The Gulf Back to the Bullets

By Michael S. Serrill

Bullets flew again last week over the Persian Gulf along with bombs, rockets and, oddly, prospects for peace. One of the ironies of the seemingly endless Iran-Iraq war is that the chances for a settlement appear to improve whenever the gulf conflict threatens to fly out of control. That seemed to be the case as the week wore on: the so-called tanker war in the gulf was renewed with a vengeance, while simultaneously there was new activity on the diplomatic front. By week's end United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar was packing his bags for a trip to Iran and Iraq that could lead to a lasting cease-fire. Meanwhile, the gulf and the Strait of Hormuz were littered with blasted, battered, shell-pocked ships from a dozen nations.

As the new diplomatic moves were played out, U.S. officials criticized Iraq for heating up the war again. That untimely escalation threatens peace discussions at the U.N. and poses a greater danger than ever to U.S. naval forces, which since July 21 have been providing protection to eleven reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers. At the same time, the U.S. denounced Tehran's dilatory tactics in responding to a July 20 U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a cease-fire. The Reagan Administration even briefly threatened to seek an international arms embargo against Iran.

Iraq revived the tanker war on Aug. 29 after a 45-day lull that coincided with the U.S. military buildup and the Security Council resolution. Iraqi fighter jets swooped down over three Iranian oil facilities in widely separated locations. In the southern gulf, they set ablaze the tanker Alvand at Sirri Island as the ship was being loaded with Iranian oil. In the central gulf, they attacked an oil-loading facility on the island of Lavan. In the north they bombed and strafed the island of Farsi, used by Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a base for speedboat assaults against gulf shipping. Said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein after the first wave of air raids: "From now on we will strike them on the sea and destroy all the economic arteries that finance their aggression."

By week's end Iraq claimed to have disabled twelve "maritime targets," though independent sources could confirm only seven hits, one of them a small supply boat on which two crewmen were killed. The Iraqi air force, whose active warplanes outnumber Iran's almost 10 to 1, also bombed and set ablaze the main Iranian oil-processing facility on Kharg Island and attacked what a military communique described as "economic and industrial targets" around the Iranian cities of Ahwaz and Isfahan.

Tehran responded by unleashing its fleet of small speedboats armed with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers against neutral oil tankers and freighters. The speedboats, with crews of four to eight men and often no markings indicating country of origin, are Iran's chief weapon in the gulf. The boats made hit-and-run attacks against Greek, Cypriot, Italian, Spanish, South Korean and Japanese vessels. On Friday, Iran for the first time launched one of its Chinese-made Silkworm missiles from occupied Iraqi territory on the Fao peninsula. The missile plunged harmlessly into the water off a Kuwaiti beach. Most of the ships hit by Iran were sailing to or from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, which are allies of Iraq. Iran also renewed its artillery bombardment of the Iraqi city of Basra. Late in the week the ship insurers at Lloyd's of London raised war-risk premiums for vessels sailing into the Persian Gulf by 50%. Oil prices, however, remained stable.

Although Tehran threatened to include reflagged Kuwaiti ships in its attacks, two U.S.-protected convoys made their way through the gulf unmolested while the new tanker war raged around them. As they proceeded, yet another flotilla of U.S. warships sailed into the Gulf of Oman. The arrival of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri and five escort vessels brought the total U.S. naval force in the region to 46 ships. The Western armada may soon exceed 60 ships when additional British and French vessels arrive. And last week Italy announced that it was sending a naval task force to the gulf to protect its merchant shipping.

In Washington, the reaction to the Iraqi resumption of the tanker war was thinly disguised exasperation. After the initial Iraqi air attacks, Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, summoned Iraqi Ambassador Nazir Hamdoon to his office for a firm dressing down. Under Secretary of State Michael Armacost later summed up the U.S. view by saying the Iraqi action was "very regrettable, extremely unfortunate." The timing of the raids was "deplorable," he said, both because they create a new threat to U.S. warships in the gulf and because they came at a moment when Iran had for the first time begun sending signals that it might cooperate with the U.N. effort to broker a cease-fire.

Washington had plenty of reasons to be impatient with Baghad. After all, it was Iraq that started the war by attacking Iran in 1980, and it was Iraq that expanded the fighting into the Persian Gulf in 1984 by initiating the tanker war, thus endangering international oil shipments. The U.S. became an inadvertent victim of the last phase of the tanker war when on May 17 an Iraqi Exocet missile hit the cruiser U.S.S. Stark, killing 37 American sailors. The incident increased Administration resolve to protect neutral shipping in the gulf by reflagging and escorting the Kuwaiti tankers. Said one U.S. official in Washington: "Iraq owes us in the gulf. It owes us the U.S.S. Stark."

Though Baghdad claims otherwise, the Iraqi sorties have only temporarily and sporadically impeded Iran's oil shipments and have not hampered its ability to finance the conflict. Moreover, by renewing the tanker war now, said Assistant Secretary Murphy, Iraq is giving up the moral high ground to the Iranians, who can claim that Iraq's actions threaten the U.N. peace effort.

American critics of the Iraqi attacks received strong backing from London. Foreign Minister Sir Geoffrey Howe said he told Iraq's charge d'affaires in London that Britain was "dismayed" at the "dangerous escalation" of the war. When the charge, Abdul Said, responded that Iraq supported the U.N. peace effort, Howe told him that Baghdad should see that its actions "meet its words."

If the message from Europe was clear, the public word from Washington ended up sounding confused and ambivalent. Even while denouncing the Iraqi escalation, Armacost added that it was "understandable" in terms of Baghdad's military interests. This expression of sympathy was anonymously echoed by other officials in both the State Department and the Pentagon. One U.S. Government observer pointed out that Baghdad's air superiority "is the only advantage Iraq has in the war. If they lose this, their whole country goes up." A Pentagon source said, "This is realpolitik at its crassest, but anything that puts pressure on Iran is good, and that specifically includes air strikes at petroleum and economic targets."

For the record, State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley insisted that the U.S. is neutral in the war and that the Iraqi attacks were indeed to be deplored. Baghdad responded belligerently, issuing a statement early in the week that it found the U.S. protest to be "regrettable and astonishing." As Ismat Kittani, Iraqi Ambassador to the U.N., said, "The question is, How long would you expect Iraq to be restrained while Iran has no intention of restraining its efforts?" Ambassador Hamdoon told the New York Times, "Iraq never promised anybody we were going to stay idle for a specific time. We share the Americans' concern, but we have the right to decide our own policy."

At the U.N., there was increasing pressure on both sides to exercise restraint. On Wednesday, Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar disclosed that he had received an invitation to visit Tehran to discuss peace. The five permanent members of the Security Council -- the U.S., Britain, France, the ; Soviet Union and China -- approved a Perez de Cuellar visit to both warring capitals, but with conditions: talks must be confined to the July 20 resolution, and there should be a complete cease-fire on land, sea and air during the Secretary-General's visit.

At the same time the Security Council agreed to extend last Friday's deadline for an Iranian response to the resolution, which calls for a cease- fire, withdrawal of both sides to their pre-1980 borders and appointment of an independent commission to assess responsibility for the war. The U.S. had said that if Iran did not agree to abide by the resolution by the deadline, it would seek a global arms embargo against the Tehran government. That threat was withdrawn last week, but U.N. Ambassador Vernon Walters warned, "If the Secretary-General returns from Tehran empty-handed, we will not hold off any longer."

The latest escalation of hostilities in the gulf may have caused enough anxiety in the chanceries of Moscow, Peking and other Security Council members to inspire new pressure for a solution to the war. The question is whether that pressure can succeed before some of the gulf's flying bullets go astray and end up drawing U.S. forces into the conflict.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and Dean Fischer/Abu Dhabi