Acts of Desperation

By William E. Smith

THE GULF The war on shipping heats up as Iran and Iraq widen their struggle

"The day is coming closer," Iraq's President Saddam Hussein boasted last week, when his country will have the weapons to destroy Iran's big oil terminal at Kharg Island. He was probably exaggerating Iraqi capabilities, but his words were enough to send cold chills through Reagan Administration officials, who are still pondering how to deal with this latest and most dangerous phase of the 44-month-old war between Iran and Iraq. Saddam Hussein's fighting words also marked a resumption, after a respite of five days, of the devastating tanker war in the Persian Gulf. Twenty-four hours after he spoke, Iraq announced that it had hit two "naval targets" to the southeast of Kharg Island. Iran responded almost immediately by striking and heavily damaging a Liberian-registered tanker, the Chemical Venture, off Saudi Arabia. Next day Iraq claimed to have struck and destroyed a convoy of eight coastal freighters off Iran at the northern end of the gulf.

Both Saddam Hussein and the equally desperate Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini of Iran were clearly prepared to involve not only their neighbors but the world in order to achieve their goals. Saddam Hussein, having started a war he cannot win, is resorting to tanker attacks in an effort to bring international pressure on Iran to accept a peace settlement. Khomeini wants to destroy Saddam Hussein and create in Iraq an Islamic republic modeled on Iran's own.

In reaction to the latest attacks on tankers, Lloyd's of London once again increased rates on vessels using the gulf, this time more than doubling the fee (from 3% to 7.5% of value) for ships sailing to Kharg Island. In Geneva, Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, declared: "What we are afraid of is that Lloyd's might cancel insurance for navigation in the gulf, and this would be equal to closing the Strait of Hormuz." Lloyd's denied the likelihood of such a cancellation. In any event, the world, and particularly the U.S., is nowhere near as dependent on gulf oil as it was ten or even five years ago. But a cutoff would still work a considerable hardship on Japan and several West European nations, and would undoubtedly lead to a sharp, if temporary, rise in the worldwide price of oil.

In Washington, President Reagan wrote to Saudi Arabia's King Fahd to emphasize the Administration's continuing support of Saudi Arabia and its commitment to freedom of navigation in the gulf. The President said the U.S. would back this up with military aid if requested to do so by the Saudis and their allies. The Saudis temporized, grateful for the show of support but reluctant to do anything that might further antagonize Iran's Khomeini. Apparently for the same reason, Saudi warplanes have refrained from engaging in combat with the Iranian aircraft that have attacked the gulf tankers.

At the United Nations, the gulf states introduced a Security Council resolution condemning Iran as the aggressor and threatening to invoke economic sanctions. An Iranian diplomat remarked contemptuously, "If there is anything to consider, it is the conspiracy American representatives are hatching in the region with their Arab clients." Similarly, the foreign ministers of the 21-member Arab League accused Iran of aggression--an ironic charge, in this instance, since it was the Iraqis who started firing at tankers early this year. The Arab foreign ministers also asked Japan to reduce its Iranian purchases. The Japanese, who are using leased vessels for picking up Iranian oil, refused, though Japanese shipowners later decided to curtail the traffic of their own ships to Kuwaiti and northern Saudi ports. In the meantime, the Saudis prevailed on Syria, one of the few Arab countries that has friendly relations with Iran, to try to intercede with Khomeini.

There is no reason to believe that Khomeini has changed his war aims. In London, Author Fred Halliday, an expert on the gulf, has concluded that Iran will not alter its current policy without the certainty that it can continue to export its oil. Says Halliday: "The Iranians are after one thing in this war--victory. Khomeini says that he has smashed the golden idol of the Shah, he has smashed Jimmy Carter in the hostage crisis, and now he is going to smash Saddam Hussein. I can't see him looking for any compromise that would let the West off the hook." But even before the Iranians had had a chance to reply to the Syrian envoys, the Iraqi President was making his boast in Baghdad. It is possible that , Saddam Hussein's optimism is partly based on the belief that --the Soviet Union will supply him with the SS-21 missile, an advanced weapon that has a range of several hundred miles. In any event, Saddam Hussein's declaration was a signal that a renewal of the tanker war was inevitable. It came just a day later.

The crisis poses an array of perplexing problems for the Reagan Administration, which has no love for Khomeini and very little for Saddam Hussein. With only a touch of irony, Henry Kissinger once said that from Washington's point of view, the perfect conclusion to the Iran-Iraq war would be for both sides to lose. Nonetheless, the U.S. appears to be tilting toward Iraq, if only because that country's allies include Egypt and Saudi Arabia, two of Washington's good Arab friends. One of the Reagan Administration's chief concerns is that the current impasse could curtail the oil exports not only of Iran but of Saudi Arabia and the other gulf states as well.

Thus a primary U.S. objective is to give maximum support to Saudi Arabia in dealing with the crisis. In his letter to King Fahd, President Reagan emphasized once again that the U.S. is prepared to provide naval and air power in the Saudis' defense. But, said the President, U.S. planes would need to be able to use Saudi bases. The U.S. was reported to have advised the Saudis that if a major airfield like the one at Dhahran was made available for American planes, a squadron of 24 U.S. Air Force F-15s could be in Saudi Arabia within 48 hours.

In his Tuesday night press conference, Reagan said he thought the chances of direct U.S. involvement in the gulf war were "very slight." He continued: "We have not volunteered to intervene, nor have we been asked to intervene." So far, the President added, it appeared that "the gulf states want to take care of this themselves." That was certainly true. As Saudi Arabia's Information Minister Ali Hassan al-Shaer explained last week, "We do not want trouble. The situation is very, very delicate. We do not want to extend the scale of the war."

Given the extent of the Arab states' sensitivities, the U.S. was prepared to remain on the sidelines. But in case the situation should worsen, the Administration decided to use its emergency powers to sell the Saudis at least 200 of the 1,200 Stinger antiaircraft missiles that they had requested. The Administration's previous efforts to sell Stinger missiles to both Saudi Arabia and Jordan were called off two months ago because of congressional opposition. Many lawmakers were influenced to some degree by Israel's traditional argument that the U.S. should not provide weapons to countries with whom the Israelis remain in a formal state of war. Now, the Administration believes, Congress will go along with the Saudi sale because of the threat to Western shipping in the gulf. The Saudis have been eager to buy the Stinger, a shoulder-fired weapon that has a range of about three miles and is guided to its target by a heat-seeking infrared device.

In his news conference last week, Reagan repeated the pledge that has been U.S. policy since the war began almost four years ago: "Neither we nor the Western world as such would stand by and see the strait or the Persian Gulf closed to international traffic." The U.S. is sending the aircraft carrier America to the waters just outside the gulf, where the carrier Kitty Hawk and half a dozen other ships are already standing by. But the chances are that if the U.S. is obliged to keep the Strait of Hormuz open by military means, it will do so in close cooperation with Britain and France. The U.S. would also need the support of the Arab states in the area, but so far its overtures have been met with polite refusals. Even Saddam Hussein rejects the idea of U.S. military assistance for his Arab allies, saying, "Arab strength is enough to destroy Iran."

The Ayatullah Khomeini's ebullience remains undiminished. Last week he told his commanders, "The whole world is terrified of you. You need not fear anyone. God is with you, so everything is with you." Nonetheless, there are many reports of dissatisfaction in Iran, even among some of the senior clergy who believe that the war is slowing down the Islamic revolution. There are also signs that Khomeini is using the war as a means of keeping domestic discontent under control. The danger is that if his oil exports are cut off by Iraq, he will strike at the Saudi oilfields or launch still another ground offensive against Iraq. At the same time, the Iraqi government seems genuinely pleased with the results of the tanker war thus far, claiming that it has destroyed 27 vessels since Feb. 27. As the news of new attacks reached Baghdad last week, a high Iraqi official declared, "Let the Iranians lose their tempers and attack other shipping in the gulf. This will only push the Iranians into a dead end." --By William E. Smith. Reported by Barry Hillenbrand/Jidda and Barrett Seaman/ Washington

With reporting by Barry Hillenbrand, Barrett Seaman