The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (83 page)

Despite snowflakes and memos, in the end Rumsfeld’s intent to counter Iranian influence ran contrary to the defense secretary’s own desire to withdraw forces quickly. In an e-mail to his subordinate army commander Lieutenant General David McKiernan, Tommy Franks ordered him to “take as much risk getting out as you did getting in.” Rumsfeld did not want the military tied down in a large occupation. “Recock” became the word of the day at CENTCOM. The United States would get out of Iraq and prepare for the next war in the global fight against terrorism, with rumors circulating that Syria was next. The U.S. military concurred. The short war of Desert Storm was the generals’ model and no one in uniform wanted a long occupation. Franks was happy to leave the details of post-war Iraq to the Pentagon civilians. With Iranian influence growing and the security situation in chaos, rather than address the impending crisis and engage the British on the merits of the intelligence, American special operations troops packed up and left Iraq. Harward’s ideas to counter the Iranians went to the shredder, and by mid-May the SEALs and Harward’s command were back in California. Franks had taken a risk and left Iraq open for the Revolutionary Guard.

T
he early success in Iraq gave renewed impetus within the Bush administration for a strategy regarding Iran. Once again senior officials gathered around the table in the confined White House Situation Room to discuss
what the U.S. policy should be toward Iran. On April 25, 2003, Condi Rice chaired a video teleconference with senior officials. The disembodied faces from across the globe all agreed that they should try to discredit the Iranian clerical rule, stop its nuclear program, and call for it to be a good neighbor to Iraq. But the group seemed no more united on how to achieve these ends than they had the previous October, when Rice shelved the idea of a presidential decision directive on Iranian policy. Over the ensuing six months, the national security adviser had not tried to force the issue with Bush either. Now, as Iran moved into the vacuum of post-Saddam Iraq, the U.S. government fretted and held more meetings.

Rice floated another paper outlining broad goals. The paper referred to “democratic transformation as opposed to regime change” as the American goal. The United States would maintain unrelenting pressure on Tehran to end its nuclear program and nefarious activities in Iraq, and held out the possibility of military action to rein in Iran. The U.S. presence in Afghanistan and Iraq would keep Iran on the defensive, the White House surmised.

The paper circulated among senior officials, and its lack of specificity made most everyone happy. In a June 25, 2003, principals meeting, Rice said the paper obviated the need for a more formal document and that she intended to give it as a memo to the president. “We should make it very clear that we will do anything to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, supporting terrorism, and disrupting our Iraq strategy.”

Powell responded, “Student demonstrations indicate a desire for a better life, but we shouldn’t push for regime change—we don’t know what we’ll get.”

“I agree the paper lays out generally the right policy,” Rumsfeld added. “But we should encourage the demonstrators, perhaps through IO [information operations]. We should tell the Iranian people the regime is harboring al-Qaeda personnel in order to embarrass the regime.”

Rice added that the United States should encourage people-to-people exchanges, an idea Powell liked. Rumsfeld dissented. He suggested it would open the door to spies inside the United States and opined that talking with Iranian academics was a waste of effort. “We will be talking with people with no power,” he said.

Toward the end of the meeting, Vice President Cheney added his opinion:
“I am not sure that the paper reflects the dangers and the opportunities in Iraq. We are not using our enhanced posture enough. It is not aggressive enough.” Cheney objected to taking regime change off the table as an option. Further, he argued that the U.S. invasion and swift dispatch of Saddam Hussein presented an opportunity. Iran was nervous that it might be next. U.S. forces were poised on two sides of Iran, and Washington needed to leverage this to pressure Iran into acquiescing to America’s wishes. Cheney had no use for talking to the Iranians, and this coercive window of opportunity would not stay open forever.

“We don’t know what will happen if we have regime change. Need to be careful moving forward,” Powell retorted.

“We can’t just do nothing,” Cheney threw back at Powell. “We need to determine targets, especially if they hit us. We need options to take advantage of this window.”

Again, the administration was at an impasse. Rice refused to engage and shifted the subject to needing a diplomatic effort to isolate Iran, while Rumsfeld screeched about the need for actionable intelligence. Without any agreement, and lacking an unequivocal presidential edict, nothing happened. America’s Iran policy drifted on an endless river of point papers and discussions.

H
owever, the fact that the American military achieved in three weeks what Iran failed to do in eight years of war scared the supreme leader. Administration hard-liners like Cheney and Luti had been correct: American military force had successfully intimidated Iran. While continuing low-level enrichment of uranium, Iran halted its nuclear weapons program out of fear of provoking an American attack.
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The supreme leader, hedging his policy bets, decided to again open a dialogue with the United States. Iranian leaders understood the divisions within the U.S. government and looked for a new channel beyond those in Geneva. Khalilzad had made it clear that the United States was unwilling to expand the talks beyond the narrowest focus as a one-way lecture on American demands. So the Iranians turned to the one recognized, official means of communicating with the United States: the twenty-year-old channel through the Swiss embassy. Perhaps this would get their message to senior officials disposed to talk.

O
n May 4, 2003, a mysterious two-page fax arrived at the U.S. State Department. Delivered by the Swiss foreign ministry, the document originated from its ambassador in Tehran, Tim Guldimann. On the second page, under the heading “Roadmap,” the Iranians presented an astounding agenda, a way forward to address every issue of contention between the Islamic Republic and the United States. Breaking down U.S. and Iranian aims into a series of bullets, Iran agreed to full transparency for its nuclear program and agreed to halt its support for Hamas and to take actions that would lead to a demilitarization of Hezbollah. In return, the Iranians wanted the United States to stop trying to change their political system, to turn over MEK members, and to recognize “Iran’s legitimate security interests in the region.” They also wanted a public statement that Iran was not part of the axis of evil. To achieve these goals, the two nations would engage in a series of confidence-building measures, beginning with issuing joint statements on the need to meet with “mutual respect,” moving to direct meetings and the establishment of working groups to hash out the details of a permanent arrangement that would end the thirty years of estrangement.
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Guldimann was a respected diplomat. When his five-year posting to Tehran ended, he moved up to a plum assignment as ambassador to Germany. His last few years in Iran had been marred by personal hardship. His wife had been diagnosed with cancer, requiring her to move to Hamburg, with Guldimann shuffling back and forth to visit her as she underwent lengthy but ultimately successful treatment.
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But the American State Department under Colin Powell had not been overly happy with Guldimann. Officials expected Guldimann, as the official conduit for démarches between the United States and Iran, to simply provide a messenger service without comment. Richard Armitage viewed him as too much a cheerleader for rapprochement, going beyond his mandate of simply relaying messages to actively working to resolve the diplomatic impasse. Those within the administration who opposed any talks with Iran, such as Elliott Abrams at the NSC and John Bolton at State, had even harsher words for Guldimann, recommending to the Swiss that he be fired.
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On April 21, Sadeq Kharrazi, Iran’s ambassador to France and former deputy foreign minister, met with Guldimann, and the two discussed a draft road map for improving relations that the Iranian had developed. Kharrazi
had clout within the Iranian government, with his sister married to the son of the supreme leader. Over the next two weeks, Kharrazi met several times with Ayatollah Khamenei to discuss the points in the proposed road map. The discussion remained a state secret, with only the supreme leader, President Khatami, and Kharrazi present at those meetings.

Ambassador Zarif, who now happened to be in Tehran for consultations and to see his family, reviewed the draft of the road map. He made numerous changes to the Microsoft Word document, his red tracked changes marking up the document, adding in the words “mutual respect” and the need for a democratically elected and fully representative government in Iraq. Zarif’s input looked remarkably similar to those points he had discussed the previous fall with American Iranian Council president Hooshang Amirahmadi during their ultimately failed efforts to achieve a breakthrough in December 2002.
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Despite reservations, the supreme leader agreed with the opening. The Swiss represented the official means to communicate between Washington and Tehran. While a new round of talks was scheduled in Geneva, the Bush administration had refused to expand their scope beyond Afghanistan and subjects only of interest to the Americans. Kharrazi reassured the supreme leader that Guldimann could get to the highest levels of the U.S. State Department. Ayatollah Khamenei expressed some concerns, but commented that he concurred with 80 to 95 percent of the points laid out as far as U.S. and Iranian goals for the talks, deliberately remaining vague about the points on which he disagreed. “But everything can be negotiated,” Khamenei said.
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On May 2, Kharrazi met with Guldimann. After Guldimann made some minor changes to the document, Kharrazi said, “If the Americans agree to have a discreet bilateral meeting on the basis of this road map, the meeting could be arranged very soon. In this meeting our remaining reservations could be discussed, as well as the U.S. would bring in their reservations on this paper. I am sure that these differences could be eliminated.” If they agreed to the framework for talks, the next step, Kharrazi thought, would be a direct meeting between Secretary of State Powell and the Iranian foreign minister in Paris or Geneva with the supreme leader’s blessing. Kharrazi continued, adding a historic statement: “We are ready to normalize relations.”

Guldimann clearly approved of this new opening. “This is a golden opportunity; one day we must find a solution,” the Swiss diplomat told Kharrazi. When asked if he believed that Armitage would represent the
United States at the first meeting, Guldimann correctly thought he would be too senior, but recommended that it mimic the ongoing meetings with Khalilzad and Zarif on terrorism with a similar-level group, perhaps with Kharrazi or even Zarif.

Guldimann sent the road map document with a cover letter describing his talks with Kharrazi through official channels back to the U.S. State Department. He followed it up with a quick visit to Washington, where he met with a powerful Republican, Congressman Bob Ney, a Farsi speaker known to advocate for talks with Iran. Guldimann provided a copy of the road map document to Ney and vouched for its authenticity. After meeting with the Swiss ambassador, Ney picked up the phone and called an old college friend at the White House, who happened to be the president’s close political adviser Karl Rove. Rove assured Ney that the Iranian overture would get in front of the president.

The Guldimann fax with the Iranian road map circulated through the State Department. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Nicholas Burns brought it up to Armitage, who took it over to Powell. When Powell’s chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, read it, he immediately recognized many of the elements that Richard Haass had drafted at the beginning of the administration on the topics for negotiations. He claimed later that Haass’s memo had been slipped to the Iranians during the Crocker meeting in Geneva. “They were responding to what we gave them,” Wilkerson said.
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Hillary Mann, who had worked with Ryan Crocker during the earlier talks with Zarif and the Revolutionary Guard, recommended testing Iran’s sincerity. She drafted a memo and sent it to Richard Haass, who approved it and forwarded it up to the front office for Powell and Armitage. When the pugnacious John Bolton heard about it, he grew livid. “It was fantasy,” he said. Bolton remained convinced that talking to Iran was fruitless. “They used diplomacy-stalling techniques. This was little more than a ruse to buy more time for their nefarious activities and nuclear weapons program.”
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He spoke to Powell and told him it was a bad idea to talk to the Iranians. Then he phoned the Swiss embassy and berated them for the excesses of their ambassador, who had exceeded his instructions in managing the official channel.