The bad news — this is the final part of my series Mire in the Middle East. The good news — I’m thinking I might box these up as a collection and make them available as one download on my website (davidrollins.substack.com). I’m also considering doing a series of podcasts, but I’ll let you know when they’re released.
“Nuclear” ends on the downing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight Air 782 on January 6, 2020. That’s close enough to 2023; today’s media can take it from here. I hope you’ve enjoyed this series, though probably “enjoyed” isn’t the right word. Maybe “found it informative” would be more appropriate. I also hope you’ve found it impartial. Frankly, I think the taking of sides in this biblical feud is not helpful to either the Israelis or the Palestinians. It’s the ordinary people on both sides who suffer, pawns in the power games of others. But I won’t say more because I’ve avoided it thus far — why start now? But please don’t let me stand in your way. If you have something to say, there’s a button at the conclusion of this final walk down memory lane. Please press and write. I’m Switzerland.
The next essay from me will be titled “HOW TO INVADE TAIWAN AND GET AWAY WITH IT.” I’m looking forward to writing that one.
— David
It’s December 1987, and the Lebanese Civil War, now in its seventh year, continues to rage just across Israel’s border. The region is a powder keg looking for a spark. The match is lit when an Israeli is stabbed to death in an attack that takes place in Gaza. Days later, an Israeli truck collides with two vans carrying Palestinian workers, killing four. The accident is viewed as a revenge attack for the stabbed Israeli and Gaza explodes. This becomes known as the first intifada (Arabic word for “shaking off”). Gazan Palestinians throw rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli security forces and other Israeli targets, but following harsh crackdowns by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and the leakage of weapons from across the border, this soon becomes running battles fought with bullets and grenades.
US-brokered talks in 1988 with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) hold at least some promise of peace with the rejection by the PLO of terrorism and the acceptance of Israel’s right to exist, along with the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which calls on all Arab states to accept Israel’s right “to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.”
However, even a willingness to reduce the violence has to wait until 1992, and the election of a more moderate Israeli government tiring of the conflict. An actual cessation of violence only comes about in 1994 following the signing of the Oslo Accords. Brokered by the Norwegian government, the Accords reiterate the PLO’s 1988 statements along with Israel’s acceptance of the PLO as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people and includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and areas of the West Bank. The Accords also establish the Palestinian Authority, a body to administer the West Bank and Gaza, along with an agreement between Israel and the PLO to work out a “Two-State Solution” within five years.
The world breathes a sigh of relief. Is now, at last, peace on the table?
No, it’s not, because for some the price asked is too high. A violent and ambitious Sunni Islamist group connected to the Muslim Brotherhood called Hamas (Arabic for “zeal”) rises from the ashes of the intifada. Determined to establish an Islamic state through jihad (holy war) in Gaza and beyond (the area of ancient Palestine), its charter calls for the complete and total destruction of Israel by any and all violent means. The group also rejects the PLO as the sole representative of Palestinian aspirations and refuses to recognize the Oslo Accords.
Israel, meanwhile, supercharges the ill will by continuing to build settlements on land in the occupied territories in defiance of the Accords, land earmarked as part of the future Palestinian state. And all the while, in reaction to this and other Israeli impositions, the Palestinians build up their arms caches. Any talk of peace is drowned out by accusations and recriminations and, in 2000, talks between the two parties break down entirely
Israel, meanwhile, supercharges the ill will by continuing to build settlements on land in the occupied territories in defiance of the Accords, land earmarked as part of the future Palestinian state. And all the while, in reaction to this and other Israeli impositions, the Palestinians build up their arms caches. Any talk of peace is drowned out by accusations and recriminations and, in 2000, talks between the two parties break down entirely.
September 2000. The second intifada erupts when Israeli politician Ariel Sharon visits the Temple Mount and claims Israeli jurisdiction over the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of Islam’s holiest sites. This uprising is far deadlier than the first, with thousands of Palestinians (and considerably fewer Israelis) killed. In an attempt to manage the deteriorating situation, Israel approves hundreds of assassinations of Palestinians, while Palestinians attack Israelis with a seemingly inexhaustible army of suicide bombers.
March 2002. In an attempt to crush the uprising, Israel sends in its forces to occupy Gaza and areas of the West Bank and begins to wall off parts of the West Bank, building similar defensive barriers to those it erected to contain Gaza in 1997.
The death and bloodshed continue unceasingly until Israel withdraws its forces in 2006. But by then, the Palestinian Authority is considered by Palestinians to be corrupt, impotent, and an instrument of Tel Aviv. In a final rejection, frustrated by the inaction of its elected but hopelessly compromised officials, in 2006, the Palestinian Gazans elect new representatives who promise action — Hamas.
Osama bin Laden, opens the curtain on a new era of super terrorism. He orchestrates the most audacious spectacle ever in the name of Allah the Merciful — flying hi-jacked commercial airliners full of innocent civilians into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center
The arrival on the scene of Hamas, an elected death cult with ideals similar to that of ISIS on Israel’s doorstep, goes barely unnoticed in the West, but only because Islamic terrorism is front and center elsewhere on the world stage. Its lead actor, Osama bin Laden, opens the curtain on a new era of super terrorism, orchestrating the most audacious spectacle ever in the name of Allah the Merciful — flying hi-jacked commercial airliners full of innocent civilians into the Twin Towers of New York City’s World Trade Center.
Afghanistan’s ruling Sunni Taliban is identified as having provided Bin Laden’s al-Qaida Islamist organization with room to train and to grow in strength and numbers. The United States is enraged and, likening 9/11 to the surprise Imperial Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, invades Afghanistan with the intent of eliminating the Taliban.
America encounters support from Iran regarding its actions in Afghanistan, and a relieved Bush Administration opens a back channel with Tehran.
Iran’s leaders welcome this rapprochement. The emergence of bin Laden’s brand of Sunni extremism poses a serious challenge to its Shia Islamic Revolution, the aim of which is to dominate the Middle East, a cause bestowed on it by the Ayatollah Khomeini. But if America is prepared to take on the enemies of the true religion, then inshallah (God wills it).
This turnaround in the relationship between two long-time enemies also suprises America’s allies. For several years prior to 9/11, the United Nations and the European Union, along with the United States and various other nations, have been coming together to impose successive waves of sanctions on Iran to dissuade its apparent pursuit of a nuclear weapons program.
For example, in March 1995, President Clinton issued an executive order banning all US involvement in Iranian oil sales. Two months later, another Clinton Executive Order stopped all US trade and investment with Iran. In the same year, the US Congress went further and imposed the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act that levied penalties on all foreign companies that invested more than $20 million in Iran’s energy sector in a single year.
Prior to 9/11 there was a brief relaxing of US sanctions when reformist cleric Mohammad Khatami was elected President in May 1997, an event President Clinton deemed “hopeful”. The thaw continued into 2000, and sanctions were lifted on a range of products, including Persian rugs and pharmaceuticals.
But the friendship is short-lived. President Bush, in his January 2002 State of the Union address, names Iran part of an “axis of evil” together with North Korea and Iraq. The announcement reportedly takes Tehran completely by surprise. Any and all conciliation is dead.
New president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proclaims Israel to be a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the face of the earth”
Iranian returns to its hard-line roots in 2005 when the ultra-conservative politician Mahmoud Ahmadinejad replaces the moderate Mohammad Khatami, assumes the Iranian presidency and proclaims Israel to be a “disgraceful blot” that should be “wiped off the face of the earth.”
It’s further revealed at this time that Iran, a signatory to the international Non-Proliferation Treaty, is running a clandestine nuclear enrichment program and, given Ahmadinejad’s remarks, the program’s intended uses are likely less than peaceful.
Increasingly harsh sanctions are imposed on Iran in a bid to discourage its nuclear aspirations, aspirations Tehran consistently denies.
Under pressure, possibly from Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, Ahmadinejad walks back some of his aggressive statements, but international, and particularly Israeli, concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear motives remain.
Since the Iran Hostage Crisis that began in November 1979, where 52 US Embassy staff were held for 444 days, America has believed that its citizens and allies have been singled out by Iran for terrorist attacks. Responding to this, successive US lawmakers and presidents have introduced a range of ever more constricting statutes and Executive orders that appear to make the punishment of Iran personal. Iran reciprocates, using whatever weapons are at its disposal.
During the United States-led war in Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom), the Islamic Revolution engages in the conflict by supporting numerous proxies whose chief weapons are Iranian-made Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), a kind of deadly effective improvised explosive device (IED) that account for at least 1 in 6 deaths of US servicemen. The Pentagon attributes the presence of these EFPs in Iraq to the Quds Force, the special forces arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard led by Qasem Soleimani (more on him to come).
Meanwhile, the US-led efforts to constrain Iran’s ambitions to acquire nuclear weapons become more feverish.
While Tehran consistently denies that it has a nuclear weapons program, the US and Europe are mistrustful, mostly because of Tehran’s enmity towards Israel and its long-standing commitment to terrorism as an instrument of projecting power in the region. And, in regards to the West’s belief, there is growing evidence these fears have foundation.
In 2003, Iranian dissidents smuggle a laptop out of the country and into the hands of the CIA. The computer reportedly contains nuclear weapons-related designs. Among the documents recovered are technical modifications to the Iranian Shahab-3 medium-range missile that would allow it to mount a nuclear warhead.
There is considerable dispute between Iran and the US over the credibility of this intelligence windfall. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sides with Iran and also disputes the authenticity of this “intelligence,” however, the IAEA is deeply troubled on other fronts revealed by the following released statement: "It is clear that Iran has failed in a number of instances over an extended period of time to meet its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement with respect to the reporting of nuclear material and its processing and use, as well as the declaration of facilities where such material has been processed and stored." The Agency further claims that Iran has long been engaged in a “pattern of concealment” adding that, while it has no evidence that these undeclared activities are related to a nuclear weapons program, is unable to conclude that Iran's nuclear program is exclusively peaceful.
In 2006, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, consistently and provocatively antagonistic towards the US and Israel, announces that Iran has successfully enriched uranium with its own centrifuges. This is like a slap that wakes up the world to Iran’s true intentions — enriching uranium from yellowcake is a key step in the production of nuclear weapons. If Iran’s aim is not to build nuclear weapons, then why go down this development path?
The US response is swift. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice says the Security Council must consider "strong steps" to induce Tehran to change course in its nuclear ambition. In reply, Ahmadinejad vows that Iran will not back away from uranium enrichment. The United Nations Security Council’s rebuttal is yet another raft of sanctions.
However, the West only has itself to blame for Iran’s nuclear aspirations. Prior to the overthrow of the Shah, the United States and Europe actively funded and provided expertise for the design and construction of nuclear power stations and supporting industries and technologies, such as the building of centrifuges, the devices used to enrich uranium.
Back then, in 1970, a cooperative “global citizen” under the Shah’s rule, Iran ratified the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, subjecting its nuclear program to IAEA verification and inspection. But since the Ayatollah came to power (1979), open cooperation on its nuclear programs has all but ceased.
With Iran’s determination to develop nuclear weapons seemingly inexorable, and the intended target made clear once these goals are reached, key Iranian nuclear scientists either die under mysterious circumstances or are openly assassinated.
2010 is a bad year to be an Iranian physicist.
Ardeshir Hosseinpour, an Iranian physics professor and electromagnetism expert involved in Iran’s nuclear program, is killed by gas poisoning, supposedly the result of “a faulty heater.”
Also in 2010, Masoud Alimohammadi, an Iranian quantum field theorist and elementary-particle physicist, is murdered by a magnetic bomb attached to a parked motorcycle, detonated remotely.
Again in 2010, Majid Shahriari, a quantum physicist, is killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his vehicle by a passing motorcycle, detonated remotely.
And in a simultaneous attack on the same day, Fereydoon Abassi, former head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization and a scientist regularly linked with Iran’s attempts to weaponize nuclear energy, survives the car bomb attached to his car by a passing motorcycle rider.
Not so lucky is Darioush Rezaeinejad, whose field of expertise is neutron transport. He’s gunned down in 2011 by a motorcycle-riding assassin who confronts him outside his home and shoots him five times.
In the same year, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, another nuclear physicist, is murdered by yet another motorcycle assassin who again used the favored MO — attaching a car bomb to his moving vehicle.
Accused of the murders, Israel’s response is that it cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran. And assassination is not the only weapon in its armory.
In 2010, Israel deploys the world’s first cyber weapon against Iran’s nuclear program. Called “Stuxnet,” the malware worm reportedly jointly developed by Israel and the US infects Iranian computers, causing centrifuges to spin out of control and wreck themselves. The worm manages to infect more than 20,000 devices in 14 Iranian nuclear facilities and destroys around 900 centrifuges, causing some delay to the Iranian program.
…the IAEA releases a report stating it has credible evidence that Iran conducted experiments prior to 2003 aimed at designing a nuclear bomb
Then, in November 2011, the IAEA releases a report stating it has credible evidence that Iran conducted experiments prior to 2003 aimed at designing a nuclear bomb and that research may have continued on a smaller scale after that time.
And in August 30, 2012, the IAEA reveals a major expansion of Iranian enrichment activities, with now more than double the number of centrifuges operating. There are also serious questions raised about Parchin, an Iranian military facility. Since the Agency requested an inspection of the facility, "significant ground scraping and landscaping has been undertaken over an extensive area.” The Agency provides satellite images that it believes shows Iranian efforts to remove incriminating evidence from the facility and deems it a "nuclear clean-up."
As always, Iran refutes the Agency’s assertions and its evidence, but the Agency acquires still more troubling information that corroborates its suspicions; intelligence indicating that Iran has advanced computer modeling of the performance of a nuclear warhead, work, the Atomic Agency says, is "critical to the development of a nuclear weapon.” Now the IAEA fears that Iran has advanced its weapons research on multiple fronts.
Then, a surprise reversal. On August 7th 2013, barely three days after centrist Hassan Rouhani is inaugurated following the electoral defeat of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new president reaches out to the United Nations Security Council to kickstart negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
In September 2013, Obama and Rouhani speak by telephone, the first high-level contact between the leaders of the United States and Iran since the final days of the Shah in 1979. By October 15th 2015, after a couple of years of interim agreements and roadmaps, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, otherwise known as the “Iran Deal,” is adopted. The deal significantly curtails Iran’s nuclear aspirations for a period of 15 years in exchange for the lifting of UN sanctions that have suffocated Iran’s economy.
As part of the Iran Deal, on January 15, 2016, the US government sends an aircraft stuffed with $400 million in cash to Tehran. Obama’s critics accuse the president of bargaining with terrorists, the cash payment being for five US hostages held in Iranian prisons. But, in fact, this is Iran’s money being returned to it, the payment for an F-14 Tomcat never delivered, one of 80 of the swing-wing “Top Gun” fighters plus spare parts and weapons, purchased shortly before the Shah was exiled.
The following day, Iran releases the five hostages.
But then a new president in the White House brings fresh challenges.
On May 8, 2018, US President Donald Trump breaks with America’s European allies and announces that America is pulling out of the so-called Iran Deal, claiming the treaty is “a giant fiction” and immediately reimposes the sanctions lifted by the deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
Chief among Trump’s concerns is that the Deal’s relaxed sanctions are financing Iran’s export of terror in the Middle East through its support of extremist Islamist proxy militias.
Early in 2019, the CIA, British intelligence and Mossad combine to smuggle an Iranian nuclear scientist out of Iran who aided in the assassination of fellow nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in 2011 (see earlier reference). The unnamed scientist flees Iran to Turkey, aided by Mossad, and is hence brought to England with the migrant crisis as cover.
January 3, 2020. Donald Trump announces to the world that the United States has killed General Qasem Soleimani after a drone struck his limo convoy outside Baghdad Airport. At the time of Soleimani’s assassination, he is commanding Iran’s elite Quds Force, its military intelligence and unconventional warfare group fighting in the Syrian civil war on the side of Basha al Assad.
Trump’s address to the nation is combined with demonstrations of the weapon used in the assassination, a US Reaper drone, followed by dramatic footage of the Hellfire air-to-ground missile annihilating various vehicles.
President Trump compares Soleimani with assassinated ISIS leader al-Baghdadi, whom Trump gleefully pronounced “…died like a dog,” and describes them both as “monsters…the world is better off without.”
The assassination of Soleimani hits Iran hard. He was a personal friend of Ayatollah Al Khamenei and regarded by the Iranian people as a national hero, having joined the Islamic Revolution as a young man and fought in the Iran-Iraq war for the entire 8 years of the conflict, rising quickly through the ranks to command an entire division while still in his 20s.
Western intelligence experts agree with Trump that Soleimani was one of the world’s leading terrorists. But there is concern that an opportunity has been lost. Soleimani was the officer in charge of a recent crackdown against opposition to the Islamic revolutionary regime, coordinating the murder of over 1000 Iranian demonstrators. Prior to the US execution of Soleimani, the protesters in Iran were burning symbols of the regime. After the assassination, the demonstrators return to the old theme of burning American flags.
Some commentators are fearful of terrorist reprisals against Americans by Iran’s various groups of proxy fighters. Others go so far as to suggest a war could break out between the US and Iran.
Concerned about reprisals, President Trump tweets, "WARNING…if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats.” (The capital letters are Trump’s.)
Trump’s reference to the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the 52 sites that will be hit representing the 52 hostages taken, is yet more proof that the United States, like all the participants in the violence of the Middle East, cannot forgive and forget. Where this conflict is concerned, memories are long.
The US President’s threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites is quickly walked back by Administration spokespersons after it’s pointed out that destroying national monuments could be considered a war crime and there would be global outrage similar to that which followed ISIS’s destruction of the ancient Roman ruins at Palmyra, Syria, and other treasured antiquities.
In fact, the US assassination of Soleimani is just the latest in a series of recent reprisals and retaliations between the US and Iran:
Following Trump’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the US immediately reimposes sanctions on Iran
Iran responds by immediately announcing the resumption of uranium enrichment
June 2019. Oil tankers are attacked in the Gulf. The US blames Iran. Iran denies responsibility
June 2019. Iran shoots down a US reconnaissance drone claiming that it was in its airspace. The US counterclaims that the drone was in international airspace
September 2019. Saudi Aramco oil refinery at Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil refinery, is damaged by a coordinated drone strike. Yemeni Iran-backed Houthi rebels claim responsibility. The US says that only Iran in the region possesses the technology for such a coordinated attack
December 2019. The US bombs “terrorist targets” in Iraq and Syria, killing up to 25 Shia militiamen
December 2019, pro-Iranian demonstrators storm the US Embassy in Baghdad, an attack President Trump says was orchestrated by Soleimani (more echoes of the storming of the US Embassy by IRGC in Iran in 1979…)
The fatal drone strike on Soleimani follows.
In retaliation for the assassination of Soleimani, Iran launches a missile strike at US bases in Iraq. Tehran provides Iraq with advance warning, and no US servicemen are killed. However, there are subsequent claims that the explosions have caused brain damage to 100 personnel.
The White House, while condemning the attacks, sees them as an attempt by Iran to de-escalate tensions. Iran, however, is skittish, anticipating a military response ordered by a publicly bellicose President Trump.
Five days after its strike on the base in Iraq and suspicious of a “blip” on its radar screen in the night-time skies over Tehran, an IRGC surface-to-air battery fires two missiles 30 seconds apart at the radar contact. Both missiles score hits, and the target is destroyed. However, what has been shot out of the sky is Ukraine International Airlines Flight Air 782, a regularly scheduled flight departing Tehran International Airport to Kyiv. All 176 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing 737-800 are killed.
Soleimani is buried with full state honors a day after the airliner is shot down. Reportedly, ten million Iranians take part in his funeral.
The Iranian government denies involvement in the tragedy of UIA Ft 782, but numerous videos of the incident captured on iPhones go viral, and the regime is ultimately forced to admit that it has lied.
Correction: In the previous essay, Part 5 of this series, I said a man named “Dehghan” who attended a meeting between IRGC and local Lebanese Shia militia in Baalbek to plan the attack on the Marines Beirut barracks in 1983 had not been identified. In fact, this was Hossein Dehghan, an Iranian who has subsequently held a number of positions in various subsequent Iranian governments and is currently the head of the Mostazafan Corporation, second only in size and stature to the Iranian state-owned oil corporation.
Hi John. Vin is very much alive and kicking butt. I should finish NOTHING PERSONAL, Book #8 in the Vin Cooper series, within the next few weeks, Christmas shenanigans permitting. This one is written in the style of the first couple of books - it's all first-person Vin, he's working with Anna, and I've also managed, due to popular demand, to weave Tom Wilkes into the story, the protagonist from my first two novels ROGUE ELEMENT and SWORD OF ALLAH. The one thing I haven't figured out yet is the publishing strategy, whether to self-publish or get a publishing house to do it. There are pros and cons for me with both. And thanks for asking.
I've been thinking of putting out a few Vin Cooper quotes from the book on Substack as a teaser — he can really throw a great insult!
Fantastic, thank you