U.S. Assumes Soviets Saw Diverted Missile Hardware

Operating under a “worst case” scenario, U.S. officials are assuming the Soviet Union got a look at the latest version of the Navy’s Phoenix missile system after agents for Iran allegedly penetrated weapons stockpiles in California and elsewhere, sources familiar with the investigation said Thursday.

Components for Phoenix missiles, diverted to Iran by the international theft ring, are among “the most sophisticated combat weaponry known to the free world,” according to an investigative affidavit filed in San Diego after authorities announced a series of arrests Monday.

Since then, the sources say, military and intelligence officials have launched a high-level assessment of the potential national security damage caused by the thefts, and the review could prompt urgent modifications to missiles used by the Navy’s F-14 Tomcat fighters to protect aircraft carriers and other ships from air attack.

Navy spokesmen continued their refusal Thursday to discuss specifics of the case, saying the investigation is continuing. But sources and experts inside and outside government said theft of the missile components could have more serious ramifications than the diversion of a range of spare parts for the F-14 fighter.

In the mid-1970s, the United States supplied the government of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi with about 80 of the F-14s equipped with systems enabling them to fire missiles simultaneously at as many as six targets. According to intelligence sources, 284 of the 714 Phoenix missiles ordered by Iran had been delivered when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini seized power six years ago and the United States imposed an arms embargo.

With the shah’s overthrow, U.S. national security experts “assumed that every weapon in Iran was compromised” and available for inspection by Soviet agents, one official recalled. “We assumed the worst case and we made fixes” to modify the Navy’s inventory of Phoenix missiles to foil any edge the Soviets might have gained by developing ways to defend against the weapon.

“We took the necessary steps” in 1979 and 1980 “to ensure the integrity of the F-14 Phoenix missile system,” this official said.

Now, according to other sources, there is a fear that missile components stolen from Navy stockpiles since 1983 and diverted to Iran might have given the Soviets a glimpse of how the Phoenix system had been modified.

Question of Delivery

Although a U.S. Customs official said Monday that no “critical” aircraft parts had actually reached Iran since the investigation of the theft ring began two years ago, several other government investigators said the ring had successfully delivered sensitive parts to the Tehran regime.

While Khomeini’s relations with Moscow have been chilly--Iranian propaganda, for instance, classifies both the United States and the Soviet Union as “great Satans”--experts say U.S. intelligence officials must assume that Soviet agents could have gotten a look at the stolen missile systems.

“It is only reasonable that we have to assume the Soviets have access to it and we’ll have to go through another series of fixes,” said John Buchanan, a retired Marine pilot and logistics officer who is a senior research analyst at the Center for Defense Information, a private Washington-based military study group.

Stephen Goose, another senior analyst at the center, said it is “highly questionable,” however, that the Soviets “would gain enough to make a significant difference in their performance against the missiles and our high-performance aircraft.”

Similar Viewpoint

A similar view was taken by Geoffrey Kemp, a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies, who was formerly a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council staff.

“It’s troublesome,” he said of the diversion of sophisticated equipment to Iran, “but I don’t think it’s of dramatic, strategic significance.”

The affidavit filed by federal agents to support the arrests of the alleged ring members--among them an aviation storekeeper on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and a civilian employee at a San Diego naval depot--specifically cited the Phoenix missile system components in describing the significance of the case.

More than 60 cartons of equipment were shipped to Iran by the ring, the affidavit said, adding: “Some of these parts are valued at approximately $100,000 (each) . . . and others comprise the most sophisticated combat weaponry known to the free world.”

Unique Position

Iran is the only foreign country to have either the F-14 or the Phoenix missile system, which can track up to 24 targets simultaneously and launch six missiles at a time against separate targets as far as 50 miles away.

Since the U.S. arms embargo and the 1980 outbreak of its war with Iraq, Iran’s fleet of F-14s in flying condition has shrunk to about 20 planes because of pilot shortages, maintenance problems and the lack of spare parts, military analysts say.