38
Negev Desert, Israel
Captain Avi Yaron muted his radio and closed his eyes.
“Barukh atah Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha olam,”
he prayed,
“she hehiyanu v’kiy’manu v’higi’anu la z’man ha ze.”
Blessed art Thou, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this season.
With that, he throttled up his engines, carefully veered his F-15 out of its underground bunker, taxied onto the tarmac, and waited for clearance. Behind him, thirty-seven more F-15s and F-16s fueled up, revved up, and got in line. This was it. The night for which they had been waiting, preparing, and hoping over the past six months.
Yaron looked out at the beehive of activity across Hatzerim Air Force Base, not far from the ancient city of Beersheva, in the heart of the Negev Desert. Most people who knew anything about the place thought of Hatzerim as the home of the Israeli Air Force Museum. Only a handful of people even in Israel knew the IAF had been secretly retrofitting the facilities to house several new air attack wings.
Yaron’s hands were jittery. Were the intel guys right? Was there really a narrow window when neither Russian nor American spy satellites were in position to watch them? How could they really know precisely what time that window opened and shut?
He hated to wait. He was desperate to fly, desperate to engage the enemy, drop his ordnance, and save his people. But life in the Israeli Air Force these days seemed all about waiting. The pilots waited for the green light from the commanders. The commanders waited for the generals. The generals waited for the minister of defense. The defense minister waited for the prime minister. The prime minister waited for the president of the United States.
What if they waited too long? What if Iran got the Bomb and set into motion another holocaust?
The time for waiting was over, Yaron believed. It was time to strike first.
He checked his instruments. Everything was ready, as was he, and as he waited for permission to launch, his thoughts drifted to Yossi, his twin brother. He checked his watch. He could picture Yossi in his F-16 at that very moment, taxiing out to the tarmac at Ramat David Air Base in the north, not far from Har Megiddo, from whose name came the term
Armageddon
. He wished he could shout a shalom to him, but radio silence was the rule of the day, and it was inviolable.
Just then the ground crew gave him the signal. It was go time.
Yaron didn’t hesitate. He put the pedal to the metal and took his Strike Eagle to forty-eight thousand feet in less than a minute. Behind him, the skies filled with fighter jets, long-range bombers, and fuel tankers. A devastating armada had just been unleashed for the twelve-hundred-kilometer flight, the longest mission in which any of these young pilots, navigators, and weapons systems officers had ever been engaged.
39
Tehran, Iran
The Bell 214 Huey took off just after evening prayers.
As it gained altitude, the Iranian military helicopter gently banked north and headed for the Alborz Mountains, site of the Supreme Leader’s heavily guarded retreat complex on Mount Tochal. At 3,965 meters, Tochal was the second-highest peak in the range and was well away from the smog and the noise and the congestion of the capital and from all the palace intrigues and political machinations that increasingly vied for his attention and sapped his strength.
Haunted by growing fears of an imminent Israeli attack, the graying, bespectacled Hamid Hosseini, now seventy-six, looked out over the twinkling lights of Tehran, a city of eight and a half-million souls. He had never imagined rising to the heights of his master. He had never sought to be the nation’s Supreme Leader. But now a great burden rested on Hosseini’s shoulders. He wished he could sit with his master and pray and seek Allah’s counsel together, as they had done on so many occasions over the years. But it was not to be. There was a time in a man’s life when he no longer had the blessing of his mentor’s attention or wisdom or even his presence, a time when a man had to make fateful decisions on his own, come what may. This was one such moment, and Hosseini steeled himself for what lay ahead.
Upon landing at the retreat site, an aide slipped the Supreme Leader a note, informing him that his guests were waiting for him in the dining room. Hosseini read the note but would not be rushed. Flanked by his security detail, he headed first for his master bedroom, instructed the aide to give him some time alone, then closed the door and sat on the bed.
His mind was flooded with questions. They had all been asked and answered before, some of them dozens of times. But they had to be asked once more. Were they truly ready? How long would it take? Were they certain they would be successful? Could they guarantee complete secrecy? Moreover, if they were discovered before they were ready, could they survive the repercussions?
Hosseini’s top advisors were confident that victory was at hand. He was not. They believed the benefits far outweighed the risks. He feared they were telling him what they thought he wanted to hear, not the truth—at least not the whole truth. They had the luxury of being wrong. He did not. And that, he reasoned, made all the difference.
Hosseini slipped off the bed and onto his knees. He faced the windows, thus facing Mecca, and began to pray.
“O mighty Lord,” he implored, “I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the Promised One, that perfect and pure human being, the one who will fill this world with justice and peace. Make us worthy to prepare the way for his arrival, and lead us with your righteous hand. We long for the Lord of the Age. We long for the Awaited One. Without him—the Righteously Guided One—there can be no victory. With him, there can be no defeat. Show me your path, O mighty Lord, and use me to prepare the way for the coming of the Mahdi.”
It was his standard prayer, the one he had prayed thousands of times over the years. It was also a secret—one he had carefully kept hidden, even from those closest to him. As a closet “Twelver,” he longed to see the Mahdi come in his lifetime. And now, he sensed, that time was drawing close.
Thirty minutes went by. Then an hour.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Hosseini did not answer but continued praying. A few moments later, there was another knock.
Annoyed, the Supreme Leader tried to ignore it and maintain his focus. When it happened a third time, however, he rose, stepped to his dresser, pulled out the top drawer, retrieved his nickel-plated revolver, and opened the bedroom door. He was so enraged he could barely breathe.
“Everyone is waiting for you, Your Excellency,” his young male aide said.
“Did I not ask to be left undisturbed?” Hosseini fumed.
The aide blanched and began to back away. “You did, but I thought . . .”
“You wicked son of a Jew!”
Hosseini shouted.
“How dare you disturb me as I enter the holy place!”
With that, Hosseini shot the man in the face.
The sound of the explosion echoed through the retreat facility. Hosseini stared at the dead man as a pool of blood formed on the hardwood floor of the hallway. Then he knelt down and dipped his hands in the blood and began to pray aloud.
“
Allahu Akbar.
Highly glorified are you, O Allah. The Prophet—peace be upon him—taught us that when we find those who are unfaithful and disobedient infidels, we must ‘kill them wherever you may come upon them,’ that we must ‘seize them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every conceivable place.’ The Prophet—peace be upon him—taught us to ‘strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be stern against them’ for ‘their final refuge is hell.’ May this sacrifice, therefore, be acceptable in your sight.”
With that, Hosseini rose, his hands dripping with warm blood, and turned to the chief of his security detail, who stood stone-faced and trembling in the hallway.
“I will come out soon,” Hosseini said calmly. “Make certain my way is not obstructed.”
With that, the Supreme Leader entered the bedroom alone. The security chief shut the door behind him. Hosseini then returned to his prayer rug, knelt again facing Mecca, and bowed down.
Without warning, a blazing light as if from the sun itself filled the room. Hosseini was stunned, wondering what this could be. Then a voice, emanating from the center of the light, began to speak.
“Very good, my child. I am pleased with your sacrifice.”
The room grew cold.
“The hour of my appearance is close at hand. With blood and fire I shall be revealed to the world. It is time to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate the infidels—Jews and Christians, young and old, men, women, and children.”
This was the moment Hosseini had been waiting for, he knew, the moment for which he had prayed all of his life. But he had never imagined it like this. He was hearing the actual voice of
Sahab az-Zaman
, the Lord of the Age. The Twelfth Imam himself was speaking directly to him, and every fiber of Hosseini’s being trembled in excitement and in fear.
“Now, listen closely to what I am about to tell you. Get ready; be prepared. And do not hesitate for a single moment to carry out my commands.”
“Yes, my Lord,” Hosseini cried. “Thank you, my Master.”
“You shall complete the weapons and test them immediately. When I finish roaming the earth and all is set into place, we will proceed to annihilate the Little Satan first and all the Zionists with it. This is your good and acceptable act of worship to me. You must bring to me the blood of the Jews on the altar of Islam. You must wipe the ugly, cancerous stain of Israel from the map and from the heart of the Islamic caliphate. This is right and just, but it is only the first step. Do not be distracted or confused. This is not the ultimate objective. I have chosen you above all others not simply to destroy the Little Satan, for this is too small a thing. The main objective is to destroy the Great Satan—and I mean destroy entirely. Annihilate. Extinguish. Obliterate. Vaporize. In the blink of an eye. Before they know what has hit them. The Americans are a crumbling tower. A dying empire. A sinking ship. And their time has come.”
The Twelfth Imam then instructed Hosseini to meet with his security cabinet, consisting of President Ahmed Darazi, Defense Minister Faridzadeh, and General Mohsen Jazini, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, already gathered and waiting for him in the retreat’s main dining room.
“Each of you must carefully select four deputies, forming a group of twenty. These must be men of honor and courage, like yourselves. They must be men willing to die for my sake, for the sake of Allah. The twenty of you will form my inner circle and be my most-trusted advisors. You will meet weekly. You will establish secure communications. You will then recruit 293 additional disciples—some mullahs you trust, but mostly military commanders and leaders of business and industry. You must find servants extraordinarily gifted in organization, administration, and warfare. You will recruit this group with haste, but never let the Group of 313 meet all together in one place. It is too dangerous. There is too much risk of infiltration or leaks. Create a cell structure. Do not let one cell know about another. Only you four can know all the details. Is this clear?”
“Yes, Master. I will do all that you say.”
“Very good, Hamid. Get ready; be prepared. Let there be no mistake—I am coming back soon.”
40
Mount Tochal, Iran
Hosseini pressed his face to the floor.
The words of the Twelfth Imam rang in his ears. He wanted to ask questions, to plead for wisdom, to say something, anything, but no words would form; no sound would come.
Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light was gone. Hosseini lay prostrate, unable to move. It seemed like only a few minutes, but later, as his breathing calmed and his heart slowed, he realized that nearly an hour had gone by. None of his aides dared check on him, of course. Nor would his guests.
Slowly Hosseini began to compose himself. He washed his hands and face, changed into fresh clothes, and stepped out of his room. He walked down the freshly mopped hallway, then turned right and went down another long hallway, past several bodyguards stationed at strategic points, and entered the main dining room. There he was greeted by his security cabinet, all of whom instantly rose to their feet.
“Please, gentlemen, be seated,” the Supreme Leader said, taking a seat at the head of the table.
“I have known the three of you for many years,” he began. “I have sought your counsel and relied on you many times. Now I need your best assessment. Ali, we will begin with you.”
Hosseini paused. He knew he needed to explain to his colleagues what had just happened. But first he needed to gather his thoughts and process it for himself.
“Thank you, Your Excellency,” Defense Minister Ali Faridzadeh began. “Last month you asked me to go back to my team and ask many questions, to press the scientists for more clarity. This I have done.”
“And what have you found?”
“We are ready, Your Excellency.”
“You are certain?”
“Absolutely.”
“The uranium is sufficiently enriched?”
“Most of the last batch was 97.4 percent,” Faridzadeh said. “Some came in at 95.9 percent. Both are sufficient, and we continue to make improvements.”
“How many warheads could you build with that?”
“We have already finished nine.”
Hosseini was taken aback by the defense minister’s impressive report. “They are already built?”
“Yes, Your Excellency—thanks be to Allah—nine of them are ready to be detonated. My men should have another six done by the end of the month.”
“This is welcome news, indeed,” the Supreme Leader said. “Which design did you use? The one from Pyongyang?”
“No, Your Excellency. In the end, we chose A. Q. Khan’s design.”
“Why?”
“The data from the North Korean tests were disappointing, Your Excellency,” Faridzadeh explained. “The warheads the North Koreans tested certainly detonated. But the yields were not that impressive.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Pyongyang’s bomb could annihilate several city blocks, but we don’t believe they could take out a city. And this was one of your stated objectives, the capacity to take out all or most of a city with a single weapon.”
“Yes, we must achieve this,” Hosseini pressed. “You’re certain the North Korean plans are not sufficient?”
“I am not a physicist, as you know, Your Excellency,” the defense minister replied. “But my top man has pored over the data from every angle, and he is simply not convinced the North Korean design has been perfected to the point that we’d want to risk the future of our own country on it.”
“But we paid so much for it,” Hosseini said.
“We did, Your Excellency. But what the North Koreans sold us was effectively worthless in comparison to what we bought from A. Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program.”
“But we hardly paid Dr. Khan anything.”
“Nevertheless,” the minister said, “Islamabad has built 162 warheads to date based on Khan’s design. They’ve tested their warheads multiple times. The yields are absolutely enormous. So we know the design works. Now we simply need to test what we have built and make sure we have followed his impressive design to the letter.”
“And you are ready to test?”
“Almost, Your Excellency,” the defense minister said.
“How soon?” Hosseini asked, leaning forward. “Could you be ready by summer?”
Faridzadeh could not suppress a smile. “
Inshallah
, we should be ready by next month.”
The Supreme Leader was ecstatic. He was tempted to drop to his knees and offer Allah a prayer of thanksgiving right there and then. But he did not smile. He did not visibly react. There were still too many risks, too many variables, too many unknowns, too many things that could go wrong. Still, they were almost there. After so many years and so many setbacks, they were almost ready. And just in time, for the coming of the Mahdi was at hand.
“Do I have authorization to proceed with the test?” the defense minister asked.
Hosseini did not answer immediately. He rose and walked to the window, where he stood looking down at the lights of Tehran. He wanted to say yes, of course. But the stakes could not be higher. The testing of an Iranian nuclear warhead would alert the world that they were ready. The charade that they were simply running a civilian nuclear power program would be over. Talks at the U.N. over the possibility of imposing new international sanctions were already under way. For now, their allies in Moscow and Beijing were standing firm against such sanctions. But a nuclear weapons test could radically change that dynamic. And what if the first warhead failed? Or what if it was less impressive than they wanted or needed? They would have lost the critical element of surprise. Yet in light of the vision he had just experienced, could he afford any delay? Had he not been commanded to “get ready; be prepared”?
“What would the Americans do in reaction to such a test?” he asked President Darazi as he continued to gaze at the twinkling lights in the valley.
“Nothing, Your Excellency,” the president replied.
Hosseini turned. “Are you really willing to bet your life on that, Ahmed?”
“I am, sir.”
“Why?”
“Your Excellency, the Americans are a paper tiger,” Darazi argued. “They are an empire beginning to implode. Their economy is bleeding. Their deficit is skyrocketing. They’re fighting two wars in the Middle East—at a cost of about $12 billion a month—two wars that most Americans don’t want. Their Congress is focused on jobs and health care and reenergizing their economy. President Jackson is committed to pulling U.S. forces out of the region as rapidly as possible. And he has signed an executive order declaring that the U.S. will never use nuclear weapons against any other nation—even if attacked first. Believe me, Your Excellency, regardless of what they are saying about keeping their military option ‘on the table’ with regard to ‘the Iran issue,’ we needn’t worry about a preemptive strike from the Americans. It is never going to happen. Not under this president. Not under this Congress.”
The Supreme Leader hoped Darazi’s analysis was accurate. It was certainly consistent with his own perspective and with the vision he had just received. But the Americans were not the only threat. He looked the president in the eye and asked, “What about the Zionists? What will they do?”
“Of that, Your Excellency, I’m not so sure,” Darazi conceded. “We all know Prime Minister Naphtali is a warmonger. He is oppressing the Palestinians. He is terrorizing Lebanon. He is humiliating the Egyptians and the Jordanians. He is playing the Syrians for fools. The good news is Naphtali’s government is headed for a train wreck with the White House. Relations between the two countries are souring rapidly.”
At that, however, the Supreme Leader pushed back. “How can you say that, Ahmed? Yes, Jackson and Naphtali have had a few spats. But so what? Naphtali still has Congress in his pocket, no? He still has the Jewish lobby, correct? Israel is still getting $3 billion a year in American military aid, true? A lovers’ quarrel is not a train wreck, Ahmed.”
“With all due respect, Your Excellency,” the president countered, “this is not a lovers’ quarrel. I believe we are witnessing a fundamental rupture between these two governments. Could it change? Yes. Could President Jackson be defeated in the next election? Of course. But for right now, the foreign policy of the United States is run by President William Jackson—a man who fundamentally believes he must negotiate with us, can negotiate with us, and will be successful in the process. He won’t attack us militarily while he’s trying to engage us diplomatically. What’s more, I believe he will do everything in his power to keep the Israelis from attacking us.”
The Supreme Leader considered that for a few moments. He liked Darazi. The president was a true Twelver, devoted in every respect to the coming of the Twelfth Imam, and thus useful in many ways. Still, Hosseini did not entirely trust the man’s geopolitical instincts.
Just then an aide to General Jazini rushed into the room and handed the commander a note.
“What is it?” the Supreme Leader asked, seeing Jazini’s face grow ashen.
“It is the Israelis, Your Excellency,” Jazini said.
Hosseini braced himself. “What have they done?”
“You’re not going to believe this.” Jazini proceeded to read the entire classified cable aloud.
“Russian intelligence indicates massive Israeli war game under way. Stop. Four hundred warplanes have been launched. Stop. Inbound for Greek isles for practice bombing, strafing runs. Stop. Repeat of their 2008 drill, but four times as large. Stop. FSB warns Jerusalem making final preparations for war. Stop. Please advise. Stop.”
Faridzadeh and Darazi gasped.
Hosseini was not surprised. Nor was he rattled like the others. It was time, he realized, to share with the men the vision he had just experienced and the message he had received.
“Gentlemen, we need not fear the Israelis, and let me tell you why,” the Ayatollah began. “Just before coming into this meeting, I received a message directly from the Twelfth Imam. In a vision not fifty yards from this room, he told me that the time for his appearance has come. The time of the extermination of the Israelis and the Americans has thus come as well. The Lord of the Age has chosen you and me to act, and we must be faithful. So get out your notebooks, and allow me to explain. . . .”