in engagement with Iraq since 1977, the longstanding U.S.-Iran alliance effectively rendered this impossible. After the dramatic break in Iran–United States relations, however, both American and Iraqi officials made a number of positive gestures towards one another; notably, Saddam publicly condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and on April 10 Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs David D. Newsom offered "to resume diplomatic relations with Iraq at any time." Saddam later stated that Iraq had accepted Newsom's offer shortly before the outbreak of the war, but "when the war started, and to avoid misinterpretation, we postponed the establishment of relations." In another widely publicized remark, Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski told a television interviewer on April 14 that "We see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States and Iraq ... we do not feel that American–Iraq relations need to be frozen in antagonism." Moreover, the CIA—desperate for intelligence on Iran—maintained contacts with Iranian opposition figures including Shapour Bakhtiar and Gholam Ali Oveissi, who were themselves in touch with Iraqi officials and had encouraged Saddam to invade. Although there is no evidence either Bakhtiar or Oveissi were acting at the behest of the U.S., Iranian awareness of such contacts through documents seized in the U.S. embassy fueled suspicion. The July 9 Nojeh coup plot, a failed military coup d'état against Khomeini funded by Iraqi intelligence through Bakhtiar, solidified the Iranian view that the U.S. and Iraq were conspiring to reverse the Iranian Revolution. Bakhtiar falsely told the plotters that their efforts had the "blessing" of America, but there was no U.S. involvement. After a peak earlier in 1980, Saddam reduced bilateral tensions with Iran leading up to the coup attempt, perhaps seeing a successful coup as an alternative to war. In August, Saddam made a trip to Saudi Arabia in which King Khalid pledged Saudi support for an invasion of Iran, which Bryan R. Gibson commented was "a very significant gesture, especially in light of the closeness of American–Saudi relations." United States Secretary of State Alexander Haig told Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, that it was during this visit that "President Carter gave the Iraqis a green light to launch the war against Iran through [Crown Prince] Fahd," but at a 2008 conference several academics and former U.S. officials questioned the veracity of this assertion as well as the motives of both Haig and Fahd in promulgating it.