Tuesday, January 21, 2003

Remembering
Taking War To Iraq
By Stephen R. Shalom

    
    WASHINGTON - The war between Iran and Iraq was one of the great human tragedies of recent Middle Eastern history. Perhaps as many as a million people died, many more were wounded, and millions were made refugees. The resources wasted on the war exceeded what the entire Third World spent on public health in a decade.

The war began on September 22, 1980, when Iraqi troops launched a full-scale invasion of Iran. Prior to this date there had been subversion by each country inside the other and also major border clashes. Iraq hoped for a lightning victory against an internationally isolated neighbor in the throes of revolutionary upheaval. But despite Iraq's initial successes, the Iranians rallied and, using their much larger population, were able by mid-1982 to push the invaders out. In June 1982, the Iranians went over to the offensive, but Iraq, with a significant advantage in heavy weaponry, was able to prevent a decisive Iranian breakthrough. The guns finally fell silent on August 20, 1988.

Primary responsibility for the eight long years of bloodletting must rest with the governments of the two countries -- the ruthless military regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the ruthless clerical regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. Khomeini was said by some to have a "martyr complex," though, as U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance wryly observed, people with martyr complexes rarely live to be as old as Khomeini. Whatever his complexes, Khomeini had no qualms about sending his followers, including young boys, off to their deaths for his greater glory. This callous disregard for human life was no less characteristic of Saddam Hussein. And, for that matter, it was also no less characteristic of much of the world community, which not only couldn't be bothered by a few hundred thousand Third World corpses, but tried to profit from the conflict.

France became the major source of Iraq's high-tech weaponry, in no small part to protect its financial stake in that country. The Soviet Union was Iraq's largest weapon's supplier, while jockeying for influence in both capitals. Israel provided arms to Iran, hoping to bleed the combatants by prolonging the war. And at least ten nations sold arms to both of the warring sides.

The list of countries engaging in despicable behavior, however, would be incomplete without the United States. The U.S. objective was not profits from the arms trade, but the much more significant aim of controlling to the greatest extent possible the region's oil resources. Before turning to U.S. policy during the Iran-Iraq war, it will be useful to recall some of the history of the U.S. and oil.

SOME CRUDE HISTORY

Much of the world's proven oil reserves are located in the limited area of the Persian Gulf (called by Arab nations the "Arabian Gulf," and by those who try to keep their gazetteers politically neutral, simply "the Gulf").

Less than four percent of U.S. oil consumption comes from the Gulf, but, according to the official argument, Western Europe and Japan are extremely dependent on Gulf oil and hence if the region fell into the hands of a hostile power, U.S. allies could be brought to their knees, and U.S. security would be fundamentally and irreparably compromised. If one examines the history of U.S. policy in the Gulf, however, protecting the oil interests of Western Europe and Japan never seemed to be one of Washington's foremost goals.

As far back as the 1920s, the State Department sought to force Great Britain to give U.S. companies a share of the lucrative Middle Eastern oil concessions. The U.S. Ambassador in London -- who happened to be Andrew Mellon, the head of the Gulf Oil Corporation (named for the Mexican, not the Persian/Arabian, Gulf) -- was instructed to press the British to give Gulf Oil a stake in the Middle East. At the end of World War II, when the immense petroleum deposits in Saudi Arabia became known, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal told Secretary of State Byrnes, "I don't care which American company or companies develop the Arabian reserves, but I think most emphatically that it should be _American_." And it wasn't the Russians that Forrestal was worried about. The main competition was between the United States and Britain for control of the area's oil.

In 1928, Standard Oil of New Jersey and Mobil had joined British and French oil interests in signing the "Red Line Agreement," under which each pledged not to develop Middle Eastern oil without the participation of the others. Nevertheless, after World War II these two U.S. firms (together with Texaco and Standard Oil of California) grabbed the Saudi concessions for themselves, freezing out the British and French. When the latter sued on the grounds that the Red Line Agreement had been violated, Mobil and Jersey told the court that the agreement was null and void because it was monopolistic.

In the early 1950s, oil was used as a political weapon for the first time -- _by_ the United States and Britain and _against_ Iran. Iran had nationalized its British-owned oil company which had refused to share its astronomical profits with the host government. In response, Washington and London organized a boycott of Iranian oil which brought Iran's economy to the brink of collapse. The CIA then instigated a coup, entrenching the Shah in power and effectively un-nationalizing the oil company, with U.S. firms getting 40 percent of the formerly 100 percent British-owned company. This was, in the view of the _New York Times, an "object lesson in the heavy cost that must be paid" when an oil-rich Third World nation "goes berserk with fanatical nationalism."

In 1956 the oil weapon was used again, this time by the United States against Britain and France. After the latter two nations along with Israel invaded Egypt, Washington made clear that U.S. oil would not be sent to Western Europe until Britain and France agreed to a rapid withdrawal schedule. The U.S. was not adverse to overthrowing Nasser -- "Had they done it quickly, we would have accepted it," Eisenhower said later -- but the clumsy Anglo-French military operation threatened U.S. interests in the region.

In October 1969 the Shah of Iran asked the U.S. to purchase more Iranian oil as a way to boost his revenues. But the Shah's request was rejected because, as an assistant to then President Nixon explained, "a substantial portion of the profits from these purchases would go to non-American companies if Iranian oil were sought," while if Saudi oil were purchased, the U.S. share would be larger.

By the end of the sixties the international oil market was far different from what it had been two decades earlier. Oil supplies were tight, the number of oil firms had grown, and the producing countries, joined together in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, were seeking to improve their financial position.

Crucial talks on oil prices began in 1970 between U.S. companies and the government of Libya. Significantly, Washington did not weigh in on the side of the companies, and in fact, the companies themselves did not put up much resistance to the price increases. For the oil companies, higher prices would be beneficial, making profitable their growing investments in the developed nations (for example, in Alaska and the North Sea). Any higher prices could be passed on to consumers -- and, indeed, in 1972-73 the companies raised their prices to a greater extent than crude costs alone warranted.

In 1972, the Nixon administration was advocating higher oil prices. According to a study by V. H. Oppenheim, based on interviews with U.S. officials, "The weight of the evidence suggests that the principal consideration behind the indulgent U.S. government attitude toward higher oil prices was the belief that higher prices would produce economic benefits for the United States vis-a-vis its industrial competitors, Western Europe and Japan, and the key Middle Eastern states, Saudi Arabia and Iran." And Henry Kissinger has confirmed that this was U.S. Government thinking: "The rise in the price of energy would affect primarily Europe and Japan and probably improve America's competitive position."

Amid growing warnings about a possible oil embargo, the industrialized Western countries held meetings to decide their response. Showing its concern for its allies, the United States proposed that resources be shared, but on the basis of each country's sea-borne imports, rather than on the basis of total energy requirements. Since the U.S. was much less dependent on imports than other countries, this formula meant that in the event of an embargo U.S. energy supplies would be cut far less than those of its "allies."

After the October 1973 Middle East war broke out, but before the Arab embargo, U.S. oil company officials wrote to Nixon, warning that the "whole position of the United States in the Middle East is on the way to being seriously impaired, with Japanese, European, and perhaps Russian interests largely supplanting United States presence in the area, to the detriment of both our economy and our security." Note that the Russian threat was considered only a possibility, the allied threat a certainty.

In late 1973 and on into 1974, the Arab oil producers cut their production and imposed an embargo against the United States and the Netherlands for their pro-Israeli position. The public has memories of long lines at the gas pump, rationing, and a crisis atmosphere. In fact, however, in Kissinger's words, "the Arab embargo was a symbolic gesture of limited practical impact." The international oil companies, which totally monopolized petroleum distribution and marketing, pooled their oil, so the shortfall of Saudi supplies to the U.S. was made up from other sources. Overall, the oil companies spread out the production cutbacks so as to minimize suffering, and the country most supportive of Israel -- the U.S. -- suffered among the least. From January 1974 to March, oil consumption in the U.S. was only off by 5 percent, compared to 15 percent in France and West Germany.

Even these figures, however, overstate the hardship, because in fact, "_there was at no time a real shortage of petroleum on the European market._ Consumption simply responded to the increase in prices....Between October, 1973, and April, 1974, the reserves of oil products in the countries of the European Community never descended below the 80-day equivalent of consumption; and in Italy the reserves in fact increased by 23 per cent." In Japan, there were about two million barrels of oil more than the government admitted, as the bureaucracy, the oil industry, and industrial oil users sought to exploit the crisis for their own advantage.

In the aftermath of the embargo, U.S. allies tried to negotiate their own bilateral petroleum purchase deals with the producing nations without going through the major international oil companies. Washington opposed these efforts. In short, the well-being of U.S. allies has never been the key consideration for U.S. policymakers.

Nor for that matter has the crucial concern been the well-being of the average American. One former Defense Department official has estimated that it cost U.S. taxpayers about $47 billion in 1985 alone for military expenditures related to the Gulf; former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman put the annual figure at $40 billion. What could be worth these staggering sums?

These expenditures have not been necessary for the survival of the West. In extremis, according to former CIA analyst Maj. Gen. Edward B. Atkeson, if all Gulf oil were cut off, the elimination of recreational driving (which in the U.S. accounts for 10% of total oil consumption) would reduce Western petroleum needs to a level easily replaceable from non-Gulf sources. Even in wartime, Atkeson concluded, Gulf oil is not essential to Western needs. And in a protracted global conflict, one can be sure that oil fields would not last very long in the face of missile attacks.

The billions of dollars, however, are a good investment for the oil companies, given that they are not the ones who pay the tab. To be sure, the multinationals no longer directly own the vast majority of Gulf crude production. But they have special buy-back deals with the producers, whereby they purchase at bargain prices oil from the fields they formerly owned. For example, according to former Senator Frank Church, U.S. firms "have a 'sweetheart' arrangement with Saudi Arabia, notwithstanding the nominal nationalization of their properties...." Radical regimes want to sell oil as much as conservative ones do, but a change of government in any Gulf state might eliminate the privileged position of the oil companies.

The internal security of regimes like Saudi Arabia depends heavily on outside, particularly U.S., support. Many Saudis believe that in return their country has been overproducing oil to please the United States, to the detriment of their nation's long-term interests. Selling oil beyond the point at which the proceeds can be productively invested is economically irrational, particularly given the fact that oil in the ground appreciates in value.<28> More democratic or nationalistic governments in the Gulf may not be so willing to sacrifice their own interests. And such governments will also be less willing to accommodate a U.S. military presence or to serve as U.S. proxies for maintaining the regional status quo.

And thus for more than forty years, through many changed circumstances, there has been one constant of U.S. policy in the Gulf: support for the most conservative available local forces in order to keep radical and popular movements from coming to power, no matter what the human cost, no matter how great the necessary manipulation or intervention. The U.S. has not been invariably successful in achieving its objective: in 1979, it lost one of its major props with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, who had policed the Gulf on Washington's behalf. But the basic pattern of U.S. policy has not changed, as is well illustrated by its policy toward the war between Iran and Iraq.

THE GULF WAR

The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either belligerent in 1980 and announced its neutrality in the conflict. One typically humanitarian State Department official explained in 1983: "we don't give a damn as long as the Iran-Iraq carnage does not affect our allies in the region or alter the balance of power." In fact, however, the United States was not indifferent to the war, but saw a number of positive opportunities opened up by its prolongation.

The need for arms and money would make Baghdad more dependent on the conservative Gulf states and Egypt, thereby moderating Iraq's policies and helping to repair ties between Cairo and the other Arab states. The war would make Iran -- whose weapons had all been U.S.-supplied in the past -- desperate to obtain U.S. equipment and spare parts. The exigencies of war might make both nations more willing to restore their relations with Washington. Alternatively, the dislocations of war might give the U.S. greater ability to carry out covert operations in Iran or Iraq. And turmoil in the Gulf might make other states in the area more susceptible to U.S. pressure for military cooperation.

When the war first broke out, the Soviet Union turned back its arms ships en route to Iraq, and for the next year and a half, while Iraq was on the offensive, Moscow did not provide weapons to Baghdad. In March 1981, the Iraqi Communist Party, repressed by Saddam Hussein, beamed broadcasts from the Soviet Union calling for an end to the war and the withdrawal of Iraqi troops. That same month U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he saw the possibility of improved ties with Baghdad and approvingly noted that Iraq was concerned by "the behavior of Soviet imperialism in the Middle Eastern area." The U.S. then approved the sale to Iraq of five Boeing jetliners, and sent a deputy assistant secretary of state to Baghdad for talks. The U.S. removed Iraq from its notoriously selective list of nations supporting international terrorism (despite the fact that terrorist Abu Nidal was based in the country) and Washington extended a $400 million credit guarantee for U.S. exports to Iraq.In November 1984, the U.S. and Iraq restored diplomatic relations, which had been ruptured in 1967.

THE SOVIET THREAT AND THE RAPID DEPLOYMENT FORCE

At the same time that the war was furthering the U.S. position in Iraq, it was also extending U.S. military relations with the other Arab Gulf states.

Washington typically justified its desire for military ties in the Gulf and the development of forces for use there by warning of the Soviet threat. In January 1980, President Carter proclaimed the "Carter Doctrine," declaring that the U.S. was willing to use military force if necessary to prevent "an outside power" from conquering the Gulf. As Michael Klare has noted, however, the real U.S. concern was revealed five days later when Secretary of Defense Harold Brown released his military posture statement. Brown indicated that the greatest threat was not Soviet expansionism but uncontrolled turbulence in the third world. "In a world of disputes and violence, we cannot afford to go abroad unarmed," he warned. "The particular manner in which our economy has expanded means that we have come to depend to no small degree on imports, exports and the earnings from overseas investments for our material well-being." Specifically, Brown identified the "protection of the oil flow from the Middle East" as "clearly part of our vital interest," in defense of which "we'll take any action that's appropriate, including the use of military force."

Brown did not explicitly state that the United States would intervene militarily in response to internal threats, like revolution, but after he left office he explained what could be said openly and what could not: "One sensitive issue is whether the United States should plan to protect the oil fields against internal or regional threats. Any explicit commitment of this sort is more likely to upset and anger the oil suppliers than to reassure them."

Gulf touchiness on explicit U.S. commitments to "defend" the oil fields had two sources. First, the sheikdoms do not like to be seen as dependent on U.S. force against their own populations. And, second, the Gulf states were made nervous by the frequent talk in the United States about taking over the oil fields in the event of another embargo. There was even a Congressional study of the feasibility of seizing the oil fields; and though the study concluded that such an operation would be unlikely to succeed militarily, the mere fact that this was considered a fit subject for analysis did not instill confidence in Gulf capitals.

Given this sensitivity, Brown advised that the United States should prepare plans and capabilities for intervention -- against coups and other threats -- but should avoid an explicitly declared policy to this effect.

The Carter administration began the formation of a Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) to project U.S. military power into the Gulf region. Originally proposed in 1977, the planning did not make much progress until after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The fundamental purpose of the RDF was always, in the words of Carter's National Security Adviser, "helping a friendly government under a subversive attack"; nevertheless, to justify the RDF the Soviet threat had to be magnified. Accordingly, Carter spoke in apocalyptic terms about the strategic significance of the invasion of Afghanistan, even though U.S. military experts were aware that a "thrust through Afghanistan would be of marginal advantage to any Soviet movement through Iran or the Gulf."

In 1980, the Army conducted a gaming exercise called "Gallant Knight" which assumed an all-out Soviet invasion of Iran. The Army concluded that they would need 325,000 troops to hold back the Soviet colossus. According to a former military affairs aide to Senator Sam Nunn, the Army deliberately chose this scenario to guarantee that immense forces would be required. And though an RDF of this size might seem unnecessarily large for combating Third World troublemakers, the Pentagon noted that in the mid-1980s Third World armies were no longer "barbarians with knives." The U.S. could no longer expect to "stabilize an area just by showing the flag."

When Reagan became president, he added what became known as the "Reagan Codicil" to the "Carter Doctrine," declaring at a press conference that "we will not permit" Saudi Arabia "to be an Iran." The codicil did not represent new policy, but merely made explicit what had always been policy.

Under Reagan, the CIA secretly concluded that the possibility of a Soviet invasion of Iran was "remote" -- not surprisingly, given that the Red Army was hardly having an easy time with the Afghanis, who had half the population and were much less well equipped. The remoteness of the Soviet threat, however, did not slow down the build up of the RDF.

In 1982 the Pentagon's secret _Defense Guidance_ document stated that the Soviet Union might extend its forces into the Gulf area "by means other than outright invasion." It continued: "Whatever the circumstances, we should be prepared to introduce American forces directly into the region should it appear that the security of access to Persian Gulf oil is threatened...." In the Senate, many argued that there was too much emphasis on countering the USSR, whereas the focus should be on "deterring and, if necessary, fighting regional wars or leftist or nationalist insurgencies that threatened U.S. and allied access to the region's oil supplies."

The official line was that the RDF would be deployed when a government invited it in to repel a Soviet attack. But, as a Library of Congress study noted, this view was belied by "guidance documents which say that the forces must be capable of coercive entry without waiting for an invitation." Senators Tower and Cohen stated that they favored greater emphasis on marines who could shoot their way ashore against military opposition. The administration pointed out that RDF plans all along had included a "forcible entry" option, relying on Marines. "We must be able to open our own doors," the Marine Commandant testified in March 1982. In short, these folks are not just "barbarians with knives."

To support the RDF, the Pentagon needed a network of bases, and not just in the Middle East, but worldwide. "To all intents and purposes," a former senior Defense Department official observed, "'Gulf waters' now extend from the Straits of Malacca to the South Atlantic." Nevertheless, bases nearer the Gulf had a special importance, and Pentagon planners urged "as substantial a land presence in the as can be managed." The Gulf states were reluctant to have too overt a relationship with the United States, but the Iran-Iraq war served to overcome some of this reluctance. In 1985, as Iranian advances seemed ominous, the _New York Times_ reported that Oman "has become a base for Western intelligence operations, military maneuvers and logistical preparations for any defense of the oil-producing Persian Gulf." A few months later, a secret U.S. report was leaked indicating that Saudi Arabia had agreed to allow the United States to use bases in its territory in a crisis. The doors to U.S. influence were opening wider.

TWO TRACKS TO TEHERAN

U.S. policy with respect to Iran was more complicated, because it followed two tracks at once. On the one hand, U.S. officials saw "a great potential" for a covert program to undermine the government in Teheran; on the other hand, Washington tried to build ties to that same government.

U.S. actions in pursuit of the first track showed quite clearly that Washington's opposition to the Khomeini regime had nothing to do with its lack of democracy, for the groups that the U.S. backed against Khomeini were often supporters of the previous dictator, the Shah.

Starting in 1982 the CIA provided $100,000 a month to a group in Paris called the Front for the Liberation of Iran, headed by Ali Amini, who had presided over the reversion of Iranian oil to foreign control after the CIA-backed coup in 1953.<59> The U.S. also provided support to two Iranian paramilitary groups based in Turkey, one of them headed by General Bahram Aryana, the Shah's army chief, who had close ties to Shahpur Bakhtiar, the Shah's last prime minister.

In 1980, under the Carter administration, the United States began clandestine radio broadcasts into Iran from Egypt, at a cost of some $20-30,000 per month. The broadcasts called for Khomeini's overthrow and urged support for Bakhtiar. Other broadcasts contained anti-Soviet material. In 1986, the CIA pirated Iran's national television network frequency to transmit an eleven minute address by the Shah's son over Iranian TV. "I will return," Reza Pahlavi vowed.

Simultaneous with these activities, the U.S. pursued its second track: trying to establish ties with the Iranian mullahs based on the interest they shared with Washington in combating the left. The U.S. purpose, Reagan announced in November 1986, after the Iran-Contra scandal blew open, was "to find an avenue to get Iran back where it once was and that is in the family of democratic nations" -- a good trick, as Mansour Farhang has commented, since pre-1979 Iran was hardly democratic.

According to the Tower Commission, "In 1983, the United States helped bring to the attention of Teheran the threat inherent in the extensive infiltration of the government by the communist Tudeh Party and Soviet or pro-Soviet cadres in the country. Using this information, the Khomeini government took measures, including mass executions, that virtually eliminated the pro-Soviet infrastructure in Iran." These massacres elicited the expected level of concern from U.S. officials. "The leftists there seem to be getting their heads cut off," remarked an undersecretary of state from the Carter administration. The U.S. also passed to the Iranians "real and deceptive intelligence" about the Soviet threat on Iran's borders.

Reagan administration officials claimed that their efforts in Iran were designed to build ties to moderates. In fact, however, they were aware that they were dealing with the clerical fanatics. Oliver North told Robert McFarlane and John Poindexter in December 1985 that the anti-tank weapons the U.S. was secretly providing to Iran would probably go to the Revolutionary Guards, the shock troops of the mullahs. In August 1986, the special assistant to the Israeli prime minister briefed George "Out-of-the-Loop" Bush, telling him, "we are dealing with the most radical elements....This is good because we've learned that they can deliver and the moderates can't.">

The idea of building a strategic connection to Iran had wide support in the U.S. government, though the policy of using arms transfers to achieve it did not. The Tower Commission, for example, stated that while it disagrees with the arms transfers, "a strategic opening to Iran may have been in the national interest." And it should be made clear that a strategic opening does not simply mean beginning a dialogue with or acting civilly toward an former adversary; rather, it was part of a policy to prevent any comparable access for the Soviet Union. Thus, a CIA position paper in 1985 noted that whichever superpower got to Iran first would be "in a strong position to work towards the exclusion of the other." Another CIA official wanted to achieve "a securing of Iran" so that it would again "have a relationship with the U.S." and be "denied to the Soviets." And McFarlane cabled to Poindexter after a secret meeting in Teheran in May 1986: "we are on the way to something that can become a truly strategic gain for us at the expense of the Soviets."

ARMS TO THE AYATOLLAH

The main tool by which U.S. policy makers sought to secure their position in Iran in 1985 and 1986 was secretly providing arms and intelligence information. As a proclaimed neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, the United States was not supposed to supply weapons to either side. Nevertheless, U.S. allies kept the combatants well-stocked. Israel transferred vast quantities of U.S.-origin weapons to Iran; to what extent U.S. permission for these shipments was obtained (as required by U.S. law) is not known, but surely the U.S. had enough leverage to prevent the transfers if it had wanted to.

In 1984, because of Iranian battlefield victories and the growing U.S.-Iraqi ties, Washington launched "Operation Staunch," an effort to dry up Iran's sources of arms by pressuring U.S. allies to stop supplying Teheran. U.S. secret arms sales to Iran in 1985 and 1986 thus not only violated U.S. neutrality, but undercut as well what the U.S. was trying to get everyone else to do. The cynical would note that Operation Staunch made the U.S. arms transfers to Iran that much more valuable.

When this arms dealing became known, the Reagan administration was faced with a major scandal on several counts. Proceeds from the arms sales had been diverted to the Nicaraguan contras in violation of the Boland Amendment. And though the administration's professed uncompromising stand on terrorism was always hypocritical, given its sponsorship of terrorism in Nicaragua and elsewhere, being caught trading "arms-for-hostages" was particularly embarrassing.

Now, in fact, this would not have been the first time the U.S. offered Teheran arms for hostages. In October 1980 the Carter administration had declared that spare parts for U.S. military equipment could be sold to Iran if the U.S. embassy hostages were released promptly. There was even talk among U.S. officials about pre-positioning some spare parts in Germany, Pakistan, and Algeria so that the Iranians could get the equipment as soon as possible. Republicans charged that Carter was trying to buy the hostages out in time for the election; there is some evidence that the Republicans in the meantime were engaged in an election maneuver of their own: negotiating with Iran to keep the hostages until after the election to ensure a Reagan victory.

In any event, political influence not hostages was the Reagan administration's objective. Regardless of what was in the President's mind (as it were), the National Security Council was clear that the political agenda was key.

Whatever the arguments for purchasing the freedom of hostages, trading weapons to obtain their release is another matter entirely, since one is exchanging for the lives of some hostages the lives of those who will be fired on by the weapons. And trading weapons for "a strategic opening" is more reprehensible still, particularly so when the weapons are going to the country whose army is on the offensive. Reagan claimed that the weapons were all defensive in nature, but this is nonsense. Anti-tank missiles in the hands of an advancing army are offensive. And U.S. officials knew exactly what Iran wanted the weapons for: for example, as the Tower Commission noted, North and CIA officials discussed with their Iranian contacts "Iran's urgent need" for "both intelligence and weapons to be used in offensive operations against Iraq."

The intelligence that the United States passed to the Iranians was a mixture of factual and bogus information. The CIA claimed that the false information was meant to discourage Iran's final offensive, by for example exaggerating Soviet troop movements on the northern border. But if the U.S. simply wanted to discourage an Iranian attack, it could have done this more easily by telling Iran of Washington's contingency plans to use U.S. air power in the event of an Iranian breakthrough against Iraq. The misinformation about the Soviet Union, however, had the added advantage of inciting Iranian hostility to Moscow and to the local communists.

U.S. intelligence did not deal only with the Soviet Union, but covered the Iraqi front as well. CIA deputy director John McMahon claimed that he warned Poindexter that such intelligence would give the Iranians "a definite edge," with potentially "cataclysmic results," and that he was able to persuade North to provide Iran with only a segment of the intelligence. North, however, apparently gave critical data to Iran just before its crucial victory in the Fao Peninsula in February 1986. It is unclear to what extent North was acting on his own here, but it is significant that despite McMahon's warnings, neither Poindexter nor CIA Director Casey reversed the plans to provide the Iranians with the full intelligence information.

At the same time that the U.S. was giving Teheran weapons that one CIA analyst believed could affect the military balance and passing on intelligence that the Tower Commission deemed of "potentially major significance," it was also providing Iraq with intelligence information, some misleading or incomplete. In 1986, the CIA established a direct Washington-to-Baghdad link to provide the Iraqis with faster intelligence from U.S. satellites. Simultaneously, Casey was urging Iraqi officials to carry out more attacks on Iran, especially on economic targets. Asked what the logic was of aiding both sides in a bloody war, a former official replied, "You had to have been there."

Washington's effort to enhance its position with both sides came apart at the end of 1986 when one faction in the Iranian government leaked the story of the U.S. arms dealing. Now the Reagan administration was in the unenviable position of having alienated the Iranians and panicked all the Arabs who concluded that the U.S. valued Iran's friendship over theirs. To salvage the U.S. position with at least one side, Washington now had to tilt -- and tilt heavily -- toward Iraq.

THE AMERICAN ARMADA

The opportunity to demonstrate the tilt came soon. Kuwait had watched with growing nervousness Iran's battlefield successes, perhaps made possible by U.S. arms sales and intelligence information. Iran was now also attacking ships calling at Kuwaiti ports, and to protect itself Kuwait decided to try to draw in the United States. In September 1986 (before the scandal broke), it approached both Washington and Moscow and asked if they would be interested in reflagging some Kuwaiti vessels, that is, flying their own flags on Kuwaiti ships and then protecting these new additions to their merchant marine. The initial U.S. reaction was lackadaisical. But when the U.S. learned in March 1987 that the Soviet Union offered to reflag eleven tankers, it promptly offered to reflag the same eleven ships -- which would both keep Soviet influence out of the Gulf and give the United States the opportunity to demonstrate its support for Iraq.

The Kuwaitis accepted the U.S. offer, declining Moscow's, though chartering three Soviet vessels as a way to provide some balance between the U.S. and the USSR, the Kuwaitis being less afraid of Soviet contamination than their American saviors were. Undersecretary of Political Affairs Michael H. Armacost explained in June 1987 that if the USSR were permitted a larger role in protecting Gulf oil, the Gulf states would be under great pressure to make additional facilities available to Moscow. The U.S. view was that only one superpower was allowed to have facilities in the region, and that was the United States. Thus, when in December 1980 the Soviet Union proposed the neutralization of the Gulf, with no alliances, no bases, no intervention in the region, and no obstacles to free trade and the sea lanes,Washington showed no interest. By August 1987, the U.S. had an aircraft carrier, a battleship, six cruisers, three destroyers, seven frigates, and numerous supporting naval vessels in or near the Gulf,ployed since the height of the Vietnam war."

The Reagan administration claimed that the reflagging was merely intended to protect the flow of oil. It warned that "any significant disruption in gulf oil supply would cause world oil prices for all to skyrocket," grimly recalling how events in 1973-74 and 1978-79 demonstrated that "a small disruption -- of less than 5% -- can trigger a sharp escalation in oil prices."

In fact, however, oil -- and oil prices for that matter -- were never threatened. There has been a worldwide oil glut since the early 1980s, with much underused production capacity in non-Gulf nations. Despite the horrendous human costs of the Iran-Iraq war, oil prices had actually fallen by 50 percent during the course of the conflict. By the end of 1987, two thirds of all the oil produced in the Gulf was carried by pipeline. The Congressional study noted that even in the unlikely event of an actual shutdown of the Gulf, the impact on oil supplies and prices would be minimal. In no sense then could the Strait of Hormuz be viewed as the "jugular" of the Western economies.

Fewer than two percent of the ships that did transit the Strait came under attack, and even this figure is misleading because many of the attacks inflicted relatively minor damage. Only one Iranian attack in ten caused serious damage.

Significantly, Iran became more aggressive in attacking shipping _because_ of the U.S. naval presence. Between 1981 and April 1987, when the U.S. reflagging was announced, Iran struck 90 ships; in the little over a year thereafter, Iran struck 126 ships. As the Congressional study noted, "shipping in the Gulf now appears less safe than before the U.S. naval build-up began."

If the U.S. were concerned with free navigation, it might have given some consideration to a Soviet proposal that the U.S. Navy and all national navies withdraw from the Gulf, to be replaced by a United Nations force. But Washington wasn't interested. Indeed, some, like the _New York Times_, noted that it was the United States that could close the Gulf -- to Iranian exports -- though the _Times_ added that "such action would of course be unthinkable unless requested by the Arab states of the region." So much for freedom of navigation.

It was Iraq that started the tanker war in the Gulf proper in 1981, and that continued these attacks into 1984 without a parallel Iranian response at sea. Two months after Iraq stepped up the pace and scope of its attacks in March 1984, Iran finally began responding. Iraqi attacks, however, outnumbered those by Iran until after the United States announced its reflagging. The U.S. Navy protected the reflagged vessels, and in April 1988 extended its protection to any neutral vessels coming under Iranian attack. In practice, this meant that Iraq could strike at Iranian vessels with impunity, with the U.S. Navy preventing retaliation by Teheran.

Washington justified its policy by noting that Iraq only attacked Iranian ships, while Iran targeted the ships of neutrals: Kuwait, in particular. This was a dubious legal argument on two counts. First, Kuwait was a neutral engaged in rather unneutral behavior. Among other things, it opened its ports to deliveries of war material that were then transported over land to Iraq. Second, Iraq too hit neutral ships, even Saudi Arabian ships -- when they called on Iran.<115> Iraq declared certain Iranian waters a "war exclusion zone," but as an international law expert has noted, Iraq's "method of enforcement has closely resembled German methods" in World War II, and "under any analysis the Iraqi exclusion zone cannot be justified." The "attacks on neutral merchant vessels by both sides must be condemned as violations of international law." There was thus no legal justification for the U.S. to take Iraq's side in the tanker war.

Still less was there any sense in which the U.S. Navy could be referred to as a "peacekeeping" force. Gary Sick, a former National Security Council officer in charge of Iran, asserted that American naval units "have been deployed aggressively and provocatively in the hottest parts of the Persian Gulf." "Our aggressive patrolling strategy," he observed, "tends to start fights, not to end them. We behave at times as if our objective was to goad Iran into a war with us." According to a Congressional report, officials in every Gulf country were critical of "the highly provocative way in which U.S. forces are being deployed."When in April 1988 the U.S. turned a mining attack on a U.S. ship into the biggest U.S. Navy sea battle since World War II, Al Ittihad, a newspaper often reflective of government thinking in the United Arab Emirates, criticized the U.S. attacks, noting that they added "fuel to the gulf tension."

The aggressive U.S. posture was in marked contrast to the posture of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union too was escorting ships in the Gulf, particularly vessels carrying weapons to Kuwait for Iraq. On May 6, 1987, Iranian gunboats attacked a Soviet merchant vessel, and two weeks later one of the Soviet ships chartered by Kuwait was the first victim of a mine attack since 1984.These facts are not widely known, because the Soviet response was extremely mild.

Soviet policy in the Gulf was the subject of a study commissioned by the U.S. Army and written by reputed intellectual heavyweight Francis Fukuyama of the Rand Corporation. Fukuyama concluded that Gorbachev's "new thinking" in foreign policy was only rhetoric as far as the Persian Gulf was concerned because Moscow continued to pursue "zero-sum" (that is, totally competitive) policies vis-a-vis the United States. But the facts presented in the study suggest a rather different conclusion. Fukuyama notes that the "Soviets, it is true, were facing a U.S. administration that was itself playing very much a zero-sum game in the Gulf....What the Soviets would have done if faced with a more collaborative United States is untestable and consequently unknowable." Nevertheless, for Fukuyama the USSR is to blame since Gorbachev had been accommodative in other areas of policy in the face of U.S. intransigence and thus might have been so in the Gulf as well.

Fukuyama acknowledges that the Soviet Union refrained from following other, more aggressive policies in the Gulf, such as trying to outbid Washington for influence with Kuwait. He observes that Soviet naval units in the Gulf were not offensively deployed, in contradistinction to those of the United States. (Indeed, Fukuyama points out that since the early 1970s Moscow had slowed the development of its power projection capability, unlike the United States.) The USSR sought to use economic and political instruments of policy in the Gulf, rather than predominantly military ones as the U.S. did. And when Moscow did seek its own advantage in relations with Iran, it did so in response to the secret dealings in Teheran by the White House. In short, if Soviet policy in the Gulf can be criticized for insufficient "new thinking," by comparison U.S. policy reflected a Stone Age approach.

The provocative U.S. naval deployments in the Gulf took a heavy toll on innocent civilians. In November 1987, a U.S. ship fired its machine guns at night at a boat believed to be an Iranian speedboat with hostile intent; it was in fact a fishing boat from the United Arab Emirates. One person was killed and three were wounded. The most serious incident was the shooting down by the U.S. cruiser Vicennes of an Iranian civil airliner, killing all 290 people aboard. The commander of another U.S. ship in the Gulf noted that while "the conduct of Iranian military forces in the month preceding the incident was pointedly non-threatening," the actions of the _Vicennes_ "appeared to be consistently aggressive," leading some Navy hands to refer to the ship as "Robo Cruiser."

These tensions in the Gulf continued to promote one important U.S. goal: they encouraged the Gulf states to enhance their military cooperation with the United States. As noted above, the United States had used the Iran-Iraq war as a lever for obtaining additional basing rights in the Gulf region. The reflagging operation further enhanced the U.S. position. According to an Associated Press report, the U.S. general in charge of the RDF claimed that the "United States gained unprecedented credibility with Arab leaders as a result of its large-scale naval commitment in the Persian Gulf." This commitment, he said, enabled the U.S. to establish better diplomatic and military ties with Gulf states.

INDIFFERENCE AND DIPLOMACY

Aggressive U.S. naval deployments in the Gulf elicited no dissent from the _New York Times._ The editors acknowledged that Washington's "profession of neutrality is the thinnest of diplomatic fig leaves," that in reality "America tilts toward Iraq." But the tilt was "for good reason," for it was a strategy designed to achieve peace. The administration had been confused, the _Times_ admitted, but now Washington had developed "a coherent policy to contain Iran. It has thereby earned the right to take risks in the gulf." And when the risks resulted in the destruction of the Iranian airliner, the editors declared that the blame might lie with the Iranian pilot, but if not, then it was certainly Teheran's fault for refusing to end the war.

This is the common view of the war, widely promoted by Washington -- that Iran was the sole obstacle to peace. A review of the diplomacy of the war, however, shows that while Khomeini certainly bears tremendous blame for the bloodshed, the blame does not stop with him.

When Iraq attacked Iran on September 22, 1980, the United Nations Security Council waited four days before holding a meeting. On September 28, it passed Resolution 479 calling for an end to the fighting. Significantly, however, the resolution did not condemn (nor even mention) the Iraqi aggression and did not call for a return to internationally recognized boundaries. As Ralph King, who has studied the UN response in detail, concluded, "the Council more or less deliberately ignored Iraq's actions in September 1980." It did so because the Council as a whole had a negative view of Iran and was not concerned enough about Iran's predicament to come to its aid. The U.S. delegate noted that Iran, which had itself violated Security Council resolutions on the U.S. embassy hostages, could hardly complain about the Council's lackluster response.

Iran rejected Resolution 479 as one-sided -- which it was. When Norway called for an internationally supervised withdrawal of forces, Iraq replied -- accurately -- that this violated 479. Iran refused to engage in any discussions as long as Iraqi forces remained on its soil. In the meantime, State Department officials proposed "a joint U.S.-Soviet effort to promote a settlement," but Brzezinski argued that this "would legitimate the Soviet position in the Gulf and thus objectively undercut our vital interests." No U.S. initiative was forthcoming. A few more unfruitful Security Council meetings were held into October, and then there were no further formal meetings on the subject of the war, despite the immense carnage, until July 1982.

There were a number of third party mediation efforts. The first was undertaken by Olof Palme, representing the UN Secretary General. Palme proposed that as an initial step the two sides agree to have the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway cleared. Iraq, however, would only agree if it could pay the full costs (thus legitimating its claim to the entire river), and no agreement could be reached. Then, the Nonaligned Ministerial Committee proposed a cease-fire simultaneous with withdrawal, with demilitarized zones on both sides. Iran accepted and, for a while, Iraq did as well. But Baghdad soon changed its mind, hoping to win on the battlefield. In neither of these instances was any significant outside pressure put on Iraq to settle.

In early 1982 another mediation effort was begun by the government of Algeria, which had helped Iran and Iraq reach a border agreement in 1975 and had also served as a go-between for the release of the U.S. embassy hostages. On May 3, 1982, however, an aircraft carrying the Algerian foreign minister and his team of experts was shot down in Iranian airspace by an _Iraqi_ fighter plane. Five years later a captured Iraqi pilot was said to have admitted that the attack was intentional, with the objective of having Iran be blamed for the action. Whether this is true or not, the shootdown eliminated from the scene the most experienced mediators.

By the end of May, 1982, Iran had recaptured nearly all its territory and Iraq was looking for a way out of the war. The Islamic Conference Organization and the Gulf Cooperation Council tried to mediate a settlement. On June 3, three men led by an Iraqi intelligence officer attempted to assassinate the Israeli ambassador to Britain, according to one report with the hope of provoking an Israeli invasion of Lebanon that would create the conditions for the Gulf combatants to end their fighting so they might face their common enemy, Israel. Israel needed no encouragement to march into Lebanon; it knew the provocation had nothing to do with the PLO or Lebanon, but invaded anyway. But the Lebanon war did not dissuade Iran from continuing the Gulf war, and may even have derailed the mediation efforts.

Iraq offered to withdraw its remaining forces from Iran and to cease fire. In Teheran a vigorous debate ensued as to whether to accept the offer or to continue on. The militant mullahs had seen their power grow during the war; though the Shah had originally been ousted by a wide range of political forces, the crusade against Iraq had enabled the right-wing clerics to mobilize the population and to prevail over their domestic opponents. In addition, just as Iraq had erroneously assumed that Iran was on the verge of collapse in September 1980, so now it looked to Iran as though Saddam Hussein was about to fall. Khomeini decided to go on with the war, declaring that Iran would not stop fighting until Saddam Hussein was overthrown, Iraqi war-guilt assigned, and reparations paid.

The government of Iran thus bears major responsibility for the death and destruction that followed. But, significantly, no industrial country gave strong support to a peace settlement at this time. Within the United States government, Secretary of State Alexander Haig proposed some sort of international peace conference (though without U.S. participation, and of course with no Soviet participation). The proposal, Haig recalls, "failed to win the attention of the White House." Haig notes that the "war was then at a critical stage, an Iranian offensive having recovered nearly all of Iran's lost territory, and it is possible that a properly designed initiative could have succeeded in ending the hostilities."

On July 12, 1982, the Security Council met on the issue of the war for the first time since 1980 and called for a withdrawal to the pre-war boundaries. Iran considered this further proof of the bias of the United Nations, since the call for withdrawal came at the first moment in the war when Iranian forces held any Iraqi territory.

Iraq responded to Iranian victories on the ground by making use of its advantage in technology: it escalated the tanker war, employed chemical weapons, and launched attacks on civilian targets. Iran retaliated by striking Gulf shipping starting in 1984 and launching its own attacks on civilians, though on a lesser scale than Iraq. Iran charged that the Security Council's handling of each of these issues reflected animus against Iran.

In 1984 the Security Council passed a resolution on the tanker war that was directed primarily against Iran's actions and made no reference to Iraqi conduct except to call for all states to respect the right of free navigation.

On chemical weapons, the Security Council passed no resolution. The United States condemned the use of chemical weapons, but declined to support any Council action against Iraq. The Council did issue a much less significant "statement" in 1985 condemning the use of chemical weapons, but without mentioning Iraq by name; then, in March 1986, for the first time a Council statement explicitly denounced Iraq. This, however, was two years after Iraq's use of chemical warfare had been confirmed by a UN team.

In 1983 a UN team found that both sides had attacked civilian areas, but that Iran had suffered more extensive damage than Iraq. Teheran wanted the Security Council to pass a resolution that indicated Iraq's greater responsibility, but the Council refused to do so, and no statement was issued. In June 1984 the Secretary General was able to get the two sides to agree to cease their attacks on civilians. Both sides soon charged violations, but UN inspection teams found that while Iraq was indeed in violation, Iran was not. By March 1985, the moratorium was over.

At this time, jockeying for position with Moscow was still a crucial consideration for the United States. In a section of a draft National Security document that elicited no dissent, U.S. long term goals were said to include "an early end to the Iran-Iraq war without Soviet mediation...."

Iran remained committed to its maximum war aims, a commitment not lessened by the fact that Oliver North, apparently without authorization, told Iranian officials that Reagan wanted the war ended on terms favorable to Iran, and that Saddam Hussein had to go. But it was not just North's unauthorized conversation that encouraged Iranian intransigence; the authorized clandestine dealings between Washington and Teheran no doubt had the same effect.

In late 1986 the Iran-Contra scandal broke, forcing the U.S. to go all-out in its support for Iraq in order to preserve some influence among the Arab states jolted by the evidence of Washington's double-dealing. In May 1987, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy met with Saddam Hussein and promised him that the U.S. would lead an effort at the UN for a mandatory arms embargo of Iran; a resolution would be drawn up calling on both sides to cease fire and withdraw, and imposing an embargo on whoever didn't comply, presumably Iran. The U.S. drafted such a resolution, but the non-permanent members of the Security Council altered it to include the formation of an impartial commission to investigate the origins of the war, as Iran had been insisting, and to eliminate the mandatory sanctions. On July 20, 1987 the revised document was passed unanimously as Security Council Resolution 598.

Iraq promptly accepted 598, while Iran said it would accept the cease-fire and withdrawal of forces if the impartial commission were set up first. The U.S. and Iraq both rejected Iran's position, asserting that Iran had no right to select one provision out of many in the resolution and impose that as a first step.

The Secretary General then travelled to Teheran and Baghdad to try to work out a compromise and he made some progress. According to the leaked text of his private report to the Security Council, Iran agreed to accept an "undeclared cessation of hostilities" while an independent commission was investigating the responsibility for the conflict; the cessation would become a formal cease-fire on the date that the commission issued its findings. This was not an acceptance of 598, but an informal cease-fire might have meant an end to the killing as surely as a formal one. Iraq, however, insisted that "under no circumstances" would it accept an undeclared cease-fire. Instead of seizing the Iranian position as a first step toward a compromise, the United States, in the words of Gary Sick, "pressed single-mindedly for an embargo on Iran, while resisting efforts by Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar to fashion a compromise cease-fire."

"Could the war have been ended by a compromise in early 1988?" Sick has asked. "The answer will never be known, primarily because the United States was unwilling to explore Iran's offer. The U.S. position -- and sensitivities about even the perception of any sympathy toward Iran -- were a direct legacy of the Iran-contra fiasco. They may have contributed to prolonging the war for six unnecessary months."

Finally, in July 1988, with Iranian anti-war sentiment growing widespread, Ayatollah Khomeini decided to end the fighting. On July 18, Iran declared its full acceptance of Resolution 598. But by this time Iraq had turned the tide of the land battle, having regained virtually all of its own territory, and Saddam Hussein refused to accept the cease-fire. Baghdad continued offensive operations, using chemical weapons both against Iran and its own Kurdish population. It was not until August 6 that international pressure got Iraq to agree to a cease-fire, and it went into effect two weeks later. Both regimes continued to kill their own citizens -- Kurds in Iraq and dissidents, especially leftists, in Iran -- but the Gulf war was over.

The Iran-Iraq war was not a conflict between good and evil. But though both regimes were repugnant, it was the people of the two countries who served as the cannon fodder, and thus ending the war as soon as possible was a humane imperative. Instead of lending its good offices to mediation efforts and diplomacy, however, Washington maneuvered for advantage, trying to gain vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and to undercut the left. The United States provided intelligence information, bogus and real, to both sides, provided arms to one side, funded paramilitary exile groups, sought military bases, and sent in the U.S. Navy -- and all the while Iranians and Iraqis died.

Three months after the end of the war, U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of the Navy Seth Cropsy expressed his hope that the outcome of U.S. operations in the Gulf would dispel the "national reluctance to interpose American military forces in third world conflicts when important issues are at stake."

Those opposed to U.S. interventionism will not share this hope. Not that there weren't important issues at stake; there were. But they were not the danger of Soviet invasion or the threat that the Western economies might be deprived of oil. For Washington the important issue was whether it would be able to maintain the status quo in a region of great strategic value to the Pentagon and economic value to the oil companies. But for those outside the corridors of power, the real issues have been, and will continue to be, how to promote peace, justice, and self-determination in the Gulf and elsewhere -- and these issues do not lend themselves to gunboat diplomacy.

    [Editor's Note: A footnoted paper is available at The United States and the Gulf War.]

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