Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 05 (12 page)

 
          
“
Madame
Vice President
,
Iran
feels that the presence of any offensive
warships in the
Persian
Gulf
will only
increase tensions further,” Velayati said. “
Iran
strongly objects especially to the
United States
or any other nation sending any warships
capable of land- attack operations into the Gulf. You desire negotiations, yes,
but
Iran
feels that such negotiations with Hornet bombers and Tomahawk cruise
missiles aimed at our cities and military bases is not true negotiating—it is
bargaining at gunpoint, and we shall not stand for such. If you truly desire
peace, madam, if
America
truly does not want this conflict to escalate further, you will agree
to remove your warships from the Gulf immediately. We shall do the same.
Iran
will not look favorably upon any nation
that decides to send a warship capable of land attack into the
Persian Gulf
.”

 
          
“Minister
Velayati, your terms are much too broad for diplomatic discussion,” Vice
President Whiting said in complete disbelief. “You simply cannot unilaterally
decide to close the
Persian
Gulf
to any
vessels you choose, any more than the
United States
can close off the
Gulf of Mexico
or the
Gulf of Alaska
...”

 
          
“We
will not accept any interference from
America
!” Velayati emphasized. “If
America
attempts to sail an offensive land-attack
warship into the
Persian
Gulf
,
Iran
will consider it a hostile act. We do not
wish war, but we are prepared to defend our rights and our freedoms!
America
wants another Desert Storm with
Iran
! No more Desert Storms! No more warships in
the
Persian Gulf
! No more war! ” And the line went dead.

 
          
Whiting
dropped the phone back in its cradle, then sat back in the couch in the Oval
Office, where she had taken the call. “I’m too young and innocent for this, Mr.
President,” she quipped. That was an exaggeration, of course. As the former
Governor of Delaware and a former United Nations Deputy Ambassador, Whiting was
well equipped to take on anyone in an argument.

 
          
“Hell,
Ellen, Velayati was educated at
Oxford
—he’s supposed to
respect
women,” President Kevin Martindale said, trying to help his
Vice President unclench her jaw. “I thought he was a pussycat.” Whiting was not
going to relax that easily—her lips were tight, her eyes narrow and hard as she
made her way back to her seat around the coffee table in the Oval Office.

 
          
“Okay,
ladies and gents, what in hell is going wrong around here?” the President
asked. Recently elected and only forty-nine years old, divorced, with two grown
children, he was in tremendously good health and vitality although the stress
of forming a new government was bound to take its toll on his boyish good
looks. Today he was dressed in gray slacks, business shoes, and a conservative
white shirt under a thick cardigan sweater. His thick salt-and- pepper gray
hair was neady in place except for the famous “photographer’s dream,” a thick
lock of bright silver hair that curled defiantly down across his forehead over
his left eye when he got angry. The end of the lock was pointed, like the Grim
Reaper’s scythe. If a second one appeared over the
right
eye, heads would roll.

           
With the President and the Vice
President was Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman; Secretary of Defense Arthur
Chastain; Philip Freeman, the President’s National Security Advisor; and
Charles Ricardo, the White House Communications Director. “This is a new one on
me,” the President went on. “
Iran
wants to close off the
Persian Gulf
to all land-attack warships. The request is
so far out in left field that it’s laughable, but I got a feeling no one’s
going to be laughing. First off, I want to hear about that incident with the
spy ship. Phil, Arthur, Jeffrey, Charles, let’s hear it. Ellen, jump in
anywhere. Let’s go.”

 
          
“A
covert-action vessel belonging to a technical group of the Intelligence Support
Agency, code-named Madcap Magician, was attacked and destroyed by Iranian air
bombardment,” Philip Freeman began. Freeman was the former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff in the previous administration; his popularity and
leadership had made him a possible presidential candidate after his retirement,
but he had accepted the position of National Security Advisor in the new
Martindale administration instead. It had turned out to be a good choice; he
was very well respected, not only in the White House but in Congress and
throughout the nation as well, on a par with Martindale himself.

 
          
“Casualties?”

 
          
“No
definite word yet, sir,” Freeman responded. “The ship carried a crew of one
hundred thirty-three. One hundred twenty persons were rescued from the
United Arab Emirates
; they escaped in four lifeboats before and
during the attack. The rest are presumed missing or captured by the Iranian
navy. The ship was lost, sunk by aerial missile bombardment.”

 
          
“Was
it on a spy mission?”

 
          
“Very
definitely,” Freeman said. “Operating under Executive Order 96-119, covert
surveillance of the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian heavy warship surveillance
and intelligence. The vessel was the base for an unmanned stealth drone the
National Security Agency began using to photograph the Iranian warships in the
Gulf
of
Oman
.”

 
          
“Shit,”
the President muttered. “Sounds like we lost a real valuable asset.”

 
          
“The
vessel had been used as a seagoing platform for tilt-rotor aircraft and Swimmer
Delivery Vehicles,” Freeman said. “In service for about seven years, just
before Desert Storm. The unit had also assisted on the GCC attack on
Abu
Musa
Island
recently—they inserted special-ops troops
with laser designators to help the Arab crews hit their targets. Yes, we’ll
miss that platform.”

 
          
“We
never should have sent it in the first place,” Secretary of State Hartman said.
Hartman was the administration’s senior member, a former Wall Street investment
house CEO and twelve-term Congressman from New York who brought an insider’s
knowledge both of Congress and the world of international finance to a rather
young White House. Hartman had also brought an extensive web of personal
contacts with him—decision makers who preferred the old- boy network over
diplomatic or political bureaucracy. “The GCC had no business attacking that
island, and we had no business assisting them.”

 
          
“Intelligence
reports said that the Iranians were gearing up to launch an attack on the
Abraham Lincoln
carrier group when it
entered the
Persian
Gulf
,” Freeman
responded. “The Iranians stole those islands from the
United Arab Emirates
and started basing antiship, antiaircraft,
and long-range ballistic missiles there.”

 
          
“
‘Intelligence reports’ have been saying that same thing for years now,” Hartman
said. “And
Iran
didn’t ‘steal’ those islands—they once
owned
them. The ownership is in dispute, that’s all, and
negotiations with the
United Arab Emirates
were ongoing.”

 
          
“
Iran
’s not negotiating any longer,” Freeman
said. “It looks like the Iranians are going to block the
Strait of Hormuz
with their aircraft carrier battle group.”

 
          
“They’re
going to park their
what?”
Vice
President Whiting asked in complete surprise.

 
          
“You
heard correctly, Ms. Vice President,” Freeman said. “The
Khomeini
Iran’s new aircraft carrier, has put to sea. A
fourteen-ship battle group, including two of their three Kilo-class
submarines.”

 
          
“
Iran
has an
aircraft
carrier?
Since when?” Whiting exclaimed.

 
          
“Since
1995 at least,” Freeman responded, and related the details of its
transformation from the ex-Russian carrier
Varyag.

 
          
“This
is unbelievable! ” Whiting said. “And now they’re going to park that thing in
the middle of the
Strait
of Hormuz
to block
anyone else from entering the
Persian Gulf
?”

 
          
“General,
better give us a quick rundown on that battle group,” the President said.

 
          
“Yes,
sir,” Freeman said. He referred to his notes only briefly; he had received many
detailed briefings on the Iranian military’s recent developments and knew the
information, updated daily, almost by heart: “The
Khomeini
aircraft carrier battle group is the largest and most
powerful seagoing battle group in southwest Asia, with the exception of our
own—and in normal day-to-day postures, we’re certainly outnumbered, if not
outgunned. Most of the ships are ex-U.S. or ex-British frigates and destroyers,
but new hardware was acquired over the past three years during the Russians’
big arms fire sales, and with arms deals with
China
.

 
          
“Leading
the group is the
Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini.
Although the Iranians call it a ‘defensive aviation cruiser,’
it’s a pure aircraft carrier, designed for high-performance fixed-wing
aircraft, not just vertical-takeoff jets or helicopters. It carries an air
group of twenty-four fixed-wing and fifteen rotary-wing aircraft, including two
squadrons of twelve Sukhoi-33 Flanker-D fighter-bombers; it can carry probably
another
six to ten
planes above-deck, including carrier- modified Sukhoi-25 bombers and MiG-29
fighters. The ship and the planes are top-of-the-line Russian hardware and
weapons—the Iranians spent four billion dollars in the past five years
outfitting this ship.

 
          
“The
Khomeini
carries lots of anti-ship
and antiaircraft weapons as well,” Freeman continued. “The
Varyag
was originally designed to carry nuclear anti-surface cruise
missiles; we don’t think the
Khomeini
has any nukes, but it certainly has cruise missiles, probably exRussian SS-N-12
Sandbox, good against ships or shore targets. The Sukhoi-33 fighter-bomber
carries the Kh-41 Moskit short-range and AS-18 Kazoo long-range ground- and
maritime-attack missiles, along with air-to-air missiles. The
Varyag
was primarily designed as an
anti-submarine warfare vessel, and so the
Khomeini
still has a pretty good ASW capability.”

 
          
“It’s
a violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime agreement to sell
sophisticated missile stuff to
Iran
,” Hartman pointed out. “
Russia
and
China
both signed that agreement.”

 
          
“But
Iran
didn’t officially get them from
Russia
—they got the missiles from
Ukraine
,
Serbia
, and the
Czech
Republic
, as well as
North Korea
. None of these countries signed the MTCR
agreement—none of these countries except
North Korea
even
existed
in 1989, and
North Korea
thumbs its nose at the rest of the world
all the time,” Freeman said. “The bottom line is this:
Iran
can get its hands on any military hardware
it wants, and there’s little we can do about it. If we sanctioned every country
that sold
Iran
modern military hardware, we’d alienate three-quarters of our trading
partners.