomented hate for the occupiers.

The Iraqi National Congress aided the Iranian effort. During the U.S. invasion, they passed along the locations of U.S. forces. In theory, this was to avoid any misunderstandings that might lead to a confrontation between the two countries, but it gave Iran the ability to move its agents into Iraq around U.S. forces who might be on the watch for Iranian subversives. U.S. intelligence suspected that Ahmed Chalabi had even told the Iranians that the Americans were reading their sensitive communications, an incredible compromise of some of the United States’ most sensitive intelligence sources.
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The Bush administration found it convenient to ignore this. The silver-tongued Ahmed Chalabi, who maintained a home in Tehran and close ties to senior Iranian officials, continued preaching the gospel that the Defense Department and the White House wanted to hear: the virtues of a democratic Iraq; Baghdad as an ally in the war on terrorism and a bulwark against extremism, including in Iran; and even an Iraq ready to recognize Israel. The Iraqi exile had an American officer assigned to carry a secure phone for him to call back to Washington. On speed dial were two office numbers: Donald Rumsfeld’s and Dick Cheney’s.
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When Chalabi flew into southern Iraq on an American transport aircraft following the U.S. invasion, his large ragtag entourage included many who’d come from Iran, including Badr Corps soldiers.

In Bush’s State of the Union speech following the invasion, Chalabi was accorded a place of honor, sitting next to the First Lady in the gallery. The next day, during a White House meeting, with Bush still aglow from the heady congressional reception the night before, the president asked, “Who invited Chalabi to sit next to Laura?” No one sitting around the table answered, and the president did not press the subject. Richard Armitage, sitting in for Colin Powell, who was out of the country, shook his head. “The only person with that kind of clout in the administration was the vice president, and he sat there and never said a word.”

In fact, rather than worry about Iranian influence, the United States embraced Iran’s surrogates. On March 30, 2003, CENTCOM issued an edict for its troops to disarm any Badr Corps soldiers who appeared carrying weapons out in the street. It was not enforced. During the chaotic occupation
of Baghdad, U.S. Marines operating in the sprawling Shia suburb of Sadr City (then called Saddam City) allowed Shia militias to remain armed. They roamed around the city rounding up Sunni and Baathist officials under the notion that they could tell the good guys from the bad. They certainly did. They rooted them out, killing many. In one instance, with marines nearby, a Sunni official was encased in tires and thrown alive into a burning building. When the on-scene marines learned of it, they treated it with little more interest than halting the pervasive looting throughout the city, the smoke from which cast a pall over the Iraqi capital.
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The Saudis and Kuwaitis raised the alarm over the influx of Iranians. Neither country showed much enthusiasm for the American invasion. Both feared the invasion would expand Shia influence and they believed it would remove a barrier to Iran by replacing the Sunni government with a Shia one. On April 13, Kuwaiti ruler Sheik Sabah al-Sabah expressed his anxiety about the increased turmoil in the Iraqi Shia community, urging the United States to provide security for the holy shrine in Najaf. If the United States failed to do this, Iran would step in and assume the prestigious role as the guarantor of safety of the key Shia shrines.
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At the urging of the State Department, more American forces were moved to safeguard Najaf and Karbala. But Iran knew the language and culture far better than the well-intentioned American soldiers. While U.S. troops safeguarded Shia pilgrims, Iranian operatives moved among the populace and cultivated the emerging Shia groups.

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ran’s sudden appearance in Iraq did not go unnoticed by the U.S. military. “We need to stop the Iranians from trying to influence Iraq,” Rumsfeld wrote to Doug Feith in a May 1, 2003, “snowflake” memo. “Let’s come up with a plan of four or five things to do, so we get some success. They need to know we are serious.” After conferring with Joint Chiefs vice chairman Peter Pace, Feith responded with the now familiar line on Iran. They needed to sever any support for terrorist groups—as defined by the United States, dismantle the Quds Force, end its nuclear and missile programs, and support a Middle East peace process that maintains Israel as a Jewish state. Feith also suggested that the United States adopt a multifaceted approach similar to that of the Iranians. He recommended a list of different actions: closing down Iranian intelligence operatives and arresting the fifty to seventy-five Quds Force officers inside Iraq, providing security for senior Shia clerics, and
developing a propaganda campaign that would highlight moderate Shia leaders and Iran’s malign influence in Iraq. Feith also suggested the United States could expel the Badr Corps troops, although at nearly five thousand fighters, this would take considerable military muscle, and Feith offered no idea of where they would be expelled to.

Rumsfeld tasked both Joint Chiefs chair Richard Myers and CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks with countering Iran’s growing influence. He liked the idea of targeting the Quds Force through arrests or harassment. But Rumsfeld ordered Franks to come up with a plan to arrest the four known Quds Force generals in Iraq. Franks agreed and tasked his special forces operators from Task Force 20, currently looking for the high-value men like Saddam and his two sons, to come up with a quick snatch of the four generals operating in Basra and Baghdad. CENTCOM issued a new directive to its commanders to detain by force any Badr Corps soldier found carrying a weapon or “engaging in conduct incompatible with good order and detrimental to creating a law abiding society.”
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“I have no doubt that USCENTCOM forces will exercise their full authority when dealing with Badr Corps members,” Myers wrote back to Rumsfeld.

American proconsul L. Paul Bremer too raised concerns about Iran and the Badr Corps with Rumsfeld in his first two weeks in Baghdad. “Iran is committing serious assets in Iraq, and it is time to move against what is a concentrated Iranian long-term strategy.” Bremer recommended rolling up Iran’s intelligence service and closing its embassy. He held a meeting with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the brother of the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI). Bremer told him that the U.S. government was concerned about Badr Corps activities and that the Iranians were up to no good in Iraq. Al-Hakim protested on both accounts, but listened.

Bremer postponed the planned June elections in Najaf in part to prevent the ISCI from winning the local elections through force of arms and intimidation. In an e-mail to Rumsfeld regarding Najaf, Bremer laid out his concerns: “Elements of the Tehran government are actively arming, training and directing militia in Iraq. To date these armed forces have not been directly involved in attacks on the Coalition. But they pose a longer term threat to law and order.”
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Bremer asked the British commander to step up his forces along the border and raised the alarm with Rumsfeld that the Polish and Ukrainian forces
arriving to relieve the U.S. Marines in southern Iraq were not up to the task of containing the Iranians.
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Bremer’s comments about delaying the redeployment of the marines did not go down well with the Pentagon. In a note to the careerist and secretive army colonel who ran the chairman’s Iraqi planning office, Kevin Bergner, Abe Shulsky commented on Bremer’s meeting with Iraqi political leaders and his attempt to counter pro-Iranian elements in Najaf and Karbala: “Pretty strong language…definitely does not sound like he is on board with Polishled MND [multinational division] taking over that sector.”

Relations between Rumsfeld and Bremer had already turned sour, with Bremer’s independent style aggravating the defense secretary. Going after the Badr Corps and Shia militias was a sensitive subject in the Pentagon, and Chalabi and the INC views held sway. The U.S. military could go after Saddam loyalists but not the Shia. In a phone conversation on May 20, Rumsfeld cautioned his four-star general that any dealings with Iran would be controlled by the National Security Council and the White House. “The NSC wants to be the center of gravity for all Iranian contacts,” the secretary said. This included any dealings with the MEK. He ordered Franks not to take any action against Iranians inside Iraq without Rumsfeld’s personal approval.

Harward also raised the alarm about Iran following his near shoot-out in early April. The SEAL commander had his intelligence section focus on the Iranian problem, and it quickly unmasked Iran’s campaign to infiltrate forces into Iraq. The aggressive actions by the Revolutionary Guard small boats had been designed to try to prevent the Americans from interfering with one of their main routes into southern Iraq. One of Harward’s intelligence officers was a direct-commission navy reserve lieutenant named Thomas Mahnken. The dark-haired Mahnken held a doctorate from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and when not in uniform he taught strategy at the Naval War College in scenic Newport, Rhode Island. He began analyzing the Iranian and Badr infiltration routes, termed “rat lines” by the SEALs. In short order, he uncovered several key routes following traditional smuggling trails leading into Basra and Baghdad. One of the key cities in the Iranians’ movement into Iraq was Amarah, strategically situated on the Tigris River and only thirty miles from the Iranian border. With a population of some three hundred thousand, mostly Shia, the Badr Corps soldiers along with some troops from the Iranian Quds Force arrived in force and occupied the old Baath Party facilities, effectively taking control of the city. Based
upon the information gleaned by Mahnken, Harward proposed deploying SEAL teams to interdict the Iranian rat lines. While Harward hoped to avoid an armed confrontation, the SEALs could at least detain Iranian agents and round up many of the weapons flowing in with the Badr Corps soldiers.

Harward met resistance from the United Kingdom too. With southern Iraq, including Amarah, in the British area of responsibility, the Queen’s soldiers had to approve any operations by Harward’s SEALs. Mahnken drove up to the headquarters of the British division near Basra to discuss options to counter the Iranians. Rather than support the Americans, Mahnken was told by the senior British intelligence officer that they were overreacting. The gunfire by Iranian soldiers had been directed at smugglers, and Iran was doing a good job of controlling its borders. Moreover, the British found no evidence of Badr Corps troops moving across the border. Mahnken tried to argue the point, but the British simply refused to accept his intelligence. “I believe you are overreacting; the Iranians are not a problem.”
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