The Middle East

THE MIDDLE EAST

The Reagan Doctrine

The Reagan administration's policies toward the Middle East were at least partially informed by the Reagan doctrine, which pledged U.S. support to nations faced with a perceived Communist threat and promised to assist guerrilla groups that sought to displace Marxist governments.

Lebanon

The crown jewel of President Jimmy Carter's Middle East policy was the 1978 Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt, a positive contribution toward peace in the region that was later overshadowed in the court of public opinion by the debacle of the hostage crisis in Tehran. The Reagan administration fumbled its way through Middle East policy making. A crucial problem was the civil war in Lebanon. Palestinian refugees from the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Jordan radically altered the delicate political balance in Lebanon. The Palestinians used bases in southern Lebanon to challenge the Israelis. Other parties to the Lebanese civil war were armed militias representing the Maronite Christian community, the Druse Muslims, the Amal, and the Shiite Muslims—as well as the forces of the official Lebanese government and Syrian troops.

The Palestinian Problem

The Reagan administration tended to view the Palestinians' demands for their own homeland in the West Bank region of Israel through Cold War lenses. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) got some support from the Soviets, and Israel was perceived as the bastion of western democracy in the Middle East. The Israelis invaded Lebanon in June 1982 with what they believed was tacit permission from the United States. When the Israelis fought their way into Muslim sections of western Beirut, the United States helped to broker a plan whereby PLO fighters would leave Lebanon. A multinational force consisting of French and Italian troops and U.S. Marines landed in Lebanon on 25 August 1982 to enforce the shaky peace and to help evacuate the PLO fighters. After the PLO had been evacuated, the marines withdrew. On 14 September the leader of the Christian group, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated. In retaliation Christian forces rampaged through Palestinian camps, killing men, women, and children while the Israelis stood by. The multinational forces, including the marines, were sent back to Beirut. The situation deteriorated, and the peacekeeping forces became the targets of sniper attacks. The rules of engagement were changed to allow peace-keepers to fire back when fired upon. Occasionally air support and bombardment from U.S. warships were used to retaliate for attacks on the peacekeepers. On 18 April 1983 a vanload of explosives blew up at the U.S. embassy in Beirut, severely damaging the building and killing sixty-three people. On 23 October Shiite fighters drove a truck loaded with dynamite into the headquarters compound of the U.S. Marine contingent, killing 241 marines and sailors. The following February the marines were withdrawn from Lebanon. On 20 September 1984 the new U.S. embassy in Beirut was bombed and destroyed. For the rest of Reagan's presidency, his administration relied on halting diplomacy in the region. In 1988, when PLO leader Yassir Arafat renounced terrorism and called on all parties including Israel to begin negotiations toward a settlement, Reagan authorized the State Department to begin talks with the PLO.

NANCY AND HER ASTROLOGER

During the last two years of Ronald Reagan's presidency several White House staffers published memoirs that called into question the president's grasp on the workings of his administration. Perhaps the most alarming of these books was For the Record (1988), by Donald Regan, who had been treasury secretary during Reagan's first term (1981-1984) and White House chief of staff for part of the second (1985-1987). Regan revealed that First Lady Nancy Reagan dictated her husband's schedule according to the advice she received from a San Francisco astrologer whom she called every Saturday, usually from Camp David. Although Regan never knew the astrologer's name, she was later identified as San Francisco heiress Joan Quigley.

Before Regan arrived at the White House the job of squaring the president's schedule with Quigley's predictions belonged to longtime Reagan aide Michael Deaver, who told Regan that Nancy Reagan had been consulting astrologers at least since her husband was governor of California. Her faith in her current astrologer had been reinforced after Quigley had predicted that "something bad" would happen on 30 March 1981, the day John Hinckley Jr. tried to assassinate the president.

For part of the time he headed the White House staff, Regan kept a color-coded calendar—with dates highlighted in green for "good" days, in red for "bad" days, and yellow for "iffy" days—"as an aid to remembering when it was propitious to move the president of the United States from one place to another, or schedule him to speak in public, or commence negotiations with a foreign power." He reported frequent last-minute changes and cancellations in the president's schedule, made because of Nancy Reagan's consultations with Quigley.

Before the Geneva summit in 1985, the president's first meeting with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev, Mrs. Reagan not only talked to Quigley about "auspicious moments for meetings" between the two world leaders but also had her draw up a horoscope for Gorbachev to provide information about his "character and probable behavior."

According to Regan, Nancy Reagan's insistence on following her astrologer's advice especially hurt the president during the Iran-Contra scandal. Believing that Reagan's national security advisers acted without the president's knowledge or consent, Regan emphasized the need for him to get his explanation of what he knew about the arms-for-hostages deals before the public quickly and to speak to the press on a regular basis thereafter, but Mrs. Reagan vetoed the plan. Based on Quigley's predictions of "good" and "bad" days for the president, Reagan was not allowed to talk publicly about the scandal until 12 November, nine days after the news had broken, when he spoke to a delegation from Congress, and—although he delivered a televised address on the subject the next evening—he did not answer reporters' questions until the nineteenth—a date Quigley identified as "good." Furthermore, because Quigley said the early months of 1987 were mostly "bad" for the president, he did not hold another press conference until 19 March. During that period he made few public appearances, and on some occasions he was not allowed to leave the White House.

As Regan predicted, the president's lack of communication with the public and the media reinforced the perception that he had something to hide. By the time of the March press conference, Regan had resigned—forced out, he (and many others) believed, by Nancy Reagan.

When news of the first lady's consultations with an astrologer broke in May 1988, the president stated emphatically that he had never consulted an astrologer about policy decisions, but Nancy Reagan made it clear that she would continue to consult Quigley.

Sources:

George Hackett and Eleanor Clift, "Of Planets and the Presidency: Ron and Nancy Look to the Stars for Guidance," Newsweek, 111 (16 May 1988): 20;

Donald T. Regan, For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington (San Diego, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988).

Hijackings and Kidnappings

Lebanon and the Palestinian question dogged the Reagan administration throughout the 1980s, especially because of terrorist actions by groups sympathetic to the Palestinians, including airplane hijackings and bombings. These incidents brought increasing frustration in the West, especially in the United States, because there appeared to be little that could be done to stop them. The most frustrating and frightening form of terrorism was the practice of Shiite groups in Beirut of kidnapping western residents of the city, including Americans, and demanding to exchange them for prisoners held by the Israelis.

The Libyan Connection

There was also increasing tension between the Reagan administration and the Libyan regime of Col. Mu'ammar al-Gadhafi. Gadhafì, a demagogic and charismatic leader, used some of Libya's oil wealth to finance terrorists operating in Europe and the Middle East. Moreover, there was evidence that Libyan diplomats had used their diplomatic status to move weapons and explosives across borders for the terrorists, as well as providing communications links for them. The United States specifically considered the Libyans responsible for the hijacking of TWA flight 847 in 1985. For some time Libya had claimed the Gulf of Sidra as part of its territorial waters, while the United States took the position that the gulf was international waters and periodically sent U.S. naval vessels into the gulf to emphasize that position. U.S. vessels entered the gulf some sixteen times between 1981 and March 1986. Periodically the Libyans sent jets, which were turned back without incident, but on 19 August 1981 there was an aerial dogfight between U.S. and Libyan jets, and two Libyan planes were shot down.

Retaliation

On 7 January 1986 Reagan signed an executive order declaring a state of emergency between the United States and Libya. The order ended trade and transportation between the United States and Libya and ordered U.S. oil companies to end their Libyan operations. On 24 March missiles were fired at U.S. planes flying over the gulf. In retaliation the U.S. Navy fired missiles at the Libyan launch sites and fired on Libyan patrol boats that approached U.S. vessels, sinking three of them and damaging a fourth. On 5 April a bomb detonated in a West Berlin nightclub killed a U.S. Army sergeant and injured fifty other American servicemen, as well as 230 civilians. U.S. intelligence linked the bomb to Libya. On the night of 14-15 April aircraft from carriers in the Mediterranean and long-range bombers based in Great Britain attacked Libya. Gadhafi's command post was targeted, but he escaped harm. His young daughter was killed, and other members of his family were wounded. In 1989 U.S. and Libyan planes engaged in further aerial combat, and two Libyan planes were shot down.

The Iran-Iraq War

On 22 September 1980 Iraqi air-craft attacked Iran. Iraqi ground forces invaded the next day. The two countries had long disputed ownership of the Shatt al Arab waterway on their border. Furthermore, the Iranians had provided support for Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq, and Iraq opposed the spread of radical fundamentalist Shiism from Iran. Many of Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors provided funds and logistical support to Iraq, which also received military equipment from the Soviet Union. Seeing the two countries as effective counterweights to one another, the United States did little to assist either side—other than imposing an arms embargo on Iran in the early years of the war, which dragged on for eight years with neither side gaining a decided advantage. In addition to the arms embargo, it was contrary to U.S. law to sell arms to any country designated as a source of international terrorism. Iran had been identified as having a role in the Beirut bombings and kidnappings and thus fell within this prohibition.

The Arms-for-Hostages Deal

In 1984 American intelligence became concerned about growing Soviet influence in Iran, and the National Security Council (NSC), under the direction of Robert C, McFarlane, began seeking ways to counter that influence. They also hoped that the Iranians might be able to persuade Shiite groups in Beirut to release Americans they were holding hostage. In spring 1985 Israeli intelligence reported to their American contacts that the Israelis could provide American arms to Iran, in return for which Iranians would work to release the hostages. The Americans would then replace the arms that Israel shipped to Iran. McFarlane circulated a draft proposing this exchange, which was severely criticized by Secretary of State George Shultz and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger. Despite the opposition of these two cabinet members, McFarlane and the NSC staff persuaded Reagan in August 1985 to go ahead with the delivery of five hundred TO W (tube-launched, optically tracked, wire-guided) antitank missiles to Iran. After the delivery of this shipment, a single hostage, Rev. Benjamin Weir, was released. Lt. Col. Oliver North, a marine attached to the NSC staff, then proposed the sale of eighty Hawk missiles to Iran, a proposal McFarlane accepted. Some of the Hawks were delivered in November, with the covert assistance of the CIA. During these arms transfers both North and McFarlane met with Iranian officials, even making secret trips to Iran to do so.

Presidential Approval

North continued to press the sale of arms in exchange for the release of hostages to an increasingly skeptical McFarlane. He got a more receptive audience when McFarlane was replaced as NSC director by Adm. John Poindexter in December 1985. In meetings throughout December 1985 and January 1986 the Reagan administration wrestled with the proposal, which Shultz and Weinberger continued to oppose, while Poindexter, North, and CIA director William Casey pressed for approval. Reagan sided with the latter group and signed a presidential finding authorizing the ongoing covert operation on 17 January 1986.

Operation Rescue

Starting with the January presidential finding, the United States began directly but covertly selling arms to Iran, in violation of the arms embargo and of the statutes prohibiting the sale of arms to any nation involved in international terrorism. These covert activities were also carried on without required statutory reporting to congressional oversight committees. This operation, which North called Operation Rescue, went on until early summer 1986. Three hostages were released, instead of the five or six for which the administration had hoped, and since the Shiite groups soon took additional hostages, the net effect was zero. The operation then got mixed in with U.S. Central American policy, when the administration began diverting the proceeds from the arms sales to support covert activities in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

Sources:

William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II, second edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991);

Wilbur Edel, The Reagan Presidency: An Actor's Finest Performance (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1992);

Robert D. Schulzinger, American Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, third edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);

John Tower, Edmund Muskie, and Brent Scowcroft, The Tower Commission Report: The Full Text of the President's Special Review Board (New York: Bantam Books, 1987).