Shimon Peres, point-man of Oliver North in
the Iran-Contra operations, from an interview with Bob Woodward, Summer 1988:
While reviewing some materials concerning various Iranian
political events having occurred during the last years of Khomeini, I came
across a fantastic piece of information which allows us to identify with great
probability, in fact with near certainty, the man previously only known as
“Witness C” or by his alias, Abolghasem Mesbahi.
His true name is actually Abdul Hasan Mephahi. On Oct. 5,
1988, La Cinq, a French television network, mentioned Mephahi and informed
their viewers that the Iranian diplomat had been expelled from France in 1983
for “activities not in keeping with diplomatic status.”
This description of the Iranian diplomat matches the
description of Witness C at the Mykonos murders trial in Germany, and
identifies, in my opinion unambiguously, Mesbahi. The identification raises,
and perhaps answers, some intriguing questions regarding the Lockerbie affair.
In late 1996, Mesbahi told German Law Authority that Iran
officials had contracted the bombing of Pan Am 103 to avenge the downing of an
Iranian civilian airliner by the USS Vincennes a few months earlier. (See
Lockerbie—the man who was not there.)
Irangate
In 1985, the Reagan administration was confronted with two
major international issues. In Lebanon, a dozen American citizens were hostages
of Hezbollah, an organization controlled by Tehran, and Reagan had promised
that he would never negotiate with terrorists. In 1984, the Congress had cut
funding to support the Contras while the Reagan administration was keen on
continuing their support to fight the Communist regime.
McFarlane came up with a plan. The United States would sell
weapons, at first through Israel, then directly to Iran in return for help to
negotiate the release of the hostages. The weapons were sold at a premium,
which was used to fund the Contras.
After a leak by Iranian radical Mehdi Hashemi to the
Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa, the arrangement was revealed on Nov. 3, 1986.
There is little doubt that Hashemi leaked the information to
derail the rapprochement process between Tehran and Washington intended by
McFarlane.
Hashemi was a close allied of then-Minister of Interior
Mohtashami who opposed any deal with the US, and is believed to have founded
the Hezbollah organization while he was ambassador in Damascus.
At first, Reagan denied the allegations, but faced with
evidence, admitted the arms sale on Nov.13, 1986.
“My purpose was ¡¦ to send a signal that the United States
was prepared to replace the animosity between us with a new relationship ¡¦ At
the same time we undertook this initiative, we made clear that Iran must oppose
all forms of international terrorism as a condition of progress in our
relationship. The most significant step which Iran could take, we indicated,
would be to use its influence in Lebanon to secure the release of all hostages
held there,” Reagan said in a nationwide address.
On March 4, 1987, Reagan took full responsibility and stated
that, contrary to his previous assertions, the US had traded arms for hostages.
Reagan’s and Bush’s political careers went on unaffected by the unlawful
operations. However, at the international level, the credibility of the US
stand in the war on terror was shattered.
“US willingness to engage in concessions with Iran and the
Hezbollah not only signaled to its adversaries that hostage-taking was an
extremely useful instrument in extracting political and financial concessions
from the West but also undermined any credibility of US criticism of other
states’ deviation from the principles of no-negotiation and no- concession to
terrorists and their demands,” a Hezbollah expert wrote.
Irangate: Part II?
Meanwhile, unknown to all outside the inner circle of the president,
the Reagan administration had already put in place a new plan. In January 1987,
CIA veteran (1972-87) Richard Lawless set up a consulting company—US Asia
Commercial Development Corp.
The then-42-year-old Lawless was a former member of the CIA
Operations Directorate, who may have worked under State Department cover in
Vienna and in Seoul, when Vice President George H. Bush advisor Donald Gregg
was serving as the CIA station chief.
Lawless, who is widely believed to have worked directly for
Bush, began a series of meetings with Iranian representatives in Geneva
starting on Sept. 15, 1987.
Mohammad Javad Laridjani, the Iranian Deputy Foreign
Minister, was visiting Paris in early September 1998. From there, he was called
unexpectedly to Geneva on the Sept. 6, 1988 for talks with American
negotiators.
The Nation, an Israeli daily, reported on Sept. 30, 1988,
that US and Iranian negotiators had “hammered out an agreement.”
According to the Israeli daily, progress was made when the
US negotiators gave up on Col. William R. Higgins. The US accepted the Iranian
line that he was either dead or no longer among the hostages controlled by
Tehran. (It may have been a little more precise to state: not controlled by
those in Tehran that the negotiators represented, i.e. the Rafsanjani clan.)
On Oct. 5, 1988, a French television network, La Cinq,
reported that three meetings between Lawless and Iranian negotiators had taken
place at Glyon, near Montreux, in late August and early September. (It seems
that a fourth meeting occurred in early October.)
The Iranians negotiators were named as Mohammad Javad
Laridjani, Mahmoud Jamali, Nasrollah Kazemi Kamyab and Abdul Hasan Mephahi. All
of them are quite well known senior officials and worked for the Foreign Affair
Ministry, except Mephahi who was representing Rafsanjani.
Jamali was director general for International Conferences at
the Foreign Ministry. The official nature of these talks is abundantly clear
from the high-ranking level of the participants.
On the same day, former President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr of
Iran said that an aide to Vice President Bush had been conducting secret
negotiations on the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon. Bani-Sadr
identified the aide of the vice president as Richard Lawless.
Bani-Sadr also alleged that Tehran had partially obtained
the release of assets frozen in the US since the Islamic revolution and that
there had been a delivery of arms to Iran.
On Oct. 6, 1988, L. Paul Bremer, described as “preposterous”
a spate of reports that the US had offered money or weapons to Tehran in order
to secure the release of Americans hostages held in Lebanon.
“I’ve never been able to explain the Iranians and what their
strategies are and what they do,” Reagan declared on the same day. “But
obviously, we couldn’t do any negotiating with them until and unless the
hostages are released.” Both men were lying through their teeth.
All Iranian negotiators were representing the view of
Rafsanjani who in the aftermath of the Iraq-Iran ceasefire was leading the
economical reconstruction of the country and had gained the support of strong
allies such as Ahmad Khomeini (a son of the Supreme Leader), Foreign Minister
Ali Akbar Velayati, as well as most moderate elements of the Revolutionary
Guards.
Rafsanjani has been listed by Forbes as one of the
wealthiest men on the planet. His fortune is believed to originate from arms
deals conducted after the Islamic Revolution.
By 1988, Iranian politics had become increasingly polarized
between the Rafsanjani and the Mohtashami factions, a trend that had not been
unanticipated by the Supreme leader.
“You do not fight in the name of Allah, but you fight to
further your own interests. You do not fool me when you say that you have the
interest of Islam at heart. You fight for power, and I know it.
“You always want more power. None among you is content with
his own carpet, and each one among you seeks to stretch his legs on his
neighbor’s carpet,” Khomeini said.
On Sept. 26, 1988, a commando led by Mir Lohi, a former
cohort of Mehdi Hashemi as well as a Mohtashami agent, attempted to assassinate
Rafsanjani as he was leaving the parliament. Rafsanjani escaped but four of his
bodyguards were killed and several others wounded.
The assassination attempt was widely perceived as a way to
prevent a rapprochement with Washington. In a similar manner, the killing of
Lt. Col. William Higgins in 1989 is also alleged to have been ordered by
Mohtashami in order to prevent the rapprochement of Syria with the US and again
to derail attempts by Rafsanjani to better the relations of Iran with America.
In July 1988, Rafsanjani stated in the parliament that “Iran
should now attract those countries who could become friends instead of
alienating them, as it had done in the past.”
Consequences for Lockerbie
The secret dealings between Washington and Tehran during
1987 and 1988 raise many questions unanswered to this day, some directly
relevant to the Lockerbie investigation.
What was the origin of the funds used to continue the
dealings with Tehran and the Contras in these years? Did the US run illegal
drug operations, by opposition to controlled deliveries, to raise the money
needed? And if so, was Monzer al-Kasaar involved in this scheme? (See
”Confession of an Iranian Terror Czar.") These possibilities should not
been dismissed as conspiracy theories too promptly.
Released on April 13, 1989, Senator John Kerry’s Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concluded that
“senior US policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a
perfect solution to the Contras’ funding problems.”
Did the CIA, or other US institutions, intentionally hide
the existence of Abdul Hasan Mephahi, who contrary to the Zeist verdict blames
Tehran—not Tripoli—for the Lockerbie bombing, to investigators because his
testimony would have necessarily revealed the existence of secret illegal
dealings between Washington and Tehran?
These questions, as well as dozens of others that have
haunted the Lockerbie affair for two decades, should now be considered in the
light of these ongoing secret operations at the time of the bombing.
The Aftermath
Mehdi Hashemi, who had leaked the scandal to the media, was
executed in 1987. Amiram Nir was assassinated on Dec. 1, 1988. Lt. Cmdr. R. J.
Hunt told investigator R. Stitch that he had learned from Oliver North that Nir
had been assassinated by the CIA because he was about to sell the story of the
second Irangate.
Gannon and McKee were US intelligence operatives working in
Lebanon to release the US hostages. Both died on Pan Am 103. Both had worked
with Nir on the security of Vice President Bush during his secret meeting with
Iranian officials at the King David hotel in Jerusalem on July 29, 1986.
Ian Spiro, a British citizen and US-MI6 Intelligence asset
in the Lebanon, is one of the few people suspected to have betrayed Gannon and
McKee and passed their travel plans to the Iranians the day prior to the
bombing of Pan Am 103.
Spiro told journalists that he could link Irangate to
Lockerbie. Soon after he left Lebanon, Spiro and his wife and three children
were murdered in California. The San Diego Sheriff’s Department never responded
to an official request from Britain’s Foreign Office for copies of a medical
examiner’s report on their unsolved deaths.
In 1996, journalist Gary Webb published reports in the San
Jose Mercury News claiming that Contras, with the protection of the Reagan
administration, had distributed crack cocaine into Los Angeles to fund weapons
purchases. In 2004, Gary Webb was found dead, officially having committed
suicide. He shot himself twice in the head.
In August 2002, [Abu] Nidal, the man accused by Mephahi to
have organized the bombing of Pan Am 103, also committed suicide by shooting a
bullet in his mouth. According to Palestinian sources, which have seen his dead
body, several bullets had entered the back of his head.