The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power

377 Pages·2008·1.72 MB·English

by  Ronen Bergman

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Nekudat Ha’al Chazor copyright © 2007 by Ronen Bergman
Translation copyright © 2008 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Originally published in Israel as Nekudat Ha’al Chazor in 2007 by Kinneret, Zmora-Bitan, Dvir—
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bergman, Ronen.
The secret war with Iran: the 30-year clandestine struggle against the world’s most dangerous terrorist
power / Ronen Bergman.
p. cm.
1. Iran—Foreign relations—20th century. 2. Iran—Foreign relations—21st century. 3. Iran—Military
relations. I. Title.
DS274.B47 2008
955.05'4—dc22
2008013640
ISBN-13: 978-1-41656490-4
ISBN-10: 1-4165-6490-X
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com
For my father,
Shmuel Bergman:
He sets the standards
for kindness, honesty, and devotion.
CONTENTS
Preface
PART I
GREEN STORM RISING
1. The Twilight of the Iranian Monarchy
2. Death to the Infidels
3. Operation Seashell: How Israel Secretly Armed Iran
PART II
THE HIDDEN WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST
4. Dangerous Games: The Lebanon War and the Birth of Hizballah
5. The Poor Man’s Smart Bomb: The Reinvention of Suicide Bombing
6. The Drugged Octopus and the Rise of Hizballah
7. The Meat Market: How Iran and Hizballah Perfected the Art of Hostage
Taking
8. The Hungarian Octagon: The Hidden Side of Iran-Contra
PART III
THE GLOBAL WAR
9. Assassins
10. Operation Body Heat
11. Terror in Buenos Aires
12. Exporting Terror
13. Target: The Great Satan
14. The al-Qaeda Connection
PART IV
THE SECOND COMING OF HIZBALLAH
15. A Divine Victory: Hizballah Takes Lebanon
16. Hizballah Prepares
17. Oil on the Flames
PART V
THE FIRST SHI’ITE BOMB
18. The Termite File: How an Israeli Arms Dealer Gave Iran a Chemical
Arsenal
19. Importing a Russian Bomb?
20. The Countdown
21. Ghost Raid
22. The Second Lebanon War
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Bibliography and a Note on Sources
PREFACE
George W. Bush famously described Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” while
Iranian leaders regularly refer to the United States as the “Great Satan.” But
presidential rhetoric in Washington and Tehran aside, the Iranian clerical regime
(and not the Iranian People) is unquestionably an enemy of the United States.
Consider: Iran has chemical weapons and an active nuclear weapons program. It
is a sponsor of international terrorism. It is dedicated to spreading a brand of
Islamic revolution that is virulently anti-Western. In short, many of the concerns
that were cited—and disputed—as grounds for invading Iraq are indisputably
true of Iran.
True, Iran has not launched full-scale invasions against its neighbors, as
Saddam Hussein did against both Iran and Kuwait. Instead, it has been skillful in
conducting its military adventures so as to avoid the wrath of the West. For the
past twenty years Iran has masterfully used Hizballah as a proxy, maintaining a
veneer of deniability. It has sponsored terrorists, working closely with al-Qaeda
prior to 9/11, after which point it became expedient to maintain some distance
from that network. And while the world had become obsessed with Osama bin
Laden and his lieutenants, it forgot that the most dangerous of all terrorists
before the advent of al-Qaeda, a Lebanese Shi’ite by the name of Imad
Moughniyeh, who was responsible for the death and kidnapping of the biggest
number of Americans until 9/11, was alive and well and a frequent welcome
visitor to Tehran, until he was blown up by a car bomb in Damascus early in
2008.
The Iranian threat is a top priority of the U.S. defense and foreign policy
establishment. This threat has appeared particularly urgent ever since Western
intelligence agencies—the CIA and the Mossad, as well as MI6, the French
DGSE, and the German intelligence service—suddenly realized in 2002 that
despite their concerted and often coordinated efforts to track the development of
Iran’s nuclear program, and their overall assessment that Iran’s nuclear
ambitions were being successfully contained, the Iranians had been able to fool
them. Their nuclear program has advanced to the point where production of an
Iranian nuclear bomb is now probably no more than a few years away.
This unsettling discovery raises a fundamental question: What exactly are
Iran’s nuclear ambitions? When the day dawns—as it may well soon do—and
Iran is in possession of a nuclear bomb, what will it use it for? According to a
CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll from 2006, over 80 percent of Americans believe
that Iran would supply nuclear weapons to terrorists to be used against the
United States. Many in the U.S. defense establishment agree. Indeed, the
Pentagon and the CIA, in close cooperation with Israel’s Mossad and the Israeli
air force, are drawing up plans to deliver a knockout blow to Iran’s nuclear
installations before any weapons are produced. However, it is also possible—
some would say probable—that the main purpose for which Iran wants nuclear
weapons is to deter the United States from doing to Iran what it has done to
Saddam Hussein.
What is clear today is that any decision to strike Iran from a distance—much
less invade it—can only be made against the background of the bitter experience
in Iraq. America went to war against one man, Saddam, and defeated him, only
to become mired in the quicksand of the complex and intractable tribal and
religious conflicts of an entire country. If there is one thing that everyone agrees
on, it is that drawing lessons from the military imbroglio in Iraq is imperative.
And the most important of these lessons is that there is no substitute for high-
quality intelligence. Know thy enemy, both his strengths and his weaknesses.
Even if the startling and disputed announcement in the U.S. National
Intelligence Estimates in 2007 that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons project in
2003 was correct, it is clear to all that Iran could easily pick up where it left off,
using the enriched uranium that it admits it is producing.
The problem is that after three decades of trying to meet the Iranian challenge
with a variety of strategies—covert negotiations, arms deals, critical dialogue,
containment, direct political confrontation, and indirect action against its proxies
—we still do not understand Iran. We do not know what its leaders want to do,
and we do not know how to stop them from doing it.
Or, at least, we do not know enough. The West, most notably the United
States and Israel, has maintained for three decades an effort to gather, analyze,
share, and act upon covert intelligence on Iran. This book follows the drama of
this secret intelligence struggle against Iran. At its heart are the two most
concerned countries: Israel and the United States. Both have played a complex
role, each trying to compensate for the other’s disadvantages, as they cooperate
in intelligence gathering and in operations. There have been many failures, and
some successes, too. This book brings these fascinating and sobering stories to
light, in order to contribute to the understanding of a regime that is a far greater
danger to the West than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq ever was.
The story ventures along the secret paths inside the intelligence communities
of both countries, while describing in detail many Mossad operations. The
United States relies on Israel’s intelligence agencies for much of its Middle
Eastern intelligence collection. Israeli successes are immediately shared with the
United States and Israeli failure means American blindness. In many instances,
Israel and its battles have served as testing grounds for American weapons and
for combat tactics developed in the United States.
This book is based on thousands of documents, and some three hundred
interviews with pertinent people in twenty countries, the names of two hundred
of whom appear in the Bibliography. Unless cited specifically in the text, all
interviews quoted were conducted by the author. A detailed survey of Iran’s part
in international terror requires the use of intelligence material gathered by Israel,
the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Research on such
a subject is highly complex. Many sources are necessarily anonymous.
Disinformation and simple errors have often crept into journalists’ reports on
Iran. I have made every attempt to verify and cross-check the information here,
yet it is not always possible to be certain of every detail; intelligence sources
have their own agendas. Whenever accounts differ, I have tried to say so.
Ultimately, however, an abundance of corroborated testimonies and
independent sources leaves no room for doubt as to the general trends: Iran
consistently supports terrorist operations against a wide and ambitious variety of
targets. And Iran is consistently trying to acquire nuclear weapons.
Here, then, is a view of the greatest security challenge the United States is
facing.
PART I
GREEN STORM RISING