The Gulf Tangling with Tehran

By William R. Doerner

The warning issued by U.S. Navy Captain James Chandler could hardly have been plainer. If the Iranian patrol boat Joshan approached any closer to the U.S. guided-missile cruiser Wainwright, Chandler warned the Iranian craft by radio, "it is my intention to sink you." The Joshan's reply came quickly in the form of a deadly antiship missile. Chandler immediately ordered his crew to fire a hail of aluminum chaff into the air, which deflected the missile by confusing its radar guidance system. Moments later a second ship in the U.S. gulf convoy, the frigate Simpson, unleashed an SM-1 missile. It scored a direct hit, sinking the Joshan, killing 15 Iranian crewmen and wounding 29.

The Simpson's quick kill was the first in a daylong series of naval clashes last week between the U.S. and Iran, the most serious military action taken since the American buildup began in the Persian Gulf last July. The action came during a week in which Iran also suffered a major military setback in its 7 1/2-year war of attrition with Iraq: Iranian troops were driven from the strategic Fao Peninsula by a concerted Iraqi offensive. Meanwhile a third drama involving the gulf, the 15-day hijacking of a Kuwaiti jetliner by suspected pro-Iranian Islamic extremists, ended anticlimactically in Algeria with the release of 31 hostages and the escape of their captors.

The U.S. strike was in retaliation for damage suffered two weeks ago by the ^ American frigate Samuel B. Roberts after it hit an Iranian mine in international waters. Ten American crewmen were injured in the explosion and fire, the worst casualty toll since the accidental Iraqi attack about a year ago on the U.S.S. Stark that claimed 37 lives.

The decision to retaliate was made by President Reagan after U.S. weapons experts established that the mines were of Iranian origin. In a series of conferences over the weekend, the President's top military advisers, including Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, National Security Adviser Colin Powell and Admiral William Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, presented a series of options. Reagan eventually selected a "light" form of retaliation, according to Crowe. It included the targeting for destruction of two oil platforms, the Sassan and the Sirri, that served as bases for Iranian intelligence monitoring in the gulf, and the sinking of one Iranian naval vessel. "We concentrated on targets that are at sea," Crowe said later. "We're stronger at sea."

Reagan then summoned congressional leaders of both parties to the White House at 9 p.m. Sunday. He stressed that he was consulting the lawmakers before giving the final military orders, which was in contrast to his secrecy in ordering the U.S. strike against Libya in 1986. He heard no objections. At 10:05, after the congressional leaders had left, the President said to his aides, "Let's do it."

Three hours later, at midmorning in the gulf, two three-ship naval convoys approached the platforms, 100 miles apart in the southern gulf, and warned their Iranian occupants to evacuate. The Sassan was fired on and then destroyed by U.S. Marines, who helicoptered to the platform and planted explosive charges. The Sirri was bombarded by the guns of the frigates Simpson and Bagley.

The sinking of the Joshan followed within minutes. Then the action shifted farther north, near the Strait of Hormuz. There, repeated hostile actions by Iran forced the U.S. to jettison its plan to limit Iranian ship losses to a single vessel. When two Iranian frigates, the Sahand and the Sabalan, fired on American reconnaissance aircraft, U.S. warships went after them. A Harpoon missile launched by the U.S. destroyer Joseph Strauss hit the Sahand. The missile, delivered from a distance of 20 miles, blew a hole in the Iranian vessel's hull. An F-14 Tomcat from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Enterprise in the Strait of Hormuz delivered a laser-guided cluster bomb that disabled the * Sabalan. Even though the Sabalan was the ship that had been targeted to be sunk by the Navy because of its frequent attacks on merchant ships in the gulf, Carlucci and Crowe ordered naval commanders not to sink the stricken vessel, hoping to limit Iranian casualties. The U.S. also damaged or destroyed three Iranian speedboats, bringing to six the total number of vessels lost by Iran.

The U.S. was not able to end the day of skirmishes without suffering apparent casualties of its own. A Cobra helicopter carrying two crewmen failed to return to the Wainwright after a reconnaissance mission. Iran claimed that it had shot down the gunship. After a fruitless search for the missing chopper, the Navy listed the two crewmen as missing.

Iran's setback in the gulf was serious enough, but the loss of the Fao was devastating. The peninsula, gateway to the Shatt al-Arab waterway and the southeastern port city of Basra, had been captured by Iranian forces in 1986. In a surprise offensive code-named Blessed Ramadan, after the Islamic holy month that began last week, President Saddam Hussein ordered the Iraqi Seventh Army, supported by elite Presidential Guards, to attack the peninsula's Iranian defenders. Early last week, following a successful 36-hour armored blitzkrieg, the Iraqi victory was complete.

Iran's growing unpredictability has prompted U.S. military planners to begin changing American rules of engagement in the gulf. Administration officials suggested that a "cooperative approach," using help from U.S. allies, will be employed with greater frequency in the future. The goal is to put Iran on notice that the U.S. Navy could come to the aid not just of U.S.-flagged vessels in the gulf, as is currently the case, but also of those registered to other nations.

The beginning of the end of the Kuwaiti hijacking came shortly before 4 a.m. last Wednesday with a totally unexpected message from the Boeing 747. "We declare to the Muslim people and to all people who seek freedom," said a voice over the cockpit radio, "that today, the third day of Ramadan, we will end the Kuwaiti airplane operation."

That operation had been the longest continuous skyjacking in history, a terror-filled 15-day epic that began with the capture of the plane as it neared the gulf and continued during stops at the Iranian city of Mashhad and the Cypriot city of Larnaca before reaching a seven-day standoff in Algiers. For many of the 31 hostages inside the aircraft, the tipoff to approaching | freedom came when the hijackers began systematically wiping overhead compartments and doorways to erase their fingerprints. Then, following a plan apparently worked out in advance with Algerian negotiators, they quietly left the aircraft and vanished into the North African night. There were reports that the hijackers were flown to Beirut or Syria, but Algerian authorities refused to confirm or deny them.

Despite their ordeal, all the hostages were found to be sufficiently fit to travel home to Kuwait. Kuwaiti officials privately claimed that the freeing of the captives was a vindication of their country's principled refusal to accede to the hijackers' chief demand, the release of 17 pro-Iranian terrorists convicted of taking part in attacks on the U.S. and French embassies in Kuwait in 1983. But the hijackers' safe passage out of Algeria not only prevents them from being brought to justice for killing two passengers in Larnaca but also frees them to commit terror anew.

The hijackers, perhaps the most professional team of air pirates yet encountered, took elaborate precautions against revealing their identities. Yet Washington, citing accounts from released hostages, says one of the gunmen is Hassan Izz-al-Din, a Lebanese who is believed to have been directly involved in the killing of U.S. Navy Diver Robert Stethem during the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 in 1985. Said Secretary of State George Shultz, speaking in Helsinki en route to pre-summit meetings in Moscow: "I don't think ((releasing the hijackers)) is a proper thing to do." But he declined to "second-guess" Algeria. As for the Algerians, Interior Minister Hadi al- Khaderi, who oversaw the negotiations, explained his government's decision in its starkest terms: "It was a question of saving human lives."

With reporting by Dean Fischer/Bahrain and David S. Jackson/Algiers