The Secret War with Iran

Ronen Bergman

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781780744674
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Intelligence & Espionage
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The shocking failure of Israel and the West to suppress Iran despite thirty-years' secret struggle While many now fear a looming war with Iran, few know that this war is already raging and has been doing so for the past three decades. Starting from the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, intelligence expert Ronen Bergman details the complex array of political manoeuvring, assassination attempts, arms trading, and suicide bombs that have characterised the secret war between Iran and the intelligence services of Israel and the United States. Drawing on interviews with a plethora of intelligence agents from all sides, this is a riveting exploration of the growing influence of Iran in the Middle East, and the covert activities of the CIA and Mossad to tackle Iran and its political ambitions.

PART I

GREEN STORM RISING

CHAPTER 1

The Twilight of the Iranian Monarchy

At least one immediate lesson was learned from the catastrophe that befell the CIA in Tehran with the collapse of the rule of the Shah: shred your secret documents both vertically and horizontally.

On November 4, 1979, nine months after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the Iranian monarchy, a group of students decided to stage a demonstration in front of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. The angry crowd soon found that they could enter through the gate without resistance. They poured into the compound and seized dozens of embassy staff: the start of America’s worst hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, and helped destroy the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Some of the American diplomats taken hostage would later testify that one particularly militant young man by the name of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of their jailers, and maltreated them in a particularly brutal way, though his involvement in the hostage crisis has been disputed.

The hostage takers, who called themselves “Muslim student followers of Imam’s line,” discovered a treasure trove of intelligence inside the embassy.

Just over a year earlier, as tension in Iran began to mount, the CIA’s representatives in Tehran had decided to ship a large part of their classified documents out of the country, just in case. The documents were packed into crates and flown to the United States—only to be returned to the embassy two months later. The staff found it too difficult to work without an archive, and besides, in an emergency, the classified material could always be shredded.

As the student revolutionaries entered the embassy grounds, CIA station personnel began urgently feeding the secret papers into shredding machines. Most of the material was shredded into thin strips. The students, some of whom were soon to be among the founders of the intelligence services of the Islamic Republic, found only a small number of documents intact. But the CIA had not taken into account the determination of the revolutionaries.

Some 250 female students were given a painstaking job. First they combed the embassy compound garbage bins and retrieved the shreds. Then they set about sorting them and putting them back together. The task took two years of meticulous labor. Today, as a consequence of their success, high-security shredders use spiral-toothed blades which leave only tiny scraps that crumble in one’s hands.

The students had recovered a treasure trove of top-secret information on all the aspects of Iranian-American relations. The reconstructions of those documents were released in book form in limited editions. Some were even put on sale in bookshops in Europe.

By June 1985, sixty-one volumes of selected documents had been published. They provided priceless insights into the intelligence methods and diplomatic activity used by the United States and Israel in Iran.

They were also highly embarrassing to the old Iranian regime. The CIA’s five thousand paid informers encompassed government officials and officers in the military of all ranks, including at senior levels. The restored documents led to purges by the Revolutionary Guards of the bureaucracy, the media, and the armed forces, and to executions of top personages who had collaborated with the CIA. They revealed the extent to which the United States was involved in Iran’s internal affairs, with the connivance of the Shah, who owed his hold on power to American intelligence.

In 1953, the Shah was forced to go into exile, after the liberal Mohammad Mossadegh practically took over the government. In August of the same year, Naamtallah Nasiri, a young captain in the Iranian army, approached Mossadegh and in an act of great courage, handed him a letter of dismissal signed by the Shah. Mossadegh was surprised and a little amused. He did not know that behind Nasiri and the Shah stood a powerful conspiracy, with both the CIA and the British MI6 as partners. The two agencies initiated “Operation Ajax,” which called for “spontaneous” mass protests in Iran and a number of clandestine actions that eventually led to the triumphant return of the Shah. (In 2000, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright officially apologized for America’s role.) Nasiri later became a general and headed the much-feared SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police.

The reconstructed documents also reveal the extent to which the CIA’s analysts failed to grasp the danger of the Shah’s overthrow. One of the documents was an evaluation sent by the CIA to Jimmy Carter’s White House in August 1978, which argued there was no chance that the Shah would be toppled in the near future, despite the increased rioting. A few weeks later, the National Intelligence Estimate came out, containing a prediction that the Shah’s rule would last another ten years.

Admiral Stansfield Turner, CIA director from 1977 to 1981, said in a press interview later, “We did not understand who Khomeini was and the support his movement had. We were just plain asleep.”

The strips of shredded documents also demonstrated the extent of CIA knowledge of Israel’s intelligence activities, and detailed the intimate relations between the Israelis and the Shah’s regime. For example, they described a secret meeting between Major General Ezer Weizman, the renowned former commander of the Israel air force who had been appointed minister of defense in the government of Menachem Begin in 1977, and Lieutenant General Hassan Toufanian, Iranian deputy minister of war and armaments. Toufanian was a CIA informant who supplied the agency with the meeting’s protocol. It offered clear evidence that Israel had developed, manufactured, and intended to sell to Iran long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads under the code name of “Operation Tzor.”

Reuven Merhav, head of the Mossad station in Iran at the time, explains that the Shah wanted to work with Israel more than ever after the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976. “Carter began asking questions about human rights, including everything that was going on in Iran,” recalls Merhav. “The Iranians were scared that the gates would close in America and Western Europe, and were looking for alternative sources of supply” for their weapons needs.

Israel and Iran planned to build a tremendous military co-production line, the biggest Israel had partnered in until then. There were a total of six projects. Israel was to supply the know-how and Iran the money and test sites. At the end of the process, the Iranians were supposed to be able to produce the weapons systems themselves. The largest project concerned Israeli-made ballistic surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 700 kilometers. As one senior Israeli military source at the center of the relations with Iran explains, “The Shah wanted Iran to become a regional power, and to be a regional power, he needed a mighty army. He needed a fleet of Boeing 747s to fly his generals, his ministers, and himself around, so he bought no fewer than twelve. He needed to host international conferences, so he built guesthouses with golden bathrooms; and he needed missiles. I know that he was also thinking of nuclear weapons.”

The deal called for Israel to supply Iran with its Jericho missile, which is based on an old French design. Though Israeli censorship doesn’t allow publication of specifics about the Jericho, according to non-Israeli media, it can carry a nuclear warhead, and according to the authoritative Jane’s Defense Information publications, three squadrons of Jericho missiles at the Israeli air force base known as “Wing 2,” located near a village called Zacharia, southwest of Jerusalem, are in fact armed with nuclear warheads. In addition to the Jericho missiles, the projects included plants for the manufacture of 120mm mortars and artillery pieces; the development of a modern sea-to-sea missile called Perah (Hebrew for “Flower”) with a range of 200 kilometers; and a warplane originally called the “Lion,” later the “Young Lion” or Lavi.

A very senior source in the Israeli Ministry of Defense reveals that the weapons deal with Iran was fraudulent. With each of the six joint projects, the Israelis planned to deceive the Iranians by providing them only an outdated version of the weapon in question, while using Iranian money to build a new generation for Israel’s exclusive use.

The details of the various deals were worked out at a series of meetings, mostly between the Israeli ambassador to the Shah’s regime, Uri Lubrani, and General Toufanian. The latter was very close to the Shah and was in charge of all military purchases abroad, as well as local weapons development and manufacture. Yaakov Shapiro, the Defense Ministry official in charge of coordinating the negotiations with Iran from 1975 to 1978, recalls: “In Iran they treated us like kings. We did business with them on a stunning scale. Without the ties with Iran, we would not have had the money to develop weaponry that is today in the front line of the defense of the State of Israel.”

After witnessing a missile test at a secret base south of Tel Aviv and the destruction of a target far out to sea, a highly impressed General Toufanian persuaded the Shah to proceed with the deal with Israel. The agreement was conditional on each side setting up straw companies in Switzerland, owned in turn by companies registered in the Virgin Islands. The deals would be signed between the companies without a word about the governments involved, and the papers were worded in such a way that if they were ever discovered, their true nature would not be discernible.

Yet the efforts made by the Shah’s army to disguise these projects were exposed even before the U.S. Embassy was occupied. General Mohammad Antazemi, who reported to Toufanian and knew of the deals, wanted to save his skin once the Ayatollah Khomeini took power. After hiding out for a few days, he turned himself in, requesting immunity in exchange for the documents about the Swiss straw companies. He took members of the Revolutionary Guards to a secret apartment in Tehran where he had hidden copies of hundreds of reports and of the correspondence between Israel and Iran. His thanks were that he was strenuously interrogated and then executed by a firing squad in one of the city’s squares.

The surprising success of Khomeini’s revolution put a stop to Israel’s plans to arm Iran. Indeed, if Khomeini had not taken power as early as he did, he might have taken over a country armed with long-range missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads and with a range that covered large areas of Europe and all of Israel, as well as a jet fighter that was supposed to be the best in the world.

The Israeli relationship with Iran changed radically in 1979, as did America’s. The revolutionary regime had turned the country’s two most useful allies into its greatest enemies. Unfortunately, neither enemy knew much about the new man in charge in Tehran.

Sayyid Ruhollah Khomeini was many things. He was far from the simple conservative many in the West thought him to be. A closer look at his doctrines reveals that the man who preached for a return to “pure Islam” was in fact a revolutionary (or a cynic, depending on which way you look at it), who reshaped Shi’ite Islam to suit himself and his lust for power, not hesitating to bend in accordance with the demands of a changing reality.

The Shi’ite faith was born out of a deep feeling of deprivation and grievance. The Shi’ites claim that the legal heir to the Prophet Muhammad was his son-in-law and cousin, Ali Ibn Abu Talib, and that all subsequent rule over Muslim believers should have been in the hands of his descendants. Shi’a is an abbreviation of the phrase “the faction of Ali.” The Sunnis, by contrast, claim that Muhammad died without appointing an heir. Ali did rule for a few years, from 656 to 661, but they were years of constant internal strife. Finally, he was murdered, whereupon the Umayyad dynasty took over and ruled from 661 to 750. To this day, the Shi’ites see that as a criminal and despicable usurpation, and the reign of the first three caliphs as an arbitrary confiscation of the Prophet’s inheritance. The Shi’a were born as victims of injustice.

In the dominant Shi’a tradition, there are, in effect, two kinds of people. The first is the superior few, generally no more than a dozen, who are entitled to issue religious directives independently, dictating to their followers. They are chosen in accordance with their knowledge and seniority by Shi’ite institutions, the most important of which are in the holy cities of Qom, in Iran, and Najaf, in Iraq.

All others are the “imitators,” who must choose one of the ayatollahs and obey his rulings.

For centuries, the greatest weakness in the Shi’ite establishment was the divisions and personal rivalries between the different ayatollahs. Only rarely did one of them rise above the others and manage to unite a large-scale following. Khomeini was one of the few such leaders to succeed in uniting the majority of the Shi’ite faithful under his leadership.

Khomeini bore the hereditary title Sayyid, meaning “Lord,” used only by descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.

Since the first imam, Ali, rule over the Shi’a had passed from father to son. In 874, after the murder of the eleventh imam, al-Hassan al-Askari, his son, then a small child, is said to have gone into a cave at Samarra, some 100 kilometers north of Baghdad, and has never been seen since. The Shi’ites believe that when the day comes, the hidden imam will be revealed again, as the Mahdi, or messiah.

Khomeini belonged to the Mussawis, descendants of the seventh imam, Mussa ibn Ja’fer. After seizing power and declaring the Islamic Republic, Khomeini ensured that the Shi’a clerics occupied all positions of real power in the country.

Sayyid Ahmad, Khomeini’s grandfather, settled in the city of Khomein in around 1840, and set up his own small religious school. He was considered a peerless Islamic scholar. In 1902, Ahmad’s son, Mustafa, was murdered shortly after Mustafa’s son, Ruhollah (Khomeini), was born. The fact that he was stabbed six times and his son was only six months old rendered the child a bad kadam, or a child born under an evil sign, destined to bring only disaster on himself and his family. The repulsion with which the family and neighbors viewed the boy was so powerful that his mother sent him to a distant aunt, who undertook to bring him up until he turned sixteen.

As a young man in his family’s hometown of Khomein, the future revolutionary became a well-known preacher, acutely expert in the intricacies of the faith, but lacking in charismatic oratory. For many years he professed, at least outwardly, the conservative teachings of the Shi’a, by which religious sages do not rule themselves but only advise the king. By the early 1960s, however, Khomeini underwent a dramatic change. The Shah’s program of reform, announced in 1963, along with Khomeini’s sharp and public criticism of the proposed changes, singled him out as the Shah’s most prominent and vocal critic.

From that moment on, the ayatollah’s conduct was completely different. For one thing, he began to speak simply, abandoning his hitherto complex, profound style, so that more people would understand him. His new vocabulary was limited to some two thousand words. By sheer repetition of certain phrases they took on the nature of magical incantations. Second, he began to portray the world as a clash between good and evil. The evil must be uprooted and destroyed, a duty that had to be performed by the good, who were both judges and executioners. His followers among the poor found this persuasive.

Finally, in order to prepare himself for the role that he now desired, Khomeini shook off the basic separation of civil and religious authority that had always prevailed in the Muslim empires, and declared there was no longer a need for a king advised by religious sages. The government should be in the hands of the sages themselves. Not only was monarchical rule no longer acceptable, but so was any regime that was not headed by a religious authority. The presidents of Egypt and Syria and the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia were all heretics, whose rule was illegitimate.

Khomeini’s ideology, advocating “rule by the Islamic jurist,” constituted a great innovation for the Shi’a. And his next great innovation drastically changed the way the Shi’ites interpreted their defining historical event, the battle of Karbala, in 680. When Hussein, the son of the Imam Ali, tried to reclaim rule over Islam for his family, he and seventy of his followers were killed in the battle. The anniversary is marked in the Ashura ceremonies, where the participants cut themselves until the blood flows. The Iranians had mourned the death of Hussein for hundreds of years, seeing it as a great tragedy. Khomeini told them that Hussein had died in honor, and that death should be sanctified, whereas life was something to have reservations about. “You must pray to Allah that He grant you the honor of dying for the sanctification of His name,” he preached.

Khomeini’s attitude to the issue of martyrdom was meant to prepare the ground for his assumption of power. He explained to his supporters that the highest sanction in the hands of the state was the power to execute its citizens. Take this sanction away, by changing death to a desired reward, and the state became powerless.

Khomeini’s next step was to shatter the most important traditional custom of Shi’ite theology. He allowed the believers, even encouraged them, to call him “Imam.” This title had been reserved by the Iranian Shi’ites for Ali and the eleven leaders who came after him. Until the inevitable return of the missing twelfth imam at some unpredictable time, no Iranian religious sage had had the right to use the title. Without stating it explicitly, Khomeini was creating the impression that he was the missing imam, who had returned as a messiah, or Mahdi.

In 1963, Khomeini launched an open campaign against the Shah from Qom, one of Iran’s holiest cities. He was swiftly arrested. Not long after, mass rioting broke out in the capital and other cities. Many were killed with the battle cry “Long live Khomeini!” on their lips. After a year in prison, he was released and placed under house arrest in Tehran before he was allowed to return to Qom, where he resumed his incitement against the regime. Khomeini now focused his attacks on the law that gave U.S. military personnel diplomatic immunity in Iran. He was arrested again and sent into exile in Turkey. From there he went to the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf in Iraq. The lessons that he taught there attracted more and more students, and during the 1970s he became, from afar, one of the most powerful of the Shah’s opponents...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: Green Storm Rising
• Part II: The Hidden War in The Middle East
• Part III: The Global War
• Part IV: The Second Coming of Hezbollah
• Part V: The First Shi’ite Bomb
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography and a Note on Sources
• Index