Counterthreats

Iran's diversionary tactics

It was yet another grim chapter in the 34-month-old war between Iran and Iraq. Regular troops and Islamic Guards from Iran penetrated six miles into Iraq last week, pursuing Kurdish rebels who had raided Iranian government outposts and seizing a small Iraqi garrison at the border. The Iranian attack was typical of the pattern of the war. Major cross-border assaults are followed by fierce counterattacks, followed by exaggerated casualty claims. But even allowing for customary hyperbole, the toll was high. Iran claimed that its forces had killed or wounded 3,800 Iraqis; Iraq took credit for 1,400 Iranian casualties.

Military analysts believed the latest Iranian campaign, the biggest so far to take place in the rugged Zagros Mountains of Kurdistan, was essentially diversionary. Iraqi officials said they expected an imminent attack on the central front, only 80 miles from Baghdad, now that the rainy season was over.

Thus far, the long, debilitating war has been a military standoff. Neither side has a strategic advantage that would allow a major offensive to bring decisive results. But despite large infusions of money and arms from Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, Iraq is suffering more than Iran. Tehran's oil production is currently running about 2.2 million bbl. per day, compared with a maximum of 700,000 bbl. per day pumped by Iraq. Iraq is so strapped for cash that it has been unable to pay for many essential imports.

The region has been rife with reports that France, which has already provided more than $4 billion worth of arms to Iraq, may soon supply it with Super Etendard jet fighters equipped with the kind of air-to-surface Exocet missiles that Argentina used against Britain in last year's Falklands war. A likely target for Saddam Hussein: Iran's major oil outlet at Kharg island in the Persian Gulf. The very idea provoked a quick Iranian counterthreat. If France or any other nation intervened in the war by supplying such weapons, or if Iraq seriously damaged the facilities at Kharg island, Majlis Speaker Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani warned, "Iran will destroy the security of the gulf and prevent a "single ship from entering or leaving." That in turn prompted State Department Spokesman John Hughes to declare that the U.S. was "committed" to maintaining the freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. With exquisite diplomatic equivocation, he firmly stated that the U.S. would take any threat by Iran to the gulf "fairly seriously."

Meanwhile, Iraqi intelligence has privately accused government and army officers in the United Arab Emirates of smuggling more than $1 billion worth of arms to Iran. According to the Iraqis, weapons that were originally destined for the Emirates' own military forces have been loaded onto dhows and shipped across the gulf to Iran.

The U.S. has formally denied TIME'S report (July 25) that American weapons were flowing from the U.S. to Iran in spite of a U.S. ban on such sales. But some congressional committees have taken an interest in the matter and intend to pose questions to the Administration about it after the summer recess. Coincidentally, federal agents in New York City concluded eight months of undercover investigation into illegal weapons exports last week. Eight men were charged with conspiring to sell more than $2 billion worth of weapons, including attack helicopters, rocket launchers, missiles, tanks and machine guns, to federal agents who posed as representatives of Iran and the Irish Republican Army. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.