Iranian Attack Reported on Soviet Ship in Persian Gulf

An Iranian gunboat raked a Soviet freighter with cannon fire in the Persian Gulf, the first attack on a Soviet vessel since the Iran-Iraq War began 6 1/2 years ago, marine salvage executives reported Friday.

The official Soviet news agency Tass branded the attack, which occurred Wednesday morning, as an “act of piracy.”

Shells hit the crew’s quarters and started a small fire, but the crewmen escaped injury, one executive reported.

Tass said Friday in a dispatch from Moscow that intensive rocket and heavy machine-gun fire from “launches without markings” inflicted serious damage on the 6,459-ton Ivan Koroteyev.

“By sheer luck, no crew members were hurt,” Tass said. The dispatch added that the Soviets are investigating the attack and noted that the attackers were reported to have been Iranian gunboats.

Soviet Warning

The salvage executives said the Soviet ship was hit about 80 miles east of Qatar in the southern gulf, 30 miles from an offshore Iranian oil field.

Soviet officials who were in the gulf region recently warned that Moscow would reply “firmly” to any attack on Soviet ships. They did not say if that would involve military action.

The attack came a day after the vessel, owned by USSR-Azov Shipping Co. of Zhdanov, sailed from Kuwait for Dammam, Saudi Arabia, and the emirate of Dubai, the executives said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Tass said that the vessel was carrying building materials and drainage pipes to Dammam.

The attack was seen as a signal from Iran to Kuwait that Kuwaiti plans to ship its oil in Soviet and U.S. flag vessels will not stop Iranian attacks, the maritime sources said. Iran accuses Kuwait of aiding Iraq’s war effort.

Ardebili’s Warning

In Tehran, President Ali Khamenei said Friday that Iran will not ignore Moscow’s “unacceptable” support for Iraq, IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, reported. Khamenei, however, made no reference to the attack.

The chief justice of Iran’s supreme court, the Ayatollah Abdulkarim Moussavi Ardebili, warned last week that Kuwait would “bear the consequences” of involving the superpowers in the gulf. Moscow is Iraq’s main arms supplier.

The salvage officials said that they heard about the attack Thursday but could not confirm it until Friday.

The vessel made no distress call and did not respond to radio contacts, the sources said. It was only when the Ivan Koroteyev docked Friday at Dammam for repairs that executives could confirm the attack.

The attack raised tension in the gulf, the scene of escalating retaliatory attacks by Iran and Iraq on ships. The “tanker war,” as it is now called, began in February, 1984, as an offshoot of the Iran-Iraq conflict.

Warships in Gulf

Two Soviet warships have patrolled the gulf since September. The United States, Britain and French also have warships in the waterway to escort their countries’ merchant vessels.

Shipping executives said it is not clear whether a Soviet warship was accompanying the Ivan Koroteyev when the freighter was hit.

More than 200 ships have been hit by Iranian and Iraqi attacks since the tanker war erupted. Both sides seek to cripple the other’s economy.

Kuwait, the closest gulf state to the war zone, has chartered three Soviet tankers to carry its oil and seeks to register some of its 21 state-owned tankers under the American flag.

The Kuwaitis say the major powers must help defend oil exports from the gulf. Twenty percent of the non-Communist world’s oil passes through the waterway.

Arab diplomats said they expect the first Soviet tanker to be operating from Kuwait within a month, with other tankers flying the Stars and Stripes a month after that.

‘Displaying Their Partiality’

Moscow and the Western powers have said they will defend freedom of navigation in the gulf.

IRNA, the Iranian news agency, quoted Khamenei as saying Friday that the Soviets “claimed to be neutral (but) are openly displaying their partiality in the region and explicitly supporting Iran’s enemy.”

He also said that Iranians were “disgusted with the United States because of its past ugly record in Iran,” according to IRNA, but he added: “Our nation did not treat the Russians and the Soviet government the same way because the hatred was not as much.”