United States support for Iraq during the Iran–Iraq War

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi meeting with President Jimmy Carter and Zbigniew Brzezinski, 1977. U.S. intelligence sharing with post-Revolutionary Iran Following the Iranian Revolution, the Carter administration continued to see Iran as a bulwark against Iraq and the Soviet Union, and therefore attempted to forge a strategic partnership with the new Interim Government of Iran under Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan. Chargé d'affaires at the American embassy in Tehran, Bruce Laingen, realized that Iranian officials were acutely interested in U.S. intelligence on Iraq, and convinced Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Harold H. Saunders to approve an intelligence-sharing liaison with the Iranian government, culminating in an October 15, 1979 meeting between longtime Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer George W. Cave and the Iranian Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Amir-Entezam and Foreign Minister Ebrahim Yazdi. Cave told Mark J. Gasiorowski that he briefed Entezam and Yazdi on Iraqi military preparations and covert operations seemingly designed to facilitate a large-scale invasion of Iran, although no final decision had been made (the content of Cave's briefing was corroborated by Laingen, Yazdi, Entezam, and Bazargan). For example, according to Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst Wayne White, who was not aware of the intelligence that informed Cave's briefing: "The Iraqi army was doing little more than continuing its well-known annual schedule of primarily battalion and brigade-level training exercises ... Very little of the Iraqi military was anywhere near the Iraqi-Iranian frontier." Similarly, the head of the Iran desk at the State Department, Henry Precht, stated: "I had no impression at the time that anyone believed Iraq was planning a major attack although we thought that [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] might be stirring up the Kurds. At the time I did not think he would take on his larger and still probably more potent neighbor." Claims of U.S. involvement and "greenlight" accusations Iranian leaders, including Khomeini and his successor Ali Khamenei, have long espoused a belief that the U.S. gave Saddam Hussein a "green-light" to launch the invasion of Iran. U.S. officials have strongly denied this charge. In fact, Iranian suspicions that the U.S. would use Iraq to retaliate for the hostage-taking predated the invasion, as Carter noted in his diary on April 10, 1980: "The Iranian terrorists are making all kinds of crazy threats to kill the American hostages if they are invaded by Iraq—whom they identify as an American puppet." There are several reasons for this perception, including some circumstantial evidence. In another widely publicized remark, Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told a television interviewer on April 14 that "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq ... we do not feel that American–Iraq relations need to be frozen in antagonism." Moreover, the CIA—desperate for intelligence on Iran—maintained contacts with Iranian opposition figures including Shapour Bakhtiar and Gholam Ali Oveissi, who were themselves in touch with Iraqi officials and had encouraged Saddam to invade. Although there is no evidence that either Bakhtiar or Oveissi were acting at the behest of the U.S., Iranian awareness of such contacts through documents seized in the U.S. embassy fueled suspicion. United States Secretary of State Alexander Haig told Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, that it was during this visit that "President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through [Crown Prince] Fahd," but at a 2008 conference several academics and former U.S. officials questioned the veracity of this assertion as well as the motives of both Haig and Fahd in promulgating it. As described by Malcolm Byrne: "The American veterans were unanimous that no 'green light' was ever given, and that the Haig document, while intriguing on its face, leaves far too much room for interpretation to be definitive. ... the Saudi comments did not address the various policy arguments that militated against an invasion—chiefly, the potential danger posed to the American hostages in Tehran". On the other hand, senior U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman told journalist Andrew Cockburn that "he remembers coming across a 'memcon' summarising a meeting in late June 1980—three months before the war began—between Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and a senior Iraqi diplomat. In the meeting Brzezinski clearly stated that America would be content with an Iraqi attack on Iran—a green light if ever there was one." Additionally, sources linked to the Iranian government have accused Brzezinski of personally meeting with Saddam in Amman, Jordan in July 1980. King Hussein of Jordan is said to have acted as an interlocutor, but two of the king's biographers—Avi Shlaim and Nigel J. Ashton—found nothing to corroborate that such a meeting occurred. Gary Sick, a close aide who accompanied Brzezinski during a 1980 trip to the Middle East, told Brands that the meeting as described was impossible: "I was with him at least 14 hours a day, including a brief visit to Jordan, and I can attest absolutely that (1) Iraq was not on the agenda, and (2) he could not physically have made such a visit—even if he stayed up all night and got a secret flight to Baghdad," the latter being a variation on the original claim. French historian Pierre Razoux wrote, "a meticulous analysis of the events, context, and statements by contemporary authorities, combined with more recent sources and interviews granted by certain key participants, has left no doubt that the American government did not push Saddam Hussein to criminal behavior". Prelude to the Iraqi invasion of Iran On April 9, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) received information from a human source considered reliable, postulating a 50% chance Iraq would invade Iran. Carter himself has confirmed that fear the U.S. hostages would be executed if Iraq attacked was one reason he approved a failed rescue mission on April 24. In light of these alerts, the claims of senior Carter administration officials involved with Iran—including White, Naas, Precht, and Sick—that they were surprised by the invasion require some explanation. According to Gibson, Iraq also kept its invasion plans secret from the Soviets, despite this being a violation of a 1972 treaty. The Special Coordination Committee (SCC) of the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) was very concerned about preventing Soviet encroachment into Iran, a consideration which precluded the Carter administration from taking stronger measures against Iran in response to the hostage crisis. In September 1980, the SCC resolved to warn the Soviets that if they invaded Iran, it would be considered cause for war with the United States. In sum, as described by Brands, "the Carter administration's attention was elsewhere in the period preceding the invasion; at an NSC meeting on the Persian Gulf on 12 September, it was the possibility of a Soviet, not an Iraqi, invasion of Iran that occasioned preoccupation." Gibson avers: "If Washington had any foreknowledge of the invasion, logic would suggest that the timing would be postponed until after the hostages were successfully released." Hahn states that "there is no evidence to support the Iranian contention" that the U.S. helped instigate the conflict, finding several holes in this theory. Brands concludes: "There is no hard evidence that a green light was given, while there is substantial documentary proof that the Carter administration neither expected nor welcomed the war." == Support ==

U.S. shift towards backing Iraq by 1982 By mid-1982, the war's momentum had shifted decisively in favor of Iran, which invaded Iraq to depose Saddam's government. Riedel recounted: "You just had a series of catastrophic Iraqi defeats. They had been driven out of Iran, and the Iraqi army looked like it was falling apart." "The Reagan administration feared that Iran's army might slice through Iraq to the oilfields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia," as described by Judith Yaphe; Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs Nicholas A. Veliotes "outlined a nightmare scenario in which the Iranians invade Iraq, they defeat Iraq, and then head straight for Israel, which is distracted and debilitated by its ongoing adventure in Lebanon." As a result, the U.S. gradually abandoned its policy of neutrality. which were later deemed to be misleading intelligence information designed to prolong the war with Iran and increase US influence in the region, contributing to the Iraqi defeat in the First Battle of al-Faw in February 1986. Frank Carlucci: "An Iranian victory is unacceptable." By November 1983, the State Department had been briefed on Iraq's "almost daily use of [chemical weapons]". According to Teicher's 1995 affidavit and separate interviews with former Reagan and Bush administration officials, the CIA secretly directed armaments and hi-tech components to Iraq through false fronts and friendly third parties such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait, and they quietly encouraged rogue arms dealers and other private military companies to do the same: [T]he United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third-country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required. The United States also provided strategic operational advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in combat ... The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. My notes, memoranda and other documents in my NSC files show or tend to show that the CIA knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, munitions and vehicles to Iraq. The full extent of these covert transfers is not yet known. Teicher's files on the subject are held securely at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and many other Reagan-era documents that could help shine new light on the subject remain classified. Teicher would also, under threat of a grand jury indictment for possibly violating his national security oath due to his disclosures, sign an affidavit retracting everything he had said. hosts then-Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz of the Saddam Hussein administration at the White House, 1984 About two of every seven licenses for the export of "dual use" technology items approved between 1985 and 1990 by the U.S. Department of Commerce "went either directly to the Iraqi armed forces, to Iraqi end-users engaged in weapons production, or to Iraqi enterprises suspected of diverting technology" to weapons of mass destruction, according to an investigation by House Banking Committee Chairman Henry B. Gonzalez. Confidential Commerce Department files also reveal that the Reagan and Bush administrations approved at least 80 direct exports to the Iraqi military. These included computers, communications equipment, aircraft navigation and radar equipment. In conformance with the Presidential directive, the U.S. began providing tactical battlefield advice to the Iraqi Army. "The prevailing view", says Alan Friedman, "was that if Washington wanted to prevent an Iranian victory, it would have to share some of its more sensitive intelligence photography with Saddam." : Saudi Arabia transferred to Iraq hundreds of U.S.-made general-purpose "dumb bombs". Lang disclosed that more than 60 officers of the Defense Intelligence Agency were secretly providing detailed information on Iranian deployments. He cautioned that the DIA "would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival." The Reagan administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports affirming the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians. Hiltermann says that when the Iraqi military turned its chemical weapons on the Kurds during the war, killing approximately 5,000 people in the town of Halabja and injuring thousands more, the Reagan administration sought to obscure Iraqi leadership culpability by suggesting, inaccurately, that the Iranians were partially responsible for the attack. Forms of U.S. support Bear Spares With the UN-imposed embargo on warring parties, and with the Soviet Union opposing the conflict, Iraqi engineers found it increasingly difficult to repair and replace hardware damaged in battle. According to Kenneth R. Timmerman, "Saddam did foresee one immediate consequence of his invasion of Iran: the suspension of arms supplies from the USSR." The Iraqi military settled on the American Type Culture Collection strain 14578 as the exclusive strain for use as a biological weapon, according to Charles Duelfer. On February 9, 1994, Senator Riegle delivered a report—commonly known as the Riegle Report—in which it was stated that "pathogenic (meaning 'disease producing'), toxigenic (meaning 'poisonous'), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce." It added: "These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction." The report then detailed 70 shipments (including anthrax) from the United States to Iraqi government agencies over three years, concluding "It was later learned that these microorganisms exported by the United States were identical to those the UN inspectors found and recovered from the Iraqi biological warfare program." Donald Riegle, Chairman of the Senate committee that authored the aforementioned Riegle Report, said: U.N. inspectors had identified many United States manufactured items that had been exported from the United States to Iraq under licenses issued by the Department of Commerce, and [established] that these items were used to further Iraq's chemical and nuclear weapons development and its missile delivery system development programs. ... The executive branch of our government approved 771 different export licenses for sale of dual-use technology to Iraq. I think that is a devastating record. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control sent Iraq 14 separate agents "with biological warfare significance," according to Riegle's investigators. Combat planning and battlefield intelligence More than 60 US Defense Intelligence Agency officers provided combat planning assistance, and the US also provided battlefield intelligence including satellite pictures to Saddam Hussein's military. Diplomatic support In 1984, Iran introduced a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council, citing the Geneva Protocol of 1925, condemning Iraq's use of chemical weapons on the battlefield. In response, the United States instructed its delegate at the UN to lobby friendly representatives in support of a motion to take "no decision" on the use of chemical munitions by Iraq. If backing to obstruct the resolution could be won, then the U.S. delegation were to proceed and vote in favour of taking zero action; if support were not forthcoming, the U.S. delegate were to refrain from voting altogether. USDEL should work to develop general Western position in support of a motion to take "no decision" on Iranian draft resolution on use of chemical weapons by Iraq. If such a motion gets reasonable and broad support and sponsorship, USDEL should vote in favor. Failing Western support for "no decision," USDEL should abstain. Representatives of the United States argued that the UN Human Rights Commission was an "inappropriate forum" for consideration of such abuses. According to Joyce Battle, the Security Council eventually issued a "presidential statement" condemning the use of unconventional weapons "without naming Iraq as the offending party." == Parties involved ==

According to Russ Baker, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, a "vast network" based in the U.S. and elsewhere, fed Iraq's warring capabilities right up until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait. According to Timmerman, Soghanalian also helped the Iraqis obtain TOW anti-tank missiles, for which he was later prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice. According to classified U.S. government documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times, several federal agencies "issued warnings of serious irregularities with the program," including that the loan guarantees allowed Iraq to purchase arms. "Iraqi officials ... acknowledged that the Department of Agriculture funds had been diverted for military purposes," however "evidence of improprieties was largely ignored." George H. W. Bush, "first as vice president and then as President, intervened repeatedly over a period of almost a decade to obtain special assistance for Saddam Hussein—financial aid as well as access to high-tech equipment that was critical to Iraq's quest for nuclear and chemical arms." As late as October 1989, President Bush authorized $1 billion in loan guarantees to Iraq, although this was reduced to $400 million after several senior Iraqi officials were implicated in the BNL scandal. An investigation by the Clinton administration concluded "We did not find evidence that U.S. agencies or officials illegally armed Iraq or that crimes were committed through bartering of [U.S. agricultural] commodities for military equipment". According to the Financial Times, the companies involved in the scandal by shipping militarily useful technology to Iraq were Hewlett-Packard, Tektronix, and Matrix Churchill's Ohio branch. Even before the Persian Gulf War started in 1990, the Intelligencer Journal of Pennsylvania in a string of articles reported: "If U.S. and Iraqi troops engage in combat in the Persian Gulf, weapons technology developed in Lancaster and indirectly sold to Iraq will probably be used against U.S. forces ... And aiding in this ... technology transfer was the Iraqi-owned, British-based precision tooling firm Matrix Churchill, whose U.S. operations in Ohio were recently linked to a sophisticated Iraqi weapons procurement network." Aside from the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and ABC's Ted Koppel, the Iraq-gate story never picked up much momentum, even though the U.S. Congress became involved with the scandal. See an article by journalist William Safire, introduced into the Congressional Record by Rep. Tom Lantos. An even longer list of American companies and their involvements in Iraq was provided by the LA Weekly in May 2003. == Energy development and security ==

Aqaba pipeline project The United States government supported the construction of a new oil pipeline that would run westward from Iraq across the land to the Jordanian port city of Aqaba, permitting access from the Red Sea. The Bechtel Corporation was the prime contractor for this project. Donald Rumsfeld discussed the advantages of the pipeline personally with Saddam Hussein in 1983. The Aqaba project never made it past the drawing board, however, because of its proximity to Israel, which planners insisted upon. So near to the border it would run, the Iraqi leadership feared the Israeli side could disable the pipeline at a later date, simply by "lobbing a few hand grenades" at it. But attention in Washington was on isolating Iran; accepting Saddam's apology for the error, the White House criticized Iran's mining of international waters, and in October 1987, the U.S. attacked Iranian oil platforms in retaliation for an Iranian attack on the U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City. Iran Air Flight 655 and Admiral Crowe, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Iran Air Flight 655 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by , a U.S. Navy warship. The missiles hit the Iran Air aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. All 290 people on board were killed, including 274 passengers and a crew of 16, making it one of the deadliest airliner shootdowns of all time and the deadliest in Iranian history. Vincennes entered Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits. The reason for the downing has been disputed between the governments of the two countries. According to the U.S. government, Vincennes crew misidentified the aircraft as an F-14 Tomcat, a U.S.-made fighter jet within Iran's inventory, despite it transmitting civilian identification codes. It asserts that Vincennes and other warships repeatedly contacted the aircraft on both civilian and military air distress frequencies, but received no response. By contrast, the Iranian government maintains that the U.S. recklessly shot down the aircraft, violating international law, after repeatedly provoking the Iranian forces. Some analysts blamed the overly aggressive attitude of Vincennes captain, William C. Rogers III, while others focused on more widespread issues and miscommunications on board. The United States was criticized for the downing, especially in its initial response. While not issuing a formal apology, President Reagan issued a written diplomatic note to Iran, expressing deep regret. In 1996, both governments reached a settlement in the International Court of Justice in which the U.S. agreed to pay  million (equivalent to $ million in ) on an ex gratia basis to the families of the victims. As part of the settlement, the U.S. did not admit liability for the shootdown. Longer term interests In response to further Iraqi chemical attacks on Kurdish civilians after the August 1988 ceasefire with Iran, U.S. senators Claiborne Pell and Jesse Helms called for comprehensive economic sanctions against Iraq, including an oil embargo and severe limitations on the export of dual-use technology. Although the ensuing legislation passed in the U.S. Senate, it faced strong opposition within the House of Representatives and did not become law. In a rare rebuke, Secretary of State George Shultz condemned Iraq's "unjustified and abhorrent" attacks, which Shultz's assistant Charles E. Redman characterized as "unacceptable to the civilized world." Even after these pronouncements, however, the State Department advised against sanctions. In October 1989, President Bush signed NSD 26, which begins, "Access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key friendly states in the area are vital to U.S. national security." With respect to Iraq, the directive stated, "Normal relations between the United States and Iraq would serve our longer term interests and promote stability in both the Persian Gulf and the Middle East." == Public opinion ==

Shortly after the Iraqi invasion of Iran, an October 1980 ABC News poll found that 39% of Americans felt "more sympathy" for Iraq, compared to 11% for Iran. By 1984, this shifted slightly, with 44% sympathizing with Iraq and 12% with Iran. As the war progressed, a May 1987 poll by the Los Angeles Times showed that 30% of the U.S. population wanted Iraq to win the war, while 5% supported Iran. Following the beginning of direct U.S. involvement in the Tanker war, a September 1987 poll by The New York Times reported an increase, with 43% favoring an Iraqi victory compared to 5% for Iran. == See also ==