US-Iran deals: the Iran-Contra precedent

Miller suggests that while there were a number of constituent elements in the hostages deal, Pan Am 103 could be seen as necessarily part of the comprehensive settlement involving, inter alia, money, international recognition of Iraq’s aggression against Iran, prisoners and hostages. It would have been necessary, she suggests persuasively, because, as the CIA commented in an assessment of June 1989, the Iranians “believe that the presence of Western hostages in Lebanon will help deter retaliation” for the Lockerbie bombing (CIA, Directorate of Intelligence, Terrorism Review, June 1, 1989, http://www. foia.cia.gov/browse_docs_full.asp, March 19, 2010, cited in Miller n.63). In Miller’s words,

“Iran could not feel safe from US retaliation for Pan Am 103 (whether the retaliation was justified or not) if the hostages were freed without some guarantee. Thus the eventual indictment of a rival state, it could be argued, provided that guarantee and was thus the necessary condition for the deal that followed” (Whose Knows about this . . .”, section captioned “A Nego-tiation Process”).

(c) Evidence of an accommodation:

the sidelining of Mohtashemi

Miller further suggests that even before the final settlement of late November 1991 it is feasible to infer the existence of a tentative agreement between the US and Iran about Pan Am 103. In April 1989 the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, appointed a 20-member council to redraft the constitution, including the pragmatist Mohammad Hashemi Rasfanjani (who would be elected President in August of that year), but excluded Interior Minister Mohtashemi, the alleged Lockerbie instigator, whose appointment would normally have been expected to be virtually automatic (Keesing’s Record of World Events, vol 35, p.36601, cited by Miller, n.64). When, in August, new President Rasfanjani presented his proposed Cabinet, Mohtashemi was again excluded and, despite a petition of more than 50 per cent of the Majlis calling for his re-instatement, the new Supreme Leader, Khamenei, approved Rasfanjani’s Cabinet selection (Keesing’s Record of World Events, vol 35, p.36859, cited in Miller, n.65). Miller conjectures that the otherwise powerful Mohtashemi’s exclusion may have been a response to a US offer of a policy of non-retalition.

Those who oppose the conviction of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi fall essentially into two distinct camps. There are those who publicly seek to confine themselves to demonstrating Megrahi's innocence and those such as the present author who, more adventurously perhaps, seek to go further and identify a basis for condemning the true culprits. Both camps can and do function fraternally in collaboration. For many years those in the narrower camp were wary of going further for fear of being labelled conspiracy theorists. However we now finally have official confirmation that blaming Iran is no longer “conspiracy” but enjoys official, US government, recognition. This was plainly the consequence of their 2010 declassification of the DIA report referring to the intelligence gained by the NSA on the original deal between Mohtashemi and Jibril.

The implications of this are far-reaching. If, contrary to common sense and what most “right thinking” people now believe, Megrahi was one of the coal face perpetrators, for Mohtashemi to be innocent of procuring the destruction of Pan Am 103 would mean that Megrahi and his confederates (whoever they were) must have been acting in pursuance of a plot which had no connection at all with the Iran. It would have to mean that they were neither acting as agents directly for Iran, replacing the PFLP-GC in the wake of the Autumn Leaves action, nor as agents for the PFLP-GC, sub-contracted after the breaking-up of the West German cell.

It would have to follow from such a supposition that the the Iranians who commissioned Jibril to destroy an American on their behalf, on witnessing what the Libyans had done off their own bat, decided (a) that equilibrium for the shooting down of IranAir 655 had in the event been achieved and (b) that there was therefore no need to seek the destruction of a second American plane. This would of course mean that two unconnected plots to destroy an American jet-liner were hatched in the same short period independently of each other, one by Iran and one by Libya (at a time when Gaddafi was trying to make a show, at least, of rejoining the community of nations.) This would be yet another coincidence to join the queue of other implausible concidences which are necessary to prop up the absurdity of Megrahi's conviction.

That Mohtashemi is guilty of commissioning the scheme which led to the destruction of Pan Am 103 may reasonably be inferred from the following facts or aspects of the case–

• 
  the existence of a powerful motive (flight 655 and US government insensitivity in its aftermath)
  
• 
  public avowals of Iranian intent
  
• 
  evidence, the existence of which is now officially acknowledged, of the making of a contract between Mohtashemi and Jibril
  
• 
  very strong probability that the bomb was a classic PFLP-GC barometric type
  
• 
  clear demonstration that the story of the journey of the bomb suitcase as unaccompanied luggage from Malta to Heathrow via Frankfurt is so much nonsense
  
• 
  strong probability that it was planted by a terrorist at Heathrow
  
• 
  strong suspicion that it was brought to Heathrow on board an Iranian cargo aircraft.
  

Mohtashemi being very likely guilty, then, this ought to have serious repercussions for the West’s relations with the current Iranian leadership.

It can be claimed with some confidence, then, that Hojatislam Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur was the senior Iranian who procured the destruction of Pan Am 103. Was he acting alone or was he complicit with and acting on behalf of other senior members of the Iranian Government? Given the vengeful passions released by the destruction of the IA655 Airbus, the calls for revenge by Khomeini and others, the size of the bounty on offer to the PFLP-GC, the fact that the deal involved a retaliatory act of war against the United States and that Mohtashemi was a highly-placed mainstream official in the government of Iran, it would very difficult to believe that he could have been acting in a vacuum when he negotiated the deal with Jibril. It is virtually inconceivable that, in the words of English legal parlance, he had embarked “on a frolic of his own” and that he was not plenipotentiary for the highest echelons of Government. The argument was developed in earlier editions of this treatise and has now been reinforced by an explicit statement of fact in the Aljezeera English TV channel documentary Lockerbie: What Really Happened, aired on March 11, 2014. The programme featured an interview with Abolghassem Mesbahi, described as a former intelligence officer who reported directly to the Iranian president until he defected to Germany. So newsworthy was the interview that the programme achieved page one banner headlines in the Daily Telegraph on the day of the broadcast, as well as being reported in other newspapers and media outlets. In the interview Mesbahi claimed that the decision to avenge the shooting down of IranAir 655 was

“made by the whole system in Iran and confirmed by Ayatollah Khomeini [and that] the target of the Iranian decision-makers was to copy exactly what happened to the Iranian Airbus. Everything exactly the same, minimum 290 people dead.”

(b) Mohtashemi-Pur’s career

Khomeini may be long dead but that does not mean Lockerbie is no more than history with little relevance to the current Iranian leadership. There are good reasons to believe that at least one other notable official was directly involved with him in negotiating the deal with Jibril, an official who has since gone on to achieved high office. To demonstrate the connection we need to look further, albeit briefly, into Mohtashemi’s career.

He was appointed as Iran’s ambassador to Syria in 1982 and is believed to have played a central role in the creation of the Lebanese Shia Hezbollah movement (see Faligot, Roger and Kauffer, Remi, Les Maitres Espions, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1994, pp. 412-3). His close supervision of Hezbollah ended when the Office of Islamic Liberation was incorporated into Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ranstorp, Magnus, Hizb’allah in Lebanon, London: St Martin’s Press, 1997, pp. 89-90). In the meantime, in August 1985, he was appointed Iran’s Minister of the Interior but is believed to have continued an active association with Syrian military intelligence in the Lebanon and to have been instrumental in the killing of Lt Col William Higgins, American chief of the UN Truce Supervision Organisation’s observer group in the Lebanon who was taken hostage in February 1988 by pro-Iranian Shia radicals. The killing was apparently designed to avert an improvement in US-Iranian relations (Ranstorp, op cit, p.146). It was Mohtashemi’s close relations with the Assad regime in Syria and with Hezbollah that made him the obvious choice to conduct negotiations with Jibril. While he was always a strong opponent of Western influence in the Muslim world and of the existence of the State of Israel he was later also an advisor to reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

(c) Rafsanjani

Towards the end of the Iran-Iraq war Supreme Leader Ayattolah Khomeini had shown he was quite prepared to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of boys and old men as cannon fodder in the Iran-Iraq war but things came to a head and he eventually saw the light. Some time after de facto hostilities had ended, in June 1988, backed by Khomeini the more moderate cleric Mohammad Hashemi Rafsanjani (later to become President of the Republic) was working on bringing hostilities with Iraq to a formal end. His star was in the ascendant but Mohtashemi saw the downing of the Airbus as a perfect opportunity to strike at Rafsanjani and discredit the rising influence of the moderates. The enmity between the two men is significant for a very specific reason which, since 2013, has assumed an importance that would not have been foreseen in the immediate aftermath of the Lockerbie attack.

Were any other identifiable Iranian officials complicit with Mohtashemi? In the light of his election to the Presidency of Iran in the Summer of 2013, keen attention not surprisingly focused on Hassan Rouhani with his background being subjected to intense scrutiny. It has been widely noted that since his election Hassan Rouhani has been pursuing a “charm offensive” in Iran’s relations with Europe and the United States. His declared purpose is to front a new “moderate” Iran, desperate to end decades of isolation and hostility. On the other hand, some commentators have argued that neither the West nor Iran’s neighbours should be lulled into complacency by what in truth is no more than a charade in which President Rouhani’s real motive is to buy time for Iran to complete its development of a nuclear armaments capability. It is pointed out that a reality check is badly needed and that for 30 years Mr Rouhani has been a key player in a regime that has been attempting to conceal its nuclear ambitions, has called for an end to the Jewish state and has supported international terrorism. Thus, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the United Nations General Assembly in October 2013, notably described Rouhani as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.” The question might be asked whether this is any more than bombastic alarmism, uttered in desperation by a worried statesman in charge of an increasingly beleaguered country, or might there be substance in his warning? Consideration of relevant material on Rouhani in the public domain admit of inferences which are chilling.