muscle. The only way to bypass the constitution and advance those plans was to put Buzhazi in charge, and that meant martial law.
Buzhazi got to his feet, amused eyes on Nateq-Nouri. “Guards, escort Their Holinesses out of the chamber,” Buzhazi shouted. At that moment, several dozen armed Pasdaran soldiers rushed into the Cabinet chamber, heavily armed, with assault rifles at port arms. A dozen Pasdaran guards surrounded the two high priests as they departed the chamber. As soon as they departed, the chamber erupted into complete bedlam. “Silence!” Buzhazi shouted. “Come to order immediately, or I will see to it that you are all removed!
Several Pasdaran guards rushed over toward Nateq-Nouri, and were immediately blocked by a small contingent of Nateq-Nouri’s personal bodyguards, seven ex-Syrian special forces soldiers.
Although outnumbered three to one, it was obvious they would protect their charge to the last man. “Hold!” Buzhazi ordered.
“His Holiness the Ayatollah Kalantari has ordered that the former President not be harmed or detained in any way. The former President shall be escorted safely out of the chamber and immediately to his residence, where he shall be placed under protective guard.
Colonel, see to it immediately.”
Nateq-Nouri was surrounded by his own personal guard, then by Pasdaran troops, and then by his advisors and Supreme Defense Council ministers sympathetic to him, but he raised his voice enough to be heard above the throng around him: “General Buzhazi, your days on earth are numbered, and I shall be there to see your last day, just before the firing squad’s bullets riddle your worthless body.”
“Brave words from a traitor,” Buzhazi shouted back. “All but Nateq-Nouri must stay. I have a few more matters to discuss.”
“I swear to Allah, I shall see to it that you are hanged by your own words,” Nateq-Nouri said, as he let himself be led out of the chamber.
As the room cleared and grew ever quieter, several shocked and incredulous eyes turned toward General Buzhazi. “You must be mad, Buzhazi, utterly mad,” Muhammad Foruzandeh, the Iranian Defense Minister, finally said acidly. “You know all that the President has said is true—he is not a traitor, and the back-channel communications he has had are perfectly legal and aboveboard—you have used them many times yourself in the past.”
The Prime Minister, Hasan Ebrihim Habibi, spluttered, “You dare attempt a military coup against the legitimate government?”
“Silence, all of you,” Buzhazi said. “This is no coup, gentlemen—this is an order from the Leadership Council that the Islamic Republic is in grave danger and is in need of help right away. Nateq-Nouri is weak and has chosen the way of cooperation and free exchange with the very agents of imperialism and oppression that seek to destroy us. I on the other hand refuse to sit by and watch my country suffer.
“Effective immediately, by the power invested in me as military leader of the Islamic Republic, I hereby suspend and disband the Majlis-i-Shura, the Supreme Court, and the High Judicial Council, until further notice.”
“What?” several of the civilians shouted. In one sweep, Buzhazi had just dismantled Iran’s civil representative government—the 270-member Islamic Consultative Assembly, the Supreme Court, and the entire federal judiciary branch of the government. This left only the three major religious organs—the Leadership Council, led by Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Khamenei; the Council of Experts, led by the Ayatollah Meshkini; and the Council of Guardians, led by the Ayatollah Yazdi—along with the military, to rule the Iranian government. All of these mullahs were very pro-military and extremely fundamentalist, dedicated to exporting the Islamic revolution—led by them and the Shiite Muslim sect, of course-all over the world. Now, under martial law, they had the military backing them up. “Buzhazi, you do not have such authority!”
“Under martial law, crimes against the government will be punishable by military courts, and reviewed by the Council of Guardians and the Council of Experts,” Buzhazi said. “The Cabinet and the Supreme Defense Council are also hereby disbanded; the Cabinet ministers retain their positions and authority, but now report to me through my General Staff officers. The newspapers Kayhan, Ettela’at, Tehran Times, and all other public or political organs will immediately suspend publication; only Jum-hurie-Islami will be allowed to continue operations, under command of the Office of Public Affairs of the General Staff. All broadcasting, except for Radio Naft-e-Melli, will immediately suspend all operations; INTELSAT earth station operations and radio relay station operations, except for military- only base operations, will be suspended immediately until military control can be concluded”
“There will be panic in the streets of Tehran, General,” Prime Minister Habibi said angrily. “You cannot simply shut off all media sources and expect to control a population of seventy million.”
“I shall deploy the entire Niru-ye Entezami-e-Johuriye Eslami-ye Iran, reinforced and led by the Pasdaran, to maintain order in the cities,” Buzhazi said sternly. “The Security Forces of the Islamic Republic have a duty to maintain order and uphold the law.
I will mobilize the Basij and federalize them under active-duty control of the Pasdaran to reinforce the internal security forces and border guards.
“But most important, I will issue orders to my staff to carefully instruct all members of the Cabinet on how to conduct your day-to-day operations in the face of this emergency. Martial law does not mean the end of the Republic, only that extraordinary measures must be taken to ensure our safety and security. I expect all government offices and ministers to properly convey that message. Further instructions will be issued by my chief of staff. You are all dismissed. Summon my battle staff and get them in here immediately.”
Buzhazi was intently studying a chart of the Middle East, with Iran centered on it, when the senior members of the Islamic Republic’s joint chiefs of staff hurried into the Cabinet room.
“I want full territorial security established immediately,” Buzhazi ordered. “The Strait of Hormuz is hereby off limits to all foreign warships. I want every vessel in our inventory in the strait shadowing every vessel that passes through.”
“We will need the reserves, sir,” army commander, Brigadier General Mohammed Sohrabi, said.
“Then order a full reserve mobilization,” Buzhazi said. “Use the Basij to fill in as necessary, but I want the sea lanes full of Iranian patrol vessels immediately—not six or twelve months from now—shadowing every tanker and every cargo ship that moves through the strait. And I want full air patrols as well—around-the-clock, low- altitude, sustained combat air patrols. I want our forces to be visible to anyone within two hundred kilometers of our shores. Test the GCC and American air forces. How do the Americans put it? Play ‘Red Rover’ with them, probe their weaknesses.”
“I may have found one, sir,” air forces commander Brigadier General Mansour Sattari interjected. “We saw the American’s stealth bomber last night.”
“You what?” Buzhazi dismissed his other staff members, and sat down with Sattari, his handpicked man, hopefully soon to be his chief of staff when he became President. “How was this done?”
“Sir, stealth works because of two things: the stealth aircraft absorbs some radar energy and redirects the rest into thin lobes that point in directions other than back at the transmitter—the net result is that the transmitting radar antenna gets very little of its signal returned, so it fails to correlate the data and form a radar return,” Sattari explained. “The energy absorbed by the skin of the plane and other systems—the so-called cloaking device these aircraft are rumored to employ—is relatively small, perhaps ten to twenty percent. The rest of the energy is still out there, but it is simply not returned to the radar system that it should.”
“Get on with it, Mansour.”
“Sir, the problem is not that we cannot receive the signals, or that the signals are not strong enough—the problem is that the antenna that must receive the signal is in the wrong place. If it were possible to move the receiving antenna and synchronize it with the transmitting antenna, or use several different antennas so synchronized, the redirected radar energy would be detected and the plane would appear on radar.
“For very brief moments, this occurred last night. Purely by chance, we had two radar facilities in perfect synchronization, an A-10 Mainstay radar plane over the strait and a radar facility at Bandar Abbas; both stations were electronically linked with each other, sharing radar data. When the radar aircraft transmitted, the ground station received, and the stealth bomber appeared on Bandar Abbas’s radar screen. It was lost a second later, not enough time to track it or even reacquire it, but it did appear.”
“So if we synchronize two radars deliberately,” Buzhazi said, “or even more than two, we could spot the aircraft long enough to track it.”
“Yes, very possible,” Sattari said. “I have my best engineers on the problem right now. I assumed that you
