The biggest journalistic scoop of this generation - the unveiling of the Iran/ Contra scandal - was also the most obscure. The report that began the greatest problem of the Reagan presidency was published on pages 24 to 26 of the November 3, 1986, issue of a small and undistinguished Syrian-sponsored weekly magazine published in Beirut, Ash-Shira' (The sail). In frustration, President Reagan has referred to Ash-Shira' as "that rag in Beirut."
The revelations about U.S. dealings with Iran were buried deep in an unsigned cover story written by the magazine's editor, Hasan Sabra. The article is titled "Between Reason of State and Reason of Revolution: What Happened in Tehran." (This reads better using French terms: "Between raison d'état and raison de révolution: What happened in Tehran.") Most of the article's three dense pages deal with the rivalries within the ruling circles of Iran, with special attention paid to Mehdi Hashemi, the ally of Ayatollah Husein Ali Montazeri, who had been arrested in October by the rival faction of Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, speaker of Iran's Parliament. According to Sabra, the information he published was leaked to him by Montazeri's office.
The section dealing with the United States comes near the end of the article, on page 26, and takes up a mere 10 percent of its space. The relevant paragraphs read as follows:
A secret American delegate, Robert McFarlane, visited Tehran clandestinely in the first part of last month (i.e., September). He stayed in Independence Hotel (the former Hilton) and conducted discussions of extreme importance with representatives of the Foreign Ministry, the Parliament, and the Army. These included the director of political bureau for Asia and Africa, Dr. Mohammed Lasani, who had spent ten years working for ARAMCO in Saudi Arabia, the vice president of the Committee on Foreign Relations in the Parliament, Dr. Mohammed Ali Hadi, as well as one of the leading officers of the Army. The discussions between McFarlane (who had been the assistant to the National Security officer in the United States, [Zbigniew] Brzezinski) and the Iranian delegation concentrated on stopping the Gulf War and so-called international terrorism.
Hashemi's supporters report that Tehran's representative made two explicit demands of Washington: end military, material, and political support for the Iraqi regime and sell Iran spare parts for its American-made airplanes, tanks, radars, and other weapons. At the same time, Washington demanded through McFarlane that Tehran stop supporting liberation movements around the world, on the pretense that they are terrorist movements, and a guarantee for the security of the states of the Persian Gulf.
The story then ends with the completion of a deal, according to Hashemi's backers. Washington quickly agreed to the Iranian demands. It sent four C300s from a Philippine base with some of the spare parts needed by Iran; it participated to a great extent in improving Iran's air defense system (which then shot down three Iraqi planes in a week, one Sokhoi and two MiG-23s); it strengthened Tehran's defenses; and it improved the operations of Iranian radar.
As for Tehran, its response was to arrest Hashemi and to spread accusations that he [through his actions] had exceeded raison d'état. It said that he wanted to get [Iran] involved in conflicts with Saudi Arabia and Syria.
In addition to the obvious error in identifying Robert McFarlane (who was not Brzezinski's assistant but a national security adviser in his own right) and in the name of the Cl30 cargo planes, the article makes the mistake of referring to September as "last month." This allowed Mr. McFarlane "categorically" to deny the story, for he had in fact been in Tehran during September.
This short, dry account hardly reads like something that would lead to a precipitous decline in President Reagan's standing, the resignations of many of his senior officials, a suicide attempt, and an international scandal involving more than a dozen countries. It did all this because it forced Hashemi-Rafsanjani - who needed to protect himself from the damaging implication that he cooperated with the United States - to respond.
The Ash-Shira' story came out on November 1; on November 4, addressing a rally commemorating the seventh anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Hashemi-Rafsanjani gave his own version of events. He offered a very different account but confirmed that Robert McFarlane visited Tehran offering weapons. A complete translation of his speech was published by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, volume 8, November 5, 1986, pp. 11-16. What follows is Hashemi-Rafsanjani's direct response to the Ash-Shira' account:
One of the aircraft which used to bring us arms from one of the European countries asked permission to cross our air space in order to land and deliver its arms in Mehrabad Airport. Of course, the arms consisted of spare parts for some of our complex needs. Those who received permission to land, posing as aircraft stewards, said they were the five who are usually with an aircraft - the captain, the copilot and those who are normally on such aircraft - and they gave us Irish names. When the aircraft entered Mehrabad they informed us that these gentlemen who had left the aircraft at the airport were saying: We are Americans and have brought your country's responsible officials a message from Mr. Reagan and U.S. officials!
We immediately held a meeting with our friends and the heads of the Armed Forces and said: Arrest these gentlemen in the airport in order to find out what is on their minds! We then moved their aircraft to the fighter base and detained them. They waited for 3 and ½ hours in the airport until we were able to decide what to do and could humbly inform the imam. The imam [Khomeini] graciously said to us: There should be no talking with these people and do not receive their message, but find out who they are, what their designation is, and who sent them!
We moved them into a hotel where they said Mr. – this is what they claimed, for it is not yet clear to us that that was so – they said that they were Mr. McFarlane and one or two other advisers of Mr. Reagan, who were at that time special security advisers to Reagan, and that they had brought a message for the Iranian authorities and had brought presents from Mr. Reagan for our country's responsible officials. The presents for each one of us consisted of a side arm, and the message was revealed to us in a personal meeting! They also brought along a cake as a key to establishing relations – and that is something we have not heard of before and must be some enigma or another. The boys [the security officers] who were extremely hungry waiting in the airport, the hotel, and elsewhere took the cake and ate it! Well, nothing was left to reach us.
We said: My dear fellows, in the United States we have much better weapons: We have Harpoons there, we have (?Howitzers) and Hawks, we have F-l4's. We have such weapons there [referring to arms purchases made by the shah but not delivered to Iran] and now you are sending us Colts! We in no way accept a gift from anyone, have nothing to say to anyone, and do not accept anyone's message. You must tell us how you have arrived illegally in Iran!
We took their passports and we now have their things here. We have made copies of their passports. The photograph is okay and is similar to the face of McFarlane. Of course, we are not yet 100 percent certain that it is him, since no one properly spoke to these people in order to find out whether they were who they said they were or not. Those who dealt with these people were security officials in that area. There was one who engaged in arms purchases and was there with the broker; the arms broker also came with these people. In order to follow their conversations we then introduced them to one of our friends who understood the language well, but who, although a discerning person, was not one of the responsible authorities.
In brief, their purpose was basically to come along, as they put it, and melt the cold ice separating Iran and the United States, to melt the frozen ocean! Their immediate aim was to turn us into interceders in Lebanon, and their distant goal was to create the amicable relations and the golden vision that they had in mind! They begged, pleaded, and sent messages requesting that one of our country's responsible officials receive them. They said that since they were bearing a message from the President, our president should receive them! We said: No! He does not wish to meet you! They said: Well, let the Majlis [Parliament] speaker receive us! We said: He, too, will not receive you! They said: Well, let the prime minister receive us! We said: He, too, will not meet you!
The self-styled Mr. McFarlane became angry and said: What crazy people you are! We have come to your doorstep in order to solve your problems! We have come to solve your problems! Your airspace is controlled by Iraqi aircraft, and so on and so forth, and we have come along to solve your problems and this is how you behave towards us?! He said: If I had gone to Russia – this is an interesting thing so listen to this and let the world hear what he said: let the Americans hear this and let the Russians hear it too! – for he said: If I had gone to Russia in order to purchase furs there – since Russian furs are famous and people go there to make purchases – had I gone to Russia to buy furs Gorbachev would have met me three times a day! Who are you not to speak to the special envoy of the U.S. President?! We said: Birds of a feather flock together. So go there!
This is not the place for such talk! We are angry with the United States. We are at war with you. You have kindled the flames of this war. You are responsible for all these calamities besetting our country. How could we meet and talk to you! Have we forgotten that Brzezinski met our ad interim government in Algiers and our ad interim government has been (?swept aside) and now you have come inside our house, our country intending to meet us?! Could our nation be asleep in such matters?!
So they spent five days in detention in the hotel and they were terrified and informed us later that the U.S. Rapid Deployment Forces were put on alert. Naturally, we do not know whether this was so or not. At long last, after five days, we permitted them to go. They were angry and we gave them their aircraft, since up to that time they had not seen it. They got into their aircraft in order to establish direct communications, since they did not want to talk on the public telephone and since we had told them that they could not use it. But sometimes they did make contact by telephone and were monitored by us – let them not think of denying that since we have a tape of the voice of this selfsame Mr. McFarlane, if that be him, and should they request it later we could give them the voice recording for (?historical interest), since he says an interesting sentence.
So you can see how the Americans took such a risk in coming here and we questioned them, saying: Sir, how dare you come here with false and wrong passports! You have entered our country illegally. What would happen to you if we were to arrest you as spies and were to declare to the world that you have come to our country?! They said: These brokers told us to do it. They told us: You come to Iran and they will welcome you! In other words, they really deceived them and I am confident they believed them. Of course, a broker who is a counterrevolutionary, one of those refugees who is abroad and sometimes assists us in our purchases, (?has deceived these people and now what would the Americans do to him I have no idea).
Another more interesting fact that, God willing, we might even give you, is [word indistinct] during the messages they sent us and we told them that we did not recognize them, Mr. Reagan took a copy of one of the Bibles chose one of the verses which roughly says that God's religions are together and all God's religions are the same, wrote those verses in his own hand on the cover of the Bible, signed it, and sent it to us in order to win our confidence. Well, we did not need the Bible, but we have a photocopy of Reagan's words, which some day we may publish and you may see.
After Hashemi-Rafsanjani's speech, most information about the American arms sent to Iran came from sources in Washington.
