President Trump edited his speech addressing the nation right until he stepped up to the lectern at the White House. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times
President Trump edited his speech addressing the nation right until he stepped up to the lectern at the White House. Photo / Doug Mills, The New York Times
Intelligence that foreshadowed the Iranian attack set off a tense, often confusing afternoon in the White House Situation Room.
The alert came to the White House shortly after 2pm Tuesday, a flash message from US spy agencies that officials sometimes call a "squawk." In the coming hours, it warned, anIranian attack on American troops was almost certain.
A blizzard of potential threats had already come throughout the day — of attacks with missiles and rockets, of terrorist strikes against Americans elsewhere in the Middle East, even one warning that hundreds of Iran-backed militia fighters might try to assault Ain al-Asad Air Base, a sprawling compound in Iraq's western desert.
But the specificity of the afternoon's latest warning sent Vice President Mike Pence and Robert O'Brien, the White House national security adviser, to the basement of the West Wing, where aides were assembling in the Situation Room. President Donald Trump joined shortly after wrapping up a meeting with the Greek prime minister.
Three hours later, a hail of ballistic missiles launched from Iran crashed into two bases in Iraq, including Ain al-Asad, where roughly 1,000 American troops are stationed. The strikes capped a frenetic day filled with confusion and misinformation, where at times it appeared that a dangerous military escalation could lead to a broader war. Trump spent hours with his aides monitoring the latest threats. Military planners considered options to retaliate if Iran killed American troops.
Keep up to date with the day's biggest stories
Sign up to our daily curated newsletter for the day's top stories straight to your inbox.
The early warning provided by intelligence helps explain in part why the missiles exacted a negligible toll, destroying only evacuated aircraft hangars as they slammed into the desert sand in barren stretches of the base. No Americans or Iraqis were killed or wounded, and Trump, who indicated to advisers he would prefer to avoid further engagement, was relieved.
Afterward, the president and vice president spoke to Democratic and Republican congressional leaders, and some urged Trump to try to dampen the crisis.
This account of the tense hours surrounding Tuesday's attacks is based on interviews with current and former American officials and military personnel in both Washington and Iraq.
As it turned out, the missile strikes might end up being a bloodless close to the latest chapter in America's simmering, four-decade conflict with Iran. Trump declared Wednesday that Iran "appears to be standing down" after days of heightened tensions since the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, although few who closely follow the dynamics of the United States' relationship with Iran foresee a peaceful future.
"If this is indeed the sum total of Iran's response, it is a big signal of de-escalation that we should gratefully receive," said Kirsten Fontenrose, who handled Middle East issues on the National Security Council earlier in the Trump administration.
Bracing for retaliation
Hours before officials at the White House and Pentagon arrived at their desks Tuesday, American troops in Iraq were preparing for Iran's retaliation to avenge the death of the general.
Spy satellites had been tracking the movements of Iran's arsenal of missile launchers, and communications among Iranian military leaders intercepted by the National Security Agency had indicated that the response to Soleimani's killing might come that day.
Ain al-Asad base in Iraq's Anbar province was the focus of numerous vague threat reports, including one warning that hundreds of fighters from Kataib Hezbollah, an Iraqi militia trained and equipped by Iran, might launch a frontal assault on the base.
The base was relatively vulnerable; no Patriot anti-missile systems protected it, according to an American military official. They had been deployed to other countries in the Middle East deemed more susceptible to Iranian missile attacks. So American commanders prepared to partly evacuate the base and assigned most other remaining forces to hardened shelters to ride out whatever attack would come.
By morning in Washington, the intelligence was still vague enough that White House officials decided to keep Trump's planned schedule, including the meeting with the prime minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Administration officials resumed their defense of Soleimani's killing amid increasing criticism that they lacked, or were unwilling to share, the intelligence that they said prompted the strike. At the State Department, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters at a packed news conference that killing Soleimani "was the right decision."
A billboard of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Tehran. Photo / Arash Khamooshi, The New York Times
Days earlier, he had said the killing had been necessary to prevent "imminent" attacks. On Tuesday morning, he gave a different message, citing the death of an American contractor killed in late December when Iranian-backed Shiite militias fired rockets at a military base in Iraq.
"If you're looking for imminence, you need to look no further than the days that led up to the strike that was taken against Soleimani," Pompeo said.
Hours later, as Trump met with Mitsotakis, the White House received the "squawk" alert about a likely missile strike. Pence and O'Brien led the initial discussion in the Situation Room about how to confront the threat, assessing the intelligence about the Iranians' likely targets.
Upstairs inside the Oval Office, Trump sat beside Mitsotakis as reporters peppered him with questions about the Iran crisis. The president hedged about threats he had made days earlier that the United States might consider targeting Iranian cultural sites — but he maintained a menacing tone.
"If Iran does anything that they shouldn't be doing, they're going to be suffering the consequences, and very strongly," Trump said. "We're totally prepared."
Confusion and misinformation
After the brief news conference ended, Trump descended several flights of stairs to the Situation Room.
With sandwiches piled on a sideboard in the room, the group that advised the president at different times throughout the day included a handful of seasoned national security officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, an Army veteran of nearly 40 years; Keith Kellogg, a retired Army lieutenant general who serves as national security adviser to Pence; and Joseph Maguire, acting director of national intelligence.
It also included Pompeo, who has become a driving force in the Trump administration's Iran policy and an advocate of what he often calls "restoring deterrence" against Tehran's aggression in the Middle East. As a forceful proponent of the Friday strike that killed Soleimani, Pompeo had played an instrumental role in bringing Trump to the crisis point.
But others around the long, rectangular table in the Situation Room had only modest foreign policy experience — including Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff and a former congressman from South Carolina; and O'Brien, who was a Los Angeles lawyer before spending 2 1/2 years as Trump's chief hostage negotiator and assumed the post of national security adviser in September.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has become a driving force in the Trump administration's Iran policy. Photo / Erin Schaff, The New York Times
Appearing on a video screen was Gina Haspel, the CIA director, who was monitoring the crisis from the agency's headquarters in northern Virginia. In the days before Soleimani's death, Haspel had advised Trump that the threat the Iranian general presented was greater than the threat of Iran's response if he was killed, according to current and former American officials. Indeed, Haspel had predicted the most likely response would be a missile strike from Iran to bases where American troops were deployed, the very situation that appeared to be playing out Tuesday afternoon.
Although Haspel took no formal position about whether to kill Soleimani, officials who listened to her analysis came away with the clear view that the CIA believed that killing him would improve — not weaken — security in the Middle East.
But at that moment days after his death, the president and his aides were confronting a flurry of conflicting information. Around 4 p.m., reports came in that a training camp north of Baghdad might have been hit. Officials at the White House and the State Department waited anxiously for the Pentagon to provide damage reports about the camp, Taji air base, where American troops are stationed. It was a false alarm, although American officials said Wednesday that they believed that several missiles fired in the barrage a day earlier were intended for the base.
As the reports about Taji came in, loudspeakers at the US Embassy in Baghdad announced that an attack could be imminent. As they had in the previous days, American and Iraqi personnel inside the compound raced toward bomb shelters.
Roughly one hour later, the first missiles bound for Ain al-Asad streaked over their heads.
A hail of missiles
At about 5:30pm in Washington, the Pentagon detected the first of what would be 16 short- and medium-range Fateh 110 and Shahab missiles, fired from three locations inside Iran.
Several slammed into Ain al-Asad but did only minimal damage. They hit a Black Hawk helicopter and a reconnaissance drone, along with parts of the air traffic control tower, according to a military official familiar with a battle damage assessment of the strike.
The attack also destroyed several tents.
Minutes later, a salvo of missiles hit an air base in Irbil, in northern Iraq, which has been a Special Operations hub for hundreds of American and other allied troops, logistics personnel and intelligence specialists throughout the fight against the Islamic State. The damage to that base was unclear, although no personnel were killed or wounded.
Why did the Iran strikes do such little damage? Trump attributed it to the "precautions taken, the dispersal of forces and an early warning system that worked very well." A senior American military official dismissed the idea that Iran had intentionally avoided killing American troops by aiming instead for uninhabited parts of the two bases.
One of the bases that was targeted, Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq, has long been a hub for American military operations. Photo / AP
Still, American officials acknowledged that Iran's leaders showed restraint in planning the missile strikes, especially after the fiery talk from Tehran after Soleimani's killing.
"We're receiving some encouraging intelligence that Iran is sending messages to those very same militias not to move against American targets or civilians. And we hope that that message continues to echo," Pence said during an interview Wednesday evening with CBS News.
After the attacks subsided, Trump and Pence made a round of calls to congressional leaders, and even some of the president's hawkish allies said that Trump should be measured in his response to the Iranian strikes.
Recounting his conversation with Trump, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he told the president, "Let's just stand down and see what happens for a few days."
Advisers also discussed whether Trump should give an address, and several aides, including Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller, as well as Pence, worked on one Wednesday morning in the hours before the president spoke on national television. More than a half-dozen drafts circulated as aides scrambled to prepare for the speech. One military official was given only 20 minutes' notice to head to the White House to stand behind Trump as he spoke in the Grand Foyer of the White House in the late morning, and the president made edits right until he stepped up to the lectern.
