guided-missile cruisers and battleships in the Persian Gulf with their bombers and cruise missiles and nuclear warheads are merely defensive in nature and not offensive?” Velayati asked. “I think not. Yet you insist on the right to sail your warships within just a few kilometers of Islamic Republic territory and fly your spy planes over our vessels. You set a dubious double standard in our own front yard, Madam Vice President.
These are our waters, our lands. We have a right to defend them from hostile foreign invaders. Your support of the dastardly Gulf Cooperative Council attack on our islands proves your hostile intent.
“Madam Vice President, the Islamic Republic of Iran will look upon the presence of non-Arab warships in the Persian Gulf to be a hostile act, an act of war against Iran,” Velayati went on. “We are calling for all non-Arab nations to remove their warships from the Persian Gulf immediately.”
“Leaving only Iran’s warships in the Gulf, Minister?” Whiting interjected.
“Iran hereby pledges that we will also withdraw our warships from the Gulf, leaving only those forces precisely equal to those of all Gulf Cooperative Council warships,” Velayati replied. “We shall remove the aircraft carrier Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and our submarines to our base at Chah Bahar and keep them outside the Persian Gulf as well, using them only to patrol the sea lanes and approaches to the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf for signs of anyone violating the agreement.”
“It is an interesting idea, Minister Velayati,” Whiting said.
Across from her, the President shrugged; the President’s r grimaced. “We must present your idea to the President and the Congress; we should like to see a formal draft of such a treaty.
Until then, Minister, the right of any nation to freely navigate international waters should not be infringed.”
“The Persian Gulf is vital to Iran’s economy as well as the economies of the GCC and the industry of our customers, madam,” Velayati went on, continuing his single-minded preaching.
“Because it is so vital, we propose that the Persian Gulf be completely demilitarized. Foreign warships, foreign warplanes, foreign troops should all leave. Iran pledges to do all that is possible to see to it that peace reigns in the Gulf. Can you pledge your support for this ideal, Madam Vice President? Will you take this message to the President?”
“Minister Velayati, I will discuss everything with the President, of course,” Whiting said, “but we need to discuss the attack on the civilian Naval Reserve Fleet vessel, the issue of thirteen persons still missing from that attack, our rights to conduct salvage-and-rescue operations in the area, and Iran’s intentions should the United States or any other nation choose to send any vessel, including armed vessels, through the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf.”
“Madame Vice President, Iran feels that the presence of any offensive warships in the Persian Gulf will only increase tensions further,” Velayati said. “Iran strongly objects especially to the United States or any other nation sending any warships capable of land attack operations into the Gulf. You desire negotiations, yes, but Iran feels that such negotiations with Hornet bombers and Tomahawk cruise missiles aimed at our cities and military bases is not true negotiating—it is bargaining at gunpoint, and we shall not stand for such. If you truly desire peace, madam, if America truly does not want this conflict to escalate further, you will agree to remove your warships from the Gulf immediately. We shall do the same. Iran will not look favorably upon any nation that decides to send a warship capable of land attack into the Persian Gulf.”
“Minister Velayati, your terms are much too broad for diplomatic discussion,” Vice President Whiting said in complete disbelief.
“You simply cannot unilaterally decide to close the Persian Gulf to any vessels you choose, any more than the United States can close off the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of Alaska …”
“We will not accept any interference from America!” Velayati emphasized. “If America attempts to sail an offensive land-attack warship into the Persian Gulf, Iran will consider it a hostile act. We do not wish war, but we are prepared to defend our rights and our freedoms! America wants another Desert Storm with Iran!
No more Desert Storms! No more warships in the Persian Gulf! No more war!” And the line went dead.
Whiting dropped the phone back in its cradle, then sat back in the couch in the Oval Office, where she had taken the call. “I’m too young and innocent for this, Mr. President,” she quipped. That was an exaggeration, of course.
As the former Governor of Delaware and a former United Nations Deputy Ambassador, Whiting was well equipped to take on anyone in an argument …”
“Hell, Ellen, Velayati was educated at Oxford—he’s supposed to respect women,” President Kevin Martindale said, trying to help his Vice President unclench her jaw. “I thought he was a pussycat.” Whiting was not going to relax that easily—her lips were tight, her eyes narrow and hard as she made her way back to her seat around the coffee table in the Oval Office.
“Okay, ladies and gents, what in hell is going wrong around here?”
the President asked. Recently elected and only forty-nine years old, divorced, with two grown children, he was in tremendously good health and vitality although the stress of forming a new government was bound to take its toll on his boyish good looks.
Today he was dressed in gray slacks, business shoes, and a conservative white shirt under a thick cardigan sweater. His thick salt-and-pepper gray hair was neatly in place except for the famous “photographer’s dream,” a thick lock of bright silver hair that curled defiantly down across his forehead over his left eye when he got angry. The end of the lock was pointed, like the Grim Reaper’s scythe. If a second one appeared over the right eye, heads would roll.
With the President and the Vice President was Secretary of State Jeffrey Hartman; Secretary of Defense Arthur Chastain; Philip Freeman, the President’s National Security Advisor; and Charles Ricardo, the White House Communications Director. “This is a new one on me,” the President went on. “Iran wants to close off the Persian Gulf to all land-attack warships. The request is so far out in left field that it’s laughable, but I got a feeling no one’s going to be laughing. First off, I want to hear about that incident with the spy ship. Phil, Arthur, Jeffrey, Charles, let’s hear it. Ellen, jump in anywhere. Let’s go.”
“A covert-action vessel belonging to a technical group of the Intelligence Support Agency, code-named Madcap Magician, was attacked and destroyed by Iranian air bombardment,” Philip Freeman began. Freeman was the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the previous administration; his popularity and leadership had made him a possible presidential candidate after his retirement, but he had accepted the position of National Security Advisor in the new Martindale administration instead. It had turned out to be a good choice; he was very well respected, not only in the White House but in Congress and throughout the nation as well, on a par with Martindale himself.
“Casualties?”
“No definite word yet, sir,” Freeman responded. “The ship carried a crew of one hundred thirty-three. One hundred twenty persons were rescued from the United Arab Emirates; they escaped in four lifeboats before and during the attack. The rest are presumed missing or captured by the Iranian navy. The ship was lost, sunk by aerial missile bombardment.”
“Was it on a spy mission?”
“Very definitely,” Freeman said. “Operating under Executive Order 96-119, covert surveillance of the Strait of Hormuz and the Iranian heavy warship surveillance and intelligence. The vessel was the base for an unmanned stealth drone the National Security Agency began using to photograph the Iranian warships in the Gulf of Oman.”
“Shit,” the President muttered. “Sounds like we lost a real valuable asset.”
“The vessel had been used as a seagoing platform for tilt-rotor aircraft and Swimmer Delivery Vehicles,” Freeman said. “In service for about seven years, just before Desert Storm. The unit had also assisted on the GCC attack on Abu Musa Island recently—they inserted special-ops troops with laser designators to help the Arab crews hit their targets. Yes, we’ll miss that platform.”
“We never should have sent it in the first place,” Secretary of State Hartman said. Hartman was the administration’s senior member, a former Wall Street investment House CEO and twelve-term Congressman from New York who brought an insider’s knowledge both of Congress and the world of international finance to a rather young White House. Hartman had also brought an extensive web of personal contacts with him—decision makers who preferred the old-boy network over diplomatic or political bureaucracy. “The GCC had no business attacking that island, and we had no business assisting them.”
