U.S. Reinforces Fleet, Prepares for ‘All Options’

Reflecting high-level concern over rising tensions in the Middle East, the United States is reinforcing and redeploying its naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf to ensure that President Reagan “has all options available to him,” Administration officials said Thursday.

One day after the State Department moved to make Lebanon off limits to U.S. citizens, Defense Department officials acknowledged that the Navy has beefed up its Mediterranean flotilla and is positioning ships farther north in the Persian Gulf as “precautionary measures.”

“We are of course concerned about the rising tensions in the Persian Gulf and the Middle East area, and we want to make sure we are prepared,” spokesman Robert B. Sims said at a Pentagon briefing.

Tensions Heightened

A new wave of hostage-taking in Lebanon, including the kidnaping of three American professors last weekend, and the bloody Iranian offensive against the Iraqi city of Basra have heightened tensions in the volatile region.

Repeating the statement of a White House official at a briefing Wednesday, Sims stressed that the United States wants to “show support for our friends in the region” and to be ready “if our strategic interests are threatened.”

The Pentagon spokesman refused to say whether military action is a possible option. “I have no intention of discussing what options the President might have,” he said.

But other officials said that military action always is among the options and that movements of ships in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf are intended to make certain that they are in proper position.

No Evacuation Plans

Sims said he knows of no plans for the ships to be used to help evacuate Americans from Lebanon, the strife-torn country where eight Americans are now being held hostage. On Wednesday, the State Department invalidated U.S. passports for travel to Lebanon and gave the estimated 1,500 Americans still there 30 days to leave.

According to Sims and other Administration officials, these are the main elements of the reinforcement and redeployment of U.S. ships in the region:

--A 10-ship battle group led by the aircraft carrier Nimitz has moved into the eastern Mediterranean near Lebanon after canceling port calls.

--Another U.S. Navy battle group headed by the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy canceled plans to leave the Mediterranean this week and now is in port in Spain.

--A five-ship Mediterranean Amphibious Readiness Group, carrying 1,900 Marines, now is crossing the Atlantic and will reach the Mediterranean on Saturday. It is scheduled to take the place of a similar three-ship group that has been stationed in the Mediterranean for six months.

--The aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk and an accompanying battle group left Subic Bay in the Philippines on Thursday, officially described as en route to the Indian Ocean but, according to sources, heading for the Arabian Sea just outside the Persian Gulf.

--Several destroyers in the Navy’s six-ship Middle East force have moved farther north in the Persian Gulf than ever before, nearer to--but still some distance from--the location of intense fighting between Iran and Iraq.

War Costly to Both Sides

Sims said that the battles around Basra have become “a war of attrition” costly to both sides.

“In our current assessment, there is no imminent danger of Basra falling,” Sims said. He listed Iraq’s casualties at 20,000 killed and wounded compared with Iran’s casualties of 45,000, adding, “Obviously, it is a very debilitating war on both sides.”

“Recent Iranian territorial gains have been negated by large Iraqi counterattacks within the past three or four days, so that the disposition of Iranian forces is essentially the same that it was about a week ago,” Sims said.

He discounted reports from the battlefield that Iran is making effective use of TOW anti-tank missiles and Hawk anti-aircraft missiles sold to the Tehran government in Reagan’s controversial effort to gain the release of American hostages in Lebanon.