Middle East A Deadly New Missile Game

By William R. Doerner

Now that the superpowers have agreed to eliminate medium-range missiles from their arsenals, these weapons are fast turning into the most sought-after items in the Middle East. In the process, they are changing the nature of warfare in one of the world's most volatile regions. True, the missiles being stockpiled by seven Middle Eastern nations (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Syria) are not yet nuclear -- with the highly probable exception of Israel's. But the conventionally armed weapons have figured prominently in the eight-year-old gulf war between Iraq and Iran, and they threaten to make future conflicts in the region bloodier and more intractable than ever before. Writes W. Seth Carus of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: "It is only a matter of time before these countries acquire significant inventories of accurate missiles armed with highly lethal warheads."

What helped touch off the current Middle East arms race, beginning about three years ago, was the "war of the cities," in which Iran showered missiles on Baghdad and Iraq later reciprocated against Tehran. To reach Iran's capital, which was beyond the flight capacity of their Soviet-made Scud-B missiles, the Iraqis managed to double the weapon's range to 360 miles. During the latest outbreak of this war-within-a-war last winter, the two sides fired more than 200 missiles at each other, claiming at least 2,000 lives. The casualties would be much greater if Middle Eastern nations had equipped the missiles with chemical warheads, as many experts predict they eventually will.

Curbing the region's missile arsenals has proved to be a difficult if not impossible task. U.S. officials were stunned last March by intelligence reports that Saudi Arabia had secretly purchased at least ten Chinese CSS-2 missiles, each with a range of 1,550 miles. Last week, in an attempt to head off yet another missile deal, the U.S. expressed "deep concern" at the prospect of China's selling the Syrians its M9 missile (estimated range: 500 miles).

Also last week, in an incident that could damage Washington's relations with Cairo, federal officials accused five people, including two Egyptian army colonels, of seeking to smuggle from the U.S. a tightly controlled chemical used in the manufacture of missiles. Cairo apparently wants the material, called carbon-carbon, to enhance the accuracy of a new missile, code-named Bader-2000, that Egyptian and Argentinian scientists are developing with Iraqi money.

Israel, which produces two classes of Jericho missiles, has grown increasingly alarmed as one hostile neighbor after another has begun collecting weapons that could reach population centers inside the Jewish state. When asked about the rumored Syrian-Chinese deal, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir replied cryptically, "We shall not sit by idly." His words suggested a possible pre-emptive strike against a future Syrian missile cache.

The U.S. has lately moved to the forefront of efforts to put a lid on further proliferation. Last year Washington helped form the Missile Technology Control Regime, an agreement with six other Western nations that severely restricts the export of missile-related hardware and technology. Speaking at June's special session on disarmament at the United Nations, Secretary of State George Shultz warned that "we are already seeing signs of a dangerous new arms race which will put at risk countries far removed from the gulf region itself." The irony is that both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, even as they seek to reduce their own arsenals, appear unable to contain the spread of missiles among their Middle East clients.

With reporting by Ron Ben-Yishai/Jerusalem, with other bureaus