The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran (97 page)

Lonely and distraught, on July 13, 2010, Amiri showed up at the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani embassy near the vice president’s home at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. He asked to be returned to Iran.
Two days later, he arrived in Tehran, where after warmly embracing his seven-year-old son and his father, he held a press conference and claimed to have escaped from his CIA abductors, adding, “They offered me $50 million to cooperate with them and tell the media that I am a very important person in Iran’s nuclear program. They wanted me to show a laptop on the TV and say we have obtained very important information on Iran’s nuclear weapon program. But I promised myself not to tell [them] anything against my country.” The Iranian Fars News Agency claimed Amiri had been a double agent the entire time, working for Iranian intelligence—a possibility that the CIA considered too.
³⁰

What happened to him after his return remains unclear. Iranian authorities wanted first to find out what had been compromised. Rather than throw him in prison, he received a hero’s welcome that also helped the government save face. However, reports circulated in 2011 that he had been charged with espionage and imprisoned. If not executed, he is destined for a life in internal exile and house arrest.
³¹

The spy game was not confined to Iran. In 2004, with Iranian assistance, Hezbollah established a counterintelligence unit called a spy combat unit.
³²
The unit quickly grew in competence in its search for American and Israeli agents. Working with Lebanese government security officials, Hezbollah started using computers to search through phone call records looking for unusual calling patterns, such as short-duration calls between two prepaid cell phones.
³³
In 2009, they claimed to have arrested a hundred Israeli agents. While this was likely a gross exaggeration, the new counterspy effort raised enough alarms in Langley to cause the Americans to reassess their own operations, and reportedly CIA officers were told to be especially careful about how they handled their agents in south Lebanon.
³⁴

In June 2011, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah disclosed during a television interview that Hezbollah had unmasked two CIA spies. These then led to a third man. Hezbollah’s al-Manar news ran stories on TV using animation to describe the group’s covert meetings with CIA officers at a prominent Pizza Hut in south Beirut, as well as a McDonald’s and a Starbucks coffee shop. The Lebanese group listed the names of the chief of station and four other CIA case officers, plus nicknames for five other Americans accused of being CIA employees involved in spying in Lebanon. During his Friday sermon on June 24, 2011, Nasrallah summoned the often used Iranian line and called the American embassy in Beirut a “nest of spies.”
³⁵

This drew a reaction from the American ambassador, a seasoned Foreign Service officer named Maura Connelly, who traveled to visit General Michel Aoun at his residence in the hills of East Beirut. Aoun, who had commanded the Lebanese army brigade during the 1983 engagement that had led to Bud McFarlane’s famous “sky is falling” memo and direct American military intervention in the Lebanese Civil War, was now a coalition partner with his old adversary Hezbollah in the Lebanese government. Since American diplomats are prohibited from talking to Hezbollah, Ambassador Connelly went to Aoun to complain about Nasrallah’s accusations against her embassy. “We view these accusations as an attempt to deflect attention away from internal tensions in Hezbollah,” she said after the meeting. While it was generally the Lebanese leader who engaged in hyperbole, this time it was an American diplomat trying to deflect attention from the uncovering of U.S. agents in Lebanon.
³⁶

Just the previous month, in May 2011, Iran claimed to have arrested thirty suspected CIA agents, stating that the discovery of a secret Internet communication method used by the CIA had led to the uncovering of the traitors. But Iran defined spies broadly, and included journalists, academics, and officials in Iranian energy companies whose only “crime” was e-mailing colleagues in Europe or the United States. Iranian officials accused the United States of establishing special websites to communicate with its agents. An Iranian news website claimed that the MOIS had used a number of double agents to identify forty-two more CIA agents and revealed a program aimed at “misleading and entrapping Iranian youth and students,” especially by telephone polling to ask their opinions.
³⁷
It was indeed a broad definition of a Western spy.

Iran scored a lucky blow against the CIA when U.S. covert flights over the Islamic Republic were exposed. On December 4, 2011, Iranian troops stumbled upon a superstealthy U.S. Air Force RQ-170 Sentinel drone, operated by the CIA from an airfield in southwestern Afghanistan. Flying at fifty thousand feet, the bat-wing-shaped unmanned plane looked like a miniature B-2 Stealth bomber and carried sophisticated surveillance equipment. Designed to evade radar, it represented the most advanced drone in the American inventory. While 150 miles inside Iranian airspace, the CIA operator lost the satellite link that allowed him to control his drone, and the dune-colored plane came down largely intact to the sands of Iran’s eastern desert. An Iranian military engineer claimed that Iran’s electronic warfare forces had jammed
the signal and had reconfigured the GPS coordinates to have it return not to home base near Kandahar, but to an air base in Iran.

U.S. officials talking on background to reporters denied this claim as an empty brag, while admitting that the drone had not accidently strayed over Iran. The CIA—not the air force—had been flying the drone and its covert mission had been to look for new Iranian nuclear sites. Since 2005, Iran has continually accused the United States of using drones to spy on its nuclear facilities. Normally, when a country is caught so flagrantly violating another state’s territory, it apologizes or at least “expresses regret.” But nothing is normal about relations between the United States and Iran. Instead of apologizing, President Obama had the temerity to ask for the drone’s return. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Martin Dempsey, never even denied American spying on Iran. Speaking to a CNN reporter, he flatly stated: “If you’re asking are we gathering intelligence against Iran in a variety of means, the answer is, of course. It would be rather imprudent of us not to try to understand what a nation who has declared itself to be an adversary of the United States is doing.
³⁸
Not surprisingly, Iran rejected the odd request. Tehran then complained about the intrusion to the UN Security Council.
³⁹

As tensions between Iran and the United States increased, the likelihood of military confrontation grew. Iran’s ballistic missiles continued to worry CENTCOM planners. In remarks at Georgetown University Law Center on January 21, 2010, General Petraeus publicly stated that the United States had deployed eight Patriot missile batteries in the Gulf, deployed in Kuwait, the UAE, and Bahrain. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait had all decided to purchase more advanced missiles and radars.

Under President Obama efforts to build a missile defense array against Iran accelerated. As hopes of engagement faded, the administration moved to place additional pressure on Iran and prepare for war. The president ordered more forces to the Gulf to counter Iranian missiles. In February 2010, the Defense Department published a ballistic missile defense review study that continued to commit the United States to defend against Iranian missiles. During a March 2010 symposium in Abu Dhabi, the head of the Missile Defense Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick O’Reilly, outlined the overarching American strategy of a layered land and sea system that allowed the detection and engagement of Iranian missiles from across the Gulf and was capable of shooting down intercontinental missiles directed as far away as
Europe.
⁴⁰
The United States deployed additional high-altitude Patriot batteries as well as Aegis radar ships outfitted with the Standard Missile 3, which had recently proved its ability to destroy high-altitude targets by shooting down a falling satellite. Secretary Gates ordered one of these cruisers to be permanently stationed inside the Persian Gulf.
⁴¹

The United States sponsored the Integrated Air Defense Center for Excellence near the air force headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE. It was a state-of-the-art facility designed to simulate defending against a missile attack in order to develop common training and procedures across the Gulf militaries.
⁴²
While Saudi Arabia objected to the center’s being in the UAE rather than in its kingdom and initially refused to participate, in the early exercises all Arab planners privately acknowledged the need for better cooperation and were frank about both their shortfalls and their need to share information. While this did not translate into any immediate breakthrough in intermilitary cooperation, the admission alone was a major step forward in forging closer military ties with the United States and with each other.

CENTCOM also worried about continued Iranian mischief in Iraq. After the U.S. raids in 2006 and 2007, the supreme leader ordered Quds Force officers not to travel to Iraq. By 2009, however, Revolutionary Guard officers started reappearing in Iraq, now unhindered as U.S. forces no longer patrolled the cities. Quds Force commander Major General Qassem Suleimani wanted to hit the Americans as they left Iraq. “He wanted to kick us in the butt on the way out the door,” said a senior U.S. military official during a speech at a Washington think tank. In June 2011, fifteen American soldiers died as a result of powerful new rocket-assisted munitions provided by the Quds Force to its Shia surrogates in Iraq, especially Kata’ib Hezbollah. The most deadly attack occurred on June 6, when one rocket killed six soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division at an air base near Baghdad.

In a manner similar to the debates in 2006, the generals were split on how to respond. A few strident voices advocated killing some of the Quds Force operatives inside Iraq, or at least rolling up some of their lucrative businesses in Oman and elsewhere. The senior commander in Iraq, General Lloyd Austin, cautioned against too harsh a response, worrying that Iran could dramatically increase the attacks on American forces. U.S. Special Forces did move to shut down the lucrative black-market business for the Revolutionary Guard of selling gasoline along the border with Afghanistan, an effort that had a significant impact on the guards’ pocketbooks. Austin ordered military
strikes targeted at the Iranian-backed militias inside Iraq. The United States sent a stern warning to Iran through the Russians and Chinese that the Americans would take further action if the attacks continued.

Iran continued to exert its influence in Iraq. Qassem Suleimani pushed to keep Iran’s hand in the Iraqi political process. At the request of the Ayatollah Khamenei, Hezbollah dispatched a senior adviser to Iraq to lobby for Iran and to promote unity and closer ties with al-Sadr’s group Jaysh al-Mahdi. With its Arab ally’s assistance, Iran retained influence with the two main Shia parties, including al-Maliki’s Dawa Party. During the 2010 elections in Iraq, which resulted in prolonged deadlock about who would lead the next government, Iran stepped in to influence the postelection jockeying, throwing its support behind the American-backed al-Maliki. After considerable cajoling by the supreme leader, Iran succeeded in herding the Iraqi Shia into a new coalition government.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats continued their harassment of U.S. warships in the Gulf, threatening a larger conflict between the two countries. As the guard operated with a decentralized command and rewarded commanders who took risks, Fifth Fleet commanders took seriously that any alteration could spiral out of control. A potentially serious incident occurred on January 6, 2008. Three American ships, led by the USS
Hopper
, were inbound through the Strait of Hormuz when five Revolutionary Guard speedboats approached. An Iranian on one of the boats raised the
Hopper
’s bridge on the radio. “I am coming at you,” he announced, before adding in heavily accented English, “you will blow up in a couple of minutes.” Another boat sped in front of the USS
Ingraham
, following behind the
Hopper
, and dropped several white objects in her path. The U.S. warship accelerated and turned to avoid them. When two other Iranian boats appeared to be making an inbound attack run, the skipper of the
Hopper
requested permission to open fire.

The
Hopper
had not undergone the normal training for a Persian Gulf deployment. Senior naval officers listening suspected the captain did not recognize the normal pestering by the immature Iranian sailors. The
Hopper
was ordered to hold its fire, and it turned out to be the correct decision. The objects dropped were only plastic boxes, and the guard boats soon lost interest in the Americans and headed off. When news of the near shoot-out broke in the press, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen, wanted to downplay the incident, concerned that it would only heighten tensions.
The U.S. Navy continued to operate with “disciplined restraint,” as one senior naval commander in the Gulf, Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, phrased it.
⁴³

Another serious incident occurred in April 2011. A Revolutionary Guard speedboat closed rapidly on the British warship HMS
York
. The ship sent verbal warnings and loud horn blasts to warn off the boat. When these failed, the captain ordered a heavy machine gun to fire in front of the boat; his next step would have been to fire into the boat. Fortunately, the guardsman piloting the boat stopped and raised his hands, and the crisis dissipated. But with tensions heightened, CENTCOM worried that this near incident could have easily led to a firefight.