Fear: Trump in the White House

In the summer of 2013, now a vice admiral, Harward was sent to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to become deputy central commander to Mattis. He checked into the BOQ, Bachelor Officer Quarters, worked a day, and went back to his room. All his belongings had been moved out. He was told everything had been moved to General Mattis’s house.

Harward went over to the house. He walked into the kitchen and found General Mattis there, folding Harward’s underwear.

“Sir,” Harward said, “what the fuck are you doing?”

“I did my laundry,” Mattis said. “I figured I’d do yours too.”

Harward found Mattis the most gracious, humble officer he had ever served under. Rather than introduce Harward as “my deputy,” Mattis said, “I want you to meet my co-commander.”

When Harward retired and moved to the Middle East as the chief executive of Lockheed Martin in the United Arab Emirates, he kept in touch with Mattis.

Mattis worried about the effects of the Obama administration’s failure to deter Iran.

But “if you know Jim Mattis,” Harward said, “he’s not a fan of going to war.”

In Marine lore, Iran had inflicted a wound on the Corps that had never healed and had not been answered. Iran had been behind the terrorist bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut in 1983. The attack killed 220 Marines, one of the largest single-day death tolls in the history of the Corps. Another 21 U.S. servicemen died, bringing the toll to 241—the largest terrorist attack against the U.S. before 9/11. Mattis had been a Marine Corps officer for 11 years and was a major.

As CentCom commander from 2010 to 2013, according to one senior aide, Mattis believed that Iran “remained the greatest threat to the United States interests in the Middle East.” He was concerned that the Israelis were going to strike the Iranian nuclear facilities and pull the United States into the conflict.

Mattis also believed the United States did not have enough military force in the region and did not have robust rules of engagement. He wrote a memo to President Obama through Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta seeking more authority to respond to Iranian provocations. He was worried that the Iranians might mine international waters and create an incident at sea that could escalate.

Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, answered Mattis. A memo, soon referred to as “the Donilon memo,” directed that under no circumstances would Mattis take any action against Iran for mining international waters unless the mine was effectively dropped in the path of a U.S. warship and presented an imminent danger to the ship. The Donilon memo would be one of the first orders Mattis rescinded when he became secretary of defense.

Mattis continued to beat the drum on Iran. He found the war plan for Iran insufficient. It was all aviation dependent; all air power. It did not have a broad joint-force plan. The plan had five strike options—first against small Iranian boats, another against ballistic missiles, another against other weapons systems and another for an invasion.

“Strike Option Five” was the plan for destroying the Iranian nuclear program.

Mattis wrote a scathing memo to the chief of naval operations saying your Navy is completely unprepared for conflict in the Persian Gulf.

Panetta told Mattis his stance on Iran put him in real trouble with the Obama White House. Give me something to counter that perception, he asked.

“I get paid to give my best military advice,” Mattis replied. “They make the policy decisions. I’m not going to change what I think to placate them. If I don’t have their confidence, then I go.”

And go he did. Mattis was relieved five months early, and when he left in March 2013, he shredded what he called “a big smartbook,” almost a foot thick, containing all his key memos, documents, notes, issue summaries, and memory joggers. For someone who reveled in history, he didn’t choose to keep any of it for others.

As part of his end-of-tour report Mattis attached a 15-page strategy for Iran because he didn’t believe the Obama administration had one. Though he noted that Obama had made several statements on Iran, Mattis remarked, “Presidential speeches are not a policy.”

His draft strategy focused on confronting and not tolerating Iran’s destabilizing actions through Hezbollah, the Quds Force operations, and their actions in Iraq to undermine the U.S. It was designed to reestablish U.S. military credibility. The second part was a long-term engagement plan to shape Iranian public opinion.

With Mattis out the door, no one cared about his views on Iran. When he was nominated as secretary, there was a sudden run on the plan and copies could not be made fast enough. The question was, did Mattis’s appointment as secretary of defense in a hawkish Trump presidency mean a likely military conflict with Iran?

At the suggestion of former secretary of state James A. Baker III and former defense secretary Robert Gates, Trump met with Rex Tillerson, 64, the CEO of Exxon for the past decade.