Iraq’s Leader Threatens Reprisal Air Attacks on Iranian Cities

President Saddam Hussein of Iraq threatened Wednesday to order reprisal air strikes against Iranian cities unless Iran stops shelling Iraq’s southern port city of Basra.

“If they dare to hit Basra again, we will bring down their cities on their heads,” Hussein told a group of officers being decorated for their role in repelling an Iranian assault near Basra two weeks ago. “He who hits the people of Basra with a mortar shell must know that you are ordered to destroy their cities with your missiles and airplanes.”

The Iraqi air force has shown increasing effectiveness in recent months in stepped-up attacks against Iranian military and economic targets, among them oil refineries and pumping stations. But Iraqi officials have repeatedly denied Iranian assertions that the raids have been aimed at civilian targets.

Nevertheless, Defense Minister Adnan Khairallah has suggested that Iraq might change its strategy. Late last month, he told reporters that “if Iran continues hitting Basra and other border cities, then don’t be surprised to hear of hundreds of Iraqi planes hitting Iranian cities at one time.”

Iraq, with about 500 French Mirage and Soviet MIG jet fighters, has an aerial advantage over Iran of roughly 5 to 1.

Hussein, in his remarks to the officers, indicated that air force commanders have already been given a free hand to hit targets in Iran, whether military or civilian.

“The political leadership,” he said, “has decided to take its hands off the Iraqi army and people from this moment. They are free to take their rights into their own hands.”

Offensive Threatened

Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, is believed to be the initial objective of the “final offensive” that Iran has been threatening for several months.

The city is about 300 miles southeast of the Iraqi capital, alongside the Shatt al Arab waterway about 10 miles west of the Iran-Iraq border in the southeastern corner of Iraq. It has been shelled repeatedly by Iranian artillery. Last February, Iranian troops stormed across the waterway at its southern end and captured the Iraqi oil terminal town of Al Faw.

Many Western analysts believe that if and when Iran does begin its final offensive, it will strike northwest from Al Faw and southwest across the Hawizah marshes above Basra in an attempt to surround and cut off the city and the land south of it from the rest of Iraq.

Hussein, in a speech Tuesday marking Army Day in Iraq, said that Basra was the objective of the failed offensive undertaken by Iranian troops from the eastern side of the Shatt al Arab on Christmas Eve.

“The recent Iranian offensive was aimed . . . at encircling and occupying the city and establishing a puppet entity there,” he said.

Heavy Casualties Claimed

The Iraqi defenders, he said, inflicted “tens of thousands” of casualties on the Iranians and drove them back in a “defeat (for Iran) unmatched in the history of wars.”

Western diplomats in Baghdad, piecing together accounts of the fighting from various sources, estimate that between 3,000 and 10,000 Iranians were killed in the battle. They said that although the battle represented a significant victory for Iraq, it did not appear to be the final offensive for which Iran has reportedly massed nearly 700,000 troops along the 730-mile-long frontier.

“It was more than a skirmish,” one Western envoy said. “It was a fairly hard battle, but it was not the final offensive.”

This envoy, together with other Western diplomats, said the final offensive appears to have been delayed by severe logistical problems and, possibly, a power struggle in Tehran. They expect the real push on Basra to come within the next two months.

Oil Targets Attacked

Over the last six months, the Iraqi air force has carried out a series of effective strikes against Iranian oil targets, seriously affecting Iran’s ability to continue paying for the war, which is now in its seventh year.