The Iran—Iraq war in the 1980s: the tangle of terrorism support

During the long friendship between the US and the Shah, the former had come to consider the oil-rich Persian Gulf region as being of vital strategic importance to its national interests. As Iran turned from a like-minded ally to an incomprehensible enemy, the US therefore had to seriously rethink its strategy towards the entire region. Critically for the formation of a new strategy, the neighbouring Iraq invaded Iran in autumn 1980. The international community’s response to Iraq’s act of aggression was not condemnation, as the Iranians had expected²⁹¹. Instead, the UN called for ceasefire²⁹², and—after Khomeini had decided to continue the war despite Iraq’s 1982 offer for a settlement— the US gave indirect support for Saddam Hussein in the hope of weakening the new revolutionary Iran²⁹³. The US backing to Iraq ranged from “access to economic resources, support in relevant international fora” to “real-time satellite imagery indicating Iranian troop

movements”²⁹⁴. Formal diplomatic relations were also restored between the US and Iraq²⁹⁵. At the same time, the US continued the policy of economic sanctions that it had adopted against Iran during the hostage crisis²⁹⁶.

Legally, the US-Iraq cooperation was facilitated by the fact that Iraq had been removed from the State Department’s list of states that support terrorism in 1982²⁹⁷, while Iran was added to it in 1984²⁹⁸. Indeed, terrorism support became the key normative justification for the subsequent US policy of outlawing Iran. Following Pollack, I refer to this issue as a ‘tangle’, meaning that it

“consists of decades of accumulated psychological scar tissue”, just as the other issues between the US and Iran²⁹⁹. Originally, the US claims about Iran’s involvement with terrorism were based on the country’s alleged role in the suicide bombings of American embassy and US marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. Although the culprits of the attacks were never definitively identified, Hezbollah is generally considered responsible, and the US blamed Iran because of its ties with Hezbollah.³⁰⁰ As an early example of such logic—and as a prelude to the then-emerging outlaw state discourse—in 1983 Reagan answered a question regarding Iran's responsibility in the Beirut attacks as follows:

One of the hardest things, of course, is to prove that the terrorist attacks are sponsored by a government.

For example, these groups that are taking credit for the recent suicide attacks are believed to have an Iranian connection. There is a faction of Iranians that believe in a holy war. We do have the evidence that

291 Instead of condemning of the invasion, the Security Council called for ceasefire (Ansari 2006, 98).

292 Ansari 98.

293 Cf. Sciolino 2001, 181.

294 Ansari 105-106.

295 Ansari 2006, 105.

296 Ansari 2006, 100.

297 Hufbauer et al. 2001.

298 Hufbauer et al. 2001.

299 Pollack 2005, xxi

300 This view, which was first expressed by Israel, was subsequently adopted by several Western analysts, who continue to assume that Iran has direct influence over Hezbollah. (Ansari 101-103)

68

Khomeini has spoken a number of times about advocating a holy war in the Moslem world to promote his type of fundamentalism. So, it's hard not to believe that he must, in some way, instigate or at least egg on those that are doing these things. [...] I think that the civilized world has to get together and see what action can be taken. This does not necessarily mean warlike action, but pressures that can be put on a government – pressures such as saying to that government, ‘You start taking some steps to control this, or you'll be outlawed in the rest of the world’.³⁰¹

Reagan spoke with even more certainty about Iranian culpability in 1985:

…in 1983 alone, the Central Intelligence Agency either confirmed or found strong evidence of Iranian involvement in 57 terrorist attacks. While most of these attacks occurred in Lebanon, an increase in activity by terrorists sympathetic to Iran was seen throughout Europe. Spain and France have seen such incidents, and in Italy seven pro-Iranian Lebanese students were arrested for plotting an attack on the U.S.

Embassy, and this violence continues. [...] Since September 1984, Iranian-backed terrorist groups have been responsible for almost 30 attacks [...].³⁰²

Iran was thus not only accused of providing material support for Hezbollah, but also of giving moral support and inspiration for individuals and groups that had no contact with the Iranian regime.

Iran was not the only state thus singled out by Reagan—in the same connection, the US president also mentioned Libya, North Korea, Cuba, and Nicaragua. In what is surely one of the most flagrant manifestations of the concept of state crime in the history of diplomatic language, Reagan referred to this group of states as ‘outlaw states’, “confederation of criminal governments”, “terrorist states”, and “Murder, Incorporated³⁰³. In addition to their alleged involvement in international terrorism, the president argued that these states were united by their totalitarian nature, as well as “by one simple criminal phenomenon—their fanatical hatred of the United States, our people, our way of life, our international stature”.³⁰⁴ The president also said that the US would not “tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, loony tunes, and squalid criminals […] since the advent of the Third Reich”³⁰⁵.

At the time, however, this kind of rhetoric served to hide ambiguities in the US approach towards Iran and Iraq. Namely, in the first half of the decade there was still a certain section of the Reagan administration which felt that, apart from Iran, Saddam Hussein should be simultaneously

contained³⁰⁶. There were also those—including Reagan’s National Security Advisor Robert

McFarlane, as well as neo-conservative figures such as Paul Wolfowich and Michael Ledeen—who believed that the US should engage with Iran to secure the release of American hostages in

Lebanon, or even to normalise relations with the country³⁰⁷. Ironically from the point of view of their subsequent anti-Iranian stance, it was the latter two who convinced Reagan to approve secret negotiations with Iran. Those negotiations ultimately resulted in a deal whereby the US provided Iran with weapons through Israel—while at the same time continuing to arm Iraq. In return, the

301 Reagan, 15 December 1983.

302 Reagan, 8 July 1985.

303 Litwak 2000, 52-54. Indeed, Litwak regards the US State Department’s list of states that support terrorism as the basis of the American category of outlaw states.

304 Reagan, 8 July 1985.

305 Reagan, 8 July 1985.

306 Ansari 2006, 99-100.

307 Parsi 2008, 117-123.

69

Iranian side agreed to try to put pressure on terrorists who were holding Americans hostage in Lebanon. Iran also paid for the weapons but, as yet another twist to the story, the money was directed to a Nicaraguan guerrilla group³⁰⁸. (See more below.)

To understand Israel’s interest in the deal, it should be noted that the Israeli-Iranian relations had been rather close during the Pahlavi dynasty. As Parsi explains, the Israeli-Iranian alliance at the time was based on the so-called periphery doctrine, according to which these two non-Arab Middle Eastern states were united by “a congruence of interests formed by [...] common vulnerabilities”³⁰⁹, most notably the threat posed by Iraq. In the 1980s, these geopolitical factors were still significant enough as to overcome ideological differences. As Parsi writes, after the Iranian revolution Israel sought to maintain ties with Iran, which was now weakening in relation to Iraq, and which Israel continued to view as ‘a non-threat’. This was despite Khomeini’s anti-Israeli rhetoric, which Israel dismissed as reflecting Iran’s unsuccessful attempts to appeal to the Arabs. As for Iran’s ambiguous policy, he explains that Iran could not really afford to confront Israel and that when Israel provided it with missiles and “spare parts for tires of fighter planes and weapons”, Iran ‘comfortably’ put its revolutionary ideology aside. However, Iran was not interested in re-establishing official relations with Israel because “overt relations with Israel would harm Iran’s standing with the Arab

nations”³¹⁰.

The secret affair eventually ended as it reached daylight in 1986, resulting in an embarrassing scandal known as the ‘Iran-Contra’. As Ansari argues, this new humiliation represented a final blow to the US-Iranian relations, for it ended cooperation even at the elite level³¹¹. The scandal also undermined US-Israeli relations, as both countries denied their culpability and tried to lay the blame on each other. Iran, for its part, denied any involvement with Americans and Israelis. Subsequently, the Reagan administration’s support for Iraq became more open, and a new round of sanctions was imposed on Iran³¹². In 1987, the US also got directly involved in the so-called tanker war between Iran and Iraq. After this—and after Iraq’s devastating attacks against Iran with chemical weapons—

Iran finally accepted the ceasefire and the war formally ended in 1988.³¹³As for the lessons of the war for Iran, it first of all seemed to verify the correctness of Khomeini’s characterisation of the US as the ‘Great Satan’ and to prove its hostile intentions towards the Islamic Republic. The lack of international response to Iraq’s acts of aggression also showed that international institutions, most notably the UN Security Council, were politically biased³¹⁴.

Several writers stress the importance of this point in connection with the present nuclear issue, for Iran regained its interest in the Shah-era nuclear programmeme precisely in this context. Shahram Chubin, for example, argues that Iran’s fate as the “unloved victim of chemical weapons”

subsequently led it to “maintain a certain ambiguity about its chemical, biological and nuclear

308 Ansari 2006, 110.

309 Parsi 2008, 29.

310 Parsi 2008, 25

311 Ansari 2006, 72-73.

312 As Estelami (1999) explains, “numerous incidents involving U.S. and Iranian naval forces, and especially the shooting down of an Iranian airliner carrying over 200 passengers by the American navy in 1988, increased the tension between the two countries” in 1987-1988.

313 Ansari 2006, 107-108.

314 See Ansari 2006, 117; Chubin 2006, 19.

70

programmes”³¹⁵. He also writes that Iran “attributes to missiles an almost mystical quality from the experience of the war with Iraq”³¹⁶. From the point of view of the US, perhaps the most important lessons were drawn from the Iran-Contra affair. As Ansari explains, they “included the curious conclusion that Iran had no moderates worth negotiating with, that the system as a whole was rotten, and that the people were duplicitous”. He also notes that the conclusion was shared across the political spectrum, making the bashing of Iran into a bipartisan affair that united the

Republicans and the Democrats alike.³¹⁷ In practice this meant that any future attempts to engage with Iran would be effectively foiled, which in turn paved the way for further estrangement and mistrust regarding Iran’s re-emerging nuclear programmeme.