From the early 1980s, the fact that Iran has been the principal foreign supporter of the terrorist organization Hizballah, providing money, intelligence, weapons, training, and operational guidance to its fighters—including the suicide bombers who destroyed the U.S. embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut during the early 1980s—has further poisoned the air between our two countries. Until al Qaeda attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, Hizballah had killed more Americans than had any terrorist group in history.
In 2004, Brzezinski and I were asked to cochair a task force on U.S. policy toward Iran under the auspices of the Council on Foreign Relations. One reason I had moved to the Pacific Northwest after retiring as CIA director was to avoid getting roped into projects like this. But because of my respect for, and friendship with, Brzezinski and council president Richard Haass, I agreed.
The task force issued its report in July 2004, acknowledging the failure of repeated efforts over the preceding twenty-five years to engage with Tehran but expressing the view that the U.S. military intervention in both Afghanistan and Iraq, on Iran’s eastern and western borders, respectively, had changed the “geopolitical landscape” and might offer new incentives for a mutually beneficial dialogue. The report recommended selective diplomatic engagement as a means to address issues such as Iran’s nuclear program. The report also proposed withdrawing U.S. objections to an Iranian civil nuclear program in exchange for stringent safeguards; suggested using economic relationships as positive leverage in dealing with Iran; and recommended U.S. advocacy of democracy in Iran “without relying on the rhetoric of regime change.” The recommendations acknowledged the likelihood of Iranian obstinacy preventing progress.
With “reform” president Hojjatoleslam Mohammed Katami in office—someone who in 1998 had called for a “dialogue with the American people”—and “reformers” winning a landslide victory in the Iranian general election in 2000, the recommendations of the report did not seem particularly radical, despite Iran’s continued support for anti-Israeli militants. However, given events over the ensuing two years, including the election of a hard-line president in Iran and Iranian support for Shia extremists killing our troops in Iraq, by the time I came back to government in late 2006, I no longer supported most of the recommendations in the report. It so quickly slid into oblivion that after I was nominated to be secretary, someone asked Steve Hadley if the administration had been aware of the positions I had taken in the report vis-à-vis Iran. I was told Steve was quite taken aback and asked, “What report?”
On December 23, 2006, five days after I became secretary of defense, the UN Security Council voted to impose limited sanctions on Iran, thus internationalizing some of the economic sanctions the United States had imposed on Tehran during the Clinton administration and first years of the Bush administration. In his January 10, 2007, speech announcing the strategy change and the surge in Iraq, Bush also said that henceforth U.S. troops would target Iranian agents inside Iraq who were helping the insurgency; more significantly, he also announced that he was sending a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and deploying Patriot missile defense batteries to the region as well. During a White House meeting on January 21, Rice passed me a note saying, “The Iranians are getting very nervous. Now is the time to keep the heat up.”
The trouble was that the Iranians were not the only ones getting nervous. A number of members of Congress and commentators worried publicly whether the Bush administration was getting ready to launch another war, a worry that only grew every time we announced some new nefarious act by the Iranians. I tried to strike the right balance in a press conference on February 2, saying that the second carrier was intended to increase pressure on the Iranians in response to their training and providing weapons to Shia extremists fighting the United States in Iraq (we believed the Iranians either killed or trained the killers—murderers, actually—of five American soldiers in Karbala on January 20), as well as to serve as a response to their continued nuclear activities. I underscored that “we are not planning for a war with Iran.” On February 15, I said, “For the umpteenth time, we are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran.” Cheney’s affirmation a few days later that “all options are still on the table”—the administration’s position—hardly helped dampen the speculation.
Ayatollah Khamanei, Iran’s “supreme” leader, had weighed in publicly on February 8, warning that Iran would retaliate against our interests if attacked by the United States. At the same time, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy announced the test-firing of an antiship missile “capable of sinking a large warship.” Trying to downplay its significance, I told the press at a NATO defense ministers meeting in Seville that we had watched the test, and “other than that, I think it’s just another day in the Persian Gulf.”
About the same time, the administration went public with evidence that the Iranians were supplying sophisticated IED bomb-making materials to Iraqis trying to kill our troops. We couldn’t prove that the most senior Iranian leaders knew about this, but I found it inconceivable that they did not; I was eager for us to be even more aggressive in picking up their agents—or killing them—in Iraq. Tensions with Iran rose further in March 2008, when the Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy seized fifteen British sailors and marines accused of intruding into Iranian territorial waters. (I immediately directed that no U.S. sailors or Marines were to patrol or board other boats in the Gulf without cover from helicopter gunships or without a U.S. warship within firing range. I wasn’t about to risk any of our sailors or Marines falling into Iranian hands.) Four days later the United States began a naval exercise in the Gulf, including two aircraft carriers and a dozen other warships—it was the first time two carriers had held a joint exercise in the Gulf since 2003.
These actions set off another round of speculation that President Bush was laying the groundwork for attacking Iran. The Economist speculated that Bush “might not be prepared to leave office with the Iranian question unresolved.” In an editorial, the magazine explained why Bush might act:
One is Iran’s apparent determination to build nuclear weapons, and a fear that it is nearing the point where its nuclear programme will be impossible to stop. The second is the advent of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a populist president who denies the Holocaust and calls openly for Israel’s destruction: his apocalyptic speeches have convinced many people in Israel and America that the world is facing a new Hitler with genocidal intent. The third is a recent tendency inside the Bush administration to blame Iran for many of America’s troubles not just in Iraq but throughout the Middle East…. Given his [Bush’s] excessive willingness to blame Iran for blocking America’s noble aims in the Middle East, he may come to see a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear programme as a fitting way to redeem his presidency.
Frankly, I shared some of The Economist’s concerns. One thread running through my entire time as secretary was my determination to avoid any new wars while we were still engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember the old saw “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging”? Between Iraq and Afghanistan, I thought the United States was in a pretty deep hole. Were we faced with a serious military threat to American vital interests, I would be the first to insist upon an overwhelming military response. In the absence of such a threat, I saw no need to go looking for another war. I kept a 1942 quote from Winston Churchill in my desk drawer to remind me every day of certain realities: “Never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricane he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that, once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”