Lebanon Blockade a Reagan Option : Shutting Airport Also Possibility if Diplomacy Fails

President Reagan on Tuesday raised the threat of blockading Lebanon, shutting down the Beirut airport and taking other unspecified steps if diplomacy fails to free the American hostages within the next few days.

Reagan has ruled out a military rescue mission and will let current diplomatic efforts by Lebanon’s neighbors and some other states “run their full course,” White House spokesman Larry Speakes said.

A Series of Options

These diplomatic initiatives will be completed “in the next day or so,” Speakes said. He added that if they fail to bring about the release of the 40 hostages held in Beirut by Shia Muslim terrorists, then the President will turn to a series of options presented by his national security advisers to put pressure on Lebanon and the Shias.

Reagan, frustrated over lack of progress in resolving the 12-day-old crisis, met with those advisers for an hour and 25 minutes Tuesday to discuss options.

Afterward, Speakes told a press briefing that a range of new options is being weighed. Some of Lebanon’s neighboring nations and others are making a good-faith effort to secure the hostages’ release through diplomatic means, he said.

“These efforts have not yet had time to run their full course,” he said, “but they will do so in the next day or so. The President directed that they be expedited wherever possible.”

Reagan’s orders to expedite diplomatic efforts and publicly threaten punitive steps contrast sharply with his expression of patience at a press conference last week. Asked if he was “willing to wait it out as long as it takes,” the President replied:

“I have to wait it out as long as those people are there and threatened and alive and we have a possibility of bringing them home--I’m going to say a probability of bringing them home.”

Speakes said that lack of progress in the diplomatic efforts, rather than any development in the crisis, has prompted the President to turn to other alternatives.

Reagan apparently believes that economic sanctions and closing of the airport would bring pressure on leaders in Lebanon to use their influence to persuade the Shia terrorists to release the hostages. Speakes said “a certain number of leadership elements” would like to see the airport remain open and could be expected to bring pressure on the terrorists to release the hostages if the facility is closed.

Other Actions Considered

While cautioning reporters against concluding that the United States is prepared to take “some drastic military action,” Speakes said options other than quarantining Lebanon and closing the Beirut airport are also being considered.

“I can assure you that these are just one or two of the options that are at the President’s disposal and they could most likely to be taken in concert with others,” he said.

“The closing down of the airport would call for international cooperation,” Speakes said. “That would be the means that we would seek to do this. There are a number of ways to bring pressure to airlines who have scheduled flights in there, to block them.

“Of course, the military option, if one should select it, for the closing of the airport is obvious.”

In military terms, the Beirut airport is within easy range of U.S. carrier planes now off the coast of Lebanon, and the American arsenal includes special bombs designed to produce craters in airfield runways.

Denying Landing Rights

Pressure on airlines now serving Beirut could include appeals to the companies or their governments for cooperation, or possibly the threat of denying landing rights in this country to airlines refusing to cooperate.

How much impact either a blockade or the closing of the airport would have is uncertain, for a number of reasons: Lebanon’s economy has been in a shambles for years, smuggling is a national pastime and the Lebanese have managed to get by with Beirut’s airport closed frequently--sometimes for months at a time--in recent years of fighting.

The airport was closed for five months in 1984 when Druze and Christian militias battled nearby, and for three months in 1982 during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. It has frequently been closed for shorter periods since full-scale civil war first broke out in 1975.

After a White House briefing on the President’s strategy Tuesday, Senate Minority Whip Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) said Reagan “has the support of Democrats without any question.”

Support From Cranston

“I would support any of the steps I heard today,” said Cranston, who was briefed along with other congressional leaders of both parties.

Speakes said that Reagan, meeting with his national security advisers on the hostage issue for the second straight day, received “a top-to-bottom review of current diplomatic efforts and the full range of future options for bringing full pressure to bear on those who are holding U.S. citizens.”

The objective, he said, is “to encourage the prompt and safe release of those who are being held and to look at options for stemming the tide of terrorism that has been inflicted on the United States and other Western nations.”

Speakes said that over the last several days, Nabih Berri, leader of the Shia militia Amal, which has control of most of the hostages, has gotten the message that Reagan is considering closing the airport and taking other punitive steps. Asked if he considered it a warning to Berri, who the White House has said could secure the hostages’ release, Speakes said, “Yeah.”