Mystery Mines

By William E. Smith

The U.S. sends helicopters to the Red Sea

It was an extraordinary performance, even by the standards of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Late last week the Iranian leader issued a statement denouncing his own state radio for applauding the unidentified terrorists who had planted mines in the Red Sea. Radio Tehran had lavishly praised that action, declaring: "All the arrogant powers are helpless, unable to save the dozens of ships facing destruction in the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea every day . . . Now Washington, Paris and London will not be able to find a secure place to stand in pursuing their scornful goals."

But Khomeini was not having any of it. He denounced the Red Sea mining, for which the shadowy Islamic Jihad organization had claimed responsibility, and he seized the opportunity to deny that his government had been involved in any recent airplane hijackings. Declared Khomeini: "How could we support something that is against world feelings, against Islam and against reason?" He added ominously that "serious measures should be taken in order to stop unsound statements on the national radio that defame Iran."

Khomeini's comments added fuel to speculation about conflict within the Iranian leadership over the country's costly war with Iraq, which took a more serious turn last week when Iraq claimed that it had attacked and destroyed several Iranian jets and warships in the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf. But Khomeini's remarks did nothing to resolve the mystery of the Red Sea mines. By last week at least 15 ships had experienced some sort of explosion as they plied the waters of the Red Sea on their way to or from the Suez Canal (see map), and there no longer seemed to be any doubt that sabotage was involved. Perplexed by the implicit threat to shipping in the Suez Canal, which his country controls, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak appealed to the U.S., Britain and France for help, not only to clear the threatened shipping lanes but to solve the mystery. By week's end American Sea Stallion helicopters and British and French minesweepers were on their way to the trouble zone.

So far, the only suspect to have confessed was Islamic Jihad, the fanatical organization that admitted causing much of last year's terror in Beirut, including the April 18 car bombing of the U.S. embassy and the Oct. 23 attacks on American and French military facilities outside the Lebanese capital. Two weeks ago, a clandes tine radio station in Lebanon claimed that Islamic Jihad had planted 190 mines along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez.

The exact nature of the organization remains murky; indeed, many experts doubt that it really exists as a cohesive entity. "It's very mysterious," said a Western diplomat in the gulf last week. "It's not really one group at all, but an umbrella name for the work done by any number of smaller groups." Taken together, the units appear to work with the aid and support of Iran, but not as a single body.

More important, many Western experts doubt whether a terrorist organization could on its own carry out a task as logistically difficult as planting mines along the length of the Red Sea. Says a diplomat in the gulf: "Mine laying is beyond the capabilities of the usual terrorist group. A government has to be involved, but no government is going to take responsibility for this sort of terrorism." Speculation quickly centered on two radical Islamic nations with reasons of their own to disrupt Western shipping and embarrass Egypt: Iran and Libya.

Locked into its no-win war with Iraq for almost four years, Iran has been either unable or unwilling to launch a land offensive that has been expected since March. Iraq, deprived of its export facilities in the gulf, has been unable to transport enough oil over its remaining outlet via Turkey to meet its quotas under the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Work is expected to begin soon on two pipeline projects, including one that would cut across Jordan to the port of Aqaba, and another that would join with Saudi Arabia's petroline and carry Iraqi oil to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Iraqi officials talk of finishing one or both projects within 18 months. Together with the existing line that carries 1 million bbl. a day of Iraqi crude through Turkey, these pipelines would give Iraq an export capacity of 2.5 million bbl. a day, twice its present OPEC quota.

Thus the mining of the Red Sea could be interpreted as a warning to Iraq and its closest Arab allies, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. The Saudis are cooperating with Iraq in the pipeline project as well as helping fund the Iraqi war effort. Jordan helps Iraq buy arms throughout the world, and then allows the weapons to be shipped through Jordan to Iraq. It also permits an estimated 90,000 bbl. of Iraqi oil a day to pass through Jordan by truck. Egypt annually sells Iraq $800 million worth of locally manufactured arms and ammunition, while acting as a middleman in securing planes, tanks and other weapons from third countries. It has also contributed 30,000 volunteers to the Iraqi armed forces.

According to disaffected Iranian officials, the decision to mine the Red Sea is an aspect of the terrorism to which Iran is resorting in the face of military weakness and domestic troubles. The country confronts increasing difficulty in buying arms on the world market, partly because the U.S. has made an effort during the past two years to stop the flow of weapons not only from American suppliers but from U.S. allies as well. As a result, Iran today is manufacturing more and more of its own crude weaponry. There is little doubt it has the ability to make floating mines.

Egypt is also suspicious of its troublesome neighbor to the west, Libya. In April, several Libyan agents were captured, while trying to slip into Egypt. According to Egyptian authorities, the Libyans admitted that their mission had been to locate targets for Libyan sabotage. In another incident, a Libyan pilot defected to Egypt several months ago with his MiG-23. He told the Egyptians that he had been training for an attack on the Aswan Dam. Such a move would be devastating, since 95% of Egypt's 46 million people are concentrated in the Nile Valley. The Egyptians, who consider Libyan Leader Muammar Gaddafi to be capable of anything, think he may reason that a threat to Red Sea shipping would bolster Libya's lagging oil exports.

But who actually planted the mines, which appeared to be centered in four clusters along the length of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez? Egyptian military experts have established that several Iranian ships and one Libyan vessel passed through the Red Sea not long before the explosions began. Interestingly, the Libyan ship is known to have sailed through the Red Sea from north to south, then reversed its course near Djibouti and returned to the north. On July 9, only a few days after the Libyan ship entered the Red Sea, the explosion occurred, damaging a Soviet container ship just five miles south of the canal. Since then, at least 14 more vessels have been hit, though overall damage has been light. The only apparent fatality occurred when a seaman disappeared and was presumed dead in an explosion aboard the Liberian-registered Oceanic Energy last week, but Western officials were not certain that this particular blast had been caused by a mine.

From the beginning, Egyptian officials were embarrassed by the explosions and tried to minimize their importance. They knew that their six antiquated minesweepers were not capable of clearing the entire Red Sea of mines, but they were also reluctant to call on the U.S. and other Western powers for help in solving the problem. As late as last week, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defense, Field Marshal Abdel Halim Abu Ghazala, was insisting that the explosive devices, which he refused to call mines, "were not designed to destroy ships but to create confusion and make noise." Egyptian newspapers pointed out that traffic using the canal had remained constant at about 60 ships a day. But the problem was still unresolved. Nobody knew the number or nature of the mines involved, or whether they possessed timing devices that would cause explosions over a period of weeks or even months. As a Western diplomat in Cairo put it, "The Egyptians have not even been able to recover a piece of a mine, much less an intact one. So the mystery surrounding them and who planted them remains."

By week's end an international military operation was under way. Britain was sending four minesweepers and a support vessel, with a total of about 200 men, and France was sending two minesweepers and a support ship, in addition to three warships stationed in Djibouti. The U.S. had sent a 15-man team of mine-warfare experts two weeks ago, and last week dispatched four Sea Stallion helicopters, support equipment and about 200 men to join the search. Their mission was not just to destroy the mines but to find and analyze them first. A Sea Stallion, flying at an altitude of 200 to 300 feet, uses a "sled" to tow a sonar detecting system through the water. Once a suspected mine is located, the unit sends divers down to take a look at the object.

With some luck, the divers are able to retrieve the mine and examine it for clues to its origin. While the Egyptians and their allies were preoccupied with the mystery of the Red Sea mines, repercussions from the gulf war were being felt throughout the region. In the third hijacking involving Iranians since June, two young opponents of the Khomeini regime commandeered an Iran Air jetliner and ordered it flown to Cairo and Rome, where they gave themselves up. In the gulf, after a respite of about four weeks, the Iraqis resumed the tanker war by hitting a Greek ship with an Exocet missile. As in the case of the explosions in the Red Sea, the renewed fighting served as a reminder to the world that the region's belligerents do not hesitate to draw outsiders into their conflicts. --By William E. Smith. Reported by Philip Finnegan/Cairo and Barry Hillenbrand/Bahrain

With reporting by Philip Finnegan, Barry Hillenbrand