The Most Powerful Partner in Crime

How the United States took sides in the Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988

Master’s Thesis ‘Internationale Betrekkingen in historisch perspectief’.

Marijn Willemse

9802991

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Index Foreword............................................................................................................................ 3

Introduction....................................................................................................................... 5

Chapter One: The History of the Conflict...................................................................... 8

1.1 Ottoman Empire and Persia .................................................................................. 8

1.2 Shiites, Sunnis and Demographics...................................................................... 13

1.3 Post World War I Relations ................................................................................ 18

1.4 The Iranian Revolution ....................................................................................... 23

1.5 Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein ......................................................... 25

Chapter Two: America Becomes Involved in the Region ........................................... 29

2.1 The Overthrow of Mossadegh ............................................................................ 29

2.2 The United States and the Shah: Best Friends .................................................... 33

2.3 War Breaks Out................................................................................................... 35

2.4 The United States Takes Sides at the UN ........................................................... 37

Chapter Three: A Clear Bias ......................................................................................... 42

3.1 Bilateral Relations.............................................................................................. 42

3.2 The American Stance on Iraq’s Use of Chemical Weapons............................... 48

3.3 The Tanker War and the Free Flow of Oil.......................................................... 52

Chapter Four: Covert Help: Iraqgate........................................................................... 58

4.1 Intelligence.......................................................................................................... 60

4.2 Loans................................................................................................................... 61

4.3 Arms and Dual-Use Equipment .......................................................................... 67

Chapter Five: The Hidden Agenda: Irangate .............................................................. 75

5.1 Operation Staunch............................................................................................... 76

5.2 The Iran-Contra Affair........................................................................................ 78

Chapter Six: The Finishing Touch ................................................................................ 84

6.1 The Tanker War Continued: America Enters the Fray ....................................... 84

6.2 The End: Resolution 598 .................................................................................... 87

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 90

Sources ............................................................................................................................. 94

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Foreword

As a student of International Relations at the University of Utrecht, I was confronted with

having to find a topic for my Master’s thesis. The current turmoil in the Middle East, and

the resulting media attention, soon made me look in that direction. In the wake of the

recent American invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq, many historians, political

analysts and journalists alike were inspired to weigh up the official reasons given by the

White House against darker, alternative reasons for the invasions. Simply to ‘free’ the

people of Afghanistan and Iraq, after the initial reasoning had been rendered moot (i.e.

‘get’ Osama Bin Laden and find weapons of mass destruction, ostensibly to be turned

against the West), did and does not suffice for many. Nor does it suffice for me.

In my quest to find a topic of my interest and some historical value at the same

time, I tried to remember what I knew of the Middle East, and which conflict or process

had left an imprint on me. I vaguely remembered some images of the Iran-Iraq war,

mainly of Iran’s child soldiers, projected on my parents’ television screen in the days

when I was still a very young boy.

After looking into the Iran-Iraq war a bit more, I concluded it was more or less

forgotten by many. The world somehow seemed to have started turning faster after the

conclusion of one of the most horrendous armed conflicts of the twentieth century, while

effectively, it can be argued that it planted the seeds of what is going on today in Iraq.

The Persian Gulf War, as it used to be called, not only got its name stolen, but also much

of its historical value. Aside from the two protagonists, it turned out there was at least a

third power with a substantial role in it, namely the United States.

Almost every book written on the Iran-Iraq war however, only mentions the role

of the United States on a side note, or fails to mention it at all. However, I must admit I

have not been able to browse all books on the subject; many libraries in The Netherlands

obviously do not think it is worthwhile to stock their shelves with books on the Iran-Iraq

war. Similarly, many books have gone out of print and are no longer available. Other

books that have gone out of print are still available, but only against exorbitantly high

prices. As a student with a modest budget, I could not obtain all the books I would have

liked.

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In all those years that have passed though, only one book has more or less been devoted

to comprehensively describing America’s role, and only very few articles. Adam Tarock

wrote ‘The Superpowers’ Involvement in the Iran-Iraq War’ in 1998, and complained in

his preface that until then no one had taken on the task to describe the role of the

superpowers before him. After him, for that matter, nobody has done so either.

Since Tarock wrote his book, which focuses heavily on the role of the Soviet

Union, leaves out virtually all of the historic events leading up to the war, the issue of

chemical weapons, and U.S. loans and exports of dual-use equipment, more information

has become available on various aspects of the conflict, and most importantly: American

involvement in it. Many formerly secret security directives and official cables in the

period from 1980 to 1984 have recently been disclosed via the internet, albeit heavily

censored sometimes. Numerous hearings and investigations, mainly instigated by the

Congress have since been published too. Sadly, not all released documents can be found

on the web, and can only be found in American libraries in their printed or microfiche

form at this moment. Moreover, many more documents have not yet been released at all,

and remain locked in U.S. government vaults.

When it can no longer embarrass people still in power in the United States, and

when it no longer presents a danger to America’s national security, we may get the

complete story one day. Aside from having more material available, hopefully someone

will then take on the job to analyze the material too. Historians need to be able to stand

on each other’s shoulders in order to come to a greater understanding of a historical

event or process. In this case, as it stands, there are too few shoulders to stand on. I

intend to reach out at least part of a shoulder.

Marijn Willemse

Rotterdam, 21 August 2006

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Introduction

The First Persian war, or better known as the Iran-Iraq war, was one of the bloodiest and

most costly armed conflicts of the twentieth century. For many westerners, it was merely

a far-away conflict and the region only seemed to catch significant interest when the

United States openly flexed their muscles in Operation Desert Storm, to free Kuwait of

their evil invader. Suddenly the lies and losses of the devil that was Iraq reached every

living room in the Western hemisphere, and the more than a million casualties the longest

conventional war of the century had cost were soon forgotten, overshadowed by an armed

conflict that somehow seemed more important.

This thesis does not attempt to clarify the reasons why the sudden change of

political direction from the United States concerning Iraq occurred, or which particular

American interests were at stake that made them decide to invade Iraq. Nor will the Iran-

Iraq war itself be detailed; just the broad strokes where the course of the war influenced

Washington’s decision-making will be touched upon.

However, in its attempt to lay bare the backbone of what was once America’s

stance and policy towards the region, during the Iran-Iraq war to be exact, one cannot

help but discern a certain level of hypocrisy. The cynical would note that it is interests

and not moral standards that tend to dictate a superpower’s foreign policy and that

feigning the opposite would be obscuring the truth.

Of course, there should be no misunderstanding that first and foremost, Saddam

Hussein and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini should be held responsible, when it comes to

carrying the blame for the start of the war and the prolongation of it. Nonetheless, many

western powers were instrumental in the prolongation, fierceness and huge death toll by

keeping the warring parties well stocked with arms and cash credits. Israel supplied arms

to both Iran and Iraq; France made sure Iraq had a steady flow of high-tech weaponry; the

Germans supplied massive amounts of arms to Iraq, and Great Britain supplied military

support as well as some spare parts for military equipment. Aside from the western

powers’ involvement, the Soviet Union should be named as the single most important

exporter of arms to Iraq. Regional states had their part too, but it can be argued there was

more at stake for them. Libya and Syria took Iran’s side, and most of the Gulf states, like

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Jordan - devoid of a strong army themselves - supplied Iraq

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with a steady cash flow in the hope that the strong buffer between them and radical Iran

would hold.

The political, economical and military involvement of the United States is slightly

less known, but by now well established. Time and again charts show that the military

help the United States has given to Iraq was minimal, but it should be stated that dual-use

equipment, which is usually not categorized as military equipment, can help a war effort

by a great deal. One should think of spray planes, armed ambulances, and civilian

helicopters. All these items can function as war tools after a few small modifications.

During the war, the U.S. Department of Commerce issued over 700 export licenses for

such dual-use equipment. The point is that the list of ‘merchants of death’ would not be

complete without the United States. Moreover though, the added blame one can arguably

attribute to the United States lies perhaps in their political levy turned on to favor Iraq.

With great power comes great responsibility, but the self-proclaimed strict neutrality was

quickly set aside when it became clear vital interests were at stake.

This thesis will start with explaining the roots of the conflict, both by the long-

term animosity between Arabs and Persians and Shiites and Sunnites, and the special

domestic as well as international developments that shaped the preconditions for the

escalation of what once was not more than a border conflict. The reason is to create a

bird’s eye view and a framework for the reader to place the central question, namely how,

when and why did the United States become more partial than impartial in this conflict,

as well as to be able to judge the side taking of the United States in part of its context.

After that framework has been established this work will narrow down to answer the

central questions more directly.

It will be shown that the Cold War, the protection of the free flow of oil,

realpolitik and a schizophrenic foreign policy have all contributed to the American stance

and actions in the Iran-Iraq ordeal. With the use of recently – to the public - released

U.S.-policy directives, official cables and memoranda, the American policy in respect to

the Iran-Iraq war will be laid bare with first hand evidence where possible, after which a

moral assessment will be made. The order of the chapters has been organized in such a

way to highlight the different forms of aid the Americans used to favor Iraq, and in one

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instance Iran. Unfortunately, because several different forms of help have occurred in the

same time frame, some small compromises to the chronology of events were inevitable.

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Chapter One: The History of the Conflict

Some historians have traced the origins of the war all the way back to pre-Islamic battles

fought between Arabs and Persians. While the (ancient) history of the two nations as we

know them today can explain the historic antagonism between Arabs and Persians in

general, it does not explain the roots of the conflict in a satisfying manner. Many more

aspects need to be taken into account to unravel the reasons why the Iran-Iraq war broke

out exactly when and where it did. For good measure however, this thesis will briefly go

into the older history of Iran and Iraq to explain which underlying forces have been a

constant in the relation between Iran and Iraq in the past few centuries. As a benchmark

to start from, the author has chosen the Ottoman Empire, because that era can still be

considered fresh in the general public’s minds - if compared to the ancient history – and

allows for fairly clear reasoning to explain the centuries-old antagonism between Arabs

and Persians, as well as the border conflicts that ensued since the emergence of Iraq as a

nation state. In addition, it will be shown that the course of history has provided for a

geographical split between Sunnites and Shiites, which played an important part in

winning over the hearts and minds of the people to convince them they were at the right

side of the fence all along. Furthermore, the rising antagonism between the two countries

in the latter half of the 1970’s, cannot be explained in a satisfying manner without taking

into account the Algiers Agreement of 1975. Lastly, the Iranian revolution and its

ensuing power vacuum provided a great opportunity for the strong and ruthless leadership

of Saddam Hussein to achieve his goal of regional hegemony. Similarly, the war may not

have gone on for as long as it did if it wasn’t for the stoical determination and devotion of

Ayatollah Khomeini.

1.1 Ottoman Empire and Persia

The mighty Ottoman Empire lasted from 1517 to 1918 and at times threatened to overrun

Europe, laying siege to Vienna twice. At the peak of their power the Ottoman Turks ruled

over vast lands, stretching over three continents. Their territory at one time completely

surrounded the Black Sea in the north, stretched as far west as the borders of Austria and

present day Morocco in Northern Africa, as far south as Yemen, but to the east the

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Ottoman arm could not reach further than the borders of Persia1, then the core of the

Safavid realm. By and large, the sixteenth century was the era of expansion, the

seventeenth the one of maintenance, and in the eighteenth century large reversals in

Ottoman territory and power took place, until after World War I the ‘sick man of Europe’

- as it had come to be called by then - finally crumbled.

Figure 1: The Ottoman Empire 1300-1699. Source:

http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/maps/default.htm, last update unknown, visited 12 July

2006.

By taking over the lands that were formerly part of the Abbasid Caliphate they usurped

the center of Muslim religion, and the Ottoman rulers created a holy aura around their

rule. “Warriors of Faith”, “Servitor of the two Holy Sanctuaries” and “Defenders of the

Shari’a” (Islamic law), were among the titles they granted themselves.2 Their attempts to

be seen as the gatekeepers of Islam paid off, and their religious authority appealed to

1 Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies (second edition; Cambridge 2002), map 12, 256-257. 2 Ibidem, p 253.

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Muslims the world over, which is no mean achievement for a non-Arab ruling elite. After

all, many Arabs traditionally tend to view themselves as the root of Islam, and who’s

more Catholic than the Pope?

For a long time, the Ottomans had looked to the west to expand, but when their

attempts to do so eventually proved futile, they started to turn their attention to the east.

After having taken control over Romania, Hungary and Transylvania around the turn of

the sixteenth century, the Ottoman Turks came across the Habsburgs and other - by then

highly organized - European societies, and the rapid expansion westward, which had been

slowing down for a significant time already, came to a standstill. Being so far away from

their central command center, Istanbul, also contributed to the Ottoman-European

stalemate. The Ottomans didn’t quite give up that easily though, and laid siege to Vienna

again in 1683, albeit for the last time. Like the first time in 1529, the Ottomans were

successfully fended off. The reason their attention moved to the east wasn’t just because

expansion westward had grinded to a halt, but also because rebellions against the

Ottomans emerged in that region.

Persia was a strong neighbor on the eastern fringes of the Empire, and never

succumbed to Ottoman control. They were of a different kind than the Ottomans and

most of their subjects. Persians were a proud people of Indo-European descent and could

look back on a glorious past. In the seventh century they too had been overrun by the

Muslim armies spreading the new belief, Islam, and had by and large been converted to

that religion, but the conquerors had to admit – much like the Romans who conquered

Greece – they had come across a highly civilized society. Thus, several Persian forms of

administration and the much-revered Persian poetry were adopted in different degrees by

the Arab conquerors, and the Persians continued to cling to their own language, customs

and traditions.3 Despite the fact most Persians were Muslims at the time their mighty

neighbour eagerly looked their way, the rapid spreading of a specific strand of Islam,

namely Shi’ism (see section 1.2) set them further apart from the Ottomans. Originating as

a small sect in Arabia, it would soon come to be associated mainly with Persia. As said,

3 Majid Khadduri, The Gulf War: The Origins and Implications of the Iraq-Iran Conflict (New York 1988), 6.

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the Ottomans were devout Sunnis and considered Sunnism to be the only true form of

Islam.

Shah Ismail, born in 1486 in Persia, managed to embattle the then Sunni rulers in

Persia, and to some degree unite the people, in the form of Twelver Shi’ism. During the

days of the Arab Umayyad Empire (661- 750) which included Persia, the Persian

converts had been discriminated against, for example in the form of higher taxes.

Whomever bets that all such things would easily be forgotten over centuries, has pulled

the shortest straw. The battle of Qadisyya for example, waged in 637 between the Arab-

Muslim armies and the Sassanid Empire (Persia), resulting in a loss for the latter, still

conjures up powerful images of Arab superiority and has been invoked by Saddam

Hussein many times during the Iran-Iraq war.

Many of Shah Ismail’s contemporary Persians weren’t looking forward to

Ottoman rule, and leaving Sunni Islam for Shi’ism was one way of uniting against a

common enemy. Also, Shi’ism preaches that one day, the twelfth Imam who

mysteriously went missing as a child, will some day return back to earth to restore order.

Shah Ismail, a very charismatic man, fit the description to some, and soon his standing

reached mythological heights, with more and more people seeking comfort in Shi’ism as

a result. He succeeded in gaining control of not only Persia, but vast territories in Central

Asia as well, including parts of the Ottoman realm. Various pockets of Shi’ah in the

Ottoman Empire revolted and combined with mixed military results of the Ottomans in

the west, Shah Ismail drew all attention of the Ottoman Sultan Salim. In 1514 Salim

reconquered northern Iraq, Syria and Egypt, but left Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala under

Persian control, supposedly because the Persian winter was looming close, which in

combination with the mountainous terrain turned out to be strong enough a deterrent.4

Either way, the Ottomans never succeeded in gaining control over Persia, but border

conflicts would ensue right up until 1988.

The Savafids managed to occupy Iraq – which then consisted of the three

Ottoman provinces of Basra, Mosul and Baghdad – between 1623 and 1638, and once the

Ottomans recaptured the lost territories, the first Treaty between the two, which dealt

with border demarcation, was signed. The treaty recognized the region of present-day

4 Ibidem, 7-10.

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Iraq as part of the Ottoman Empire, among other things, and would last for over a

hundred years on paper, but border skirmishes did persist. The Kurdish tribes in the north

ignored the borders altogether and in the south Arab tribes who did not want the

Ottomans to rule them, allied with the Persians.5 In 1812 things came to a head again

when Muhammara (now a province in Iran) emerged as an autonomous Kingdom and

bordered on both the Ottoman Empire as well as Persia. A war broke out in 1821 but

Great Britain and czarist Russia, by now the leading powers in the region, brokered a

peace agreement; The Erzurum Treaty of 1823.

Not surprisingly the Erzurum Treaty dealt mainly with border demarcation too,

like its predecessor. Unfortunately, both parties continued to meddle in each other’s

internal affairs; Persia encouraged the Kurds in Iraq to rise up against their rulers and

between 1834 and 1840 the Ottomans attacked the port of Muhammara – which later

came to be called Khorramshahr. Also, the Persian Shiites living under Ottoman rule in

Iraq were being persecuted.6 Again, Great Britain and Russia brokered a settlement,

called the Second Erzurum Treaty: Persia gave up some territory in Iraqi Kurdistan and

Persia was given back the port of Muhammara, Khorramshahr. Among some other small

land swaps Persia was granted the land area between Bahmanshir river and the Shatt al

Arab waterway, moving the borders between the two countries westward, but leaving the

Shatt al Arab under Ottoman control. However, Muhammara kept functioning as an

autonomous region, and Arab tribes moved freely around both banks of the Shatt al Arab,

and the Ottomans would invoke that fact several times to claim that the eastern bank of

the Shatt al Arab – which, according to the treaty, belonged to Persia - was to be

considered part of the Ottoman Empire after all. The former point became more

complicated when the British found large reserves of oil in the Muhammara region in

1908.

Against this backdrop the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Russia and Great Britain

negotiated the Constantinople Treaty, which once again handled the border demarcation

and this time also the navigational rights over the Shatt al Arab. The foundations for the

fact that this waterway would cause further trouble in the future, were perhaps laid when

5 Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (London 1989), 8. 6 Ibidem, 8.

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Britain made sure the protocol granted Persia six islands in the Shatt al Arab. The reason

was clear; vast amounts of oil had been found and Britain saw opportunities in

developing Persia’s oil industry, for which it would need facilities along the disputed

waterway.7

After the First World War the global arena saw some dramatic changes in power

structure: the Russian Revolution was a very unstable time for the Soviet Union and the

Ottoman Empire folded altogether. Iraq emerged under a British mandate by combining

the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, thus inheriting all border conflicts

with Persia, as well as the ethnic heterogeneity of the region. Aside from the enduring

armed clashes of the boundaries between the two states, one could logically argue that

Arab-Persian animosity and a certain degree of mutual contempt has been a constant

throughout several centuries, which is best captured in the following Persian saying:

“While Arabs eat locusts in the desert, dogs in Iran drink iced water.”8

1.2 Shiites, Sunnis and Demographics

Another point that has led to and helped maintain Persian-Arab antagonism is the fact

that the vast majority of Persia adheres to the Shiite branch of Islam, while the

overwhelming majority of Muslims in the world adhere to the Sunni branch. As the last

chapter has shown, the conversion of Persian Sunnis to Shi’ism was – at least in part –

merely a reaction to the Ottoman threat, whose rulers were the self-proclaimed nucleus of

Sunni Islam. The result has reinforced the cultural differences between Persians and

Arabs and helped preserve them right up until the present day. Persia has since long been

associated with Shi’ism and an estimated 89% of the Iranian populace is Shiite9, whilst

some 85% of the world’s Muslims are Sunnis,10 making Iran the geographical centerpiece

of Shi’ism.

7 Richard Schofield, ‘Old Boundaries for a New State: The Creation of Iraq’s Eastern Question,’ SAIS Review, Volume 16, Issue 1 (May 9, 2006) 27-39, here 27. 8 Adam Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement in the Iran-Iraq War (New York 1998), 57. 9 CIA – The World Factbook, Iran, https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ir.html, last update unknown, visited 27 June, 2006. 10 Dick Douwes, ‘Richtingen en stromingen (Directions and currents)’ in: Henk Driessen ed., In het huis van de Islam (In the house of Islam) (2nd print, Nijmegen 2001), 162-181, here 162.

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However, Iran is not the only country in the Middle East with a majority of

Shiites. The fault line of the geographical spread of Shi’ism runs from the Caucasus all

the way south to Bahrain, with a few dispersed pockets here and there, as shown on the

map below. Most significantly, it shows that Iraq too has a Shiite majority, like Iran,

albeit a smaller one (60%). Note that the area in Iraq with a significant Shiite population

is concentrated in the South, and borders on Iran. Furthermore, many Shiite holy shrines

are located in Iraq.

Figure 2: The spread of Shi’ism in the Middle East and Central Asia. Source: Answers.com,

http://www.answers.com/topic/shiyemap-jpg, last update unknown, visited 12 June 2006.

The split in Islam was caused when the religion still bore its birthmarks, by conflicting

ideas about whom the successor of Muhammad should be. After Muhammad’s death, a

dispute between his followers arose. The community at large accepted Abu Bakr, one of

Muhammad’s close friends and father-in-law as the first Caliph and thus leader of the

Muslims. Others believed that at some point during his lifetime, Muhammad had

appointed his cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, who also happened to be the father of his only

15

descendants, as his successor. Therefore they refused to see Abu Bakr – and his

successors in turn – as the rightful ones. Instead, they believed ‘that the true Caliph and

ruler of the Muslim community descended in the family of Ali by virtue of nass, the

designation by each incumbent imam of his successor.’11 In short, Shiites grant imams

more power than Sunnis do. It should be noted here that the word ‘Imam’ can have

several meanings. The one most commonly known by westerners refers to the male

prayer leader, but in Shiite circles, it can also refer to the descendants of Muhammad.

These were believed to be infallible leaders of the Muslim community due to their divine

appointment. It is the latter meaning that is being used in this context. who were infallible

leaders of the Muslim community due to their divine appointment. It is the latter meaning

that is meant in this context. Somewhat confusingly, Ayatollah Khomeini would come to

be called Imam as well, at least by some, which is an indication of his perceived

infallibility as a leader.

The largest and by far the most common branch of Shiism is called Twelver

Shi’ism, named after the twelve Imams they recognize as they rightful successors of

Muhammad. Legend has it that the twelfth Imam suddenly disappeared as a child, but

will one day return to restore right on earth. It is this belief that can help ascribe powerful

and mythological powers to charismatic, devout and strong leaders of the kind that only

emerge once every few hundred years. As has been said before, Shah Ismail was certainly

one of those figures in his time until he suffered some defeats, but one can say the same

of Ayatollah Khomeini, and moreover, in the case of the latter the revolution coincided

with the turn of the Muslim century (1399), further adding to his messianic aura.12

The way Sunnis and Shiites practice their religion does not differ all that much,

but there are many small differences, due to the fact they do not accept the same hadith –

writings that describe what Muhammad said, did, and approved of during his lifetime.

Hadith form a guideline for Muslims on how to live and organize their lives, and things

such as prayer times are derived from it. The most important difference is that Sunnis and

Shiites have differences of opinion about whom to ascribe religious authority to: Shiites

11 Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 95. 12 Dick Douwes, ‘Richtingen en stromingen (Directions and currents), 173.

16

do not recognize the first three Caliphs and maintain that Imams can add to Islam, where

Sunnis hold up the opposite.

The scorning of the first three Caliphs – up until the present day – by Shiites has in large

part been the basis for the polemics between both branches of Islam, and a certain degree

of antagonism between the two. The tensions between the Ottoman Empire and Persia

were further fuelled by the fact that many Shiite holy shrines lay within Ottoman

territory. Access to those holy shrines for Persian Shiites had been a matter of dispute for

centuries, until both parties came to terms with allowing access. Lastly, Shiites tend to

attribute more weight to martyrdom, which stems from the massacre of the son of Ali,

Husain. Without making an in-depth analysis, suffice to say here that Husain, in Shi’ism,

is treated much like Jesus, and the willingness to die in battle relates to the wish of a

certain personification with Husain. In light of this facet of Shi’ism, Khomeini’s

determination to fight to the end, and with him hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers,

some as young as thirteen years old, is easier to understand.

The centuries-old differences between Shiites and Sunnis were turned to by both

Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini to muster the local population and their

sentiments in their favor. Contrary to that believe however, major uprisings did not occur.

Evidently, nationalism played a role too. In the same strain of thought, Iraq assumed to be

welcomed by the large Arab population in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan (see map 3,

below) – despite the fact many of those Arabs are Shiites - and Iran sparked and

encouraged secessionism in the large Kurdish population in northern Iraq (see map 4,

below). It turned out that the Kurdish population, having had many skirmishes with Iraq’s

army, were more willing to help the Iranians than the Arabs in Khuzestan were willing to

help the Iraqis.

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Figure 3: Distribution of religious and ethnic groups in Iran. Source: Answers.com,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Iran_ethnoreligious_distribution_2004.jpg,

last update unknown, visited 12 June 2006.

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Figure 4: Distribution of religious and ethnic groups in Iraq. Source: Answers.com,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Iraq_demography.jpg, last update unknown,

visited 12 June 2006.

1.3 Post World War I Relations

After the First World War the ‘sick man of Europe’ fell apart and broke up in several

smaller states. The Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Basra and Baghdad were molded into

one single state, namely Iraq. This was predominantly the work of Great Britain, who,

under a League of Nations Mandate, had been given the task to supervise the formation

19

of several new states, derived from the former Ottoman territories.13 Now Persia and Iraq

faced one another as nation-states, but the conflicts between the two would be far from

over.

There seemed to be at least some forms of rapprochement though, which

culminated in the exchange of envoys in 1931. Nonetheless, the underlying problems and

border conflicts remained largely unaltered. When King Faisal I of Iraq visited Persia in

1932, Persia attempted to pressure Iraq into accepting the so-called ‘thalweg-principle’ in

relation to the Shatt al Arab. This principle would change the borders between both

countries to the median line of the lowest point in the Shatt al Arab waterway. Iraq

rejected the idea and tensions rose again; both countries accused each other of violating

the terms of previous treaties and Iraq took the case to the League of Nations, of which it

had become a member on October 3, 1932. On a side note, Persia was renamed Iran in

1935, and hereto forth in this thesis, will be addressed as Iran.

The League of Nations failed to offer a solution and Iran and Iraq decided to

resume direct negations once again, in 1936, resulting in the Iraqi-Iranian Frontier Treaty

of 1937. As shown on the map below, Iran gained some territory due to that treaty. Iraq

would later contend that it was pressured into signing it. One should keep in mind that at

the time, Iran had a much stronger army and Iraq was still under the indirect tutelage of

Great Britain, who had by then set up the Anglo-Persian Petroleum Company, which

dominated Iran’s commercial life, and had become very powerful.

13 Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq (Cambridge 2000), 30.

20

Figure 5: The Shatt al Arab Boundary. Source: Will D. Swearingen, ‘Geopolitical Origins of the

Iran-Iraq War’, Geopolitical Review, Vol. 78, nr. 4, (Oct., 1988), 405-416, here 410.

Another point that raised the tensions was the fact that the ruler of Iran, Reza Shah

Pavlavi, undertook successful action to rid Muhammara of the degree of autonomy they

still enjoyed, and renamed it Khuzestan. The oil-rich region has long since been inhabited

by Arabs, and on the basis of the shared ethnicity a certain connection between Iraq and

Muhammara/Khuzestan had been established. In the past, Muhammara had often allied

itself to Persia because many Arabs received unfair treatment under Ottoman rule. Now

that Iraq had emerged as a semi-autonomous Arab nation, the region naturally leaned

more towards Iraq than Iran.14 Iraq angered Iran by stirring up rebellions in Khuzestan

and moreover, started to claim autonomy over the entire Shatt al Arab, contrary to both

the 1913 and 1937 treaties.

14 David Schaffer, The Iran-Iraq War (no place, 2002), 17.

21

World War II quickly moved the two countries’ differences to the background, when the

United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union occupied both nations to use them to

supply the Soviets with war materials to help combat Germany. After the war, when the

occupying forces had left the area, relations between Iran and Iraq started to improve. In

1949 the Treaty of Good Neighborly Relations was signed, and the mere political envoys

in each country were replaced by embassies. In 1951 the Middle East Treaty

Organization – better know as the Baghdad Pact - came into being and aside from Britain,

Turkey and Pakistan both Iran and Iraq became members, further enhancing the political

rapprochement between the latter two. The Baghdad Pact was merely a way for Britain

and the United States to keep some influence in the region, and as a military tier along the

Soviet border, to contain the Soviet’s feared military and political advances.15

Iraq underwent a coup d'état in July 1958, and the pro-western monarchy was

replaced by a nationalist, military regime and got rid of the last strands of imperialism.

Tehran on the other hand felt the western claws strengthen their clasp on domestic

politics but most importantly, their foreign policy. Due to an American and British-staged

coup in 1953, former prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, was expelled from office

and the Shah’s power was restored (see section 2.1), after which the U.S. and the Shah

entered a ‘sweetheart’ relation with one another (see section 2.2). On a side note, Reza

Shah Pahlavi ruled Iran until 1941, when his son, Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi ruled

the country until 1979.

In 1959 Iran signed a Military Co-operation Agreement with the United States,

which allowed for ‘American defense of Iran in case of external aggression’16 and in the

same year Iraq stepped out of the Baghdad Pact. Iran saw their military position in the

region strengthened, and pressed again for a revision of the 1937 treaty relating to the

Shatt al Arab. Politically unstable Iraq was clearly the weaker party, suffering three coups

-1958, 1963 and 1968 - the last coup, by the Ba’ath Party, allowed for political

stabilization. In April 1969 though, the Iranian government unilaterally abrogated the

1937 treaty and started to pilot their own ships in the waterway, escorted by the Iranian

navy. It had already started to help arm the Kurdish insurgents in northern Iraq three

15 Dilip Hiro, The Longest War, 11. 16 Ibidem, 11.

22

years earlier. The Kurdish problem has always haunted Iraq but matters had come to a

head at that time.

The raised tensions made Iraq decide to break off all diplomatic ties with Iran in

1971 and to do the same to Britain. The bilateral relations with the United States had

been abrogated by Iraq in the wake of the Arab-Israel war, in which Washington had

taken a pro-Israel stance. In return, Iraq started to look more and more towards Moscow,

which culminated in the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union in

1972. By the end of 1974, the Kurdish problem escalated further and Kurdish guerrillas

in the northeast kept the Iraqi army well occupied. Iran came to their military aid by

shelling the Iraqi forces and firing off anti-air missiles. Border skirmishes between Iran

and Iraq ensued and Iraq had to come to the painful conclusion it was on its own here:

neither the Soviet Union nor the Arab planned to come to its rescue. By now, with the aid

of the United States, Iran had grown to the most powerful force in the Gulf, and

considered itself the ‘policeman’ of the region.

These were the circumstances when yet another treaty between the two was

negotiated , namely the Algiers Agreement of 1975. Due to their political isolation, the

Kurdish problem that was draining their resources, and their military inferiority, Iraq

found themselves in a puny position. The Algiers Agreement once again changed the

fluvial borders, to the advantage of Iran. The thalweg-principle was now to be applied to

the whole length of the Shatt al Arab, and both countries agreed to ‘carry out a final

delineation of their land boundaries in accordance with the Constantinople Protocol of

1913 and the Proceedings of the Border Delimitation Commission of 1914.’17 In addition,

Iran ceased their aid to the Kurdish insurgents in Iraq.

Thus, again, Iran had managed to triumph in the settlement of a border dispute

with Iraq. Since both countries’ main export product was oil, the waterway was of vital

interest for the sound functioning of their commercial industry. In the case of Iraq it can

be argued the waterway was even more significant than for Iran, because Iraq borders on

the Gulf only for a mere 60 kilometers, while Iran has a coastline that stretches for over a

thousand kilometers and includes the Arabian Sea as well. Either way, for historical,

17 Mideast Web, ‘Algiers Accord’, http://www.mideastweb.org/algiersaccord.htm, last update unknown, visited 5 July 2006.

23

political and economic reasons, the Algiers Agreement was a humiliating affair for Iraq,

and some historians maintain that this agreement was the single largest cause for the

outbreak of war five years later.18

1.4 The Iranian Revolution

For decennia, the Shah held the country in an iron grip and built Iran into a more than

substantial military force in the Gulf region, with the aid of the United States. Iran had

become a western country in many aspects, upholding more and more western values as

time progressed. However, this was mostly limited to large urban centers, such as Tehran.

In fact, the – partial - westernization and the disregarding of religion to some extent

caused internal conflict. Traditional values, which were still in high esteem to many,

especially in the more rural areas, stood in sharp contrast with the direction the Shah was

leading the country.

The force field between the two – traditions versus modernization based on a

western model - ultimately caused a split in Iranian society. Many religious authorities,

who still had significant power over the minds of the people, despised the Shah’s

practices and frequently called him ‘the puppet of the United States.’ Ultimately, the

mullah’s efforts in mobilizing the masses led to the Shah’s overthrow.

Most historians tend to analyze changing political and economic circumstances in

an effort to explain why a certain revolution has taken place there and then. In the case of

the Iranian revolution this is no different. Some authors have pointed out that the

enormous increases of oil revenues in 1973-74 and 1976 had led to extraordinary high

expectations concerning Iran’s economic future and when in reality small recessions took

place, it was too much too handle for most.19 Simultaneously, it is often argued that

Jimmy Carter, who was elected president of the United States in 1977, urged the Shah to

liberalize his policies, which in turn provided the freedom needed to organize an uprising

of the masses.

18 For example, see Will D. Swearingen, ‘Geopolitical Origins of the Iran-Iraq War’ Geopolitical Review, Vol. 78, nr. 4, (Oct., 1988), 405-416, here 409. 19 For example: David Schaffer, The Iran-Iraq War, 24-27.

24

These structural forces have had, without a doubt, an impact on the conditions

needed to allow the revolution to occur, but as Charles Kurzman has correctly pointed

out, they were not a necessary precondition. Kurzman bases this conclusion on a case

study he conducted, in which an uprising in the Iranian religious center of Qum in 1975

and 1978 were compared. Only the latter uprising managed to truly appeal to the masses

and succeeded in the overthrow of the Shah, whilst both the political and the economic

conditions had remained largely the same, as Kurzman convincingly explains. Keeping in

mind the proverbial ‘last straw’ he did point out one remarkable difference between the

two uprisings: the one in 1978 saw a ‘change […] in the self-understandings and

activities of the Islamist opposition.’20 The revolution itself was in fact not the work of

the religious opposition alone, but was merely a blend of oppositions, including the

leftists and the moderates. Still, it was the Islamist opposition, the religious authorities,

who changed their rhetoric to a more aggressive one and started to call unambiguously

for an end to the Shah’s reign, marked by ferocious anti-Americanism.

The situation erupted when a state newspaper published an article criticizing

Ayatollah Khomeini, a highly revered religious leader who had been living in exile since

1964, for criticizing both the Shah and the United States. Many clerics and students in the

religious city of Qum organized revolts, which were soon followed elsewhere in the

country, by people from all walks of life. The Shah’s reign completely crumbled and he

was forced to flee the country. His prime minister, Shahpour Baktiar, installed an interim

government and allowed Ayatollah Khomeini back into the country and offered him to

work together to create a new government. Khomeini denounced everything that had to

do with the Shah, vowed to arrest everyone in government and declared he would install

a new political leadership himself.21 In February 1979 revolutionary forces finally took

over government and by now, Khomeini had become the linchpin of Iran’s religious as

well as political authority.

Logically, the country was still politically unstable, but Khomeini had over the

years become the symbol of opposition to the widely hated Shah and the United States,

and moreover, he worked hard to get dissidents out of the way. Many people in the

20 Charles Kurzman, ‘The Qum Protests and the Coming of the Iranian Revolution, 1975 and 1978’, Social Science History Vol.: 27, Issue: 3, Sept 3 2003, 287-325 21 David Schaffer, The Iran-Iraq War, 27.

25

former government and in the army were purged, and the communist Tudeh Party, who

had also played their part in the revolution, was safe nowhere. Khomeini’s goal was to

establish a state completely based on Islamic law, with no interference from outside

powers whatsoever.

The outright poor relations between the United States since the revolution,

transcended from one-sided hatred to mutual animosity when militant Iranian students

occupied the American embassy and kept around 70 Americans hostage. The last 52

hostages still in captivity, were released only after 444 days, despite strained efforts from

the United States, including a miserably failed covert operation with the use of elite

troops. The hostage-crisis was taken as a serious blow to the prestige of the United States,

and would feature the front pages of newspapers for the full duration of the debacle. The

fact many political analysts maintain that failure to solve the crisis has led to President

Carter losing the elections to Ronald Reagan, speaks for itself. Furthermore, the fact that

the hostages were released at the same day of Reagan’s inauguration on 20 January 1981,

led some people in the opposition to believe that there was a conspiracy – known as the

October surprise conspiracy – according to which Reagan had somehow managed to get

the Iranians to keep hold of the hostages a little longer.22

1.5 Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam Hussein

Without a doubt, the protagonists in the Iran-Iraq war were two ruthless and very strong

men. Both men came to power after a coup – which, in both cases, was not directly

instigated by themselves - and both men were the undisputed leaders of their respective

countries, who sought to consolidate their iron rule at every given opportunity. Saddam

Hussein al-Majid al Tikriti and Ayatollah Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini were alike in many

ways, but their ideas and actions were based on vastly different ideologies. In fact, their

personal antipathy towards one another may have increased tensions and may have

played part in the protraction of the war.

Saddam Hussein was born in 1937 in the village of Al-Awja, less than fifteen

kilometers from the town of Tikrit, in a poor family of shepherds. He spent much of his

22 Gary Sick, October Surprise: America's Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan (New York 1991).

26

childhood in the household of his uncle, a devout Sunni Muslim and at the age of twenty

became a member of the pan-Arab Ba’ath Party, which his uncle supported too. The

party’s ideology rested mainly on secularity, Arab unity, Arab socialism (but denounced

the class struggle) and nationalism and had come into being in Syria, in 1947. One of the

general ideas was to unify Arabs, under the guise of a United Arab Republic, which

would initially be formed by Egypt, Syria and Iraq, under the leadership of the highly

revered Egyptian Nasser. However, the Ba’athists had a falling out and started to develop

in different directions, and eventually even became quite hostile towards one another.

One point of discontent would later be the fact that Saddam himself wanted his Iraq to

become the undisputed hegemon of the Gulf. Aside from the differences on an

international level, the Ba’athists didn’t seem to be able to agree on a plethora of issues

on a national level either, such as the degree of socialism that should be achieved.

In the meantime, Iraq had become politically unstable: a coup in 1958, in which

the Ba’athist Party had played a marginal role, ended the Iraqi monarchy for good. A

military government took office and established a Republic and took a hostile stance

towards the West, partly because the Monarch was considered to be pro-west and partly

because they wanted to distance themselves of the former imperialist powers. Two more

coups would follow until the Ba’athist Party, having steadily grown in size during much

of the fifties and sixties, completely took the reigns under the leadership of Ahmad Hasan

al-Bakr, in 1968. Most sources state that the Ba’ath Party came to power as early as 1963,

and it did, but due to internal conflict a non-Ba’athist became President at that time:

Abdul Salam Arif.

In al-Bakr’s cabinet Saddam Hussein functioned as vice-president, but allegedly

he already called all the shots until he forced al-Bakr to resign in 1979, after which he

formally took the title of President. Saddam cruelly rid himself of all opposition:

(perceived) dissidents within the army, the Party, and other branches of government were

executed on a frequent basis. He handled the Kurdish problem in the north – who wanted

autonomy in that region - by dispatching a large portion of the military to contain the

situation. The Shiites posed a different problem altogether; they formed a majority of the

Iraqi population and were not contained in just one area to a degree the Kurds were.

27

Many Shiites were not content by being ruled by a Sunni minority government and

opposed the government in both overt and covert ways. Saddam adopted a sticks and

carrots-approach in order to combat the problem. Shiite dissidents were cracked down

hard upon – they were either executed or forced to leave the country in the tens of

thousands - but he also used a fair share of the ever-increasing oil revenues for

development projects in the Shi’a dominated south, and poured money into restoration

projects for the numerous Shiite holy shrines. Across the border to the east stood a stoical

but towering Shiite cleric who observed the proceedings towards the Shiite majority by a

small Sunni - and essentially secular - minority with obvious disdain.23

Ruhollah Khomeini was born at the turn of the twentieth century in the town of

Khomein, around 300 kilometers south of Tehran, and his heritage could allegedly be

traced back to Muhammed himself. He studied religion under highly renowned clerics

and achieved the high-ranking title of Ayatollah when he hadn’t quite reached the age of

30 yet. Soon he developed a thorough dislike for the Shah’s western policies, which often

clashed with traditional and religious values. He became one of the primary and fiercest

spokesmen expressing contempt and disdain for his pro-western government and the

involvement of the United States in the domestic politics of Iran, which led to eight

months imprisonment and exile. Initially he left for Turkey, but soon found refuge in the

Iraqi city of Najaf.

However, in 1978, then vice-president Hussein expelled him from Iraq, which

was something Khomeini would not soon forget. Khomeini left for France and due to the

audio tapes he made and had smuggled to Iran over the years, carrying his anti-Shah and

anti-American religious propaganda, combined with his unblemished religious record and

charisma, to many he had become the symbol of opposition to the Shah’s oppression.

Upon his arrival in Iran in February 1979 millions of revolutionaries welcomed

him. He quickly rid himself of the opposition and installed a political system based on the

Shari’a, the Islamic law. Reportedly 98% of the population had voted for an Islamic

Republic via a referendum. Khomeini himself took up the role as Supreme Leader in his

newly established theocracy.

23 G. Hossein Razi ‘An Alternative Paradigm to State Rationality in Foreign Policy’, The Western Political Quarterly 4 (1988) 689-723, there 699.

28

Thousands of suspected dissidents in all branches of government and perhaps most

notably, the army, were purged, weakening the strength and efficiency of the state

apparatus. Soon after coming to power, he called for the overthrow of his nemesis,

Saddam Hussein, saying: ‘This deviated person is completely uninformed about Islam,

and, among other things, is an Arab. God, the most high, said, the Arabs are very hard in

infidelity and hypocrisy.’24 Khomeini did not only despise the West, but all infidels, and

of course, Saddam’s Ba’ath Party was officially secular.25

Iran resumed their aid to the Kurds and underground Shiite movements in Iraq,

encouraging terrorist attacks on the Iraqi regime, which culminated in the attempted

assassination of the then Deputy Premier Tariq Aziz. Khomeini also stated that ‘We will

export our revolution throughout the world…until the calls “there is no god but God and

Muhammad is the messenger of God” are echoed all over the world.’26 Indeed, Khomeini

did appeal to many Shiites living elsewhere in the Middle East. In 1979 and 1980 riots -

initiated by Shiites - broke out in several countries, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain among

them. Needless to say, the tensions between Iran and Iraq had never been this high. War

was imminent.

24 As quoted in: Cameron N. Hume, The United Nations, Iran, and Iraq: How Peacemaking Changed (Indiana University Press 1994), 36, as cited in: Ibidem, 27. 25 G. Hossein Razi ‘An Alternative Paradigm to State Rationality in Foreign Policy’, The Western Political Quarterly 4 (1988) 689-723, there 699. 26 As cited in: Efraim Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 (Oxford and New York 2002), 11.

29

Chapter Two: America Becomes Involved in the Region

To understand why the United States took an ever-increasing pro-active stance when it

came to meddling in the internal politics of the Middle East, it is crucial to be somewhat

familiar with the structural forces underlying the American foreign policy towards this

region. The twentieth century saw some dramatic shifts in global power structures. The

Ottoman Empire crumbled after World War I, after which the British, and to some extent

the French, policed the Middle East through a League of Nations Mandate. World War II

took both France and Great Britain off the map of the world’s most powerful nations, and

the British World Empire started to disintegrate in a pace never seen before. Moreover,

the world now saw only two real powers, who divided the world up in spheres of

influence, namely the United States and the Soviet Union. The competition of both

superpowers virtually took place all over the world, but the Middle East, with its huge

border on the Soviet Union, vast natural resources and abundant access to oceans, soon

took in a special position.

2.1 The Overthrow of Mossadegh

The 100% British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, until 1935 known as the

Anglo-Persian Oil Company) had become a true giant in Iran’s commercial life by the

middle of the twentieth century, controlling all of Iran’s oil. Their refinery at Abadan,

Iran, had become the largest in the world in 1950. Moreover, the AIOC made exorbitant

profits and refused to give the Iranian government a larger share in the revenues. It was

estimated that the British government even made more money from taxing the AIOC,

than the Iranian government made through royalties.27

After World War II, during which Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet

Union occupied Iran, nationalist sentiment was growing. A comprehensive plan for

industrial and agricultural development was laid out, and was passed by the Iranian

Parliament, the Majlis. Subsequently, the nationalization of the AIOC became a matter of

debate, and sentiment to that effect grew explosively. Finally, the Shah was pressured

27 Iran Chamber Society, ‘Oil Nationalization’, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/oil_nationalization/oil_nationalization.php, last update unknown, visited on 17 July 2006.

30

into assigning Mossadegh – the former head of the Majlis’ oil committee - as prime

minister, after the Majlis had voted for nationalization of the AIOC in 1951.28

Mossadegh did indeed nationalize the AIOC and expelled British citizens, many

of them engineers who worked in the oil industry, after which oil production virtually

came to a standstill. To add insult to injury, Great Britain reacted by organizing a global

oil embargo against Iran and took the case to the International Court of Justice, which

ruled in favor of Iran, but did not solve the conflict. In the meantime, Mossadegh usurped

more and more power. When the Shah refused to give him the power to assign the

minister of War, Mossadegh resigned, but his followers took to the streets and the Shah

left the country in fear. Mossadegh returned to office and eventually dissolved the Iranian

Upper House and the Majlis. He effectively ruled out political opposition, with the

exception of the communist Tudeh Party.

Although the United States initially respected the Iranian sovereignty and tried to

mediate in the British-Iranian dispute under President Truman, they would soon engage

in a covert operation code-named Ajax (officially PTAJAX) to put the Shah firmly back

on his throne, after Eisenhower had won the elections.

Much about the secret operation, organized and executed in concord with the

British Secret Intelligence Service, M16, remains hidden under a veil of secrecy until this

day. For example, for years – and even until today in some circles - it was maintained

that foreign powers had little to nothing to do with the coup, and that it was solely

instigated and carried out by Iranians themselves.29 It is now known that both Britain and

the United States played a pivotal role in the coup, but the exact extent is unclear,

because so many details are missing. The CIA destroyed vital documents in the 1960s,

and the CIA still refuses to release around 1000 pages of secret documents on the

grounds of national security. However, an unnamed former official leaked an important

document to The New York Times in 2000, which has been obtained and published on

the internet by the National Security Archive (NSA). Donald Wilber, one of the main

planners of Operation Ajax, wrote the document in question in 1954, looking back on the

28 Ibidem. 29 For example, see Ardeshir Zahedi, ‘The CIA and Iran: What Really Happened?’, The New York Times (22 May, 2000), available at http://www.ardeshirzahedi.org/cia-iran.pdf, last update unknown, visited on 26 June 2006.

31

operation.30 The following section will attempt to reconstruct U.S.-policy shortly before

and during the overthrow of Mossadegh, with the aid of primary sources where possible.

During the last period of Truman’s presidency fear of a Soviet takeover of Iran

grew. The deteriorating economy of Iran due to the oil boycott and Mossadegh’s obvious

willingness to work together with the Tudeh Party caused concern. According to a widely

known theory, the lure of communism is at its strongest in a poor economy and because

of its ‘key strategic position, its petroleum resources, its vulnerability to intervention of

armed attack by the USSR, and its vulnerability to political subversion, Iran [was]

regarded as a continuing objective of Soviet expansion.’31 If the Soviet Union would ever

succeed, United States’ interests were considered to be seriously harmed. Among other

things, the U.S. feared that the security in the Middle East would be seriously

endangered, with an eventual domino effect causing most of the states in the region to

become communist, and a stop on the flow of Iranian oil to the West. Despite the fact the

United States was prepared to take military action in the case of such an event, there does

not seem to be clear and unambiguous evidence to support they were likely to take

military action as a preventative measure under president Truman. Instead, they focused

more on assisting in solving the oil controversy and being prepared to ‘provide prompt

United States budgetary aid to Iran […].’32

However, the rhetoric changed slightly and became more aggressive when former

general Eisenhower took office in early 1953. The first signs of willingness to undertake

a covert operation to install a ‘non-communist successive government to Mossadeq’ can

easily be discerned in a – hard to decipher due to poor quality - top-secret memorandum

30 The National Security Archive, ‘The Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953’, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/index.html, last update 29 November 2000, visited on 20 July 2006. 31 National Security Council, NSC 136/1, ‘United States Policy regarding the Present Situation in Iran,’ Top Secret Report, November 20, 1952. Source: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group 59, ‘Records relating to State Department Participation in the Operations Coordinating Board and the National Security Council, 1947-1963,’ Lot 63D351, National Security Council, Box 68, Folder: ‘NSC 136: U.S. Policy Regarding the Present Situation in Iran’, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran521120.pdf, last update 22 June 2004, visited on 12 June 2006. 32 Ibidem.

32

in 1953.33 Nevertheless, the role of the United States in the coup that would soon follow

is not discussed, which suggests that decisions to that effect had not yet been taken.

Great Britain first asked the United States to help organize a covert operation to

safeguard Britain’s oil interests in 1952, but it was not until Eisenhower had taken office

that the United States decided to go ahead with it. Fear of the ‘red scare’ was still on the

increase in U.S.-government circles, and safeguarding the free flow of oil to the West

was considered a vital interest. In fact, these two reasons would continue to be an

essential part of U.S.-policy towards the Middle East in decades to come.

In 1953, the CIA chose General Fazlollah Zahedi to lead the coup, cause he was a

man of stature, had some popular support, and was one of the few who publicly opposed

the Shah. With such a figure ready at hand, the secret services of both Britain and the

United States started to plot, and in July 1953, President Eisenhower signed the decree.

The operation focused on fuelling political upheaval in Iran, which would

ultimately lead to declining popular support of the Mossadegh government, after which

the actual coup could take place. In order to create the correct environment and tools to

succeed, both secret services funneled money to Zahedi to enable him to extend his

military and political support, whilst giving the impression that the money originated

from the Shah instead. Simultaneously, high-ranking officials in the U.S., including

President Eisenhower, made public statements to the effect that economic aid to the

Mossadegh government was out of the question. In line with those statements, a massive

propaganda campaign within Iran was launched, which included the spread of thousands

of copies with either pro-Shah or anti-Mossadegh articles, cartoons and pamphlets, and

the use of radio Tehran. A special pitfall in the plans was the notorious cowardice of the

Shah himself. Officially still the head of state, he had to sign a royal decree stating that

General Zahedi was the new Chief of Staff, and another one appealing to the military to

carry out all of Zahedi’s orders. In fact, after having signed those decrees, under the

33 State Department, Measures which the United States Government Might Take in Support of a Successor Government to Mosadeq, Top Secret Memorandum, March 1953. Source: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Record Group 59, Records of the Officer-in-charge of Iranian Affairs, 1946-1954, Lot 57D529, Box 40, Folder: Policy, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB126/iran530300.pdf, last update 22 June 2004, visited on 12 June 2006.

33

healthy pressure of the CIA, he was moved out of Tehran before he could change his

mind.34

The first coup attempt – on 16 August – failed miserably, because Mossadegh and

the army had somehow been informed about it, and managed to tighten security to

appropriate levels to fend off the attempted overthrow.35 The Shah fled the country again,

but both CIA-officials and General Zahedi believed not all was lost yet. The royal decree

– called firman – stating Zahedi was the new prime minister had been successfully spread

by the CIA, and was published in most Iranian newspapers on the morning of August 19.

Even to the surprise of the United States, massive pro-Shah riots broke out and many

security troops formerly loyal to Mossadegh finally changed sides. Key government

offices were captured and by the end of the day the successful coup was a fact,36 and the

Shah returned to Iran. Martial law was instituted, the press was silenced, and the Tudeh

Party was severely repressed.

2.2 The United States and the Shah: Best Friends

The overthrow of Mossadegh and the reinstallment of the Shah heralded an era of close

cooperation between the United States and Iran. Not only had the United States

succeeded in keeping out the Soviet Union, they had established firm ties with Iran

themselves, and the latter now belonged to the American sphere of influence, without a

doubt. The CIA would never leave until 1979 and over the years Iran would build up a

significant army, based on sophisticated American war equipment.

One of the preconditions of the United States to help the British with the coup,

was that Great Britain had to declare their ‘intention to reach an early oil settlement with

a successor Iranian Government in a spirit of good will and equity.’37 The end result was

that the nationalization of the AIOC was turned back, and that other multinational oil

34 Donald Wilber, CIA Clandestine Service History, ‘Appendix B: “London” Draft of the TPAJAX Operational Plan’, in: ‘Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953,’ March 1954, , 2-17, available at http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/iran-cia-appendix-b.pdf, last update 29 November 2000, visited on 12 June 2006. 35 Donald Wilber, CIA Clandestine Service History, ‘Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953,’ March 1954, 44, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/7-Orig.pdf, last update 29 November 2000, visited on 12 June 2006. 36 Ibidem, 65-77. 37 Ibidem, v-vi.

34

companies moved in to obtain a slice of the pie. American companies ended up with 40%

of the former AIOC.38 The fact that the U.S. already had, for over a decade, looked

eagerly towards Iran’s oil reserves is well documented39 and backs up the premise that

aside from keeping the Soviet Union out of Iran, getting oil concessions had a high

priority.

Military cooperation between the Shah and the United States would become ever

closer, and Iran grew out to be the strongest force in the region. Relations were cordial,

and the United States regarded Iran as one of their closest allies in the entire Middle East

(together with Israel). U.S. aid also extended to other parts of Iranian politics, and the

Shah’s White Revolution in 1963, a huge economic, political and social reform program,

was strongly encouraged by the United States. In turn, the Shah was one of the few Third

World leaders who supported U.S. policies in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic.

The only concern the United States initially had, was the Shah’s strong urge to

keep extending his military power. By threatening to buy military equipment from the

Soviets if the Americans failed to quench his military thirst, he managed to get more and

more American equipment against better prices and ever-larger credits.40 The closer

relationship between the Shah and the White House was further enhanced when Great

Britain announced in 1969 it would withdraw all its troops – who were still stationed

there – from the area. In the light of the Vietnam war there was no chance the U.S.

government could dispatch more military to police the Gulf as a replacement of the

British.

The solution was fairly simple: Iran itself would have to do the job, and it did.

The 1970’s saw a massive increase of arms sales from the U.S. to Iran, including high-

tech, state-of-the-art equipment. Between 1972 and 1978 a stunning $20 billion worth of

arms were shipped to Iran, which was the largest arms export session to a Third World

38 Stephen R. Shalom, ‘The United States and the Iran-Iraq War’, Z Magazine (Boston Feb. 1993), 13, available at http://www.zmag.org/Zmag/articles/ShalomIranIraq.html, last update unknown, visited on 24 July 2006. 39 Louise L’Estrange Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge University press 1992), 108-140. 40 Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968, Volume XXII, Iran. Department of State Washington, DC (Washington 1999), 136-145, 311-312, 314, available at http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/vol_xxii/index.html, last update unknown, visited on 3 August 2006.

35

country ever executed until then. Highly sophisticated material such as F14 aircraft and

Phoenix air-to-air missiles were all included in the package. Congress raised concern

over the immense magnitude of the sales, especially when it became known that

American companies were bribing Iranian military officials to expand the shopping list,41

but to little avail. Of course, the arms sales came to an abrupt end by the time the Iranian

Revolution took place.

2.3 War Breaks Out

As a result of the earlier described raised tensions, Iran and Iraq cut off diplomatic

relations in June 1980, and the border skirmishes increased. In September of the same

year, Iraq maintained that Iran had breached the Algiers Agreement, rendering it null and

void. Using this unilateral analysis as a pretext, Iraq claimed full sovereignty over the

Shatt al Arab, and made clear that all vessels in the waterway would have to hoist the

Iraqi flag and pay navigation dues to Iraq. On September 22, Iraq launched a full-scale

attack on Iran, quickly overtaking vast Iranian territories, including oil-rich Khuzestan –

called Arabistan by Iraq - and the eastern bank of the Shatt al Arab.

The structural forces that underlay the poor – and in some cases worsening -

relationship between Iran and Iraq have been discussed in reasonable detail: Persians

versus Arabs, Shiites versus Sunnis and the centuries-old border conflicts, featuring the

Shatt al Arab. However, these forces alone cannot account for the outbreak of a full-scale

war in 1980. In some of the previous chapters the decisive aspects in the domestic

situation of both countries, as well as the international climate, that have played part in

the eruption of war, have been hinted at. For clarity’s sake, they will be reiterated here.

It is important to note that different researchers have attached different weight to

the various reasons that led to war when it did, but there seems to be a widespread

consensus that the following developments have put their imprint on the timing of the

outbreak: firstly, the Iranian revolution resulted in an instant stop of American backup,

and combined with the political upheaval and severe purges in the military as well as the

political establishment in Iran, a grandiose power vacuum resulted; secondly, secularism

41 Michael T. Klare, ‘Fueling the fire: How we armed the Middle East’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Volume 47, Issue 1 (1991), 19-28, here 6.

36

versus Islamic fundamentalism and Saddam Hussein’s regional aspirations versus

Ayatollah Khomeini’s aspirations to export the Islamic revolution clashed; thirdly,

Saddam Hussein’s opportunism and self-proclaimed mission to redeem his country in

relation to a century of humiliating treaties pertaining mainly to the Shatt al Arab. Most

significantly in regard to this thesis however, is the allegation that America literally let

Iraq know they would tolerate an Iraqi invasion of Iran.

Zbigniew Brezinsky, National Security Advisor to President Nixon - known as a

hawk where it concerned America’s foreign policy – is supposed to have told Saddam

Hussein, during a meeting in Jordan in June 1980, something along the lines of ‘the U.S.

will tolerate an Iraqi attack of Iran.’42 Both sources here admit that the account cannot be

100% verified, but each back up their argument by coming up with other points that lead

in the same direction. Ra’iss Tousi states that shortly after the meeting, the U.S. sold five

Boeing Jets and eight gas turbine engines, with full knowledge that the latter equipment

was meant for Iraqi frigates, and Tarock points out that the U.S. had made satellite

information which showed the movement of Iranian troops available to Iraq. Dilip Hiro

takes Tarock’s argument even further, by contending that the White House exaggerated

Iran’s military weaknesses, by supplying Baghdad with at least partly phony intelligence

information.43 Either way, there does not seem evidence available that even as much as

suggests the denial of the account.

While the United States – and most other powers in the international arena for that

matter - condoned Iraq’s invasion of Iran, in hindsight, the international community

seemed to agree that it was Iraq who was the aggressor, as was put forward in a United

Nations Security Council Report in 1991, which was instigated by Resolution 598, which

ended the conflict. It stated:

Even if before the outbreak of the war there had been some Iranian encroachment on

Iraqi territory, such encroachment did not justify Iraq’s aggression against Iran – which

42 Reza Ra’iss Tousi, ‘Containment and Animosity: The United States and the War,’ in: Farhang Rajee ed., Iranian Perspectives on the Iran-Iraq War (University Press of Florida, 1997) 49-61, here 50; Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 50. 43 Hiro, The Longest War, 71.

37

was followed by Iraq’s continuous occupation of Iranian territory during the conflict –

in violation of the use of force, which is regarded as one of the rules of jus cogens.44

However, the international community once looked the other way. In fact, whilst Iran

found themselves in international isolation on political, economical and military levels,

Iraq’s position on all three fronts was strengthened during the war by a solid group of

sympathizing countries, headed by the United States of America. Throughout the war, the

United States would proclaim their neutral position, but their practices would prove the

opposite. Somewhat startling at first perhaps, but their bias in this war became

increasingly clear as it progressed.

2.4 The United States Takes Sides at the UN

The first sign the United States took sides is illustrated by Security Council-resolutions

479 and 514, adopted at 28 September 1980, and 12 July 1982 respectively. At first

glance both resolutions seem an honest attempt to end the conflict in a satisfying manner,

but upon closer examination and with the help of hindsight to put things in perspective, a

certain bias can be discerned.

Among other things, the first resolution, 479, called for ‘Iran and Iraq to refrain

immediately from any further use of force and to settle their dispute by peaceful means

and in conformity with principles of justice and international law.’45 Iraq said it would

accept the ceasefire, as long as Iran did so too. Iran however, rejected it, as long as Iraqi

soldiers would remain on their soil. Adam Tarock in this instance points out that the

Security Council (S.C.) chose to ignore Chapter VII of their own Charter, by stating that

the ‘[…] Charter says that when there is a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act

of aggression, the Security Council is to investigate the matter, determine who the

aggressor is and order appropriate enforcement measures.’46 Indeed, the Charter does say

44 Further Report of the Secretary-General on the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 598 (1987), United Nations Security Council, S/23273 (9 December 1991), available at http://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N91/482/93/pdf/N9148293.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. 45 Security Council Resolution 479: Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (28 September 1980), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/399/72/IMG/NR039972.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. 46 Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 75.

38

most of that quite literally, but does not explicitly state it will determine who the

aggressor is.47 Thus, based on the Charter alone, one cannot logically conclude the

Security Council acted in an unfair way.

Nevertheless, when compared to Resolution 660, which was passed on August 2,

1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, some not easily explicable differences do become clear.

Resolution 660 states it ‘Condemns the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait [and] Demands that Iraq

withdraws immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the positions in which they

were located on 1 August 1990 […]’.48 When Iraq failed to comply, the Security Council

met again 4 days later, on August 6, calling for all countries to boycott Iraq and to protect

assets that belong to Kuwait.49 Between August 2 and November 29, 1990, the Security

Council passed 14 Resolutions on the issue. Note that the Security Council passed the

first Resolution on the same day Iraq invaded Kuwait, literally 7 hours after the fact took

place. A decade earlier, the behavior of the Security Council was vastly different, despite

the fact the S.C. later admitted Iraq was at fault.

In 1980, no aggressor was named, and nobody was asked to withdraw their forces

to behind internationally recognized borders. Moreover, whereas in the Kuwaiti case the

S.C. gathered immediately, in this case it took them 4 full days. By the time the

Resolution was passed, Iraq had – due to their blitzkrieg – already occupied extensive

Iranian territories, including the oil-rich province of Khuzestan. In fact, when Norway

proposed Iraq pull back her troops, Iraq correctly protested that doing so would be in

conflict with resolution 479.50 When the mediation efforts of the UN proved futile due to

Iran’s unwillingness to cooperate – on understandable grounds – the international

community rested their case to pick it up only 2 years later. Thus, the performance of the

S.C. in the case of the Iran-Iraq conflict, and in regard to resolution 479 can be called

weak and biased.

47 Charter of the United Nations, Chapter VII, available at http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. 48 Security Council Resolution 660: Iraq-Kuwait (2 August 1990), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/575/11/IMG/NR057511.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. 49 Security Council Resolution 661: Iraq-Kuwait (6 August 1990), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/575/11/IMG/NR057511.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. 50 Shalom, ‘The United States and the Iran-Iraq War’, Z Magazine, 14.

39

Of course, the S.C. is not made up of the United States alone, but the traditional

American allies, France and Britain, often vote in line with the United States, unless their

own national interest is at stake, which it wasn’t in this case. Some 52 American hostages

were still held captive in Iran, and the fierce anti-American rhetoric – they were often

referred to as ‘Satan’ by the Iranian authorities - as well as having lost a rather large

chunk of their sphere of influence in the Middle East, may not have pleased the

Americans.

The Soviet Union had its own reasons to pass the Resolution; not only had Iran

turned against the United States, it had also turned her back on the Soviets, and the fact

Iran aided the Mujahideen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, had not gone down

well either. Some authors on this subject have suggested the reason the superpowers did

not get the S.C. together immediately and took a lackadaisical approach towards Iraq’s

aggression, was that they hoped Iraq could quickly bring down Khomeini and his

companions,51 which is not an unreasonable argument. In general, Saddam Hussein was

regarded by the West as a rational man, whereas Khomeini and his ideology was not

understood by many.

When the Security Council finally did come together again on 12 July 1982, it

had become clear that Iraq had underestimated Iran’s power to reorganize, and the failure

to ‘push through’ right at the start had backfired. Iraq was now struggling against Iran’s

threefold larger population, and had for the most part been pushed back on its own soil.

The war at this stage had many similarities with World War I: countless trenches and

artillery fire had to hold the Iraqi’s static line of defense, but the massive ‘human wave’

tactics of Iran threatened to break through time and time again. The Soviet Union, which

had declared itself neutral at the start of the war and imposed an arms embargo on Iraq,

had resumed arms shipments in the middle of 1981, when it had become obvious Iran

was now on the offensive.52

A U.S. intelligence report – albeit a bit censored - written a month before the S.C.

got together, reveals the American analysis of what was thought might occur in case Iran

beat Iraq. U.S. fears are perhaps best captured in the following passage:

51 Adel Darwish and Alexander Gregory, Unholy Babylon: The secret history of Saddam’s war (London 1991), 62, in: Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 77 52 Efraim Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War 1980-1988 (Oxford 2002), 30-42.

40

The Khomeini regime sees itself as a leader of “peoples oppressed by imperialism,”

especially by the United States. Iran’s anti-U.S. hostility most directly affects U.S.

interests in the Persian Gulf, where Iran’s stunning defeat of Iraq will establish the

Khomeini regime as the predominant power. This, coupled with the clerics’ religious zeal

and traditional Iranian aspirations, impel the regime to seek regional dominance. In the

clerics’ eyes, the revolution was not intended for Shia Iran alone, but for all oppressed

muslims.53

So, it seems the U.S. feared the balance of power would potentially alter in favor of Iran,

with detrimental results for U.S. interests. The moderate Gulf states, most notably

Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Bahrain, according to the report, shared this fear. In

fact, some Gulf states went out of their way to offer to help relieve the burden of repair

payments to Iran, in a move to persuade Iran to seriously consider a ceasefire. The Gulf

states considered Iraq the only buffer between them and Iran, and understandably so.

Direct military help from the Gulf states to Iraq however, was out of the question, due to

two related reasons: firstly, no Gulf state possessed an army strong enough to influence

the outcome of the war, and secondly, they feared the Iranian wrath in case they directly

meddled in the conflict.54

Significantly, the report states that American interests would be served by a

ceasefire, because ‘it would provide opportunities for the West to gain influence in Iran

[…].’55 Alternatively, ‘a protracted, small-scale, border conflict […] could [also] advance

some U.S. interests.’56 Unfortunately, the section where those interests are made clear,

has been removed from the document, but it takes little imagination to come up with a

few possible points: prolonging the conflict would turn the angry Arab eyes away from

Israel - a traditional U.S. ally in the region, much to the dissatisfaction of the Arabs. Also,

the Gulf states would gradually find an American military and navy presence in the Gulf

less objectionable, because it would secure the Gulf states’ own interests. The cynical

may even suggest an enduring struggle would ultimately bleed both belligerent nations,

53 Director of Central Intelligence, SNIE 34/36.2-82, Implication of Iran's Victory Over Iraq (June 8, 1982), 8. Secret. Source: Freedom of Information Act Request, 8, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB167/03.pdf, last update 18 October 2005, visited on 6 August 2006. 54 Ibidem, 8-10. 55 Ibidem, 14. 56 Ibidem, 14.

41

which in turn would ensure the balance of power is maintained, and would even reduce

the force field within that balance. Lastly, weaker nations are also often more prone to

outside intervention in their domestic affairs, which would open up opportunities for the

U.S..

Against this backdrop Resolution 514 was passed. Not surprisingly, it called for ‘a

ceasefire and an immediate end to all military operations [and] a withdrawal of forces

behind internationally recognized boundaries.’57 Iran rejected this Resolution as well,

possibly for two reasons: It was on the winning hand, and as the Iranian government

would later make clear, they wanted to topple Saddam Hussein’s government completely.

Furthermore, as a result of the biased nature of Resolution 479 and the timing of

Resolution 514, Iran had lost all confidence in the S.C.. The Iranian authors Mostaghimi

and Taromsari summed it up in the following way: ‘the behavior of the UN in these […]

events proved once more that, in the international arena, states have neither permanent

friends nor permanent enemies, only permanent interests.’58 Such a conclusion logically

led Iran to draw their own plan. More Security Council Resolutions on Iran and Iraq

would follow, but Iran would for almost the full duration of the war boycott Security

Council meetings to show its discontent with the S.C.’s favoritism over Iraq. Some of

those following Resolutions will be discussed in their appropriate contexts.

57 Security Council Resolution 514: Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (12 July 1982), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/435/38/IMG/NR043538.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. 58 Bahram Mostagimi and Masoud Taromsari, ‘Double Standard: the Security Council and the Two Wars’, in: Iranian Perspectives 62-72, here 70.

42

Chapter Three: A Clear Bias

Once the White House had concluded it was in their interest that Iraq did not lose the

war, a political rapprochement between the United States and Iraq took place. Part of that

rapprochement was made public, partly because it couldn’t be hidden, and partly to deter

Iran. A large share of how cordial the relations between Iraq and the United States

became over time, remained hidden from view, but it can now be exposed due to the

release of memoranda and policy directives.

Some of the tightening of the political bonds between the two nations paved the

way for help in a material sense, which will be discussed in chapter four. The most

dramatic form of American overt help and biased stance is their aid in the Tanker War.

Aside from protecting the free flow of oil to the West, which had been part of American

objectives since the start of the war, a few incidents that occurred enforces the

proposition of this thesis that America’s stance and behavior favored Iraq, and cannot be

called neutral.

3.1 Bilateral Relations

In the wake of the Six-Day War in 1967, in which Israel was victorious over Jordan,

Syria and Egypt, many Arabs felt that both Britain and the United States had played a

role on Israel’s side, and Iraq – traditionally vehemently opposed to all Zionists - broke

off formal relations with the United States. Some twenty years later, in 1979, Iraq landed

on America’s list of countries supporting terrorism, as a result of their ties with some

Palestinian terrorist organizations.

In case a country lands on that list, arms-related exports and sales are banned;

exports of dual use items are severely restricted, and require a 30-day Congressional

notification; prohibitions on economic assistance take place and, among other things, the

government reserves the right to prohibit any American to engage in a financial

transaction with a government on that list without a Treasury Department license.59 In

short, while Iraq was on that list, the U.S. severely restricted themselves to hand out any

59 U.S. Department of State, ‘Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism, State-Sponsor: Implications’, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/31944.pdf, last update unknown, visited on 7 August 2006.

43

material aid to Iraq, and in 1982 they had come to the conclusion an Iraqi loss to Iran

would be harmful to U.S. interests.

Not surprisingly, in February 1982, Iraq was taken off the list of countries

supporting terrorism, ostensibly without consulting Congress, even though there was

evidence Iraq was still supporting terrorists. Howard Berman for example, a

congressman, tried to get the State Department to put Iraq back on the list, because in

1982, Abu Nidal, a Palestinian terrorist living in Baghdad, was planning the assassination

of the Israeli ambassador to London and even though he was expelled in 1983, others

remained. Among them were Abu Abbas and Abu Ibrahim, who were both regarded as

top-end terrorists.60 The official reasoning behind taking Iraq off the list of states

sponsoring terrorism remains unclear, but it is certain that it showed good faith to the

Iraqis and moreover, export-restrictions on dual-use items were loosened as a result.

Another fact is, that it stands in stark contrast with the State Department’s long-term self-

proclaimed hard stance on countries harboring terrorists, which is currently phrased in the

following way:

The United States is committed to holding terrorists and those who harbor them

accountable for past attacks, regardless of when the acts occurred. The U.S. Government

has a long memory and will not simply expunge a terrorist's record because time has

passed. The states that choose to harbor terrorists are like accomplices who provide

shelter for criminals. They will be held accountable for their "guests’” actions.61

A telegram from the then Secretary of State Alexander Haig, dated 27 February, 1982, to

various U.S. embassies throughout the world and the Middle East, makes clear that

despite the fact Iraq was taken off the list, did not mean the U.S. would send any form of

military supplies to Iraq. In fact, it reads ‘it has been our policy since the beginning of the

Iran-Iraq conflict not to supply military equipment to either side’62, and ‘the move to de-

60 ‘Not all Democrats got it Wrong’, The Economist (no author), Vol. 318, Issue 7696 (1991), 26-26. 61 U.S. Department of State, ‘Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism: Patterns of global Terrorism,’ http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt/2000/2441.htm, last update 30 April, 2001. 62 Department of State Cable from Alexander M. Haig, Jr. to the United States Interests Section in Iraq. De-designation of Iraq as Supporter of International Terrorism, February 27, 1982. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq13.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 9 August 2006.

44

designate Iraq [has no] implications for U.S. policy toward the Iran-Iraq conflict.’63 This

statement was either a blatant lie, or, for those who intend to give the White House the

benefit of the doubt, U.S. policy would soon undergo a dramatic shift in this instance, as

will be shown later.

Two years later, on 26 November 1984, formal ties between the United States and

Iraq were re-established. Recently released government documents reveal that even

though it was perhaps more in the interest of Iraq to restore the severed ties, it was the

United States who had pressed for a full restoration of diplomatic ties for over a decade.

The Iraqi intransigent position on Israel and U.S. support for that country was the main

obstacle. Before the ties were restored however, a United States Interest Section was

operated through the Belgian embassy in Baghdad, which was one of the largest Interest

Sections the U.S. had in any foreign country.

The reason of the political rapprochement of the United States towards Iraq since

1975 is perhaps best explained by the Cold War. In 1972, The Soviet Union and Baghdad

had signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation, under which Baghdad received

massive amounts of arms and advisers from the Soviet Union. Since Iraq took a negative

stance towards the West in 1958, which was enhanced in 1967, their best chance to gain

know-how and weaponry was via the Soviet Union. The American-mediated Camp

David Accords of 1979, ending a long period of hostility between Egypt and Israel, while

seen as a great breakthrough in the United States itself, was looked at by many Arabs as a

humiliation.

Alarmed by the advancement of the Iraqi-Soviet relations though, and aware of

Iraq’s regional aspirations and their vastly increasing oil revenues, the United States

started to undertake steps to get a foot in the Iraqi door. When then Secretary of State

Henry Kissinger met with Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Sa’dun Hammadi in

December 1975, the former stated that ‘we [the U.S.] do not think there is a basic clash of

national interests between Iraq and the United States’64 and ‘we see no overwhelming

63 Ibidem. 64 Memorandum of Conversation, Henry Kissinger et al with Iraqi Minister of Foreign Affairs Sa'dun Hammadi, December 17, 1975. Source: National Archives, RG 59, Department of State Records, Records of Henry Kissinger, 1973-1977, Box 13, Dec 1975 NODIS Memcons, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB107/index.htm, last update 18 December 2003, visited on 9 August 2006.

45

obstacles on our side [to normalize relations].’65 Sa’dun repeatedly stressed the fact that

the United States backed up Israel, no doubt with the Camp David Accords fresh in his

memory, which was an obstacle Iraq could not overcome.

After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War, the United States not only wanted to

make sure Iraq didn’t lose the war, but also saw a renewed opportunity to move closer to

Iraq, and enhance their political levy in the Middle East after the disappointing ‘loss’ of

Iran. The fact the Soviets had proclaimed their neutrality, and stopped selling arms to Iraq

until 1982 (officially because Iraq was supposed to use Soviet arms in self-defense only)

had severely soured Moscow-Baghdad relations, and the United States would repeatedly

press for a renewal of formal ties.

The head of the U.S. Interest Section, William Eagleton, pointed out to Baghdad

several times that the United States’ and Iraq’s opinion on Iran converged, but time and

time again had to report back to Washington that Iraq wasn’t ready yet, and would not

appreciate further pressure from the U.S. the restore formal ties.66 Eagleton had mainly

attempted to pave the way for an upcoming visit of Under Secretary of State Draper, with

which the Iraqi’s turned out to be very pleased, but the main obstacle remained.

Consequently, Secretary of State Shultz met with Iraq’s Vice-President Tariq Aziz on 11

May 1983, but the American efforts culminated in the meeting of Donald Rumsfeld, then

special envoy of President Reagan, with both Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein himself, in

December 1983. A picture – of a rather poor quality - of Rumsfeld shaking hands with

Saddam Hussein has become world famous by now (see figure 6).

65 Ibidem. 66 For example, see: United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. Prospects for DAS [Deputy Assistant Secretary] Draper's Visit To Baghdad, April 4, 1981. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq04.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 9 August 2006; United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. Meetings in Baghdad with Foreign Minister Hammadi, April 12, 1981. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq05.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 9 August 2006.

46

Figure 6: Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with

Saddam Hussein, on 20 December 1983. Source:

The National Security Archive, ‘Shaking Hands

with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq,

1980-1984’, http://www.gwu.edu/ ~nsarchiv/NSA

EBB/NSAEBB82/, last update 25 February 2005.

visited on 9 August 2006.

Rumsfeld spoke about a variety of issues, but, in short, told the Iraqis exactly what they

wanted to hear. He addressed Iraq’s concern that American-made weapons and spare

parts were somehow still being supplied to Iran by third parties, by stating the U.S. would

work harder, together with Iraq, to list those countries and to minimize those sales as

much as possible. Furthermore, Rumsfeld stressed the U.S. and Iraq’s common interests,

such as stability in the Gulf, that neither wanted an Iranian victory in the war, and that the

U.S. respected Iraq’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity.67 The traditional

obstacle in U.S.-Iraq relations, American backup for Israel, could not be rendered non-

existent, but in this instance it’s fair to conclude that Iraq’s priorities now lay elsewhere.

Nonetheless, this hindrance was somewhat alleviated by America’s financial and political

support for the Aqaba pipeline, which was discussed during Rumsfeld’s second visit to

Baghdad, in March 1984.

Due to Iran’s attacks on Iraqi oil installations and oil tankers, Iraq’s oil-export

capability had been substantially lowered. The United States was aware of the fact this

could be detrimental for Iraq’s war effort and had always pursued to protect the free flow

67 United States Embassy in the United Kingdom Cable from Charles H. Price II to the Department of State. Rumsfeld One-on-One Meeting with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, December 21, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq32.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 9 August 2006.

47

of oil to the West. The plan that was put on the table involved a pipeline through the

Arabian desert – out of the reach of Iranian warplanes - to the port of Aqaba in Jordan.

The main problems were financing and the fact that the pipeline would run close to

Jordan’s border with Israel, causing Iraq concern. The United States would help out with

both of these problems.

The American Export-Import Bank – often simply referred to as Eximbank -

finally agreed to lend the money (see section 4.2) and the U.S. used their political

leverage in an attempt to obtain a non-intervention guarantee regarding the pipeline from

Israel.68 Ultimately, the project did not go ahead at all, but the goodwill of the U.S. can

not have gone unnoticed in Iraq. It would still be a rocky road for both parties involved,

not in the least because the U.S. publicly denounced Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, but

eventually, chemical warfare from Iraq’s side proved not to be a deterrent for the United

States to re-establish formal diplomatic ties with Iraq, which occurred on 26 November

1984, when Tariq Aziz paid a visit to Reagan in the White House.

Figure 7: Reagan and Tariq Aziz meet at the White House and officially restore bilateral

relations. Source: The National Security Archive, ‘Iraqgate 1980-1994’,

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/iraqgate/igp1.gif, last update unknown, visited

on 14 August 2006.

68 Department of State Cable from Kenneth W. Dam to United States Embassy in Jordan. Rumsfeld Mission: Meeting with King Hussein in London, December 23, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq34.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 9 August 2006.

48

3.2 The American Stance on Iraq’s Use of Chemical Weapons

Few people nowadays vividly remember images of the Iran-Iraq war. The only exception

is perhaps the horrible footage of people being mutilated and killed by poison gas. By far

the best known example in this instance is the gas at attack of the Iraqi army on their own

population in the Kurdish town of Halabja, in March 1988. Thousands of people were

killed in the brutal attack, for sympathizing with the enemy and rebelling against the Iraqi

regime. Quite recently this case has been revived from the dungeons of the national

psyche of at least both the Dutch and the Germans. Various newspapers’ headlines told

the story of how Dutch and German chemical manufacturers were involved in the export

of chemical weapons precursors to Iraq in the 1980’s. As will be contended in section

4.4, the United States had their own macabre role to play in this instance.

Slightly less known than the Halabja massacre however, is that chemicals had

been used on a grand scale against the Iranians long before the attack on Halabja took

place. What will be discussed in this section, is how the United States initially turned a

blind eye towards Iraq’s use of chemical weapons, before feeling compelled to publicly

judge chemical warfare.

As early as October 1983 Iran reported several cases of Iraqi use of chemicals,

and pointed out that chemical warfare was prohibited by the Geneva Protocol.69 Indeed,

Iraq acceded to the Protocol on 8 September 1931, only 3 years after it went into force,

and Iran did so in 1929. Despite accusations, no evidence of Iran’s use of chemical

weapons has showed up to date. It is not entirely unreasonable to argue that false

accusations gave Iraq a pretext to use chemical agents, since, when they signed the

protocol, which prohibits the use of all ‘asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all

analogous liquids, materials or devices [and] bacteriological methods of warfare,’70 they

entered the following reservation:

69 Foreign Broadcast Information Service Transcription. IRNA Reports Iraqi Regime Using Chemical Weapons to Stop Val-Fajr IV, October 22, 1983, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq23.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 9 August 2006. 70 University of Bradford, The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Database, Text of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, available at http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/sbtwc/keytext/genprot.htm, last update unknown, visited on 9 August 2006.

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[Iraq accedes to the Geneva Protocol] On condition that the Iraq government shall be

bound by the provisions of the Protocol only towards those States which have both signed

and ratified it or have acceded thereto, and that it shall not be bound by the Protocol

towards any State at enmity with Iraq whose armed forces, or the forces of whose allies,

do not respect the provisions of the Protocol.71

Either way, and international law or not, the Iranian accusations only received a muted

response at first. The United States had received ample evidence to substantiate Iran’s

claims as early as November 1983, when a memorandum from the Department of State

spoke of ‘what appears to be Iraq’s almost daily use of CW [Chemical Weapons],’72 and

the fact that Iraq reportedly had ‘acquired a CW production capability, primarily from

western firms, and possibly a U.S. subsidiary’73. In the same memorandum an upcoming

meeting of the NSC was announced, in which ‘a number of measures we might take to

assist Iraq [would be discussed].’74

Later in November, it became clear that Iran had asked the United Nations

Secretary-General (UNSYG) to investigate Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. Of course, if

the story would get sufficient media attention it would become clear the United States

had known about it, but refrained from denouncing it. Thus, action was required to

maintain American credibility regarding strict adherence to international law and

admirable moral standards. However, the White House would be very careful not to tread

on Iraq’s feet on this issue. It is good to remember that the U.S. at this time, was very

busy to try and get formal relations re-established with Baghdad. The best the United

States could do – being stuck in a bad-or-worse situation - was to give Iraq sufficient

warning about an imminent public statement of the U.S., ‘to avoid unpleasantly

surprising Iraq.’75

71 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Protocol, available at http://www.sipri.org/contents/cbwarfare/cbw_research_doc/cbw_historical/cbw-hist-geneva-parties.html, last update unknown, visited on 9 August 2006. 72 Department of State, Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs Information Memorandum from Jonathan T. Howe to George P. Shultz. Iraq Use of Chemical Weapons, November 1, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq24.pdf, last update February 25 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 73 Ibidem. 74 Ibidem. 75 Department of State, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Action Memorandum from Jonathan T. Howe to Lawrence S. Eagleburger. Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons [Includes Cables Entitled "Deterring Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons" and "Background of Iraqi Use of

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When Donald Rumsfeld arrived in Baghdad in December and had several meetings with

high officials, including Tariq Aziz and Saddam Hussein, he wisely made virtually no

mention of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. The White House clearly followed a two-

track policy: on the one hand they had to save their own international as well as domestic

reputation, by publicly condemning the Iraqi use of CW’s, and on the other hand they

kept moving closer to Iraq to increase their political influence there, to make sure they

did not lose the war to radical Iran, and to ensure the free flow of oil to the West. The

strong disapproval of the use of weapons illegal according to the Geneva Protocol was

probably genuine, as many official cables put the same condemning spirit in this regard

forward. However, when push came to shove, all the U.S. felt compelled to do was save

their own reputation instead of human lives.

A later much-quoted line of an Iraqi military spokesman, which reached

Washington on February 22, 1984, reads as follows: ‘“ The invaders should know that for

every harmful insect there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it whatever their

number and Iraq possesses this insecticide.’”76 Finally, in March 1984, after growing

national media attention on the use of CW’s by Iraq, the State Department issued a press

release. Aside from – briefly – condemning Iraq’s use of CW’s and the use of them in

general, it also stressed the intransigence of the Iranian government pertaining to the war.

Perhaps coincidentally, but perhaps not, the International Committee of the Red Cross

(ICRC), issued a similar statement, albeit a little more fierce, only two days later.77 It is

not altogether unreasonable to argue the United States government knew of the pending

press release of the ICRC, and acted quickly to prevent public condemnation for

withholding the grim facts from the American people, by issuing a press release first. In

Chemical Weapons"], November 21, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq25.pdf, last update February 25 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 76 United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. Iraqi Warning re Iranian Offensive, February 22, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq41.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 77 Iran Chamber Society, Julian Perry Robinson and Jozef Goldblat, ‘Chemical Warfare in the Iran-Iraq War’ (May 1984). Source: SIPRI Factsheet, available at http://www.iranchamber.com/history/articles/chemical_warfare_iran_iraq_war.php, last update unknown, visited on 24 July 2006.

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the meantime, the UNSYG had dispatched a UN team to investigate Iran’s charges,

which also confirmed Iraq’s use of CW’s.

Iraq was stunned, and replied swiftly and aggressively, calling the U.S. stance

hypocritical, referring to the American use of the atom bomb against the Japanese in

World War II. Moreover, Saddam Hussein blamed the U.S. for taking a pro-Iranian

stance in order to regain some political levy in Iran,78 which was not an entirely

unrealistic statement, as will be proven in section 5.2. Logically, this was a severe

setback for the bilateral relations, but the U.S. would soon get a chance to turn the tide a

little.

In the same month, the CW-issue was discussed in the Security Council of the

United Nations. Iran had submitted a draft resolution on the topic, but wouldn’t get very

far. The American delegate had been told to lobby for a ‘no decision’, and in the event

this proved impossible, she was not to vote.79 The Dutch and the British were working

hard on a draft resolution too, and wanted to press it through before the Ukraine was to

take over the UN-presidency. It did include a strong condemnation of the use of CW’s,

but failed to mention Iraq by name. However, because the draft did speak of Iran having

raised the issue, the suggestion was clear.80

Yet, before this was raised in the UN itself, head of the Iraqi Interest Section in

Washington called on Deputy Assistant Secretary of State James Placke, and made clear

Iraq ‘strongly preferred’ a Security Council presidential statement instead of a resolution.

Furthermore, he strongly suggested the statement should contain the following elements:

‘mention of former unsc [United Nations Security Council] resolutions on the war [a]

78 United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. Iraq Reacts Angrily to U.S. Condemnation of CW [Chemical Weapons] Use, March 7, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq45.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 79 Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the Mission to the European Office of the United Nations and Other International Organizations. U.N. Human Rights Commission: Item 12: Iranian Resolution on Use of Chemical Weapons by Iraq, March 14, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq47.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 80 Mission to the United Nations Cable from Jeane J. Kirkpatrick to the Department of State. U.N. Report on Chemical Weapons Use in Iran/Iraq War: Consideration in Security Council, March 28, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq50.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006.

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strong call for progress toward ending the war through ceasefire or negotiations [and]

reference to CW without mentioning any country. Placke answered the U.S. could agree

to all three points81, and even though it’s unclear if and how much weight the U.S. had to

throw in to fulfill Iraq’s wishes, fact is that they were fulfilled the very next day.82

Even though Baghdad got what it wanted at the Security Council, it should be clear that it

was only the best they could do under the – precarious - circumstances. The international

community was obviously not pleased with Iraq’s use of chemical weapons. Otherwise

the United Nations wouldn’t even have considered a resolution, and moreover, the

permanent members each could’ve used their veto in this regard, but they chose not to.

The United States had repeatedly made clear to Iraq, aside from their moral

objections toward the use of CW’s, that Iraq was in fact handing a very powerful

propaganda tool to Iran. After the ordeal at the UN, it seemed Iraq had finally understood

it had navigated into treacherous waters, with potentially dwindling international support

as a result. Since then, official reports of Iraq’s use of chemical weapons were fewer and

farther between, although not non-existent. The Iranian media had stopped broadcasting

gas attacks altogether, perhaps because it had such a negative impact on Iranian morale.

The total amount of Iranian casualties during the war cannot be 100% verified, but most

sources estimate it to be around the staggering amount of 90,000 dead.

3.3 The Tanker War and the Free Flow of Oil

The title of this section is a term often used to describe a certain period in the Iran-Iraq

war, during which both sides attacked oil tankers carrying their enemy’s oil. Both parties

involved were largely dependent on their oil export to supply the necessary cash flow, so

the logical result was a mutual destruction of the oil-infrastructure. As early as 1981

attacks were made on oil tankers, but most historians pinpoint the start of the so-called

81 Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to United States Embassy in Jordan. Chemical Weapons: Meeting With Iraqi Charge, April 6, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq54.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 82 Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Cover Memorandum from Allen Overmyer to James A. Placke. [United Nations Security Council Response to Iranian Chemical Weapons Complaint; Includes Revised Working Paper], March 30, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq51.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006.

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tanker war in 1984, when the battle in the Persian Gulf waters increased in intensity.

During the Tanker War, a total of 353 ships were targeted, 214 of which by Iraq, and 139

by Iran.83

By then the Iraqis had basically lost the ground offensive and were desperately

trying to hold their positions, aided by numerous trenches, artillery, tanks and sometimes

chemical weapons. Due to the successful Operation Staunch (see section 5.1) the Iraqis

had superior air power, and decided to use it. Aside from the fact they had to look for

other ways to try and find a breakthrough in the stalemate, it has correctly been argued by

many they tried to internationalize the war. By then they were confident the international

community by and large stood on their side, and by luring Iran into posing a threat to

international shipping, which would hurt the superpowers’ interest in a direct way,

success was almost ensured. As of 27 February 1984, Iraq started to launch full-scale

attacks on Iran’s main oil terminal, Kharg island, and aside from Iranian oil tankers,

neutral ships carrying Iranian oil weren’t safe either. In April they hit a Panamian tanker

and even a Saudi one that carried Iranian oil84. The Iranians reciprocated by attacking

neutral tankers carrying Iraqi oil and war supplies, escalating the conflict in the Persian

Gulf waters.

For Iran the choice to return fire in the Gulf waters was complicated, since Iraq’s

only port on the Gulf, Fao, had been destroyed very early in the war, and as a result there

were no Iraqi tankers shipping oil. To hurt Iraq in the same way, they had to attack

neutral vessels. Iraq transported their oil mainly via pipeline by then, but exported some

oil and massive quantities of military supplies with Kuwaiti vessels, who subsequently

suffered heavy losses. At the end of 1986 the tiny Gulf state officially approached the

permanent members of the Security Council to help out, and the Soviet Union offered to

lease Kuwait three tankers, who would be flying the Soviet flag. Of course the United

States could not stay behind and reflagged eleven Kuwaiti tankers in 1987. Britain also

reflagged three Kuwaiti vessels.85

83 Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), Anthony H. Cordesman, ‘The Tanker War and the Lessons of Naval Conflict’ (no place 1 May 1990), 18, available at http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/9005lessonsiraniraqii-chap14.pdf, last update unknown, visited on 25 June 2006. 84 Hiro, The Longest War, 129. 85 Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War, 51.

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Right at the onset of the war, the United States had already made clear their resolve to

keep the Strait of Hormuz open to international shipping and as early as 1983 the U.S had

sent a taskforce of three warships and around 2000 marines to the Indian Ocean, to send

out the message they were serious about it.86 Section 6.1 will elaborate on the – for the

first time truly visible - involvement of the United States in the Iran-Iraq war. The

American reasons for being the self-proclaimed guardians of the free flow of oil will now

be turned to.

Figure 8: The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Source: United Nations Cartographic

Section, http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/mideastr.pdf, last update unknown,

visited on 11 August 2006 (Image has been adjusted by author).

The Strait of Hormuz is a typical bottleneck (see figure 7), a small sea lane which

connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, is only some 45 kilometers wide at its

narrowest point, with a shipping lane of just under 4 kilometers in breadth. Roughly 90%

of the total oil produced by Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the

United Arab Emirates (UEA), about two-fifths of all world traded oil, leaves the Gulf

86 Ibidem, 50.

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area through this narrow passage.87 Note the extensive coastline Iran has on the Persian

Gulf, and that it, together with Oman, also borders on the bottleneck.

A constant in American policy, is the commitment to safeguarding the free flow

of oil to the West. It has been mentioned several times before in this thesis, but needs

some elaboration to fully understand why it has always played such a dominant role in

American foreign policy, and more importantly for the central question in this thesis, how

it relates to the context of the war, and in this particular context, the tanker war.

In 1975 a Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report, titled ‘Multinational Oil

Companies and U.S. Foreign Policy’, spelled out the American priorities in this respect

since World War II. The United States sought to establish and maintain a steady supply

of oil to Japan and Europe at affordable prices, political stability in non-communist,

Western-minded, oil-exporting countries and a dominant position in the world oil trade

for American firms.88 There are a plethora of examples of the implementation of this

policy throughout the world. In the context of this thesis, it’s worth pointing out the

overthrow of Mossadegh, when American oil firms saw their share of the Iranian oil

industry instantly raised from nil to 40%.

Completely in line with American long-term foreign policy, a Security Directive

dating 26 November 1983 states: ‘It is present United States Policy to keep the Strait of

Hormuz open to international shipping.’89 Reagan made clear he was ready to deploy

military forces in case it was needed. The reason was ‘the real and psychological impact a

curtailment in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf [would have] on the international

economic system.’90

At the time, many American newspapers stressed that a closure of the Strait of

Hormuz could result in similar lines at gas stations during the oil crisis of 1973, but

between 1982 and 1988 the net U.S. oil imports as a percentage of demand from the

87 Ibidem. 88 As cited in: Dilip Hiro, ‘Oil, the Gulf and the Iranians’, The Nation, Vol. 245, Issue 8, (19 September 1987), 261-263, here 261. 89 National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 114) from Ronald W. Reagan. U.S. Policy toward the Iran-Iraq War, November 26, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq26.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006. 90 Ibidem.

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Persian Gulf region, hovered between 9 and 10%.91 True, even in 1973 the American

import of Gulf oil was not significantly higher (around 14%92), but in retrospect the

strong measures taken by both the American as well as the Dutch government – the two

countries targeted by the embargo – were vastly exaggerated. Besides, it turned out the

world’s major oil companies could dictate how oil was distributed.93 So, effectively, it

was unfair and unwarranted to play on the American citizens’ fears.

What was more important, was that Europe and Japan more or less were. The

Energy Information Administration did not publish the oil import-data for Europe during

the 1980’s, but if the following decade can be used as an indication, the net oil imports as

a percentage of demand hovered around 25%, and for Japan the number was even higher:

around 60%.94 The official – and not altogether unrealistic - argument for protecting the

free flow of oil to the West is that the United States partly depends on their allies for their

financial well-being and their national security. In other words, a severe disruption of the

oil flow to their allies and trade partners would hurt American interests.

A somewhat darker reasoning brings the insurance of the dominant position of

American oil firms to the forefront. While it can be argued the United States was not

dependent on oil from the Gulf, the staggering profits of American oil companies were

(and are). Nowadays not many American oil companies literally own the local

infrastructure in the Gulf – even Saudi Arabia nationalized the oil companies – but they

do have lucrative so-called ‘buy-back’ deals. Especially Saudi Arabia is often mentioned

in this context, which is a country that’s largely dependent on the U.S. for their national

security, and allegedly overproduces to please the United States and the American oil

firms, who have a lot to gain by Saudi overproduction. Overproduction does not make

much sense from a financial perspective because ‘selling oil beyond the point at which

the proceeds can not be productively invested is economically irrational, particularly

91 Energy Information Administration (EIA), ‘Persian Gulf Oil and Gas Exports Fact Sheet’, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/pgulf.html, last update September 2004, visited on 11 August 2006. 92 Ibidem. 93 Duco Hellema, Neutraliteit & Vrijhandel: De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse buitenlandse betrekkingen (Neutrality & Free Commerce: The history of Dutch foreign relations) (Nieuwegein: Het Spectrum 2001), 279-280. 94 Energy Information Administration (EIA), ‘Persian Gulf Oil and Gas Exports Fact Sheet’, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/pgulf.html, last update September 2004, visited on 11 August 2006.

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given the fact that oil in the ground appreciates in value.’95 Today, and there is no

evidence that suggests the situation was vastly different twenty years ago, Saudi Arabian

oil exports account for a staggering 49% of the total Gulf oil exports.96

Yet another – very important and rarely mentioned - argument that ties in with the

one just mentioned, highlights another constant in American foreign policy since World

War II: support for the most conservative and stable pro-American governments possible,

at least where it concerns the Gulf states. The rationale is as follows: whenever all power

is in the hands of one or few people who have a firm grip on their country and are, most

importantly, pro-American, a golden combination to further American interests is found.

A perfect example, again, is Saudi Arabia, who - as said - overproduces oil to please the

United States. Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, in which women have virtually no

rights, and it doesn’t even have a constitution. Yet America would not even think about

‘liberating’ the Saudi people of their repressive regime. Among other reasons, more

democratic regimes, or more radical ones, would think twice about overproducing against

low rates, which was yet another reason why a potential Iranian dominance in the region

had to be halted at all costs. Dilip Hiro phrased the argument brilliantly:

Islamic Iran would […] impress on the gulf rulers its views on the proper use of gulf oil.

God has been bountiful toward Moslems by bestowing on them this precious resource in

such abundance, Iran would argue. Thus, Islamic rulers must cooperate in exploiting this

“Moslem resource” in such a manner as to benefit the masses [and restrict] output in

order to secure the maximum price for oil. It is this prospect that sends shivers down the

spines of Western leaders […].97

As has been said, the United States agreed to reflag eleven Kuwaiti vessels, but would

end up throwing in their military might too. That part of the so-called tanker war ties in

with the end of the conflict, and will be discussed in chapter six. Before moving on to the

resolution of the war however, it makes sense to discuss the material aid that oozed out of

America to their belligerent ‘friend’ in the Middle East, as well as the schizophrenic

foreign policy in regard to aiding the protagonists of the war.

95 Shalom, ‘The United States and the Iran-Iraq War’, 5. 96 Energy Information Administration (EIA), ‘Persian Gulf Oil and Gas Exports Fact Sheet’, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/pgulf.html, last update September 2004, visited on 11 August 2006. 97 Hiro, ‘Oil, the Gulf and the Iranians’, 263.

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Chapter Four: Covert Help: Iraqgate

The story of Iraqgate – named after Watergate – came out in the early nineties. It reveals

how Washington, London and Rome ensured Iraq had sufficient weapons by choosing to

not enforce the law on a no-need-to know basis, sometimes even with active help from

the CIA, and enormous financial credits, part of which would be used to obtain western

military technology. This thesis will limit itself to the Washington side of the story, but

again, one has to keep in mind that not only the United States carries blame for what

happened. Furthermore, Iraqgate was a process that went on until only weeks before

Operation Desert Storm, in early 1991. Again, this thesis will attempt to limit itself as

much as possible to the period during the Iran-Iraq war.

Iraqgate has nowhere near been unraveled completely and the evidence is rather

thin. Of course, it is another government scandal and many people have been reluctant to

work along with the investigations. In fact, one of the few people who wanted to

investigate it, Henry Gonzalez, chairman of the House Banking Committee, met with

staunch opposition. He was accused by government officials several times that he was

jeopardizing national security.98 Shortly after the story blew, the scandal quickly quieted

down and the only comprehensive work written on it, ‘Spider’s Web: How the White

House illegally armed Iraq’, by Alan Friedman, then a correspondent of the Financial

Times, is only available second-hand on the present day.

The story seemed to be muffled by the American media as well. It failed to

receive as much attention as one would think with an affair of such magnitude. Perhaps

the national embarrassment about what arguably can be called a black chapter in

American history, has played its part too. In The Netherlands for example, little is taught

about the atrocities associated with the Dutch colonial past. In the same vein, Germany

did not like to talk much about World War II in the decades following it. While this thesis

will not maintain the American involvement in the Iran-Iraq war matches the monstrous

German behavior in World War II, it is quite understandable most Americans do not want

to hear about how they armed Iraq up to a few weeks before Operation Desert Storm was

98 Peter Phillips, Censored 1999: The News That Didn’t Make the News (no place 1999), 379.

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launched, for the same reasons. Note that if the Americans had not gone to war with Iraq

themselves, this story would probably not have been widely known at all.

Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall come up with yet another possible

explanation for the lack of media attention. The government holds real power over the

press, they state. Aside from the prerogative to allocate television channels, almost

everything that is written about what goes on in government circles, is leaked from within

that same government. Additionally, if publishing a story can have detrimental effects for

a certain media platform’s ‘government source’, odds are it will not be published at all,

especially if the story is somewhat controversial.99 ‘Paradoxically’, Scott and Marshall

write, ‘it is the journals with the highest national reputations, such as the New York Times

and the Washington Post, that find it hardest to undermine their government sources.’100

Unfortunately, due to the reputation of the aforementioned newspapers, if they choose not

to publish a story, other newspapers tend to become reluctant to publish it themselves,

because they have to question whether it is real news or not. In this case too, the New

York Times and the Washington Post chose not to spend too many words on the

scandal.101

Another reason why the story remained controversial, is because the White House

kept all evidence of their direct involvement securely locked under the guise of national

security. Many companies who were charged with illegally selling military equipment,

dual-use equipment, even nuclear technology, and the illegal use of government loans,

following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, maintained that the American government knew

of, approved of and at times even instigated their dealings with Baghdad, faced a brick

wall when their lawyers’ attempted to get access to the necessary documents to make a

case.

This has led some authors to undermine the scope of the scandal by stressing the

fact no convictions at the address of the CIA or the White House have been made, and

99 Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America (second edition, University of California Press 1998), 174. 100 Ibidem. 101 Russ W. Baker, ‘Iraqgate: The Big One That (Almost) Got Away, Who Chased it – and Who Didn’t’, in: Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1993, available at http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp, last update unknown, visited on 16 June 2006.

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that consequently, some of the Iraqgate revelations should be looked at with suspicion.102

Despite the fact this thesis will go briefly into some unverifiable accounts too, those

accounts will be treated with suspicion. Nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence

available to back up the claim the United States government engaged in immoral

behavior to further their own interests, and that behavior, on many occasions, was

certainly not illegal under American law. The point here is, that immoral behavior does

not necessarily reflect illegality, and vice versa.

4.1 Intelligence

As has already been made clear, it is quite possible the United States supplied Iraq with

satellite information which showed the movement of Iranian troops, even before the war

started in earnest. Saudi Arabia, the largest and most oil-rich State in the Gulf region, has

been a long-term ally of the United States in the region, not in the least because of their

oil relationship.

Within two weeks after the start of the war, the United States supplied four

Airborne Warning and Control Systems (AWACS) to Saudi Arabia,103 in the full

knowledge that Riyadh passed the information onto Baghdad. One should keep in mind

that until 1984, there were no official bilateral relations between Iraq and the United

States, and aside from information gathered by the AWACS, the former also passed on

satellite information, made available by Washington, to Baghdad.104

This is proof that the un-neutral behavior of the United States started very shortly

after, if not even before, the commencement of the war. The severity of the case is

enhanced when one considers that before the Charter of the United Nations came into

being, the stationing of the AWACS alone would have been considered an act of war

under international law. Under the U.N. Charter, the United States had become merely an

accomplice in Iraq’s aggression.105

102 Kenneth I. Juster, ‘The Myth of Iraqgate’, Foreign Policy Volume 0 , Issue 94 (March 1, 1994), 105-120. 103 Hiro, The Longest War, 75. 104 Ibidem, 120. 105 Counterpunch, Francis A. Boyle, ‘U.S. “Neutrality” Toward the Iraq-Iran War’ (December 14, 2002), available at http://www.counterpunch.org/boyle1214.html, last update unknown, visited on 2 August 2006.

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A further clue of U.S. intelligence being passed on to Iraq can be found in a

memorandum of conversation between Secretary of State Shultz and Tariq Aziz, just

after the bilateral relations were restored. When Tariq Aziz told Shultz that high-tech

weaponry (which Iraq bought from France, among others) assured Iraq’s defense, Shultz

commented that ‘superior intelligence also must be an important factor in Iraq’s

defense,’106 which Aziz underwrote.

In addition, according to the Sunday Times of 16 March 1985, after the formal

ties between Iraq and the United States were restored, direct links between the CIA

headquarters and the American embassy in Baghdad were set up. This allowed the Iraqi

government to know the positions of Iranian planes very shortly after their take off, as

well as the Iranian ground positions, which were allegedly passed on every 12 hours,107

giving Iraq an enormous advantage on the battlefield.

4.2 Loans

Featuring the Iraqgate scandal were substantial financial loans and credits, issued by the

Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) Atlanta branch and Eximbank. Just before the war

broke out, Iraq had a flourishing economy due to ever-increasing oil revenues. The

expectation was that Iraq would have $30 billion in oil income in 1980.108 Saddam

Hussein had already started an ambitious and generous social development plan, and was

reluctant to stop pouring cash into it, presumably to give Iraq’s populace the impression

all was going well, and to combat dwindling support for his regime.

Combined with the enormous costs of the war effort and vastly decreased oil

output in combination with dropping oil prices on the world market, it’s foreign financial

reserves quickly dropped and enormous trade deficits followed.109 By 1983 Iraq found

itself in an acute financial crisis. Baghdad was forced to cut back on its social programs,

106 Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the United States Embassy in Iraq. Memcon [Memorandum of Conversation]: Secretary's Meeting with Iraqi DepPrimMin [Deputy Prime Minister] Tariq Aziz, November 26, 1984, 10:00 a.m., November 29, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq60.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 July 2006. 107 As cited in: Hiro, The Longest War, 160. 108 Diro, The Longest War, 38. 109 Ibidem, 58.

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and other austerity measures were taken too. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt helped out

by granting Iraq large loans, some even interest-free.

The United States saw an opportunity to increase commercial and political

relations with Iraq, which would help open up a large new market, and would help in

Iraq’s war effort against Iran. Additionally, the more cordial the relations between Iraq

and the United States became, the more likely it would be at the expense of Iraq-Soviet

relations.

In December 1982, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) decided

to go ahead and lend credit to Iraq. After all, roughly 11 months before, Iraq had formally

lost the U.S. stigma of being a supporter of terrorism, which opened the road for

American credits, loans and import of American dual-use equipment (see section 4.3 for

American dual-use equipment exports). Iraq’s agricultural production had fallen

significantly by then, because many agricultural workers had been called to the front, and

government aid for the agricultural sector has been virtually cut off as part of the

austerity measures. The USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) runs programs

to lend credit to countries that are in dire need for food and have potential for long-term

food purchases from American agricultural firms.110 The idea behind the CCC programs

was to open up new markets for American exporters of agricultural commodities.

Under those CCC-programs, transactions must be covered by a credit payback

guarantee issued by a CCC-approved bank in the importing country. The American

commodity exporters then usually assign that guarantee to an American or foreign bank

which then provides the necessary financing. In case the receiving country defers

payment or fails to pay altogether, the CCC is accountable, and not the bank providing

the credits.111 Thus, it was possible for banks to lend large sums of money, all backed up

by the CCC. Under this scheme, Iraq borrowed just over $5 billion in the period from

1983 to 1990.112

110 Globalsecurity, House of Representatives Debate led by Chairman of the House Banking Committee Henry B. Gonzalez. Scandal involving Atlanta agency of Banco National del Lavoro (February 4, 1991), available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/congress/1991_cr/h910204g.htm, last update unknown, visited on 24 June 2006. 111 Ibidem. 112 Ibidem.

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The CCC-credit scheme was not well-known and not much-used until then. It is said that

various administrations – the program was set up in the seventies – have found it a handy

tool to hand out foreign aid here and there, mainly because it’s not controlled by

Congress.113 The first bank to make use of the CCC credits, was the prestigious Morgan

Guaranty Trust, which has traditionally been closely associated with Washington.

Whether the White House had a hand in this is unclear, but it did ensure it caught the eye

of American exporters and other banks. On a different note, the Department of the

Treasury allegedly was pressured by the State Department to approve ever larger annual

credits.114

Christopher Drogoul, BNL’s Atlanta branch manager, soon caught wind of the

program, and would turn out to be the one to take the largest share of the CCC-backed

loans: roughly $2,5 billion in total, up to 1990.115 Until here there’s no grand scale

scandal to be discerned, but it all changed when the FBI raided BNL Atlanta in 1989.

The FBI found out Drogoul had made additional, secret loans to Iraq, which he

kept off the bank’s official records, thereby rendering them illegal. In the subsequent

fraud investigation, another fact, this time relating to the CCC-backed loans, was

unearthed: The Iraqi representatives had faked the purchase prices for American

commodities when they secured the necessary loans. By substantially inflating the price

they gave up to the banks, they ended up with excess money, since the actual price they

paid for those commodities was far lower. In turn, the ‘profits’ were used to buy weapons

and weapons’ technology with. Allegedly, among them were Western European firms

who enhanced Iraq’s scud missiles, manufactured nuclear triggers and Gerald Bull, a

legendary weapons designer was hired with CCC money to build ‘super guns’ in Iraq.116

What made it a government scandal, was that many people believed the CIA and

the White House exactly knew what was going on. Almost ironically, barely anyone

pointed to the fact it was another part of being a merchant of death at first. What seemed

to anger the American people, politicians and authors on the subject most, was the fact

113 Brian Duffy and Stephen J. Hedges, ‘Iraqgate’, U.S. News & World Report Volume 112, Issue 19 (August 2, 1990) 42-50, here 43. 114 Alan Friedman, Spider’s Web: How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq (New York and Toronto 1993), 95. 115 Tom Morganthau and Douglas Weller, ‘Iraqgate: What went wrong’, Newsweek Volume 120, Issue 18 (November 2, 1992), 54-57, here 55. 116 Duffy and Hedges, ‘Iraqgate’, 43.

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that around two billion of the CCC-backed loans, which Iraq still owed the United States

when Operation Desert Storm was launched, would now have to be coughed up by the

American taxpayers,117 and that Washington had had a stake in letting it get that far. Only

later the Americans would come to the conclusion they had been fighting an enemy who

had been armed with the aid of their country, and that did not go down very well with the

American populace.

The allegations that the CIA and the White House had ample foreknowledge of

what went on with the government-backed loans, was further enhanced by the

obstructionism of the CIA and the White House in regard to the ensuing court cases. The

FBI did not end up taking the case very far: Drogoul would have to stand trial for fraud

and acting without knowledge of BNL’s headquarters and additionally, the FBI claimed

that four Iraqis had also played a part in the fraud, but logically, it was unlikely they

would ever stand trial.118 Nobody else faced charges from the FBI.

When Chairman Gonzalez was undertaking his investigation, in which he stated,

among other things, that it was virtually impossible for the CIA not to know about it,

given the fact over 3000 telexes went to and fro BNL and Iraqi government agencies,

Atlanta’s attorney general pressured him to stop the investigation, because the case had

‘national security concerns.’119 Furthermore, the CIA would barely declassify any

documents relating to the BNL-affair,120 and the tensions rose even further when

Drogoul, in return for a guilty plea and a debriefing period by the government over a two-

month period, saw 287 of the 347 charges against him dropped instantly. Earlier, he had

stated he would tell the full story and name everyone involved. Later he retracted his

guilty plea and his lawyer introduced new evidence that BNL Rome’s director had known

of Drogoul’s practices in the court session on October 1992. Drogoul also testified that

people with ties to American intelligence agencies had been involved.121

Suffice to say here, that the controversy about direct White House involvement

would never be solved. A total of six Congressional investigations and an investigation

by an independent prosecutor under President Clinton could not unearth clear evidence

117 Ibidem. Also see: Globalsecurity Scandal involving Atlanta agency; Friedman, Spider’s Web; 118 Morghentau and Weller, ‘Iraqgate: What went wrong’, 55. 119 Globalsecurity Scandal involving Atlanta agency. 120 Morghentau and Weller, ‘Iraqgate: What went wrong’, 56-57. 121 Baker, ‘Iraqgate: The Big One’.

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that made clear, beyond a reasonable doubt, that any US government officials were

actively involved. Subsequently, despite serious suspicions, the whole BNL-affair died a

silent death.

Moreover, it is important to note that the BNL-affair, the spearhead of the

Iraqgate scandal, centered around allegations of fraud pertaining to the use of the CCC-

credits, and did – in essence - not question the large credits themselves, granted by the

American government. This thesis holds that supplying those credits alone, while keeping

in mind they were non-existent before the Iran-Iraq war started and were certainly not

granted to Iran, was an unambiguous form of aiding Iraq by itself, and is therefore further

proof the United States stood firmly on Iraq’s side. In the case it had been established the

White House had covertly helped to bypass American law in order to obtain more

expensive weaponry, it would only have added to what was already clear.

Relating and tying in to the Iraqgate affair, were loans from the Eximbank,

despite the fact no large-scale fraud was detected. Eximbank is a government body and

works much like the CCC: among other things, it can provide loan guarantees to

American exporting companies. In the case of Iraq, the Eximbank was reluctant to hand

out loans, because, due to the war effort, they feared Iraq might not be able to pay back

granted loans. However, the Department of State would soon exert the necessary pressure

on Eximbank to put it in line with the White House’s overall strategy.

A year after the CCC program started, in December 1983, the Department of State

recommended the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs to urge the Eximbank to

provide loan guarantees. It would ‘secure a U.S. foothold in a potentially large export

market [and] in combination with the CCC credits already granted [to] Iraq, it would go

far to show out support for Iraq in a practical, neutral context.’122 Another reason why the

Eximbank was approached only a year after the CCC had started to hand out loans, was

that Iraq’s removal from the list of terrorist states was still fresh in the memory of

Congress, who were still debating whether to undertake action. If Eximbank wanted to

122 Department of State, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Action Memorandum from Richard W. Murphy to Lawrence S. Eagleburger. EXIM [Export-Import] Bank Financing for Iraq [Includes Letter From Lawrence S. Eagleburger to William Draper, Dated December 24, 1983], December 22, 1983. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq33.pdf, last update 25 February 2005, visited on 25 July 2006.

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lend money, the debate may have been sparked up again,123while the CCC program was

beyond the reach of Congress.

In January 1984 the pressure on Eximbank was raised again. Secretary of State

Shultz made clear his Department favored more Eximbank involvement in Iraq, because

‘major Exim financing could boost Iraq’s credit rating, leading to increased commercial

financing for Iraq. However, Exim does not favor involvement in Iraq’124

As already stated earlier, Eximbank would finally approve a loan for the Aqaba

pipeline in the summer of 1984, but not without some pressure. Secretary of State ended

up asking Vice-President Bush to make a phone call to the Eximbank Director, William

Draper, who happened to be an old friend of Bush. A few days later Eximbank approved

a loan of $500 million for the project.125 In the end, the Aqaba pipeline project would not

go ahead at all, but the gesture was made.

Perhaps because of the reservations Eximbank had and the liability to Congress,

the total of Eximbank’s loans to Iraq were much more modest than the CCC program.

Sources differ slightly about the exact sum of loans handed out, but it probably hovered

somewhere around $200 to $300 million until 1990. Eximbank was dragged into the BNL

affair as well, because BNL financed around $47 million worth of Eximbank-guaranteed

exports. Of this amount, $43.8 million had been repaid by Iraq, but Iraq defaulted on the

remaining amount, which subsequently had to be paid to BNL by Eximbank.126 And of

course, it was likely that these $47 million had also been skimmed off for the

procurement of weapons.

Thus, it is clear that Washington tried to help Iraq through substantial financial

loans, and even though these loans were intended to be used for civil projects or much-

needed food imports, it must have helped Iraq’s war effort too. It allowed Baghdad to use

their scarce cash reserves for war-related expenditures, and projects such as the Aqaba

pipeline were important to increase Iraq’s oil revenues, which had the potential to have

an exponential financial effect. On a side note, even though the government’s guilt has

123 Friedman, Spider’s Web, 95. 124 Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the United States Consulate General, Jerusalem. Follow-up Steps on Iraq-Iran [Includes Transmittal Sheet], January 14, 1984. Source: declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq38.pdf, last update 25 February 2005, visited on 25 July 2006. 125 Ibidem. 126 Globalsecurity, Scandal involving Atlanta agency.

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not been established in a court of law, it is not entirely unwarranted to view Washington’s

behavior regarding the loan and credit fraud allegations at the White House’s address,

with a suspicious eye. The temptation to tread the law to achieve goals that were

perceived to be, and perhaps were, in the national interest, may have been too great.

4.3 Arms and Dual-Use Equipment

Since the 1950’s, the United States has not armed Iraq on a government to government

basis.127 When the Iran-Iraq war broke out, Washington openly proclaimed their neutral

position and that the U.S. would not arm either of the belligerents. Indeed, direct arms

shipments from the Pentagon to Iraq did not occur, and arms shipments from private arms

dealers were prohibited. But, as will be contended in this section, ways to ensure Iraq had

sufficient weapons and miscellaneous war equipment were found, sometimes with the

help of the CIA.

The export of dual-use equipment - equipment which can be used for military as

well as civil purposes - was easier. When Iraq was removed from the list of states

sponsoring terrorism in February 1982, the export of dual-use equipment was no longer

subject to - very strict – national security controls, although export licenses from the

Department of Commerce still had to be obtained by companies who wished to export

such material. Due to the lack of tight security controls, the official story goes, 771 such

licenses were issued between 1985 and 1990 – official records indicating the scale of

such exports in the period before 1985 are not available for unclear reasons - with a total

estimated value of $1,5 billion. Only 39 license requests were rejected.128

This side of the story seems to implicitly suggest that even though Washington

removed Iraq from the list of terrorist-sponsoring countries, they were largely unaware of

the stunning amount of export licenses that were approved of by the Department of

Commerce, and the exact nature of the equipment relating to those licenses. There is

127 Klare, ‘Fueling the fire’ 19. 128Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS), Unclassified version of a classified 1992 United States GAO Letter Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives in 1992. Iraq: U.S. Military Items Exported or Transferred to Iraq in the late 1980s, United States General Accounting Office (7 February 1994), http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9498.htm, last update unknown, visited on 3 August 2006.

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enough evidence at hand however, that the White House was, at times, actively involved

in approving specific sales of dual-use equipment, while they had ample reason to be

aware of the fact that the dual-use equipment was not being used for civilian purposes.

The first – declassified - lead in that direction is revealed by a cable from

Eagleton, the head of the United States Interest Section in Baghdad, to the Department of

Commerce, dating September 20, 1982. As customary, the Secretary of State received a

copy too. The cable makes clear that the head of the Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture ‘has

expressed an interest in purchasing multi-purpose crop-spraying aircraft from U.S.

sources,’129 because the current Polish helicopters they used caused some pilots to inhale

some of the insecticides.

Not long thereafter, Iran started to officially report Iraq’s use of chemical

weapons, and according to the Los Angeles times in 1991, commercial helicopters had

been used for chemical attacks.130 Additionally, ‘according to the Central Intelligence

Agency, Iraq experimented with using commercial crop sprayers for biological

warfare.’131 In the same vein, in June 1983, the State Department was given information

from an unnamed official that his government had been approached by Iraq to fit rocket

launchers civilian Hughes helicopters.132 From this follows, that Washington must have

at least suspected or known that dual-use items on a large scale, were being modified to

tools of war.

Secondly, though the Commerce Department handled the licensing of dual-use

equipment since February 1982, some more ambiguous dual-use equipment was still

handled by the Department of State on a case-by-case basis, in line with the 1976 Arms

Export Control Act. Naturally, the State Department still had to abide by the law as well,

129 United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of Commerce. Helicopters and Airplanes for Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, September 20, 1982. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq15.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006. 130 National Security Archive, ‘Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein’, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm, last update February 2005, visited on 9 August 2006. 131 Ibidem. 132 United States Interests Section in Iraq Cable from Barbara K. Bodine to the Department of State. Militarization of Hughes Helicopters, June 8, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq20.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006.

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which still barred the sale of obvious defense items that ‘would contribute significantly

to the destabilization of the region.’133

In relation to that, specific concern was raised by a potential sale of 2000 heavy

trucks, which had been obstructed by the State Department in the past, on the basis that it

could alter the balance of power. Now, the State Department argued in a plea to the

Secretary of State, that the aforementioned criterion was no longer valid, since Iraq was

now clearly fighting a defensive war. Moreover, not allowing the sale would not be

welcomed in Iraq, and it would be a nice financial opportunity for American firms, and

even though it was likely to attract attention from Congress, the State Department argued,

‘Congressional criticism of Iraq […] has been muted as members are becoming defensive

about appearing to support Iran.134 Obviously the Secretary of State agreed with his

Department’s recommendations on this issue, because he subsequently authorized the

sale.135 When Congress was informed shortly afterwards, and asked whether the trucks

would be used for military ends, the answer was ‘we presumed that this was Iraq’s

intention, and had not asked,’136 with the addition ‘[this information] is not for

publication.’137 Another example is the sale of 20 to 25 Bell helicopters, which ‘could not

be in any way configured for military use,’ while the purchasing party was the Iraqi

Ministry of Defense.138

Unfortunately, some dual-use equipment, in the 1980’s not yet listed under the

U.S. Munitions Act, can be used to even more macabre ends than the previously

mentioned forms of such equipment. Examples are nuclear entities and chemical as well

as biological weapons precursors. Israel bombed an Iraqi nuclear reactor at Iraq’s

133 Department of State, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Action Memorandum from David T. Schneider to George P. Shultz. Easing Restrictions on Exports to Iraq, January 30, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq39.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006. 134 Ibidem. 135 Ibidem. 136 Department of State Memorandum. Notifying Congress of [Excised] Truck Sale, March 5, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq44.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006. 137 Ibidem. 138 United States Interests Section. Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of State. Bell Discusses Possible Helicopter Sale to Iraq, April 12, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq55.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006.

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Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center in 1981, because it saw Iraq’s nuclear ambitions as a

threat to its existence. The United States would later come to hold exactly the same view,

but not yet during the Iran-Iraq war. An intelligence report in May 1983 concluded that

there was still ‘no identifiable nuclear weapon program in Iraq [but] Iraq has made a few

moves that could take it in that direction, in addition to serving its broad purpose of

eventual nuclear independence.139 Washington did not see a problem with Iraq’s

ambitions, to the contrary, they decided to lend a helping hand.

A year later, a State Department memorandum shows, Washington started to

think about reviewing their policy towards the export of nuclear entities. Previously, the

sale of such entities had been prohibited, despite the fact American commerce law did not

stipulate such a prohibition. The official reason given to Iraq, was that no diplomatic

relations existed,140 which seems to have been nothing but a pressure maneuver to get

bilateral relations installed. Most importantly though, the memorandum reveals that ‘the

policy review’s preliminary results favor expanding such trade to include Iraqi nuclear

entities.’141 Further, it was recommended such exports would start to be approved, but

implementation of the new policy delayed, so that ‘Congressional perceptions could be

lessened.’142 That very same month, May 1984, an intelligence report came to the

conclusion that Iraq would ‘probably pursue nuclear weapons.’143

While there is no evidence to be found in official declassified cables, reports and

memoranda in the period from 1980 to 1984, that indicates the United States allowed the

export of chemical and biological weapons precursors, a Senate Banking Committee

Report, published in 1994, did come to that conclusion the United States. After many

139 Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence Appraisal. The Iraqi Nuclear Program: Progress Despite Setbacks, June 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq19.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006. 140 Department of State, Special Adviser to the Secretary on Nonproliferation Policy and Nuclear Energy Affairs Memorandum from Dick Gronet to Richard T. Kennedy. U.S. Dual-Use Exports to Iraq: Specific Actions [Includes Document Entitled Dual Use Exports to Iraq Dated April 27, 1984], May 9, 1984. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq57.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006. 141 Ibidem. 142 Ibidem. 143 Defense Intelligence Agency Intelligence Report. Defense Estimative Brief: Prospects for Iraq, September 25, 1984. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq58.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006.

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American veterans from Operation Desert Storm started to complain about a whole range

of health problems – which came to be called ‘Gulf War Syndrome’- the investigation

was set up, and subsequently, a link between chemical and biological weapons was

found. In the context of the topic of this thesis, it is important to point out that one of the

findings of the investigation was that, at least during a couple of years in the late eighties

the United States provided the Government of Iraq with "dual use" licensed materials

which assisted in the development of Iraqi chemical, biological, and missile- system

programs, including: chemical warfare agent precursors; chemical warfare agent

production facility plans and technical drawings (provided as pesticide production

facility plans); chemical warhead filling equipment; biological warfare related

materials; missile fabrication equipment; and, missile-system guidance equipment.144

The American objectives during the Iran-Iraq war were clear: neither side should win the

war, while Iraq should definitely not lose it, even if it meant condoning, and even silently

assisting, the use of morally detestable tools of war. Likewise, American influence in Iraq

had to be expanded, and if possible, commercial ties strengthened. However, Washington

officially continued to prohibit the export of items on the Munitions Control List, which

contains clear-cut war equipment, such as tanks, explosives and ammunition. The reasons

for adherence to that policy are not set in stone, but it is thinkable the White House

wanted to maintain the veil of neutrality, both in regard to their international moral

reputation and to be able to perform as an independent arbiter, to have a stake in ending

the conflict in the future on terms that would not be contrary to U.S. interests. Another

possibility is that changing that policy would meet with tough opposition in Congress.

Either way, a rather ingenious policy was secretly pursued by the CIA, which would

bypass all the abovementioned potential drawbacks.

In a 1995 district court affidavit regarding the illegal sale of zirconium during the

1980’s by an American company to a Chilean company, which then used it in the

production of cluster bombs to be sent to Iraq, Howard Teicher, a former NSC staff

member, told the inside story. Teicher, who worked at the NSC from 1982 to 1987, was

144 American Gulf War Veterans Association, Second Staff Report on U.S. Chemical and Biological

Warfare-Related Dual-Use Exports to Iraq and The Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the War. U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (no place May 25, 1994), available at http://www.gulfwarvets.com/arison/banking.htm#N_6_, last update unknown, visited on 16 August 2006.

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responsible for the Middle East and Political-Military Affairs, and said he had regular

contact with CIA director William Casey and Deputy-Director Robert Gates. He stated

that Reagan issued a top secret and still classified National Security Decision Directive

(NSDD) in 1982, which was co-written by Teicher himself, which decreed that ‘the

United States would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent Iraq from losing the

war with Iran.’145

Teicher’s story confirms the earlier claims of this thesis that the United States

assisted Iraq in the form of loans, intelligence, and dual-use technology. His addition to

the facts that can be derived from other sources as well, lies in his claim that the CIA

ensured Iraq had sufficient weapons supplied by third countries. According to Teicher,

‘one of the reasons that the United States refused to license or sell U.S. origin weapons to

Iraq was that the supply of non-US origin weapons was sufficient to meet Iraq’s

needs.’146 Moreover, since the vast majority of Iraq’s weaponry was of Soviet origin,

American spare parts and ammunition would be of no use anyway. To combat the

problem and still be of help, the White House, in conjunction with the CIA, operated a

program called ‘Bear Spares’.

In short, the Bear Spares program meant that the CIA or the even the White

House would request a third country to supply (Soviet) weaponry to Iraq. For example,

Israel had large stockpiles of Soviet-made equipment and ammunition, which they had

captured during the many wars with their adversaries. Upon the request of the United

States, the arms would be transferred to Iraq via, for example, the Contras or the

Mujahideen in Afghanistan.147 Indeed, in the case of Israel a diversion was needed,

because the Iraqis, in their rigid anti-Zionistic approach, had earlier declined an Israeli

offer to help, so there was no reason to assume it would be different now.

Other countries ostensibly helped out too, with some U.S. coaxing now and then:

Egypt manufactured weapons after Soviet design and a company in Chile made cluster

bombs, to be sold to Iraq. Teicher stated that Casey had pointed out earlier that cluster

145 United States District Court (Florida: Southern District) Affidavit. United States of America, Plaintiff, v. Carlos Cardoen [et al.] [Charge that Teledyne Wah Chang Albany Illegally Provided a Proscribed Substance, Zirconium, to Cardoen Industries and to Iraq], January 31, 1995. Source: Court case, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006. 146 Ibidem. 147 Ibidem.

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bombs were a great tool to use against the Iranian ‘human wave’ tactics.148 Iran had

indeed launched massive human attacks by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps –

often called Pasdaran, and the so-called boy soldiers (the Basij), who were poorly armed

but allegedly had an exorbitantly high morale due to their religious fervor. The traditional

connection between Shi’ism and martyrdom became clear in practice, in a very grim way.

Anyhow, the beauty of Operation Bear Spares lay in the fact that ‘the mere request to a

third party did not constitute a “covert action”, and, accordingly, required no Presidential

Finding or reporting to Congress.’149

There are also reported cases of American war equipment being shipped to Iraq.

In the early nineties, the United States General Accounting Office (GAO) contacted the

State Department to inform them their research showed that, between 1981 and 1986, at

least four countries – unnamed in the unclassified version of the GAO report, which was

used for this thesis - had sold American-made howitzer spare parts, ammunition fuses,

TOW’s (Tube-launched, Optically-tracked, Wire-guided missiles) and weapon

conversion kits for American helicopters to Iraq, without the approval of the United

States, which is required by law. The State Department dismissed the allegations of the

GAO as ‘not credible’, without giving further explanation.150

Alan Friedman takes the story even further, by contending that the company in

Chile who delivered cluster bombs to Iraq, got the blueprints directly from the CIA

(cluster bombs were invented in the United States), and that the CIA used phony end-user

certificates to send bomb fuses to the Chilean company, as well as sending arms to Iraq

indirectly via Jordan.151 Unfortunately, Friedman bases his allegations on personal

interviews with mostly unnamed officials, and are, as a result, very hard to verify.

Moreover, Casey died in 1987, Reagan got Alzheimer’s disease in the early 1990’s, Gates

148 Ibidem. 149 Ibidem. 150 Federation of Atomic Scientists (FAS), Unclassified version of a classified 1992 United States GAO Letter Report to the Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives in 1992. Iraq: U.S. Military Items Exported or Transferred to Iraq in the late 1980s, United States General Accounting Office (7 February 1994), http://www.fas.org/man/gao/gao9498.htm, last update unknown, visited on 3 August 2006. 151 Alan Friedman, Spider’s Web 45-56.

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denied everything, and William Clark, NSC advisor to Reagan at the time, had ‘no

recollection’ of any such involvement.152

152 Ibidem, 21.

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Chapter Five: The Hidden Agenda: Irangate

Like Iraqgate, the naming of this scandal also echoes the Watergate scandal, which

indicates the scale to some extent. One could note however, that if it was truly considered

a watershed, it would have been given a more unique name of its own. Nevertheless,

despite the fact it received noticeably less media attention than Nixon’s Watergate, and

certainly did not oust Reagan from the White House, it surely dealt a massive blow to the

White House’s standing in both the Middle East and at home, which may have helped in

the decision to deploy a substantial naval force in the Gulf and put more and aggressive

pressure on Iran to end the war.

In line with Iraqi requests, as will be shown, the Americans launched a world-

wide operation to prevent arms reaching Iran. It should be recalled that under the Shah,

Iran had built up a considerable army force, based on American military equipment,

making them desperate for American spare parts and replacements. However, it turned

out that aside from pleasing Iraq and looking after their own interests by trying to deny

American military equipment to Iran, the situation was used to try and soothe animosity

in Tehran towards the United States. The official reason was to get Americans who were

taken hostage by pro-Iran groups in Lebanon released, but perhaps more convincingly,

the White House allegedly attempted to regain some political influence in Iran. The tool

to get an American foot on Persian ground yet again, was secretly supplying what the

Iranians looked after most: American military equipment. In hindsight, and some would

argue even at the time, the schizophrenic foreign policy can at best be called naïve. The

only results it yielded stood in stark contrast with the intention: Iran smirked over what

they called ‘a victory over the U.S.’, Iraq and the moderate Gulf states felt grossly

deceived, and the approval rating of Reagan quickly dropped to an all-time low.

This section will reconstruct the events that led up to the U.S.-led arms embargo

towards Iran, and will then describe the Iran-contra scandal. It also exposes that the

United States, though they most vehemently tried to obstruct an Iranian victory, they did

not want Iraq to win either. The idea was to not have the balance of power altered.

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5.1 Operation Staunch

As soon as the Shah was overthrown in Iran in 1979, the United States stopped supplying

military goods, even some that had been paid for already. Dependent as they were on

American-made military supplies, Tehran encouraged the Iranian diaspora in the United

States from the onset of the war, to set up front companies to ship military equipment to

Iran. Other private arms dealers in the U.S. or elsewhere were illegally supplying Iran

with spare parts and replacement material as well, and Washington simply turned a blind

eye to it.153

Apparently Israel supplied Iran with arms from the start of the war, with an eye on

bleeding both the combatants. On the internet numerous accounts to that effect can be

found, but unfortunately, none of the sources can be verified. It should be pointed out

here that the present-day outright hostile relations between Israel and Iran are not rooted

in a long-term conflict. In fact, since the emergence of Israel as a state, the relations

between both countries have for a long time been cordial. The Shah and the Israelis

bonded to some extent, which is understandable given the fact they’re both the odd ones

out in a predominantly Arab environment. Of course, the role of the United States, close

friends with both nations at the time, certainly has played its part too.

The only account that this author could find is that Moshe Arens, the Israeli

ambassador to the United Nations, allegedly admitted in 1982 that his country had

exported arms to Iran.154 Western Europe apparently played a role too; in a cable from the

American Embassy in Israel dating 12 December 1980, an unnamed Israeli source makes

clear that Western European arms dealers were selling arms, with or without the

knowledge of their governments.155 According to American law, third parties have to ask

for permission to export American-made military equipment, and in neither case this was

asked. Furthermore, it’s hard to believe the United States was completely oblivious to the

arms shipments, given the close relationship they had (and have) with Israel as well as

Europe.

153 Hiro, The Longest War, 120. 154 Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 107. 155 United States Embassy in Israel Cable from Samuel W. Lewis to the Department of State. Conversation with [Excised], December 12, 1980. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq02.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 July 2006.

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Iraq complained to the United States several times that it had intelligence which showed

that Iran was receiving American war equipment. Cables from Washington to Baghdad

time and again stressed that the United States did not approve or condoned any arms

shipments to Iran, but also made clear that it was impossible to control all activities

outside the U.S. borders, and that private arms dealers may be attracted to make a profit

of conflicts such as the Iran-Iraq war.156

The logical conclusion is then, that on the one hand, the Americans tried to

appease Iraq, since they were working hard to restore diplomatic relations at the time. On

the other hand, stopping arms-shipments of U.S.-material to Iran, was clearly not a

priority, which makes perfect sense under the circumstances. Iraq still occupied vast

Iranian territories, and there was no indication the status quo would change dramatically

in the near future. The Americans did not want Iraq to overrun Iran completely: they

wanted to keep the balance of power in the region intact, cause that would serve their

interests best.

As made clear earlier, the first visible tilt towards Iraq came in 1982, and

progressed over time. When Rumsfeld met with Saddam Hussein in December 1983, the

issue of arms transfers to Iran came up again. Rumsfeld contented that ‘we [the United

States] have been successful in closing off exports to Iran and will continue to do so.’157

He promised that the United States would work harder in that respect and would, together

with Iraq list those countries responsible. Rumsfeld would make good his promise.

In January 1984 Iran landed on the American list for countries supporting

terrorism and on 14 January a cable from Secretary of State Shultz to Jerusalem reveals

that diplomatic efforts to curtail U.S.-arms procurement by Iran had started off, in fact, a

month earlier. The fact Iran was now on the list of states supporting terrorism allowed

Washington to enhance their efforts to prevent exports of American weaponry, at least

156 For example, see: Department of State Cable from Alexander M. Haig, Jr. to the United States Interests Section in Iraq. U.S. Policy on Arms Sales and Transfers to Iraq and Iran, June 3, 1981. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq11.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 July 2006. 157 United States Embassy in United Kingdom Cable from Charles H. Price II to the Department of State. Rumsfeld Mission: December 20 Meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, December 21, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq31.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 14 July 2006.

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within the United States itself. Still, a certain hesitation can be discerned, because ‘[the

secretary of State had decided] not to impose additional controls on exports to Iran of

dual-use equipment and […] not to seek to prohibit importation of Iranian crude oil

[…].’158 Again, it seems the White House was unwilling to close the door on Iran

completely. Somehow Washington kept hoping for a revival of U.S.-Iran relations.

In March though, the efforts to halt the arms flow to Iran were stepped up a notch: the

State Department assigned a special ambassador to implement and oversee the arms

embargo, which was labeled ‘Operation Staunch’. Basically every U.S. ally, among them

Britain, Italy, West-Germany, Turkey, South Korea, and Israel was asked to stop selling

arms to Iran.159 Because Iran was desperate for American-made equipment, which was

exactly what U.S. allies possessed, the operation had a devastating effect. Some even

estimate that had Operation Staunch not been launched or had it been less successful, Iran

may have won the war.

Nevertheless, in contradiction to their official policy, which numerous countries

had complied with after U.S. pressure to that end, the only ones to breach that policy

were the Americans themselves. The Iran-contra affair shook the world.

5.2 The Iran-Contra Affair.

In 1985 and 1986 the CIA secretly funneled weapons and intelligence information to

Iran, until a Lebanese newspaper made the American double agenda known to the whole

world by publishing an article on it. The scandal became known under the name ‘Iran-

Contra affair’, because of the links with the Contras - armed opponents of the socialist

government in Nicaragua, who were armed and trained by the CIA. This thesis will limit

itself to the Iranian side of the story, however.160

The affair officially had two purposes: the arms shipments allegedly were a means

to get seven American hostages released, who were being held captive the pro-Iranian

158 Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the United States Consulate General, Jerusalem. Follow-up Steps on Iraq-Iran [Includes Transmittal Sheet], January 14, 1984. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq38.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 14 July 2006. 159 Hiro, The Longest War, 120. 160 For an excellent account of the links between the CIA and the Contras, see: Gary Webb, Dark Alliance: the CIA, the Contras and the Crack Cocaine Explosion (New York, 1999).

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Shiite Hezbollah, an organization which had (and still has) links with Iran. Secondly, it

was thought to be a good way to release the tensions between Tehran and the Washington

a little, with a long-term view of renewed political influence in Iran. As a bonus, it served

to bypass the so-called Boland amendment to be able to supply the Contra-rebels with

financial aid after all.161 In December 1982 the amendment was made, because it had

become clear the CIA had carried out sabotage missions in an attempt to overthrow the

socialist Sandinistas in Nicaragua, without the consent of Congress.

The amendment subsequently prohibited intelligence agencies to allocate funds to

the Nicaraguan Contras. The National Security Council was not considered to be an

intelligence agency, as it was, and is, merely an advisory and executive organ on national

security issues. However, the NSC is a versatile government body which can be molded

by the President. In the Iran-Contra affair they did carry out the arms deals instead of the

CIA, and sent the earnings to the Contra-rebels.

Once the story blew, a few investigations were set up to find out what happened.

One of the largest-scale investigations was the one of the Tower Commission – named

after senator John Tower who led the investigation. It took from 1986 till 1992, would

end up costing more than $35 million, but would fail to solve all of the mysteries

surrounding it, because many witnesses refused to testify, and the White House refused to

release some crucial documents, officially because of national security reasons.

A secret draft security directive from the hand of National Security Advisor

Robert McFarlane, dating from 17 June 1985, reveals an erratic proposed change in

policy toward Iran, despite the successful and worldwide Operation Staunch. McFarlane

stated that ‘[American] leverage with Iran is sharply reduced by the current degree of

hostility that springs from the ideology of the radical clergy.’162 He went on to remark

that the Iranian clerical regime was facing more and more challenges in the domestic

political environment, due to the ‘intensified disillusionment with a seemingly unending

war, the continued imposition of Islamic social policies on a population increasingly

161 The American Presidency Project, ‘Excerpts from the Tower Commission Report’, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/PS157/assignment%20files%20public/TOWER%20EXCERPTS.htm, last update unknown, visited on 25 May 2006. 162 U.S. Policy Toward Iran, The White House, Draft National Security Decision Directive (NSDD), secret, June 17, 1985. Source: unknown, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/05-01.htm, last update 5 November 1999, visited on 23 June 2006.

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reluctant to accept such harsh measures, and a faltering economy brought on primarily by

declining oil revenues.’163 According to McFarlane’s view, the United States should take

advantage of that by ‘discreetly communicating our desire for correct relations to

potentially receptive Iranian leaders [and] providing support to elements opposed to

Khomeini and the radicals.’164

A further incentive to that end was sparked by the seemingly growing influence of

the Soviets in Iran. Without further explaining what McFarlane based his conclusion on,

he simply stated that ‘Tehran’s leadership seems to have concluded that improvement of

relations with the Soviet Union is now essential to Iranian interest.’165

Thus, the idea was to thwart (perceived) growing Soviet influence in Iran, by

trying to bond with more moderate and conservative elements in the political power

structure of Iran, in order to regain some political leverage. McFarlane pinpointed the

Iranian army as a potential asset to further the abovementioned U.S. interests. He wrote:

‘The Iranian regular armed forces represent a potential source of both power and

inclination to move Iran back into a more pro-Western position.’166 The hostage issue,

which had already developed, was not mentioned one single time in the seven-page draft

directive, making clear where U.S. priorities lay. Therefore, the arms-for-hostages deal

that would soon ensue, should be seen as only an opening to, and part of, a grander

scheme. The following section has mainly been derived from the Tower Commission’s

findings.

In seven different incidents between 16 March 1984 and 9 June 1985, seven

Americans were abducted in Beirut, allegedly by Hezbollah. On 14 June 1985 an airplane

was hijacked with 135 Americans on board, but all the hostages had been released by 29

June. Though this hostage incident did not directly relate to the other seven hostages, the

tensions grew and due to ample press coverage, the pressure to get the seven hostages

still held captive, mounted on the White House.

It turned out that Israel, with their longstanding military ties to Iran, even after the

Iranian Revolution, had let Washington know Iran was desperate for American TOW’s

163 Ibidem. 164 Ibidem. 165 Ibidem. 166 Ibidem.

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and HAWK missiles (a surface-to-air missile, which has been dubbed ‘Homing All the

Way Killer’), to combat Iraq’s superior air and tank power. Israel had these weapons in

stock, and was happy to supply them to Iran. While the United States regarded Saddam

Hussein as the lesser of two evils, the Israelis held the opposite view. Hussein was an

outspoken anti-Zionist, and it’s not unfair to state that, arguably, Israel’s interests would

be served by increased tensions between the Arab world and the United States, so that

Israel would remain the only American ally in the region, which would lead to even more

pronounced U.S.-support.

In July and August, David Kimche, Director General of the Israeli Foreign

Ministry, paid a visit to McFarlane at the White House and discussed the possibility of

sending arms to Iran via Israel and an Iranian intermediary. According to McFarlane,

Kimche assured him that ‘100 TOW’s to Iran would establish good faith and result in the

release of the hostages,’ and that Reagan agreed to do so via Israel, as long as it would

not alter the military balance in the war. Reagan himself however, would later declare he

could not recall approving the sale. Either way, in August 100 TOW’s were delivered to

Iran, but it would take 408 more TOW’s in September, to get one hostage released. In

November 80 HAWK’s were delivered and 40 more would soon follow suit.

On November 30, 1985, McFarlane resigned as National Security Advisor (but

remain involved as a special envoy with the arms-for-hostages deal), and vice-admiral

Poindexter followed him up. Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North, who also held a high

position in the NSC and was closely involved with the HAWK sales, approached

Poindexter on the same day he started his new job, with a new proposal for an arms-for-

hostages deal. The idea was to send 3300 TOW’s and HAWK’s from Israel in 5

installments, and after a each installment a hostage would be released. If it turned out

hostages weren’t released after an installment, they would quit the whole deal. The

proposal was discussed with Reagan and the Secretaries of Defense and State during a

meeting, but the latter 2 opposed the deal, and Reagan did not grant permission.

Eventually, in January 1986, Reagan signed a Presidential Finding – of which he

would later say he never read it - whereby the CIA would deliver 4000 TOW’s directly to

the Iranians in exchange for the release of the hostages. However, the NSC would take

the lead in what was called ‘Operation Recovery’. Secretary of State Shultz would later

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recall that at the end of February, Poindexter had informed him the hostages would be

released within a week, but did not mention an arms deal. The plan was much like the

original one. Former NSA McFarlane, Oliver North and some others flew to Tehran in

March, and had planes ready with HAWK’s and spare parts which they could call in if

the deal went well. However, they were not received by any high-ranking Iranian

officials, no hostages were releases, and after 2 days of fruitless negotiating, the deal was

called off.

In July however, a second Iranian channel was opened, allegedly a relative of the

influential Parliament speaker, Rafsanjani, who served as Commander-in-Chief of the

armed forces in 1988 and 1989, and was elected President in 1989. As President, he

improved relations with the West and reshaped the Iranian economy in a fashion that was

based more on free-market principles. He was clearly a man of whom the Reagan-

administration thought could further American interests in Iran. Meetings were held and

ideas exchanged, all based on exchanging arms and intelligence for hostages. Despite the

fact the story was published in a Lebanese paper in early November, Reagan was still

inclined to go through with the deal, until Secretary Shultz persuaded him to abandon the

plan.

The story had quickly spread with devastating effects for Washington. Reagan’s

approval rating immediately dropped from 67% to 47%167 and America’s credibility was

substantially lowered in the countries they had pressured into adjusting their arms export

programs to Operation Staunch, as well as the moderate Gulf states, who naturally felt

betrayed by the United States. True, the volume of the arms shipments was not extensive,

but the symbolic weight it carried was enormous.

The scandal also exposed the schizophrenia in the American government;

obviously it was possible for the President, the NSC and the CIA to pursue a policy

directly opposed to the official declared one, while the other government departments

were supposed to strictly adhere to the latter. Naturally, Congress was not pleased, and

attempted to find out what exactly had been going on and how. The protagonists tried to

cover each other’s backs, but eventually faced trial. Poindexter was subsequently

convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government and destroying

167 Hiro, The Longest War, 1.

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evidence. North and McFarlane were convicted of similar crimes. However, Poindexter

and North got off because their convictions were later turned over on technicalities and

McFarlane, along with then Secretary of State Weinberger, were pardoned by President

Bush in 1992.

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Chapter Six: The Finishing Touch

This thesis focuses on the American meddling in the Iran-Iraq war, and so far has

explained the roots of the conflict, attempted to explain the exact timing of the war, and

has detailed the American approach towards the war. The reason why the United States

started to build up a naval force in Indian Ocean as early as 1983 seems clear: they

wanted to make sure Iraq did not lose the war and whenever there was a threat of the

Soviets increasing their influence in the region, they traditionally undertook action to

combat that, and this case was no different.

In section 3.3 the start of the Tanker War has been outlined, as well as the reasons

America had for the free flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. In the meantime, as

made clear in the previous chapter, the United States had double-crossed Iraq and the

moderate Gulf states and an American attempt to regain some of their credibility, which

added to the already clear reasons they had to dictate the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war.

Adam Tarock points to the fact the Soviet Union had undergone some drastic

internal changes since 1985, when Gorbachev came to power. His glasnost and

perestroika had helped alleviate tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Additionally, the Soviets started to become much more inward-looking, which in part

replaced a foreign policy that at times matched the American one in aggressiveness. As a

result, the geopolitical stature of Iran dropped instantly in American eyes, which was just

another reason why the United States turned its back on Iran for good.168

6.1 The Tanker War Continued: America Enters the Fray

Having reflagged some of Kuwait’s tankers, the United States finally had a legitimate

reason to have a military presence in the Gulf, to protect ‘their’ merchant ships from

attacks. In early 1987 the amount of American war ships, 8 in number, was still modest

and were used only to protect the reflagged Kuwaiti vessels.

In the meantime, the military pressure on Iraq by Iran had mounted. In April 1986

Ayatollah Khomeini had issued a fatwa, which decreed the Iranian troops had to win the

war by March, 21, 1987, the day of the Iranian New Year. In December 1986 a huge

168 Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 126.

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Iranian offensive, with the use of human-wave tactics, was launched in the direction of

Basra.169 Cutting off Basra - Iraq’s second largest city - from Baghdad would have been

detrimental for Iraq, but the Iraqis fended of the attack with their superior weapons

arsenal, and used chemical weapons again. Nevertheless, the Iranians did succeed in

capturing Iraq’s port city of Fao, which is very close to Kuwait’s border, thus also

mounting pressure on Kuwait.170

The United States, as explained, had ample reason to enter the fray, but had not

done so yet. Officially still neutral, they needed a pretext to openly engage. In mid-1987

the moment the Iraqis and the Americans had waited for came: an American tanker hit an

Iranian mine, which blew a hole in its hull. By the end of August, the United States had

built up the largest naval force since the Vietnam war. Some 30 American war ships now

policed the Gulf waters,171 and now the mighty American fleet protected all ships that

flew the American, Russian or British flag, not just the Kuwaiti vessels.

When in the same year an American frigate was accidentally bombed by an Iraqi

pilot, with 37 casualties as a result, Iraq was excused instantly and Reagan used the

situation to condemn Iran’s aggression, by stating: ‘“ We have never considered Iraq

hostile at all. Iran is the real villain in the piece.”’172 Consequently though, the American

marines were put on high alert and were given the orders to shoot at anything that seemed

to have a hostile intent. Small but direct skirmishes between American and mainly

Iranian speedboats ensued. Nevertheless, when in one particular incident two Iranian

speedboats fired at two U.S. ships, the American navy retaliated with rigor. Two Iranian

oil rigs were rendered useless; one was set on fire and the other was fired at with over a

thousand shells.173

The United States justified their policy by stating that Iraq was only attacking

Iranian ships, but that Iran attacked neutral ships too. This argument has to be considered

moot, cause as has been stated before, Iraq too attacked neutral ships. Besides, even

though Kuwait was officially neutral, it can be argued they engaged in rather un-neutral

169 Karsh, The Iran-Iraq War, 51. 170 Traock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 132. 171 Tousi, ‘Containment and Animosity’, 57. 172 John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, The Gulf War: Its Origins, History and Consequences (London 1989), 232, as cited in: Adam Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 137. 173 Newsweek, November 2, 1987, as cited in: Tousi, ‘Containment and Animosity’, 57.

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behavior, by allowing Iraq to use their airspace, handing out loans to Iraq, by shipping

vast amounts of military equipment to Iraq, and exporting some oil for the Iraqis.174

The Gulf states had always been wary about a considerable U.S. military

presence, but fear of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz had helped them overcome that.

The stationing of the powerful Chinese Silkworm missiles near the Strait of Hormuz,

obtained by Iran via China’s proxy North-Korea, added to that fear.

In April 1988 the Americans expanded their protection to all neutral ships in the

Gulf. So it basically boiled down to disabling Iran to attack anyone, while the Iraqis

could attack any Iranian vessel at will.175 In any case, they could fall back on Security

Council Resolution 552, which was passed unanimously as early as June 1984. It

‘[condemned] the […] attacks on commercial ships en route to and from the ports of

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia [and demanded] that there should be no interference with ships

en route to and from States that are not parties to the hostilities.’176 The title of the

document, ‘Islamic Republic of Iran’ made clear against whom the Resolution was

aimed.

The most tragic incident during American entanglement in the war was probably

the shooting down of an Iranian passenger jet carrying 290 civilians by the U.S. navy, on

July 3, 1988. Allegedly the plane was mistaken by an F14. President Reagan did state he

felt sorry about the loss of life, but also claimed that the navy had acted in an appropriate

manner, and apologies were not made. Four years later however, it was disclosed the jet

was in Iranian airspace, and not in international airspace as the original American side of

the story maintained. Instead, the American frigate responsible for the attack was in

Iranian territorial waters.177

Either way, the American aggressive rhetoric, its encroachment upon Iranian

territorial waters and the increasing direct confrontations between Iran and the United

174 Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 130-131. 175 Ronald O’Rourke, The Tanker War, Proceedings, U.S. Naval Institute (no place 1988), 34, as cited in: Shalom, ‘The United States and the Iran-Iraq War’, 11. 176 Security Council Resolution 552: Islamic Republic of Iran (1 June 1984), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/487/82/IMG/NR048782.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 11 August 2006. 177 BBC, ‘On this day’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/3/newsid_4678000/4678707.stm, last update unknown, visited on August 15.

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States, made it very clear to Iran it was facing a potential prospect of a direct war with the

most powerful state on earth.

6.2 The End: Resolution 598

At around the same time the United States threw its military might into the hard-fought

battle between Iran and Iraq, Security Council resolution 598 was passed unanimously.

Like Resolution 514 from 1982, it called again for an ‘immediate ceasefire [and

withdrawal of] all forces to the internationally recognized boundaries’178 What was new

in Resolution 598 however, was that it spoke of a ‘breach of the peace’, which invoked

articles 39 and 40 of chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. That allowed the Security Council

more power to decide what measures needed to be taken, in this case the formation of a

commission to determine the cause and the aggressor of the war (for the report, see

section 2.3). It should be noted that this clause in the Resolution was pushed through by

the non-permanent members of the Security Council.

Iraq accepted the Resolution with both hands, but Iran maintained that the

commission would have to be set up first. In the meantime, Operation Staunch was still

having cumulative effects on Iran. Similarly, in 1986, the United States negotiated with

Saudi Arabia to drastically raise its oil output, so that lower oil prices would result. While

a barrel of oil in 1985 sold for the price of $30, the price had dropped to only $9 in

1986.179 One might argue that the drop in oil prices also had a negative impact on Iraq,

but Iraq was still receiving a massive cash flow in loans and grants from the moderate

Gulf states – which was estimated at a total of $50-55 billion throughout the course of the

war180 - and the United States. Aside from that, insurance costs for Iranian oil shipments

had risen steeply due to the danger associated with it.181 As stated earlier, most of Iraq’s

oil was exported via pipeline by then, and in addition, Iraq’s oil output had risen, while

178 Security Council Resolution 598: Iraq/Islamic Republic of Iran (20 July 1987), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/524/70/IMG/NR052470.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 12 August 2006. 179 Tousi, ‘Containment and Animosity’, 55. 180 Hiro, The Longest War, 150 181 Ibidem, 129-130.

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Iran’s output had been lowered due to Iraq’s attacks. Furthermore, the few weapons Iran

managed to obtain almost invariably came from the black market, against inflated prices.

Slowly but surely the international help Iraq had received in terms of cash flow

and weapons procurements, was no longer used to merely maintain the status quo. The

bleeding of Iran had paid off and Iraq’s superiority in weaponry was, for the first time

since the middle of 1981, translated into significant successes on the battleground. In the

spring of 1988 the Iraqis recaptured Fao and threatened to conquer Khuzestan once more.

The range of scud missiles had been extended by new technology from the west, and

could now reach Tehran.

The hardship was felt throughout Iran’s population and morale dropped to an all

time low. This was exacerbated by a one of Iraq’s harshest attacks yet: the massacre at

Halabja with the use of chemical weapons. Saddam had chosen to kill the Iraqi Kurds

who sympathized and collaborated with the Iranians, who were in control of Halabja by

then. While for the first time Iranian journalists made many pictures which were

consequently published and did shock the world to some extent, the U.N. once again

condemned it, but failed to undertake appropriate action. It also had an averse reaction in

Iran|: the amount of new recruits dropped considerably.182 Additionally, as contended in

the previous section, the military pressure from the United States was mounting. In fact,

Iran started to fear an American invasion of Iran which was not without reason. It was

later revealed the Pentagon had made an emergency plan to invade Iran in the event Iraq

would lose.183

Iran made the – probably correct – assessment that there was no way out. Fighting

the holy war any longer would have more adverse effects, and may even result in an all-

out loss for Iran. Just a month after the United States had shot down Iran’s jet liner, Iran

appealed to the United Nations for the first time in eight years. Then Secretary General of

the U.N., Javier Perez de Cuellar, traveled to Baghdad and Tehran and started to

negotiate with the belligerents. Finally, on 21 July 1988, Khomeini accepted Resolution

598 and peace negotiations started in Geneva on August 25, 1988. The ‘imposed war’ as

the Iran-Iraq war is often referred to by Iran, had come to an imposed end.

182 Schaffer, The Iran-Iraq War, 97. 183 Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 180.

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An unofficial ceasefire was in effect since August 20, but Saddam Hussein claimed full

sovereignty over the Shatt al Arab waterway during the peace negotiations, one of his

goals when he started the war.184 The peace negotiations did not go smoothly and it was

not until Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 that Saddam Hussein would finally sign a

peace agreement with Iran,185 withdrew from Iran completely, exchanged the remaining

prisoners of war, and offered to honor the Algiers Agreement of 1975 again.186

The First Persian Gulf War had over its eight-year course cost over one million

lives, and the direct as well as indirect costs were estimated at a stunning $1,190

billion.187 Both parties effectively lost the war, as the borders did not change and the

Algiers Agreement was ultimately revived and adhered to by both parties. Iran and Iraq

simply returned to the status ante: both Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeini were

still the undisputed leaders of their countries, but a huge toll was paid by the people of

both nations.

There was perhaps one small winner in the war. The United States ultimately got

most of what it had bargained for, despite some serious setbacks. A revival of cordial

Iran-American relations was out of the question, but Washington had more or less

succeeded in increasing their influence in the region; the Gulf states objected less to an

American military presence in the Gulf region; the balance of power in the region

remained intact and lucrative business with Iraq would continue, albeit for only a short

time.

184 Djamchid Momtaz, ‘The Implementation of UN Resolution 598’, in: Rajaee, Iranian Perspectives, 126. 185 Tarock, The Superpowers’ Involvement, 187. 186 Schaffer, The Iran-Iraq War, 109. 187 Hiro, The Longest War, 1.

90

Conclusion

Iran and Iraq have a tremendously long history of conflict. The present day border has

remained an almost unchanged delineation between Arabs and Persians for centuries and

a certain level of hostility between both ethnic groups can easily be discerned as far back

as the seventh century, when Arab armies defeated the Persians to bring the new faith,

Islam.

Even though the Persians were converted to Islam en masse, they would find a

way to distinguish themselves from the Arabs within that religion. When the Ottoman

Empire proclaimed Sunnism as the only true branch of Islam, the Persians quickly sought

refuge in its counterpart, Shi’ism. A quirk of history had it that the geographical fault line

between both religious branches did not fall together exactly with the Persian-Ottoman

border, which resulted in Shi’ism leaving a powerful imprint on present-day Iraq, with

many Shiite holy shrines just within its borders. Shiites and Sunnites do not differ all that

much in the practice of Islam, but certainly within Iraq and other nations in the Middle

East with a substantial Shiite population it has since long been a basis for discrimination.

Furthermore, Shiites believe in the occultation of the twelfth Imam, which to some, gave

Khomeini a near-mythological stature, and the importance Shiites attribute to martyrdom

has probably in no small part played a role in the prolongation of the Iran-Iraq war.

In part as a result of the mix-up of Arabs and Persians and Shiites and Sunnis

across the borders of the Ottoman Empire and Persia, the border demarcation has been a

matter of debate for hundreds of years. When the sick man of Europe faltered after World

War I, Iraq emerged as a nation-state and inherited all the problems with Persia. Those

problems were further enhanced when oil was found and became the dominant factor in

the financial well-being of both nations, which made the Shatt al Arab waterway more

important than ever.

Shortly after World War II the enmity between the two largest political,

economical, and military giants the world had ever seen – the United States and the

Soviet union - began, which resulted in a division of the globe in spheres of influence.

Geopolitics started to play a dominant role in the foreign policies of both superpowers.

When the demarcation line in Europe had been clearly established, the attention shifted to

other parts of the world, including the Middle East. Before long Iran started to take in a

91

special position in the United States’ interest. As a large country with enormous

petroleum resources, whilst having a long border with both the Soviet Union and the sea,

Iran became regarded as the one of the greatest geostrategic prizes in the Third World.

Upon invitation of Great Britain, who saw its economic interest in Iran severely

endangered by the nationalization of their oil company, the United States staged a coup

to oust Mossadegh and reinstate the Shah. A long period of friendship and cooperation

between the Shah and Washington ensued, in which the Shah policed the Gulf region on

America’s behalf. However, internal tension in Iran mounted at the end of the 1970’s and

suddenly the close relationship between Iran and the United States came to an abrupt

ending. The Iranian revolution, marked by religious fanaticism and staunch anti-

Americanism, would set the standard for relations between Tehran and Washington for a

long time to come. The era of Iran as an asset of the United States had come to close for

good.

At the same time in Iraq, Saddam Hussein had usurped all political power and

saw a chance to settle the score with his nemesis, Khomeini. The numerous agreements

concerning border demarcation between Iran and Iraq had time and again been a matter

of discontent and humiliation on Iraq’s part. Khomeini had threatened to export his

religious revolution to the rest of the Middle East, and combined with the political

instability in Iran, the power glut, and Hussein’s regional aspirations, this was the time to

strike. There is even reason to believe the United States made clear to Iraq it would

tolerate an Iraqi invasion of Iran.

Shortly after the Iran-Iraq war started in earnest, the world took sides and

positioned itself almost unconditionally behind Iraq. By denouncing both the West as

well as the Soviet Union, Iran became a political outcast. Thus, the West could choose

between erratic religious fanaticism on the one hand, and secular rationalism on the other,

which simplified the matter significantly. The United States would proclaim their

neutrality throughout the war, but the proverb practice what you preach turned out to be

unheard of in Washington. The White House took a rather blasé attitude towards the

initial Iraqi advancements into Iran, in the hope the clerical regime in Tehran, where 52

American hostages were still being held captive, would crumble. Washington’s stance

changed drastically when Iran proved able to reorganize and use its much larger

92

population to drive Iraq’s troops back on their own soil. America’s broad shoulders

would stand firmly behind Iraq from then on.

The American one-sidedness showed itself in an endless variety. The White

House lobbied for Iraq at the United Nations; bilateral relations were restored and despite

the lack of clear evidence to back up the decision, Iraq was swapped for Iran on

America’s famous list of terrorist states; the extensive use of chemical weapons by Iraq

was condoned up to the point it threatened to hurt America’s credibility in the

international arena; extensive loans were handed out; superior intelligence was supplied

to Baghdad; large shipments of dual-use equipment - including chemical, biological and

nuclear entities - found their way to Iraq in the full knowledge they would be modified to

be used as tools of war; there is evidence to support the proposition the United States was

instrumental in deliveries of unambiguous war equipment through third parties and lastly,

America showed it did not shy away from openly using their military power to favor Iraq

and bring the conflict to an end. Still, Iran was considered the greater geostrategic asset

and for a long time during the war the United States kept the door to renewed ties with

Iran open, which culminated in the embarrassing Iran-Contra affair.

The cynical proved to be correct though: it is indeed interests and not moral

standards that tend to dictate a superpower’s foreign policy, and feigning the opposite

would certainly obscure the truth. Vital interests were at stake and were in dire need of

protection. The Cold War was still in full swing during much of the Iran-Iraq war, and

with the loss of Iran, Soviet encroachment in the Middle East was considered a real

threat. In that strain of thought, political, economical and military influence had to be

expanded and Iraq’s precarious situation proved a nice opening to that end, at the expense

of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, always turning to the Cold War to explain the

superpowers’ actions, is almost an easy way out. The minds of politicians, historians,

political analysts and journalists alike seem to have been ‘conditioned’ to turn to the Cold

War when the behavior of either the United States or the Soviet Union in the period from

World War II to 1989 needs explaining. In this case, more has to be taken into the

equation.

Another long-term spearhead of America’s foreign policy is looking after its

economic interests, and the oil-industry happens to be closely related to that. Moreover,

93

the Middle East is closely related to the oil industry with two-fifths of the world’s proven

oil reserves. Conservative, rational and pro-American governments in the Middle East

serve the United States’ interests best and for a moment it looked like Iraq could be

molded to the exemplary Saudi Arabia, in stark contrast to Iran, which is one of the main

reasons the White House could not allow Iran to win a complete victory over Iraq.

Nevertheless, the United States never had enough confidence in Saddam Hussein

to allow Iraq a full victory over Iran either. If Iran and Iraq were to become one nation, a

Middle Eastern colossus would be created, an undisputed hegemon in the region, with the

long-term potential to challenge even the position of the United States in terms of

political, economical and military might. Therefore the balance of power had to be

maintained, with two losers as the end result. Additionally, Washington had also

succeeded to extend their political levy in the moderate Gulf states, and had made them

less wary towards an American military presence in the Gulf. ‘Mission accomplished’,

any realpolitiker would argue.

However, the White House had lost Iran as an ally forever, which became clear in

an excruciating way during the war itself, and that Iraq had not landed in America’s iron

grip either, became clear only a couple of years later. In addition, widespread Arab

antipathy towards an American military presence in the Middle East would be renewed as

never before fifteen years after the conclusion of the Iran-Iraq war. So effectively, one

can argue it was a tiny and short-lasting profit margin, whilst millions of people suffered

tremendously for a full eight years long.

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Committee Henry B. Gonzalez. Scandal involving Atlanta agency of Banco National del Lavoro (February 4, 1991), available at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military /library/congress/1991_cr/h910204g.htm, last update unknown, visited on 24 June 2006. GlobalSecurity is the leading source of background information and developing

news stories in the fields of defense, space, intelligence, WMD, and homeland security,

and publishes many official documents. Iran Chamber Society, ‘Oil Nationalization’, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/oil_ nationalization/oil_nationalization.php, last update unknown, visited on 17 July 2006. This NGO has a wealth of knowledge about Iran, made available by Iranian as well as non-

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Mideast Web, ‘Algiers Accord’, http://www.mideastweb.org/algiersaccord.htm, last update unknown, visited 5 July 2006. This Israel-based NGO’s goal is to weave a

world-wide web of Arabs, Jews and others who want to build a new Middle East based

on coexistence and neighborly relations. Their site contains a lot of articles and

official documents regarding the Middle East.

National Security Archive, ‘Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein’, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm, last update February 2005, visited on 9 August 2006. An independent non-governmental research institute

and library located at The George Washington University, the Archive collects and

publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

University of Bradford, The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Database, Text of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, available at http://www.brad.ac.uk/ acad/sbtwc/keytext/genprot.htm, last update unknown, visited on 9 August 2006. U.S. Department of State, ‘Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism: Patterns of global

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Russ W. Baker, ‘Iraqgate: The Big One That (Almost) Got Away, Who Chased it – and Who Didn’t’, in: Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1993, available at http://archives.cjr.org/year/93/2/iraqgate.asp, last update unknown, visited on 16 June 2006.

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Internet – United Nations

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Security Council Resolution 479: Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (28 September 1980), available at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/399/72/IMG/ NR039972.pdf?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006. Security Council Resolution 514: Iraq-Islamic Republic of Iran (12 July 1982), available

at http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/RESOLUTION/GEN/NR0/435/38/IMG/NR043538 .pdf ?OpenElement, last update unknown, visited on 6 August 2006

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98

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Internet – Official Archive Documents [ordered by date]

All the following archive documents have been made available by the National Security Archive,

an independent non-governmental research institute and library located at The George

Washington University. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents

obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and is available at

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

Donald Wilber, CIA Clandestine Service History, ‘Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952-August 1953,’ March 1954, 44, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/7-Orig.pdf, last update 29 November 2000, visited on 12 June 2006.

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99

United States Interest Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the Department of Commerce. Helicopters and Airplanes for Iraqi Ministry of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform, September 20, 1982. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq15.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 1 August 2006.

United States Interest Section in Iraq Cable from Barbara K. Bodine to the Department

of State. Militarization of Hughes Helicopters, June 8, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq20.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 2 August 2006.

Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Intelligence Appraisal. The Iraqi Nuclear

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Affairs Action Memorandum from Jonathan T. Howe to Lawrence S. Eagleburger. Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons [Includes Cables Entitled "Deterring Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons" and "Background of Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons"], November 21, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq25.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 16 July 2006.

National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 114) from Ronald W. Reagan. U.S. Policy

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United States Embassy in United Kingdom Cable from Charles H. Price II to the

Department of State. Rumsfeld Mission: December 20 Meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, December 21, 1983. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq31.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 14 July 2006.

100

Department of State, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Action Memorandum from Richard W. Murphy to Lawrence S. Eagleburger. EXIM [Export-Import] Bank Financing for Iraq [Includes Letter From Lawrence S. Eagleburger to William Draper, Dated December 24, 1983], December 22, 1983. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq33.pdf, last update 25 February 2005, visited on 25 July 2006.

Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the United States Consulate General,

Jerusalem. Follow-up Steps on Iraq-Iran [Includes Transmittal Sheet], January 14, 1984. Source: declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq38.pdf, last update 25 February 2005, visited on 25 July 2006.

Department of State, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern and South Asian

Affairs Action Memorandum from David T. Schneider to George P. Shultz. Easing Restrictions on Exports to Iraq, January 30, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq39.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 8 August 2006.

United States Interest Section in Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the

Department of State. Iraqi Warning re Iranian Offensive, February 22, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq41.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 14 July 2006.

Department of State Memorandum. Notifying Congress of [Excised] Truck Sale, March

5, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq44.pdf, last update 25 February 25 2003, visited on 10 August 2006.

Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to the Mission to the European Office

of the United Nations and Other International Organizations. U.N. Human Rights Commission: Item 12: Iranian Resolution on Use of Chemical Weapons by Iraq, March 14, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq47.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 7 July 2006.

Mission to the United Nations Cable from Jeane J. Kirkpatrick to the Department of

State. U.N. Report on Chemical Weapons Use in Iran/Iraq War: Consideration in Security Council, March 28, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq50.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006.

101

Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Cover Memorandum from Allen Overmyer to James A. Placke. [United Nations Security Council Response to Iranian Chemical Weapons Complaint; Includes Revised Working Paper], March 30, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq51.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 11 July 2006.

Department of State Cable from George P. Shultz to United States Embassy in Jordan.

Chemical Weapons: Meeting With Iraqi Charge, April 6, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq54.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 28 July 2006.

United States Interest Section. Iraq Cable from William L. Eagleton, Jr. to the

Department of State. Bell Discusses Possible Helicopter Sale to Iraq, April 12, 1984. Source: Declassified under the Freedom of Information Act, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq55.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006.

Department of State, Special Adviser to the Secretary on Nonproliferation Policy and

Nuclear Energy Affairs Memorandum from Dick Gronet to Richard T. Kennedy. U.S. Dual-Use Exports to Iraq: Specific Actions [Includes Document Entitled Dual Use Exports to Iraq Dated April 27, 1984], May 9, 1984. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq57.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 12 August 2006.

Defense Intelligence Agency Intelligence Report. Defense Estimative Brief: Prospects for Iraq, September 25, 1984. Source: Declassified through Congressional investigation, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq58.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 6 August 2006.

U.S. Policy Toward Iran, The White House, Draft National Security Decision Directive

(NSDD), secret, June 17, 1985. Source: unknown, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB21/05-01.htm, last update 5 November 1999, visited on 23 June 2006.

United States District Court (Florida: Southern District) Affidavit. United States of

America, Plaintiff, v. Carlos Cardoen [et al.] [Charge that Teledyne Wah Chang Albany Illegally Provided a Proscribed Substance, Zirconium, to Cardoen Industries and to Iraq], January 31, 1995. Source: Court case, available at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf, last update 25 February 2003, visited on 7 August 2006.

102

List of Figures

Figure 1: The Ottoman Empire 1300-1699. Source:

http://www.naqshbandi.org/ottomans/maps/default.htm, last update unknown, visited 12 July 2006.

Figure 2: The spread of Shi’ism in the Middle East and Central Asia. Source:

Answers.com, http://www.answers.com/topic/shiyemap-jpg, last update unknown, visited 12 June 2006.

Figure 3: Distribution of religious and ethnic groups in Iran. Source: Answers.com, http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Iran_ethnoreligious_distribution _2004.jpg, last update unknown, visited 12 June 2006. Figure 4: Distribution of religious and ethnic groups in Iraq. Source: Answers.com,

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Iraq_demography.jpg, last update unknown, visited 12 June 2006.

Figure 5: The Shatt al Arab Boundary. Source: Will D. Swearingen, ‘Geopolitical Origins

of the Iran-Iraq War’, Geopolitical Review, Vol. 78, nr. 4, (Oct., 1988), 405-416, here 410.

Figure 6: Donald Rumsfeld shakes hands with Saddam Hussein, on 20 December 1983.

Source: The National Security Archive, ‘Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984’, http://www.gwu.edu/ ~nsarchiv/NSA EBB/NSAEB B82/, last update 25 February 2005.

Figure 7: Reagan and Tariq Aziz meet at the White House and officially restore bilateral

relations. Source: The National Security Archive, ‘Iraqgate 1980-1994’, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/publications/iraqgate/igp1.gif, last update unknown, visited on 14 August 2006.

Figure 8: The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. Source: United Nations

Cartographic Section, http://www.un.org/Depts/Cartographic/map/profile/mideastr.pdf, last update unknown, visited on 11 August 2006 (Image has been adjusted by author).