Iran Radicals Tricked U.S., Inquiry Finds : Weapons Were Sold to Group That Included Revolutionary Guards

President Reagan, in authorizing the sale of arms to Iran, fell victim to a monumental deception in which agents of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s radical regime tricked the Administration into believing that they were moderates, then persistently reneged on their promises, the final report of the Iran-Contra committees concluded Wednesday.

The 427-page majority report strongly contradicts the President’s oft-repeated claim that the unpopular Iran arms sale was justified as a strategic opening by the United States to moderates who were seeking to overthrow the radical elements in control in Tehran.

Instead, it discloses for the first time that the United States was selling highly valued American weapons to a political consortium including the radical Revolutionary Guards and headed by Iranian Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani, a confidant of the ayatollah.

Reagan Administration officials apparently were deceived not only about the identity of the Iranians, but also about their motives. The committee found no evidence that the Iranians were truly interested in better ties with Washington, but instead concluded that they were motivated by a hunger for U.S. weapons and--as the negotiations continued--by a quest for important diplomatic concessions from the United States.

Moreover, the White House continued to ship arms to the Iranians even though they consistently failed to fulfill pledges to obtain the release of all American hostages in Lebanon. Although three hostages were freed, more Americans were seized during the period of U.S.-Iranian negotiations--including Frank H. Reed, believed to have been captured on Sept. 9, 1986, by one of the same men with whom the White House was dealing.

In short, the committee’s 18-member majority endorsed the conclusion of Secretary of State George P. Shultz, who declared that “our guys . . . they got taken to the cleaners.”

The President is portrayed in the report as a man consumed by his passion to obtain the release of the hostages--an emotion that made him extremely vulnerable to Iranian blackmail. “The Iranians preyed on the President’s vulnerability with threats to kill the hostages if the arms sales stopped,” the report concluded.

North Termed Overzealous

Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, the former White House aide and star witness of the Iran-Contra hearings, is described as an overzealous presidential adviser who frequently ignored whatever doubts he had about the Iranians because of his strong desire to divert the arms sale profits to his favorite cause: the Nicaraguan rebels.

Whenever the arms initiative appeared to be in trouble, the report said, North advocated more concessions to Iran and reminded the President that his failure to continue it might cost the lives of American hostages. In fact, the report notes that North was advocating the diversion as early as December, 1985--three months before it was approved by his boss, then-National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter.

The committee also found new evidence that North favored making two diplomatic concessions to the Iranians that were contrary to U.S. policy: bringing pressure on Kuwait to release 17 Daawa terrorists, who had been convicted in an attack on the U.S. Embassy there, and advocating the ouster of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

‘No Price Seemed Too High’

“Concessions that the Administration was unwilling even to consider in 1985, it made in 1986,” the report said. “No price seemed too high to North and Poindexter, not even promises to help overthrow the government of Iraq or to pressure Kuwait into releasing the murderous Daawa terrorists.”

From the start, Administration officials had reason to believe that they were dealing with radicals, not Iranian moderates. When no hostages were released after the Aug. 20, 1985, Israeli shipment of TOW missiles to Tehran, Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iran-U.S. go-between, said the weapons had fallen into the hands of the leader of the radical Revolutionary Guards.

The U.S. willingness to continue arms shipments after their initial failure to gain release of the hostages sent a message to Iran, which the committee summed up as: “All U.S. positions and principles were negotiable and breaches by Iran went unpunished.”

Two Iranians who conferred with the Americans--including the so-called Second Channel, who replaced Ghorbanifar as go-between--were also known by American officials to be members of the Revolutionary Guards. The Second Channel has been identified elsewhere as Ali Bahramani, nephew of Rafsanjani.

But these signs of radical involvement were ignored. “The President was never told that the United States was arming the Revolutionary Guards,” the report said.

At a meeting in Germany on Oct. 29, 1986, the Second Channel finally explained the true composition of the Iranian group with whom the Administration had been dealing.

Even before the arms initiative began, he said, Rafsanjani had obtained backing for it from all political factions in the country, including the radicals. It was what he called an astute political move by the parliamentary Speaker to ensure that it “would not be a failure and all parties were involved so there would not be internal war.”

Administration Duped

As a result, the report said, the Second Channel represented the very same people who had frustrated the Americans in their dealings through Ghorbanifar with the First Channel. Thus, the Administration had been duped by the Iranians into continuing the arms shipments in the belief that the Second Channel would be more cooperative than the First Channel.

As for the promises that the Iranians failed to keep, the committees listed these:

--”At least four hostages were to be released in September, 1985, after Israel shipped the Hawk missiles, but none was.”

--”All of the hostages were to be released in November (1985) after Israel shipped the Hawk missiles, but none was.”

--”All of the hostages were to be released when the United States completed the delivery of the Hawk parts in 1986, but only one was.”

--”The Iranians were to release one hostage and to exert best efforts to release another after the United States shipped 500 more TOWs in October, 1986. Only one was released, while the Iranians demanded additional weapons before they made any effort to release a second.”

However, the Americans were no more trustworthy than the Iranians, the committees said. They noted that the Administration, while trying to promote trust, was overcharging the Iranians to fund the Contras. North even bragged about lying to the Iranians.

Schemes Repeatedly Botched

Nor were talks with the Iranians the only operation bungled in the Iran-Contra affair. The committees described at length how officials of “the enterprise”--the government-directed, private covert operations unit at the heart of the Iran-Contra affair--repeatedly botched all of their grand schemes.

“They were the gang that couldn’t shoot straight,” Senate committee counsel Arthur L. Liman said.

But the panels said the repeated failures should not obscure the frightening implications raised by North and then-CIA Director William J. Casey’s dreams of creating a private network, free of congressional strictures or scrutiny, that would carry out secret operations around the world.

” . . . the committees can only conjecture, with apprehension, what other controlled covert activities on behalf of the United States lay in store,” they said.

The report described with no small degree of irony the strange standards that Poindexter and North employed in their efforts to keep their dealings from becoming public.

Even as they kept Congress and top Administration officials in the dark, they shared their secrets with an odd array of people, including Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman “who flunked every polygraph test administered by the U.S. government”; Iranian officials, “who daily denounced the United States,” and the Revolutionary Guards.