Table of Contents
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Introduction

I believe the US has a pro-Iranian policy, by which I mean not a policy to help ordinary Iranians, but a policy to support the Islamist terrorists who run the country. My view will be surprising if you have noticed at all the tradition of public invective between US and Iranian officials. This loud trading of insults goes back to 1979, when the Shiite Muslim fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini assumed power in Iran, after which large crowds of Khomeini-backed Iranian students, having seized the US embassy in Tehran and taken hostage its personnel, began chanting, fist over head, Khomeini’s new name for the United States: “Great Satan.” US government officials reciprocated with counter-denunciations of the Iranian mullahs, calling them “extremists” and “terrorists.” I was young but I remember watching some of this on my TV set, in real time. It was impressive. One really got the feeling of a great enmity between the US and Iranian governments, and this impression has been reinforced over the years by the mutual and repeated denunciations of US and Iranian officials. Just recently, Bush Jr. has included Iran in his ‘Axis of Evil.’ The only thing that can possibly top that is “Great Satan,” but Khomeini used it already.

Should we infer the structure of alliances from these mutual accusations?

No. The people who run countries routinely misrepresent what they are doing. And politics doesn’t just make strange bedfellows; it can also make bedfellows who merely pretend to be estranged. In consequence, a scientist cannot proceed directly and uncritically from official statements to a model of geopolitical alliances, lest he become a propagandist. Any claim about how the various forces are aligned requires a demonstration whose logic and documentation others can check, and which makes reference to the behaviors -- not the official statements -- of governments.

For this reason, the current threats to attack Iran over its nuclear program should be taken with a big grain of salt.

The hypothesis: the US has a pro-Islamist,
pro-terrorist policy
________________

Since the supposed enmity between the US and Iranian governments dates to 1979, it is significant that in 1979, as is relatively well known, the US created and then sponsored throughout the 1980s a ‘holy warrior’ movement in Afghanistan. The point of this was to attack the Soviet Union which had a border with Afghanistan. The man who invented this strategy, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, has recently explained to Le Nouvel Observateur, proudly, that the production of fanatical Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan -- the mujahedin (or mujahideen), who went on to become an international mercenary force -- was quite deliberate, and meant to generate a conflict on the Soviet border (my emphasis, below):

[Quote from Le Nouvel Observateur begins here]

LE NOUVEL OBSERVATEUR: Former CIA director Robert Gates states in his memoirs: The American secret services began, six months before the Soviet intervention, to support the Mujahideen [in Afghanistan]. At that time you were president Carter’s security advisor; thus you played a key role in this affair. Do you confirm this statement?

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Yes. According to the official version, the CIA's support for the Mujahideen began in 1980, i.e. after the Soviet army's invasion of Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. But the reality, which was kept secret until today, is completely different: Actually it was on 3 July 1979 that president Carter signed the first directive for the secret support of the opposition against the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And on the same day I wrote a note, in which I explained to the president that this support would in my opinion lead to a military intervention by the Soviets.[1]

Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski also began at this time a secret buildup of Saudi Arabia's military, which Reagan also continued, and which made this country, according to Frontline (PBS), “ultimately...the largest beneficiary of U.S. weapons sales in the entire world” and “one of the most heavily armed countries in the world.”[2] Frontline says lots of interesting things. For example, that “years before Desert Storm [i.e. the 1991 Gulf War] billion-dollar state-of-the-art military bases were already in place [in Saudi Arabia], built to U.S. military specifications, ready and waiting for the arrival of American soldiers.” Now, Saudi Arabia is an Islamist theocracy, and in addition spends millions of its oil dollars every year sponsoring Islamist terrorism and antisemitic agitation all over the world. If the US both allies with and arms this country to the teeth, then it is allied with its antisemitic Islamist and terrorist policy. When did this begin? Frontline says: “The story of the Saudi military build-up begins...during the last days of the Shah of Iran.” In other words, Jimmy Carter began the extreme military buildup of Saudi Arabia right around the time that the Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, because Khomeini is who replaced the shah.

Jared Israel from Emperor’s Clothes has argued for some time -- and has carefully documented -- that the US ruling elite actively promotes Islamist terrorism in Asia because it destabilizes the big Asian countries -- Russia, China, and India -- that compete with the US for geopolitical influence. This strategy works, he says, because these countries have Muslim populations on both sides of their borders.[3] According to Jared Israel, the promotion of Islamist terrorism is no mere side effect of US foreign policy, but its main goal.

“At stake was whether the secular [but still ruthless] Baathism of Saddam or the radical [Muslim fundamentalist] Shiism of Khomeini would prevail in Iraq, and perhaps in the Middle East.”[4]

“in August 1988 Iran’s deteriorating economy and recent Iraqi gains on the battlefield compelled Iran to accept a United Nations-mediated cease-fire that it had previously resisted.”[5]

As Jared Israel himself has pointed out, his hypothesis here predicted that the United States would do something dramatic to re-strengthen Iran relative to Iraq, and look: just three years later, in 1991, the US launched the Gulf War against Iraq.[6] What I will show in this piece is that Jared Israel’s hypothesis can account for every little detail of the Gulf War of 1991, including its prelude and aftermath.

After taking power in 1979, the Ayatollah Khomeini immediately provoked a war with Iraq. The Washington Post wrote that “...after [Khomeini] returned to Iran in triumph in February 1979 he set about encouraging Iraqi Shiites -- who make up about half that country’s 13 million population -- to rise against their Sunni Moslem leaders.”[7] But that’s not all Khomeini did. Milton Viorst gives a more complete account:

“In January 1979, the ayatollah Khomeini had returned in triumph to Iran after fifteen years in exile. Iraq promptly recognized the new regime and extended friendly overtures, but Khomeini was not impressed. He blamed Saddam personally for his expulsion from An Najaf [in Iraq, where he had been living in exile] and left no doubt that he regarded Saddam’s state not just as anti-Shiite but as anti-Islamic, heretical and illegitimate. …As early as the summer of 1979, Khomeini repudiated the 1975 treaty between the shah and Iraq in which the two states pledged noninterference in each other’s internal affairs. He proceeded to supply arms to Kurdish guerrillas fighting Baathi rule in the north, and in An Najaf he financed the Shiite leader Ayatollah Baqir al-Sadr, who provoked disorders to the end of replacing the Baathis with a fundamentalist theocracy.”[8]

Now, under the official hypothesis that he was the enemy of the US ruling elite, Khomeini’s immediate provocation of a war with Iraq is difficult to explain. You see, the previous autocratic and repressive dictator of Iran, the Shah (King) Reza Pahlavi, had been a total US puppet (installed in power in a 1953 CIA coup, about which more in a forthcoming piece), and in consequence most of the military equipment of the Iranian armed forces was American-made. As a result of the fact that the Iranian revolution had involved some fighting, “Iran at that time was in dire need of arms and spare parts for its American-made arsenal.”[9] And yet Khomeini went out of his way to engage in dramatic anti-American provocations at the same time that he picked a fight with Iraq. For example, Khomeini seized the US embassy in Iran and took its personnel hostage.

The Washington Post claimed in 1980 that “the seizure of the American hostages has deprived Iran’s military of much-needed U.S. and European spare parts for its almost entirely imported military equipment.”[10] But this was false. The ‘hostage crisis’ did not deprive Khomeini of anything. On the contrary. The United States government offered to pay billions of dollars in exchange for the release of the hostages, which Iran accepted (the final sum was close to $8 billion).[11] And throughout the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, Iran received secret shipments of US weapons, which became a great embarrassment to the Reagan administration when this became known in 1986 (this was called, alternately, ‘Iran-gate’ and the ‘Iran-Contra scandal’). US officials claimed when caught that the arms shipments had the purpose of getting Iran to lean on the Hezbollah terrorists it has always patronized in Lebanon, who at the time had taken some other Americans hostage. The media was quick to make this explanation seem credible. For example, the Washington Post told its readers late in 1986 that, “according to informed sources” (in other words, according to alleged sources that nobody could check), “an Iranian government emissary told U.S. representatives he would arrange for the release of an American hostage held in Lebanon if the United States would sell Iran 500 TOW antitank missiles.”[11a] But this explanation was absurd. History’s greatest power does not arm to the teeth a fifth-rate power so it can grovel for its influence on a tiny terrorist organization in third country, and maybe get some hostages released.

In any case, it couldn’t be true even in principle. Limited congressional investigations into the relationship between Reagan and Khomeini brought to light in 1991, as the New York Times reported later, that:

“Soon after taking office in 1981, the Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy and allowed Israel to sell several billion dollars’ worth of American-made arms, spare parts and ammunition to the Iranian Government. . .

. . .The change in policy came before the Iranian-sponsored seizure of American hostages in Lebanon began in 1982. . .” [my emphasis] [12]

So the US had the Israelis sell “several billion dollars’ worth” in arms secretly to the nearby Iranians; meanwhile, explains the NYT, “The Reagan Administration continued to replenish Israel’s stockpile of American-made weapons.” But the key point is this: if the US policy to send US armament to Iran began before the hostages were taken in Lebanon, then arming Iran had nothing to do with buying the freedom of these hostages. The NYT pretends that, since it didn't, “No American rationale for permitting covert arms sales to Iran could be established.” But this is false. Such a rationale could be established, it’s just that the New York Times is not allowed to say it: the US had a policy to sponsor the growth of Islamist terrorism, which is precisely why the US program through Israel “was overtaken by the [direct US] arms shipments to Iran,” as the same NYT article states.

The NYT says that, in deciding to arm the Iranian Islamists, “the [incoming] Reagan Administration secretly and abruptly changed United States policy.” Is that so? I would argue that there was no abrupt change whatsoever. Consider what happened in the case of the hostages that were taken in the American embassy in Tehran, a crisis that began in the Carter presidency: “Carter, as President,” as the same article explains, “offer[ed] to accept an Iranian request and release embargoed Iranian military goods worth about $150 million -- if the hostages were freed.” Compare that to the $5.5. billion that Reagan offered and delivered to the Iranians in exchange for the same embassy hostages. And as I show in the previous piece in this series, it is hard to make sense of what happened in the embassy ‘hostage crisis’ unless we assume that Jimmy Carter was running that show in order to raise the prestige of both the Iranian Islamists and the PLO.[13] Reagan’s policies -- including his policies towards the PLO -- were Carter’s.[14] There was no abrupt change.

Now, since the arms shipments to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war at first went through Israel, and given that Iran's new Islamist government was loudly calling for the destruction of Israel, one may ask: What was the Israeli government thinking? The New York Times argues that Israel wanted Iraq and Iran mutually weakened, and tries to make it seem as if Israel had an independent foreign policy on this question. And yet the NYT also states all of the following about the supposedly ‘Israeli’ program:

1) that “Chartered aircraft from Argentina, Ireland and the United States were used to fly American-made arms to Israel and, in some cases, directly to Teheran”;

2) that these “chartered flights carrying American arms for Iran originated from a covert air base near Tucson, Ariz., known as Marana Air Park”;

3) that “For years, the Central Intelligence Agency has used Marana for secret arms shipments”;

4) that there was a continuous “flow of spare parts and other equipment for Iran’s F-14 fleet” and that these “sensitive items, whose exports are closely monitored by American officials, were transferred from United States stockpiles to Israel, which has no F-14’s”; and finally

5) that “Former Israeli officials said the 1981 agreement with [Secretary of State Alexander M.] Haig was coordinated by Robert C. McFarlane, who was then the State Department counselor.” [NOTE: By 1994, three years after the NYT article, Milton Viorst was writing like this: “Subsequently, it was revealed that...Alexander Haig, first authorized...arms to Iran in 1981.”[15]]

When did the secret arms shipments to Iran cease? Who knows if they ever did. But Milton Viorst states that “Subsequently, it was revealed that...the [arms] shipments went on without significant interruption until the end of the Iraq-Iran war.”[16] Depending on whether this means the cease-fire in 1988, or else the official ending of the war in 1990, the US shipped arms to the Iranians for at least two or four years after the Iran-gate scandal first began making headlines in late 1986! The public scandal, president Reagan’s public apology, the investigations, etc., were all supposed to have put an end to the arms sales. But according to Viorst they continued.

Iran, badly beaten by the Iran-Iraq war, and considerably worse off than Iraq, agrees to a cease-fire. Zalmay Khalilzad, at the time “an official in the [US State Department’s] office of Policy Planning” writes a briefing paper for incoming president Bush Sr., in which he calls for “strengthening Iran and containing Iraq.”[17]

…A further weakened Iran would not increase stability but would increase Iraqi preeminence in the Gulf and make Iran more vulnerable to Soviet influence.”[18]

“Zalmay Khalilzad [becomes] assistant under secretary of defense for policy planning...” a post that he will hold until 1992.[19] This captures 1991, the year that the US launched the Gulf War against Iraq.

The US destroys Iraq’s military and civilian infrastructure, thereafter imposing such harsh sanctions that 500,000 children die (more than died in Hiroshima).[20] This was completely out of proportion to Iraq’s offense (attacking the despotic Kuwaiti monarchy), even if one accepts the official story of how that happened. But what did this all amount to, geopolitically? The US was “strengthening Iran and containing Iraq,” precisely as Khalilzad had advised.

In a Washington Post editorial entitled "Arm the Bosnians," Zalmay Khalilzad argues (from his new perch at Rand Corp.) that the Bosnian Muslims should be armed, and that the Afghan strategy -- relying on Islamic states to arm and train terrorist 'holy warriors' -- should be followed.[21] The US did precisely this. As an investigation by the government of the Netherlands established, Pentagon military intelligence coordinated with Iran the importation of thousands of foreign mujahideen ('holy warrior') mercenaries into Bosnia.[22] These soldiers fought for the Bosnian Islamist and terrorist Alija Izetbegovic, whose policy was genocide.[22a]

2003

Iran cooperated closely with the US invasion of Iraq (while directing the usual public invective at the US to distract the issue); and the US took military action, while invading Iraq, to strengthen the Iranian regime.[23] The man in charge of US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is, guess who? That’s right: Zalmay Khalilzad.[24]

Zalmay Khalilzad, now US ambassador to Iraq, calls for “a withdrawal of American forces next year”[25] even as he observes that Iran is “advancing its long-term goal of establishing [regional] domination.”[26]

I point out that “Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser...was Khalilzad’s mentor when they were both on the faculty at Columbia [University].”[27] Zbigniew Brzezinski, as we saw earlier, is who invented the US’s policy of supporting Islamist terrorism in Afghanistan in 1979, and also the policy of arming Saudi Arabia to the teeth. So the argument that the US does not have a general policy to sponsor Islamist terrorism in Asia is becoming...awkward. Moreover, it is worth pointing out that if sponsoring Islamist terrorism in Asia has indeed been the US’s policy, then Iraq has been an obstacle to it, because it has been a secular state, and an influential regional power. So perhaps the Gulf War -- like Bush Jr.’s current war against Iraq -- can be explained as the US removing a thorn on the side of its pro-Islamist strategy.

“in August 1988 Iran’s deteriorating economy and recent Iraqi gains on the battlefield compelled Iran to accept a United Nations-mediated cease-fire that it had previously resisted.”[28]

“Centcom’s commander…is the overseer of all United States military activities in 19 countries of the Middle East, Africa and the Persian Gulf.”[29]

“Schwarzkopf transformed the Central Command, which had been established in 1983 to counter a Soviet threat, to confront the Iraqis, who he believed had become the real enemy in the region.”[30]

Paul X. Kelley…[its] first commander…was told to draw up plans to defend Iran against a Soviet invasion…”[31]

“At stake [in the Iran-Iraq war] was whether the secular [but still ruthless] Baathism of Saddam or the radical [Islamist] Shiism of Khomeini would prevail in Iraq, and perhaps in the Middle East.”[32]

Some have claimed (including the general himself) that Norman Schwarzkopf came up with the idea of reorienting Centcom against Iraq, but he was just following orders.[33] Schwarzkopf was responsible, however, for implementing this policy, and he also directed the Gulf War against Iraq. He obviously has many uses, because it was also Norman Shwarzkopf who did the preparatory diplomacy for this war.

“When Schwarzkopf moved to Central Command [Centcom] in 1988, he quickly immersed himself in Arab culture and customs. He wore Arab dress to a dinner with Kuwaiti officers. He embarked on a round of diplomacy in Arab capitals.”[34]

As it turns out, to convince the countries of the Gulf that they should now view Iraq as their enemy. This took some work, because these Gulf states had just financed Iraq’s war effort against Iran precisely because, to them, it was the Iranian Shia fundamentalists who posed the real threat, not the Iraqis. Kuwait, especially, was worried about the Iranians because it has a large Shiite minority.[35]

“[Schwarzkopf] believed that Iraq's victory over Iran had altered the balance of power in the Persian Gulf… [But] King Hussein of Jordan counseled Schwarzkopf: ‘Don't worry about the Iraqis. They are war-weary and have no aggressive intentions against their Arab brothers.’ Even King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and Sultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman, who disdained Saddam as a thug, were not alarmed by him.”[36]

Schwarzkopf acknowledges that he toured the Gulf giving out warnings on Iraq… [He] does not challenge the legitimacy of Saddam’s concerns over money and the islands, but defines his own mission as one of persuading the Gulf Arabs that Iraq had superseded Iran as their chief threat.[37]

‘We couldn’t put together the pieces of the mosaic,’ said an advisor to Prince Hassan, ‘but we were suspicious. The Kuwaitis were very cocky. They told us officially that the United States would intervene. We don’t know where they got that impression, from the United States itself or from another party, like the British or the Saudis. But they said they knew what they were doing. They seemed to think they were safe.’”[38]

[Excerpt from Milton Viorst ends here]

“But the American policy was clear... We understood it but Saddam didn’t. We knew the United States would not let us be overrun.”[39]

“By the time the crisis began in early 1990, we knew we could rely on the Americans. There was an exchange of talks on the ambassadorial level just before the invasion. No explicit commitments were ever made, but it was like a marriage. Sometimes you don’t say to your wife ‘I love you,’ but you know the relationship will lead to certain things.”[40]

According to the New York Times, when Jimmy Carter established Centcom in 1979 he did so because he was “Fearful that the Soviet Union would take advantage of Iranian instability and try to gain control of the Persian Gulf oilfields.”[41] Now, an ability to protect oil may be a plausible side-benefit of Centcom, but it really is hard to argue that this was its main purpose.

4) The geostrategic motivation was even weaker, because Saddam Hussein knew perfectly well that anybody who attacked US puppets in the Gulf would invite America's wrath (the US had already made this perfectly clear during the Iran-Iraq war by putting the American flag on Kuwaiti tankers).[42]

[7] SOURCE: The Washington Post, September 24, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A22, 1258 words, Centuries of Enmity Fuel New Iranian-Iraqi War, By William Branigin, Washington Post Foreign Service.

[9] The New York Times, December 8, 1991, The Iran Pipeline: A Hidden Chapter/A special report.; U.S. Said to Have Allowed Israel to Sell Arms to Iran, By Seymour Hersh

[14] To see what Jimmy Carter's policies toward the PLO were, consult the piece in footnote 13, and also the years 1977 and 1978 in:

“Is the US an Ally of Israel?: A Chronological Look at the Evidence”; Historical and Investigative Research; by Francisco Gil-White.
http://www.hirhome.com/israel/hirally.htm

To see what Ronald Reagan's policy towards the PLO was, consult the years 1981, 1982-83, and 1985 in the same book.

[20] Madeline Albright's exchange with Leslie Stahl on CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ (60 MINUTES, May 12, 1996), regarding deaths of Iraqi children:

LESLEY STAHL: We have heard that a half a million children have died [due to sanctions on Iraq, imposed because of US pressure]. I mean, that's more children than died when--wh--in--in Hiroshima. And--and, you know, is the price worth it?

AMBASSADOR ALBRIGHT: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

[23] On 24 March 2003, the Financial Times wrote as follows:

“It may be part of George W. Bush's axis of evil; some predict it will be next on the list for US pre-emptive action; but Iran is the only one of Iraq's neighbours that wholeheartedly supports regime change in Baghdad, even if via a US-led invasion.

Getting rid of Saddam Hussein and his government is one of the few objectives on which the various factions of the Tehran regime agree. Since becoming convinced that the Bush administration is indeed determined to effect forcible change in Iraq, Tehran has been egging on Washington, albeit in private. Whenever the US has needed Tehran's help, the Iranians have been more than happy to oblige.”

SOURCE: “War Sirens Herald Iran's Hour of Revenge”; Financial Times; March 24, 2003, Monday Usa Edition 1; Section: Comment & Analysis; Pg. 17; Headline: War Sirens Herald Iran's Hour Of Revenge; By Khairallah Khairallah

You may read the entire Financial Times piece, and an Emperor’s Clothes analysis of it, here:

On the question of US assistance to Iran during the invasion, please consult:

U.S. Bombed Bases of Iranian Rebels in Iraq; International Herald Tribune | New York Times; Thursday 17 April 2003; by Douglas Jehl

To read the above piece International Herald Tribune/New York Times piece, and an Emperor’s Clothes analysis, visit:

The following analysis is also useful:

[24] To read about Khalilzad’s role, visit: