The Reagan Revolution Iii: Defeating the Soviet Challenge

The Reagan Revolution

III

Defeating the Soviet Challenge

Richard C. Thornton

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Copyright 2009 Richard C. Thornton.

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ISBN: 978-1-4251-2414-4 (sc)

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to my wife Joanne, and my sons Douglas and James, whose inspiration has encouraged me to pursue this large and complex task.

Aphorism

Knowledge is power, but the ultimate power is the power to shape knowledge. That is the power of the state.

Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Soviet Challenge

Chapter 1 Brezhnev’s Legacy: Iran: The Great Game Redux

The Fall of the shah

Jimmy Carter and the New World Order

Iran in Moscow’s Grand Strategy

First Steps: Securing the Eastern Boundary

Saddam Hussein’s ‘Faustian Bargain’

The Soviet Subversion of Iran

Tightening the Vise-- Afghanistan

From Creeping Intervention to Pre-emptive Deterrence

Carter’s Fateful Decision to Support Iraq

Double Deception and War

Moscow’s entree to Iran: The War-Winning Scenario

Carter’s Gamble

Saddam’s Choice

Double Cross!

Carter’s Flip Flop

Moscow Activates the Pincer

Questions of Strategy

Chapter 2 Begin’s Dream and a Deal With Haig

A Divided Administration and the Middle East

Israel’s Strategy Toward Lebanon

Lighting the Fuse

Reagan and the Saudi Connection

The Middle East Erupts

Crisis and Response

Tangled Web in the Middle East

Osirak and the Looming Nuclear Nexus

U.S.-Israeli Anti-Nuclear Marriage of Convenience

Cease-fire and Build-up in Lebanon

The Soviet Union Increases Involvement

The Iranian Left’s Attempt to Seize Power

The International Struggle Intensifies

Maneuvering for Position

Chapter 3 Reagan’s Nightmare: A Middle East Morass

Best Laid Plans Go Awry

Reagan’s Last Minute Attempt To Avert Conflict

Israel’s Invasion of Lebanon

Reagan ‘Blindsided,’ Reacts

Cease-fire and Wider Complications

Soviet Response to Lebanon and Iran-Iraq

Begin Comes to Washington

Reagan’s Dilemma

U.S. Policy Toward Lebanon and the Iranian Invasion of Iraq

Lebanon: Victory Within Reach

Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

The Failure of Begin’s Lebanon Strategy

The Assassination of Bashir Gemayal

Pogrom at Sabra and Shatila

Into the Morass—Let George Do It

Chapter 4 Andropov’s Gamble: Strategic Dominance and Missile Defense

Andropov Prepares His Challenge

Reagan’s Dilemma

Soviet Leadership Dissension

Exploring the Postponement Alternative

Andropov’s INF Gambit

Grappling With the ‘Peace’ Question

Searching for a Way Forward

Reagan Stands By Kohl

Regaining the Public Relations Initiative

Moscow’s Pre-election Quiescence: Sacrificing a Pawn?

Turning Point in Europe

Reagan’s Counteroffensive

The Attempt to Harness Shultz

Star Wars Trumps Breakout

Intelligence Games

Part II: Identifying the Main Pints of Attack

Chapter 5 Where Will the Missiles Go? Moscow’s ‘Analogous’ Threat

Analysis of the ‘Analogous’ Threat

Evolution of U.S. Caribbean Policy

Complementary Covert Action

Missiles to the Caribbean

Conflict Intensifies in Central America

The Congress and the Contras

Reagan Prods Congress

Reagan and Andropov: the Pace Quickens

Suriname-Denial by Dissuasion

Eliminating All Possibilities But One

Grenada Signals and Soviet Diversions

Preparing for Crisis

Crisis Indicators and a Play by Shultz

Grenada and Moscow’s ‘Analogous’ Deployment

Bishop’s Doubts

Maurice Bishop Visits Washington

Strategic Crisis Intensifies Factional Strife

A Summer of Carrots…

Sticks in the Water

Shultz Attempts to Soften the Edge

The Heat of August

Chapter 6 How Close to Breakout? Krasnoyarsk and KAL

Intelligence Discovery

Reagan’s Quandary

The National Security Origins of KAL Flight 007

Casey’s Covert Probe

Midnight Mission From Anchorage

Over Kamchatka

Casey, Ogarkov and KAL007

Where was Andropov?

Who Made the Decision to Attack KAL007?

Foxhounds and Ravens Over Sakhalin

Interception Over Sakhalin

The Attack on KAL007

Captain Chun’s Decision

North to Kostromskoye

Co-pilot Sohn’s Radio Transmissions

Washington Offers to Settle

Moscow Rejects a Settlement

Washington: One Jump Ahead

Limiting Damage by Escalating the Rhetoric

No Resolution and No Agreement

A Necessary Mystery

Part III: Defeating Soviet Strategy

Chapter 7 Denial in the Caribbean: Preemptive Strike in Grenada

Washington: A Sharp and Inexplicable Conciliatory Turn

Reagan’s Woes

Prelude to Disaster in the Middle East

Shultz’s Failure in the Middle East

Reagan’s Attempt to Save Clark

Shultz Gains Added Power

Moscow Turns Up the Screws

Reaffirmation of the Analogous Threat

A Hidden Move to the Brink

The Attempt to Capture Bishop

Bishop Insists on Collective Leadership

The Battle is Joined

Death of a Revolution

Washington Prepares for Action

Outmaneuvering the Communists

The Beirut Diversion, and Grenada

Providing Cover for Thatcher

The Invasion of Grenada

Denying Moscow the Analogous Option

Chapter 8 Deployment to West Germany: A Pershing Sword of Damocles

Arms control negotiations endgame

Moscow Signals Hair Trigger Alert

The Politics of Able Archer

Turn About Is Fair Play

Desperate Last Cards

Moscow’s Retreat: From Analogous to ‘Adequate’

Dual Strategic Transition

Policy Battle Over Iran and Iraq

Syria, the Iran-Iraq War, and Moscow

Chapter 9 Preserving the Oil Fields: An Opening to Iran?

Reagan’s January 16 Speech: The Turn?

Moscow’s ‘Turn’

The ‘Death’ of Andropov and ‘Rise’ of Chernenko

Dismantling the Syrian-Iranian Alliance

Reagan’s Riposte

From ‘Deep Freeze’ to Fissures

The Soviet Union:

State Supporter of International Terrorism

Conclusion

About the Author

Introduction

Ronald Reagan entered office confronted with an economy in recession, an alliance in a state of collapse, and the Soviet Union on the march. In volumes I and II of this study, I recounted the president’s decisions to jettison the failed strategy of détente and adopt a strategy that would rebuild the western alliance and bring victory in the Cold War.¹ To that end he set about righting the economy, broadening the economic base so that it could produce both guns and butter. Not only would he set the economy on the path of rapid growth, he would also expand America’s military power to confront the Soviet challenge. Much greater economic and military strength was required to confront and defeat a Soviet Union then reaching the pinnacle of its military strength and actively attempting to change the global balance of power.

Confronting the Soviet challenge would be a formidable task, not least because of the opposition the president encountered from those within his own administration who continued to advocate an accommodation with the Soviet Union. These men, from Kissinger’s new world order faction, had acknowledged the failure of the previous attempts at détente, and now argued for hard-headed détente, a compromise that gained them entry into the administration and permitted cooperation in the short run. But the long-term objectives of Reagan and the new world order faction remained opposed.

Thus, the Reagan administration, like all American governments in the modern era, was a coalition government comprised of two broad factions: the president and his supporters, who rejected détente and sought a strategy of victory in the cold war, and the new world order faction, which pressed for what they viewed as a realistic accommodation with the Soviet Union. The president’s strategy would find expression in NSDD-75, U.S. Relations With the USSR, promulgated on January 17, 1983. It was the first, formal change in American strategic doctrine since NSC-68 in 1950, but would be honored more in the breach than in the observance.

Nevertheless, the leitmotiv recurring throughout the president’s time in office was the running battle between the two groups, despite the president’s clear decision to abandon détente. The leaders of the new world order faction, first under Secretary of State Alexander Haig, then under his successor, George Shultz, determined to keep open all possible avenues for détente, opposed every attempt by the president to defeat Soviet strategy (even while claiming that they were in agreement with him and he with them).² Their struggle and its outcome would have far-reaching consequences for the American nation.

*****

In this volume I lay out the president’s efforts to defeat the Soviet drive for global hegemony. The Soviet challenge focused on the achievement of three broad objectives—strategic weapons superiority, the political domination of the Eurasian landmass, and decisive leverage over world oil—but involved the execution of policies across the globe. Indeed, the Russians were supporting revolutionary movements on four continents, which partially masked their main objectives. The Soviet challenge was worldwide and Reagan’s response was to meet it, while undercutting Moscow’s capability to sustain their global enterprise.

The Soviet drive for global hegemony had begun during the first period of détente in the early seventies, but was reaching its zenith as Reagan entered office. The crucial decisions that opened the door for the Russians were the Salt I Agreement and the ABM Treaty of 1972. The Salt I Agreement limited offensive ballistic missiles and the ABM Treaty limited defense against missile attack. Although U.S. leaders said these agreements would cap the arms race and create the basis for détente with Moscow, from the Russian point of view they provided an incentive for the Soviet Union to seek strategic weapons superiority.³

In the Containment strategy the United States had constructed a forward position of alliances and bases around the Soviet periphery to contain the adversary. In the new world order strategy, the Soviet Union was deemed no longer to be an adversary, but a partner in managing world peace. The assumption was that the Russians could be bribed and transformed Pygmalion-like from enemies to friends and the Soviet Union from a contentious to a contented superpower, persuaded to abandon its Promethean struggle with the United States. To establish the basis for this presumed partnership it was necessary to dismantle the forward position of alliances that had been part of the Containment structure.

The period of the seventies, spanning the Kissinger, Ford, and Carter years, saw the Soviet Union mount the largest military buildup in world history under the rubric of détente, while embarking upon a global quest to alter the balance of power. The United States, on the other hand, stagnated politically, economically, and militarily, as the Containment structure and the American alliance system atrophied. But, what appeared to be an America in retreat was in reality an attempt to pave the way for the expected accommodation with Moscow, essentially a disguised spheres of influences settlement that never materialized.

Whatever can be said for this strategy, the Soviets paid no more than lip service to the liberal notion of détente, while building the power that would enable them to construct at a very minimum a hemispheric order of their own design. But, confounding the detentists, the Soviet Union also strove to develop a first-strike ICBM capability against the United States, despite the Salt I agreement that sought to limit offensive weapons, as well as a nation-wide missile defense, despite the ABM Treaty’s prohibition against it. Equally alarming, toward the end of the seventies, President Jimmy Carter negotiated the Salt II treaty which conceded strategic advantage to the Soviets, who, at the same time, also began to deploy the SS-20, a ballistic missile with a 3,000-mile range that would enable Moscow to strike any target in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Conceding strategic weapons superiority was bad enough, but abandoning protection of the oil fields of the Middle East was the fatal flaw in the new world order strategy. The vast majority of known petroleum deposits lay within the confines of the eastern hemisphere, up to this point under the protective umbrella of the Containment strategy. By the end of the Carter administration, U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia had been strained to the breaking point by the administration’s failure to keep the promises of Camp David. Worst of all, the United States had failed to support its key ally, the shah of Iran, who fell from power. Thus, the twin pillars of stability in Southwest Asia and two of the world’s principal suppliers of petroleum had become vulnerable to exploitation by the Soviet Union, and a third, Iraq, was already a Soviet ally.⁴

In short, when the new world order strategists moved to dismantle the key positions in the Containment structure that were also the crucial sources of the West’s petroleum supply, especially in Iran, they gratuitously handed the Soviet Union the opportunity to gain a stranglehold over the very lifeblood of Western Civilization. The Soviets immediately set about the task of taking advantage of that historic opportunity and that quest is the point of departure for this study.

The first term of the Reagan administration thus witnessed a major Soviet drive for control of Middle East oil carried on under the cover of the Iran-Iraq war. Fortunately, under the leadership of President Reagan, the United States successfully defeated the Soviet challenge. Reagan would deny the Soviets strategic weapons superiority with a complex countervailing weapons mix and a surprise shift to strategic defense, which inaugurated a fundamental change in the national security equation. He would neutralize the Soviet attempt to dominate the Eurasian landmass and especially Western Europe with the SS-20 by deployment of the Pershing II/cruise missile package to Western Europe. And he would block the Soviet drive to shift Iran into its orbit thereby preserving the flow of oil to the west and opening the door to an improvement of relations with Iran.

Part I: The Soviet Challenge

Chapter 1

Brezhnev’s Legacy: Iran: The Great Game Redux

From the late seventies, the vast region bounded by Turkey, Somalia and Pakistan, sometimes referred to as the Great Triangle, was the stage on which the Soviet Union began to challenge the United States for control of the oil repositories of the Middle East. The specific focus of this challenge was post-shah Iran, which, weakened by revolution and war, became the target of a sustained Soviet attempt to bring about the overthrow of the young Islamic regime. The attempt to promote revolution in Iran carried ominous global implications for the balance of power as well as for control over world oil and produced a confused U.S. response, as American leaders disagreed over priorities between security and strategy.

Moscow’s drive toward Iran was but the resumption at a more intense level and with a different antagonist of the Great Game played against Great Britain in the 19th century. London had successfully blunted Russian advances, keeping Iran effectively closed to the Russians until World War II, when Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, seeking close cooperation with the Russians against Germany, opened the door to Soviet entry.⁵ Russian and British troops occupied the northern and southern halves of the country, respectively, during the war. Afterwards, however, President Truman reversed FDR’s policy, opposing Soviet demands for gas and oil concessions from Tehran, and forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces from Iran.

Under President Eisenhower, the United States attained the upper hand in the Cold War version of the Great Game, displacing Great Britain and facilitating the rise to power of Reza Pahlavi to the throne. The result was the establishment of a firm alliance with Iran, which, combined with Saudi Arabia, ensured a stable flow of cheap energy for the subsequent two decades and drove the Soviet Union out of the global oil markets. But Eisenhower was not able to shut the Soviet Union out of the region entirely, as Moscow developed relationships, mainly as an arms supplier, with Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, and even in a limited way, with Iran.

Despite subsequent tumultuous events in the region, which included two wars (the Six Day War of 1967 and the October War of 1973) and the fundamental change in the nature of the petroleum business, as the major oil companies relinquished ownership of oil at the wellhead to producing states in return for continuity of supply, the United States remained the dominant player in the world oil game. Higher oil prices resulting from the 1973 war, however, brought the Soviet Union back into world markets to participate in the extraordinary earnings accruing to sellers of petroleum. And the fall of the shah reopened the door for Moscow to play the great game once again.

The Fall of the shah

The point of departure for the emergence of a new Soviet strategy was 1977, when Iran began to display early signs of regime instability, although the shift to détente four years earlier saw the Soviets move cautiously to generate pressure on Iran through Afghanistan.⁶ The deterioration and collapse of the shah’s regime opened up an historic and unprecedented opportunity for the Soviet Union not only to gain leverage on oil prices and bring about a change in the global correlation of forces, but also to assist in the rescue of its own state, which was on the brink of economic insolvency. From the moment unrest became evident in Iran, the Soviets put into play an elaborate, multi-faceted, long-term strategy whose ultimate objective was to draw Iran into its orbit, by one means or another.

Initial Soviet strategy toward Iran was to employ a variation on the formula Lenin had used to seize power in Russia in 1917 under the impetus of World War I. This was the two-stage revolution, the bourgeois-democratic stage when Moscow’s surrogate, the Tudeh Party, would support the young Islamic regime, while building its strength, followed by the socialist stage when the Tudeh would turn against the regime and seize power. In this conception, the Iran-Iraq war would serve as the functional equivalent of World War I whose impact would tie down Iran’s military forces, perhaps precipitate a civil war. Thus weakened the regime would become susceptible to a takeover from within.

Moscow planned to employ the Soviet Union’s emerging strategic weapons advantage to deter the United States from intervening to counter this strategy. Indeed, the Soviets could not hope to succeed unless the United States were in some manner marginalized, or effectively coopted in support of Soviet strategy, whose essential components were: the creation of military pressure on Iran’s borders, the political isolation of Tehran, and the orchestration of circumstances to provide the opportunity for left-wing forces in Iran, led by the Tudeh Party, to attempt a coup d’etat.

Central to Soviet strategy, however, was the plan to entangle Iran in a war of attrition with Moscow’s ally, Iraq, which would drain Iranian power and resources and thereby create the conditions for an internal takeover. In executing its strategy, Moscow would support both sides, orchestrating a complicated double game. The Soviets would build a pincer of Syria and Iran against Iraq, but at the same time also pit Afghanistan and Iraq against Iran. However, the true purpose of this double pincer strategy, whose effects would ripple throughout the region, was first to gain entree into Iran, supporting Tehran against Baghdad, and then to weaken it in a war of attrition to the point where a takeover could occur.

The stakes were of the highest magnitude. The possible reward was nothing less than Soviet control over two of the three largest petroleum producers in the Middle East and the inevitable exercise of influence over the third. Success would give Moscow the leverage to manipulate world oil prices, siphoning wealth from the west, particularly the United States, and keeping the Soviet system from imploding from its gross and irreparable inefficiencies. The risk, however, was possible war with the United States, which could not be expected to accept a fait accompli, and dictated that Moscow act circumspectly and through proxies whenever possible in the region.

Jimmy Carter and the New World Order

The Carter leadership, intent upon achieving détente with Moscow, as the central feature of the new world order strategy, naively succumbed to Soviet machinations and pursued policies which brought long-held Soviet dreams to the brink of fruition.⁷ At the strategic weapons level, President Carter agreed to a SALT II treaty which formally conferred upon the Soviet Union a strategic-weapons advantage, while declining to counterbalance the growing ICBM imbalance (except in the crucial manner noted below).

Geopolitically, President Carter failed to take steps necessary to maintain the very core of the nation’s economic supremacy, unfettered access to Middle Eastern oil, bringing about the collapse of U.S. relations with both Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Carter abandoned the shah of Iran and acquiesced in the rise of an antagonistic regime wholly antipathetic to American interests. Then, in a fit of electoral desperation, he shifted to support Iraq in its decision to invade Iran, making recovery of relations with Iran virtually impossible. Carter also alienated the Saudi Arabian leadership over his own Middle East plan, first proposing then refusing to honor promises made at Camp David on a framework for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank. He then compounded that error by underestimating Saudi leaders who turned sharply against the United States, driving up oil prices. Carter’s policies completely destroyed the twin pillars structure that President Nixon had constructed to stabilize the region and ensure energy access. A global oil crisis was only the immediate consequence of these inept policies.

The failure to maintain a pro-Western and pro-American orientation in the two Middle Eastern regimes that guaranteed decisive influence on the availability and price of petroleum would have profound destabilizing consequences for the U.S. global position from the later seventies to the present day. Most immediately, the oil crisis of 1979 galvanized West European efforts to develop an alternative energy source to Middle Eastern oil, a search that led directly to Moscow and the offer to provide Soviet gas and oil in exchange for the technology to deliver it. The result was the agreement to construct the world’s largest gas pipeline system, which would thereafter profoundly alter the relations between Western Europe, Russia, and the United States.⁸

For the purposes of this volume, however, it was the Carter administration’s determination to distance the United States from the two-decades-long alliance with the Shah of Iran, a planned step in the implementation of the New World Order strategy of dismantling Containment, in pursuit of its goal of détente with the Soviet Union, that set in motion the chain of events which culminated in the Iranian revolution.

Although the professed intent of Carter’s policy toward Iran was to assist in Tehran’s transition from autocracy to constitutional monarchy, the effort destabilized the shah’s regime, spurring the rise of revolutionary opposition. Ignoring the danger signs, Carter compounded this error by declining to provide any assistance to prevent the fall of the shah when his position began to totter. Worst of all, the U.S. failure to maintain its position in Iran gave Moscow the entree to gain leverage and, possibly, control over the oil fields of the Middle East. It was a second strategic failure that haunts American policy down to the present day.

While American leaders were mesmerized by the promise of détente the Soviet Union stole a march on the United States and positioned itself to make a strong bid to capture control of the oil fields. During the seventies the Soviet Union embarked upon a major drive to achieve strategic supremacy through a weapons buildup unprecedented in world history. By the time President Carter sanctioned the Soviet achievement in the SALT II treaty of June of 1979, Soviet leaders had already put in place a strategy to gain control of Iranian oil, just as the Middle East was reverberating from the fall of the shah earlier in February.

The Carter administration was not entirely derelict in its duty to protect American interests, however. When the president realized that the Soviet nuclear weapons buildup would effectively present the United States with a fait accompli, he decided upon a countermove to preserve a modicum of strategic balance. Carter’s plan was to deploy long-range cruise missiles in air, ground, and sea-launch modes, partially addressing the problem of the growing ICBM imbalance.

The long-range cruise missile, however, addressed only part of the problem, that of missile accuracy, but not speed of delivery. Its relatively slow speed clearly marked it as a defensive response to the emerging ballistics missile threat. Attention also had to be paid to a prompt retaliatory, if not preemptive, capability and here the president employed a concurrent decision to reinforce Western Europe in response to Soviet deployment of a new intermediate-range missile, the SS-20.

After three years of negotiations, the NATO decision of December 1979, saw the president deftly substitute the intermediate-range Pershing II missile for the short-range Pershing 1-A. The Pershing II was not only a very accurate, hard-target killer, but was also a high speed weapon which could reach targets in the Soviet Union from West Germany in less than ten minutes. (U.S. leaders denied, but Soviet leaders insisted, and acted upon the assumption, that the Pershing-II missile could reach Moscow.)

According to agreed allied procedure, the Pershing-II was scheduled to be deployed in West Germany in the fall of 1983, unless the United States and the Soviet Union reached an arms control agreement beforehand which would negate deployment. The upshot of the Carter administration’s policies was that Carter had acknowledged Moscow’s strategic weapons advantage in SALT II, but threatened effectively to neutralize it with the deployment of the Pershing-II-cruise missile package in four years. Other weapons systems, including the Trident II submarine and a more powerful ICBM also under development, would strengthen this result when deployed sometime in the eighties.

Iran in Moscow’s Grand Strategy

From Moscow’s point of view, therefore, the United States had opened up a window of opportunity to alter the global correlation of forces to advantage, but had also established a deadline within which to do it. Once deployment of the Pershing II began, late in 1983, the United States would gradually begin to close the window. The question for Soviet leaders was twofold: could they maintain the strategic weapons window of opportunity and draw Iran into the Soviet orbit before the United States obtained the power to prevent it?

Long-term Soviet strategic weapons’ strategy was to achieve superiority over the United States and then employ its nuclear power to coerce change in the geopolitical balance of power to advantage. Moscow strove to execute a creeping breakout from the restraints built into the U.S.-conceived arms control regime, which was based on the theory of mutual-assured destruction--an assured second-strike capability guaranteed by the absence of missile defense on either side. The Soviets were slowly eroding the weapons limitations built into both the SALT and ABM treaties through deployment of powerful offensive and layered and multi-purposed defensive missile systems.

The existence of even a rudimentary missile defense system would vitiate the MAD equation because it guaranteed the survival of a significant portion of Moscow’s offensive missile force in a nuclear exchange. Under circumstances in which the United States fielded no missile defense, the thickening of the Soviet Union’s missile defense system over time would gradually improve its efficacy and increasingly complicate U.S. retaliatory calculations.

In fact, by the early eighties American strategists were already calculating that the Soviet Union would soon be nearing breakout status, that is, the point when the imbalance would become politically, if not militarily, useable. ⁹ The question for American leaders was: would the Reagan rearmament program proceed rapidly enough to close the window of Soviet advantage? If it were too slow the balance would skew too far and the Soviet Union’s offensive-defensive breakout would become too large to neutralize and have enormous political significance. In a geopolitical crisis it would enable Soviet leaders to threaten war to deter the United States from taking action to thwart Moscow’s designs.

Indeed, from the late seventies, Soviet propagandists began promoting the idea of a war scare to justify taking preemptive action, based on the fanciful notion that the United States was planning a nuclear attack against the Soviet Union.¹⁰ They seemed to be attempting to condition American leaders into believing that the Soviet Union would use its nuclear weapons power in a crisis.

Moscow sought to coordinate its creeping breakout with the scheme to capture power in Iran. The right moment would come when Soviet leaders calculated that the Soviet strategic weapons advantage had reached its apogee and when Iran was sufficiently weakened in its war of attrition with Iraq to be susceptible to a Tudeh-led coup d’etat. Although preferring to deter the United States from direct military involvement, if necessary, the Soviets could intervene at the request of the new revolutionary regime, invoking the 1921 Treaty with Iran to justify entry. (The Iranian government denounced the treaty, but the Soviet Union refused to accept its nullification.)

For this ambitious scheme to succeed, Moscow would have to build the strategic power needed to deter the United States, the diplomatic structure to isolate Khomeini’s regime, the conventional military power to generate pressure against it, and a force within Iran that could seize control. The complex strategy required the Soviets to synchronize a broad array of policies—at the strategic weapons level toward the United States, and regionally among Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and beyond, to bring about the most propitious circumstances for a coup attempt.

However, initial Soviet strategy toward Iran would fail, as the Russians would find it beyond their ability to control all of the variables in this complex equation. Nevertheless, in retrospect, we can discern repeated, if unsuccessful, attempts by leftist forces to overthrow a war-weary Khomeini regime from mid-1981 through mid-1984. Moscow’s failure was clearly attributable to its inability to coordinate the variables, as countermeasures taken singly or in combination by Iran, the United States, Israel, Iraq, and Syria, foiled the Soviet scheme. Finally, the beginning of American rearmament forced Moscow to adopt a different strategy.

First Steps: Securing the Eastern Boundary

The Soviet Union took steps to set the stage as soon as the first signs of serious regime instability became apparent in Iran in the spring of 1978. The first step was to assert the right to defend the Iranian revolution, based on the 1921 Treaty of Friendship. From mid-year, the Soviet Union mounted a major propaganda campaign, primarily through the radio broadcasts of the National Voice of Iran (NVOI) located in Baku, denouncing U.S. interference in Iranian affairs, supporting Khomeini, who was then residing in Iraq, and inciting action against the shah.

On November 18, in an unprecedented step, Brezhnev sent a letter to President Carter, warning the United States against interference in Iranian affairs. It must be clear, he said, that any interference, especially military interference in the affairs of Iran—a state which directly borders on the Soviet Union—would be regarded by the U.S.S.R. as a matter affecting its security interests. The Soviet leader’s letter hinted at possible military moves by the Soviet Union to counter any western military effort on behalf of the shah.¹¹ A few weeks later, as Khomeini was urging his supporters to go into the streets, the president returned the warning to Brezhnev, declaring in a letter: we have no intention of permitting others to interfere in the internal affairs of Iran.¹² But, he failed to assert the prerogatives of a long-time ally of Iran.

Although the Soviets incessantly raised the threat of force from this point onward, Soviet leaders strove to avoid any direct use of military power against Iran that would provoke a retaliatory military move by the United States. A major confrontation over Iran could lead to world war, or, if short of that, to civil strife and the division of Iran along the lines of what had occurred during World War II, when the Soviet Union occupied the northern half of the country and Great Britain the southern half. As the Iranian oilfields were located in the southwestern-most part of the country a division along these lines would contradict Soviet strategy.

Moscow’s objectives would be sought through bluff, bluster, deception and indirection through proxies and clients, probing to determine Washington’s intent and will. Neither the Soviets, nor all other world leaders, could believe that the United States would supinely permit one of its main allies and principal energy sources to slip out of its orbit without a whimper of protest. When it became clear that Washington would, in fact, take no action whatsoever to uphold the shah, Moscow devised a scheme to enlist the United States unwittingly in service to its own strategic aims. In the meantime, as Iran devolved into turmoil, Moscow took several steps to create a ring of pressure around the country and foster the emergence of the capability to attempt a takeover from within.

The first step was to strengthen the Soviet position on Iran’s eastern flank, in Afghanistan. Kabul’s role in the politics of the Great Game was straight forward, if obscure. From 1953, as U.S.-Iranian relations developed into a strategic partnership, Moscow strengthened relations with Afghanistan, a position which remained stable for a decade. But, in 1963, Afghanistan under King Zahir shifted into the American orbit, where it remained for the next decade.

The bloodless coup of July 17, 1973, at the outset of U.S.-Soviet détente, in which former prime minister, Mohammed Daoud deposed King Zahir, changed that, shifting Afghanistan back into the Soviet orbit. But, the shift was not irreversible. Over the next five years, as Harrison notes, concerted efforts by the leaders of Iran and Pakistan, encouraged by Washington, persuaded Daoud to reduce Afghanistan’s reliance upon the Soviet Union. By the spring of 1978, Afghanistan appeared to be sliding out of the Soviet orbit and into a more rewarding relationship with its neighbors.¹³ This, too, did not last.

The so-called Saur Revolution, on April 28, 1978, in reality a Soviet-sponsored putsch, ended the slide, installing a Soviet client communist regime in Kabul. At the time, while some consideration was given to the implications of the coup for Iran, most discussion concentrated on Kabul itself. However, in retrospect, from the perspective of the strategy to draw Iran into the Soviet orbit, the Soviet-inspired PDPA coup against Mohammad Daoud must be understood as a preemptive step to insure Soviet control of the eastern border of Iran. That accomplished, Moscow turned to Iran’s western border.

Saddam Hussein’s ‘Faustian Bargain’

Initially, before the fall of the shah, Moscow had focused on forging an Iraqi-led Arab coalition in opposition to U.S. efforts to bring about a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. In response to Carter’s Middle East initiative Moscow had supported the emergence of an opposition Arab grouping, the so-called Rejectionist Front, also known as the Steadfastness and Confrontation Front, whose members were: Syria, Algeria, Libya, South Yemen, and the PLO. Although Iraq did not formally join the Front, Baghdad led the opposition to Egypt, hosting the Arab Summit in early November 1978 and promising an Arab boycott if Sadat signed a peace treaty with Israel.

But, as the situation in Iran deteriorated, and opportunity presented itself, Moscow changed strategy. In line with its new strategy of creating a ring of pressure around Iran, Moscow gradually shifted Iraq away from the Rejectionist Front, a maneuver which would occur over several months and result, by mid-1979, in Baghdad’s realignment with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, and eventually Egypt, a 180-degree reversal of position based on the new strategy. Iraq would henceforth play the central role in Soviet strategy toward Iran, while Syria assumed the leadership of the Rejectionist Front. The change in Iraq’s relations with Syria from ally to adversary was a direct outcome of the change in leadership and strategy in Baghdad.

As part of the restructuring of their Middle East client relationships, in the spring of 1978, Moscow offered to support Iraq in a long-term strategy to supersede Iran as the hegemonic power in the gulf. According to a thinly-veiled Iraqi account, the Soviets pointed out that the disintegration of Iran was an opportunity for Iraq. Not only could Iraq avenge the defeat against the Kurds in the 1974-75 conflict, which resulted in the imposition of the onerous Algiers Agreement, but Baghdad could also become the dominant Arab power in the Persian Gulf upon the fall of the shah.¹⁴

As an inducement to strengthen the position of those in the Iraqi leadership who wished to cooperate, the Soviets offered a major arms package, and acquiesced in the suppression of the Iraqi Communist Party, as a demonstration of their bona fides.¹⁵ Sacrificing the interests of an indigenous communist party in order to strengthen relations with a non-communist national leadership was a common Soviet practice, as Moscow had demonstrated the year before in Ethiopia and the Sudan. Despite Soviet inducements, it was not an easy decision for the Iraqi leadership.

Iraq, under Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr, had opposed the Soviet-Cuban involvement in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, and the Communist coup in Kabul, which had led to a cooling of relations. Al-Bakr had sought to strengthen relations with Syria, maintain friendly relations with Iran, and keep Moscow at arm’s length. Indeed, as recently as November 19, 1978, President al-Bakr had entertained the shah’s wife, Empress Farah, as his guest in Baghdad. ¹⁶ But the Soviets were persistent. After many exchanges of visits between Iraqi and Soviet leaders consuming the better part of a year, the Soviets gained the support of Vice-President Saddam Hussein.

Still, the issue of Iraqi strategy remained undecided. As late as late-January 1979, following a visit by Saddam Hussein to Moscow in December,¹⁷ it seemed that the Iraqis would maintain a position of independence and nonalignment, rather than independence and friendship, a formulation that would signal closer relations with Moscow in foreign policy.¹⁸ In the Ath Thawrah article cited above, the commentator rejected Moscow’s proposals, declaring that

we told those people that we rejected such logic and believed that policy…must seek to implement the principles of mutual respect…sovereignty and noninterference in one another’s internal affairs. Therefore, policies must not be based on seeking revenge but rather on preserving sovereignty and building for the future.

We were also told: You are wrong in not supporting the Iranian opposition which is definitely winning and when the shah seems certainly to be defeated. We told them that we will continue to adhere to the principles of our foreign policy and we will not make such principles subject to who will be the winner or the loser, since that is the concern of the Iranian people and government. The present situation in Iran provides us with a suitable opportunity to assert our deep respect for the principles in which we believe…as well as for rejection of the idea of lying in wait for others. ¹⁹

But, within months of the shah’s fall and Iran’s precipitous disintegration into near anarchy, the Iraqi leadership reconsidered, reaching an affirmative decision, changing to a foreign policy of independence and friendship, which meant a return to close relations with the Soviet Union. Iraq’s leaders succumbed to the vision of the rise of Iraq to regional hegemonic status. The result was a fateful coincidence of interests, centered around Baghdad’s decision to invade Iran. The issue would be resolved in July, 1979, when it was abundantly clear that Iran’s chaos presented a great strategic opportunity. Saddam Hussein ascended to supreme power, assuming the posts of President, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. According to Shamesh,

Saddam Hussein’s assumption of the presidency in July signaled the victory of the advocates of a tough stand against Iran….It seems that the enormous increase in Iraq’s orders of Soviet weapons during 1979, including most advanced airplanes, was first and foremost related to the incipient military confrontation with Iran.²⁰

A major purge accompanied Hussein’s rise to power, a sure sign in authoritarian regimes that a fundamental dispute had been resolved. Former president Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr announced his retirement, but was placed under house arrest.²¹ Hussein then emulated his hero, Josef Stalin, in brutally eliminating those on the losing side of the debate. Just as Stalin had executed scores of senior Soviet military officers in 1937, Saddam, alleging a Syrian plot to overthrow his newly established leadership, publicly executed between 450 and 500 high officials of the regime who had stood in opposition to the decision to change strategy.²² Saddam had cast his lot with the Russians.²³ In short, Iraq would become the spearhead of Soviet strategy toward Iran.

To disguise their collusion, however, Saddam emphasized the independence aspect of the independence and friendship formula, distancing Iraq diplomatically from the Soviet Union and opening further toward the west, especially in relations with France and West Germany, a path on which Iraq had already embarked during the mid-seventies when petroleum revenues were high and relations with Moscow had cooled. In preparing for war against Iran better relations with the western powers would be insurance against the possibility that an Iraqi invasion of Iran would trigger western alarm and a move to support Tehran. Saddam also muted criticism of the Soviets in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, and the invasion of Afghanistan, and rejected improvement of relations with Syria. Instead, he moved to establish closer relations with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Egypt.

The Soviet-Saddam collusion was complex and more than a marriage of convenience. Saddam himself explained it in an interview with Der Spiegel just before he assumed power. Asked whether relations with Moscow had cooled in view of the recent execution of Iraqi Communists, Saddam replied:

You in the West never considered relations between Baghdad and Moscow as normal and natural. You either said that Baghdad is a satellite of Moscow, or that relations have cooled off again. Both are wrong. It is so that sometimes we agree, sometimes we agree in part, and sometimes we are of different opinions. At any rate the Soviet Union acts differently vis-a-vis us than does America. The Soviet Union does not despise the Arabs, and it does not plot against the Arabs.²⁴

It is, nevertheless, unclear how much the Soviets conveyed to Saddam of their overall strategy. The way Saddam reacted to events at crucial points in this history suggests that the Soviets did not take him completely into their confidence. Fundamentally, however, the Russians assured Saddam of their ultimate support. Indeed, the one unambiguous conclusion to be drawn from the history of the Saddam-Soviet relationship is Soviet and later Russian support for Saddam Hussein at every critical juncture in the history of the Iraqi regime for the following quarter of a century.

Thus, while Saddam Hussein uttered occasional public outbursts of hostility to Soviet actions, when they were of different opinions, and trumpeted his independence of Moscow, Iraq’s essential friendship with Moscow and dependence upon Soviet weapons belied any fundamental deterioration of relations. Even though Iraq would acquire weapons from western sources over the next two decades, especially from France, and even the United States, Baghdad’s military power remained overwhelmingly based on Soviet weapons, whether acquired directly from the Soviet Union, or indirectly through Soviet clients.

The Soviet Subversion of Iran

In Iran, the Soviets moved to reestablish its communist party presence, outlawed and underground since 1949. Upon the shah’s fall, interim premier Medi Bazargan legalized all political parties. The result was that members of the Iranian Communist Party immediately returned to Iran under the guise of the Tudeh (Masses) Party, which had been Moscow’s united front vehicle in Iran during World War II.²⁵ Initially, the Tudeh pursued a similar policy toward Khomeini, proclaiming a temporary alliance, but pressing for the abolition of the Iranian army and the creation of an armed popular militia.²⁶

Brezhnev himself pronounced the Iranian revolution anti-imperialist and therefore worthy of Soviet support. Soviet propagandists began to portray the Soviet Union as Iran’s protector and Soviet analysts began to revise Marxist-Leninist doctrine to offer a dialectical role for Islam in the revolution. Yevgeny Primakov, for example, seeking to provide an ideological justification for a Soviet role in the orient, deemed Islam a progressive element. Social progress in the East is unthinkable unless the vast body of traditional elements [Islam] is involved in it.²⁷

As dictated by Moscow’s two-stage strategy of revolution, the Tudeh would support the Khomeini regime in the first stage, while building up its forces, but then turn against it in the second, during the war with Iraq, leading a leftist phalanx of forces in an attempt to topple the new Islamic regime. Soviet defector, Vladimir Kuzichkin, Moscow’s former KGB representative in Tehran, disclosed that the plan was to unite all the forces of the left, principally the Mujahedin and the Fedayeen, under the Tudeh, Moscow’s Trojan horse. Then Moscow would give aid in arms and money to the leftist front, and finally…bring its forces to power, even if it meant civil war…²⁸

A KGB memorandum of October 10, 1979 elaborated on the strategy to place a leftist government into power in Iran. Moscow sought to weaken the Islamic Republic by organizing provocational activity among Kurds, Azeris, Turkmen, Baluchis; support leftist forces; create economic difficulties; [and] resort to a military threat on the basis of the [Soviet-Iranian] agreement of 1921.²⁹ By the fall of 1979, events had progressed in close accordance with this plan. The stage was set. Iran had fallen into chaos and Moscow had built strong positions on Iran’s eastern and western borders, and within Iran itself.

However, at this moment, a surprise development occurred in the political struggle in Iran, forcing the first of several major adjustments in Soviet strategy. On November 4, as part of his drive to gain complete power and defeat the challenge of secular leaders to his supremacy, Ayatollah Khomeini orchestrated the seizure of American diplomatic personnel, holding them as hostages to bar any efforts by the Iranian government to reconcile with Washington. The hostage seizure precipitated the fall of the Bazargan government and the ascendancy of the Islamic Revolutionary Council.

The hostage crisis thwarted both Moscow’s and Washington’s plans. The Carter administration was attempting to come to terms with the revolution and reestablish relations with Iran. The hostage crisis brought that effort to a complete halt. Carter’s response was, on the one hand, to attempt to negotiate their release, while, on the other hand, to prepare various contingency plans, including those for a rescue attempt, and for deployment of a major ground force to take control of the oil fields of Khuzistan, as Brzezinski notes, in the event that Iran disintegrated as a political entity.³⁰

Indeed, from the third week in November, as negotiations went nowhere, U.S. leaders had abruptly begun to speak publicly about the use of force to gain the release of the hostages, citing international law to justify military action. Before this, administration officials had carefully ruled out the use of force. On November 23, President Carter sent a secret message to Khomeini declaring that should the hostages be harmed, he would be prepared to order a direct military attack on Iran.³¹ A shift of U.S. military power into the Persian Gulf-Eastern Mediterranean also began, offering credibility to the president’s threat.

For Moscow, the hostage seizure and the concentration of American power were ominous developments, particularly as the hostage negotiations foundered. The growing possibility that the United States would overthrow the Khomeini regime and recoup the U.S. position in Iran as it had in 1953 alarmed Soviet leaders because it threatened at one stroke to erase Moscow’s grand opportunity. (A Soviet mole in Khomeini’s cabinet, Mohammed Doai, no doubt kept Moscow well informed.)³² Therefore, Moscow moved quickly to obtain more time to consider longer-range solutions. The first step was to trigger a series of measures designed to throw U.S. leaders off balance and disrupt plans for an immediate military attack against Iran.

First, on November 20-23, at several points across the vast region of the Great Triangle there occurred a series of attacks on U.S. assets, embassy facilities, and personnel. Several serious incidents occurred. The worst occurred at Islamabad where a mob attacked the embassy resulting in the deaths of two Americans and four Pakistanis. Large mob demonstrations and rock-throwing incidents also occurred in Lahore, Pakistan; Izmir, Turkey; Dacca, Bangladesh; and Srinagar, India. Many were injured. The likelihood was low that these were all locally timed and separately inspired.

At the same time came an attack on the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, by several hundred armed fanatics infiltrated into the thousands visiting the holy shrine. Omani sources claimed that the Soviets had provided advice to the attackers and weapons from their stockpiles in South Yemen, a major Soviet terrorist training site and arms depot.³³ West European intelligence sources further confirmed that seventy of the men had been trained in South Yemen terrorist camps by Cubans under Soviet supervision. They also revealed that the South Yemeni army went on alert and was apparently poised to intervene on the pretext of defending the holy places if the revolt showed signs of success.³⁴

Tightening the Vise-- Afghanistan

The most significant adjustment the Soviets made, however, was in Afghanistan. Although popular disaffection with the Afghan communist regime’s land and social reforms had become widespread rather quickly after the coup, armed resistance had grown slowly through the year.³⁵ The Soviet response was gradually to infiltrate civilian cadre and military advisers to prop up the regime. However, when the shah fell, combined with a coincident upsurge in the Afghan rebellion, Soviet leaders began to contemplate the establishment and impact of a more powerful military presence in Afghanistan.

At a meeting of the Soviet Politburo, March 17-19, 1979, two months after the shah’s departure from Tehran, Soviet leaders for the first time contemplated the possibility of invading Afghanistan. The immediate concern was a rebellion in Herat, a city of 150,000 in Western Afghanistan sixty-five miles from the Iranian border. According to information available to Soviet leaders, some 20,000 people had rebelled against the Communist regime and two of the three regiments of the 17th division guarding the city had gone over to join them. ³⁶ The ensuing fighting had included the killing of some twenty Soviet advisers and their entire families.

In typical Soviet fashion, to justify their own action Soviet leaders blamed the United States for all these events and Pakistan, China, and Iran, as well, for instigating the rebellion, asserting that they were training, arming and sending thousands of religious fanatics into Afghanistan to destabilize the regime. Foreign Minister Gromyko focused particularly on the roles of Pakistan and Iran, then entering the early stages of revolutionary chaos. Not only were they supplying arms to the insurgents, the insurgents themselves were not Afghans but foreign fighters dressed in Afghan uniforms. Gromyko claimed that bands of saboteurs and terrorists, numbering in the thousands, had infiltrated from the territory of Pakistan, trained and armed not only with the participation of Pakistani forces but also of China, the United States of America, and Iran, [and] are committing atrocities in Herat.³⁷

That Pakistan was supporting rebels against the Afghan Communist regime was not in doubt, even though on a very small scale at this point. All of eastern Afghanistan lay open to infiltration across the porous Pakistani border and not surprisingly most of the resistance to Kabul was occurring in the adjacent border provinces. But, the assertion that Islamabad was sending thousands of insurgents to Herat in far western Afghanistan was particularly dubious. There was but a single road from the Pakistan border to Herat which wound from Quetta some four hundred miles through inhospitable territory along the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains. It was probably the most easily interdictable infiltration route in all of south Asia.

In the course of their deliberations Gromyko claimed that Afghan leader Nur Mohammed Taraki had appealed for the deployment of Soviet forces, but, his second-in-command Hafizullah Amin denied any need for direct assistance. Politburo member Andrei Kirilenko declared that we cannot deploy troops without a request from the government of Afghanistan. All agreed. Nevertheless, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov reported that contingency plans had already been prepared, offering two military options; one involving the rapid deployment of two divisions to Afghanistan and another for a multi-division effort using the 105th airborne division, 68th motorized division, the 5th motor artillery division as the nucleus. But, of course, he concluded, before we act we must adopt the political decision that we have been talking about here.³⁸

In the event, the Soviets decided that the time was not right to invade. Instead, they sent additional advisors and heavy equipment, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopter gunships, to enable the government to suppress the guerrillas. Afghan government forces brutally put down the rebellion in Herat with great loss of life, killing thousands.³⁹ At the same time, Moscow also began what would prove to be a long-running propaganda campaign depicting Pakistan’s intrigues against Afghanistan, while Kabul accused Iran of similar misdeeds.⁴⁰

By mid-year, partly because of increased desertion and defection from the Communist regime, and partly because of a growing internal power struggle between Taraki and Amin, the Soviets increased their presence. Moscow would maintain its hold on Afghanistan by working through its puppet Communist regime, increasing military assistance programs and gradually acting to resolve the leadership crisis.⁴¹ Conservative estimates identified 1,500 advisers in the Afghan government and between 3,500 and 4,000 in the military.⁴²

Perhaps reflecting concern about the growing weakness of the regime, but specifically in response to an army mutiny at Jalalabad near the Pakistani border at Peshawar in late June, a few weeks later Moscow deployed the first Soviet ground-force unit of four hundred men to secure control of Bagram airfield, north of Kabul. Within a month, Soviet preparations for larger-scale involvement became more evident with the dispatch of additional equipment and advisers, along with a 75-man military mission under the command of General Ivan Pavlovsky. Pavlovsky was chief of Soviet ground forces and had planned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. He remained in Afghanistan for two months, departing in mid-October, but left behind a large amount of pre-positioned equipment and a headquarters unit capable of commanding a multi-divisional Soviet military presence.⁴³

The Soviet leadership believed that the Pavlovsky mission had fulfilled the tasks assigned to them. In a report dated November 5, 1979. Defense Minister Ustinov offered the following evaluation.

Rather than continuing to rely on a passive defense and faltering operations by small units against the rebels, they were able to launch coordinated and active operations by larger groupings. This allowed them to gain the initiative in combat and to destroy the most dangerous forces of counterrevolution in the provinces of Paktia, Ghazni, Parvan, Bamian, and several other areas.⁴⁴

U.S. intelligence analysts offered a similar evaluation, believing that the civil war had reached a stalemate. The army of President Hafizullah Amin controls Kabul and a handful of other cities, while insurgent forces operate with impunity in about half the country.⁴⁵

From Creeping Intervention to Pre-emptive Deterrence

It is evident that at the end of October, the Soviet leadership (and U.S. intelligence) believed that the situation in Afghanistan itself was improving, not deteriorating, and was, at worst, a stalemate. It would seem, then, that it was an external event that shortly precipitated the Soviet decision to adopt the extraordinary measure of invading Afghanistan. That event, of course, was the hostage crisis of November 4 and the growing prospect that the United States would employ military action against Iran to restore its position there.

As noted above, the Soviets could not have expected the attack on the Grand Mosque and the rock-throwing pinpricks against American assets in the region to do more than temporarily delay the United States. Indeed, the U.S. military buildup continued. By the middle of December, the United States had concentrated unprecedented power in the Persian Gulf-Eastern Mediterranean region in the form of a large naval force whose core was five aircraft carriers and 350 planes within striking distance of Tehran and the Khuzistan oilfields.⁴⁶ Soviet leaders faced the question of how to deter the United States from taking action against Iran.

Under the growing probability that the United States would recoup its loss in Iran and deny the Soviet Union its grand opportunity, between November 26-28, the Soviets decided to take the step they had been contemplating for eight months: to invade Afghanistan and kill two birds with one stone.⁴⁷ The decision was to mobilize the necessary forces, secure lines of communication into Afghanistan, and obtain the obligatory invitation from Amin, who had in the meantime eliminated Taraki and assumed the leadership. The final decision to invade would not be made until after all preparations were completed.

From late November, U.S. intelligence identified the initial movements of Soviet forces to staging areas north of the Soviet-Afghan border.⁴⁸ From November 29, Soviet transport aircraft began flying troops of the 105th Guards Airborne Division at Ferghana into Bagram airfield, including a special brigade of heavily armed airborne troops. By December 10, the Soviet Union had airlifted an advanced contingent of over 2,700 men into the Kabul area, reinforcing the 400-man unit sent in July.⁴⁹

The glitch in Soviet preparations proved to be Hafizullah Amin, who refused to extend the necessary invitation for the deployment of large-scale Soviet forces to Afghanistan. Not even a special emissary, sent November 29-December 13, could persuade him.⁵⁰ On December 17, after surviving the third assassination attempt on his life in recent weeks, Amin called together his most trusted men, assembled eight tanks and several armored personnel carriers, and retreated to the Darulaman Palace complex seven miles outside of Kabul, there to await a showdown with the Russians.

The confrontation with Amin occurred just as Soviet forces were poised to move en masse into Afghanistan. For reasons obviously attendant upon external and not internal factors, the Russians had decided for the first time to dispense with the prior legitimization of one of their invasions and began to move in without it.⁵¹ On December 20, the Soviets directed one of the troop units flown in earlier, a 600-man armored force, to secure control of the main invasion route, the road from the border town of Termez, through the Salang Pass tunnel to Kabul.

President Carter, hoping to deter a Soviet move, sent another private warning to Brezhnev, began to publicize the troop buildup, and shifted additional forces into the Arabian Sea. U.S. intelligence, it was reported, had identified three divisions of over thirty thousand men poised to cross the Amu Darya, the river forming part of the Soviet-Afghan border. Moreover, speculation high in the administration [was] that the larger forces are poised to cross the river if the United States takes military action against neighboring Iran.⁵²

If the imminence of U.S. military action against Iran would precipitate a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, then the Carter administration reinforced that linkage the same day by announcing that the president had