Iranian Warns U.S. Over Its Role in Gulf

An Iranian official warned the United States on Friday not to increase its presence in the Persian Gulf, saying that “the possibility of a collision is high.”

“The sooner the Americans move out of the region the better,” Hussein Sheikholeslam, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, told a press conference at the Iranian Embassy in Beijing.

He pointed out that 37 American lives were lost in the Iraqi attack Sunday on a U.S. Navy frigate, and added, “I don’t know how many there will be in the next.”

As a result of the Stark incident, he said, “we have entered into a very sensitive situation; any small mistake in the Persian Gulf now might lead to great changes.”

Sheikholeslam appeared to be trying to assert Iranian supremacy in the Persian Gulf. His remarks reflected a concern that the United States and other countries might seek to impose some form of settlement of the 6 1/2-year-old Iran-Iraq War.

He concentrated on Iran’s concern about U.S. involvement in the region, but some of what he said applied to the Soviet Union as well.

“The Persian Gulf is too sensitive a region and too small to tolerate the presence of both powers, of both foreign powers,” he said.

He criticized a recent statement by Soviet President Andrei A. Gromyko that the Iran-Iraq conflict is one that will have no winner or loser.

“Definitely, this war will have a loser and a victor,” Sheikholeslam said.

He sought to make a connection between the attack on the Stark and the terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, in which 241 U.S. servicemen were killed.

‘Worst Possible Way’

“Whenever the Americans have made an intervention in the (Middle East) region, they have been defeated in the worst possible way,” he said. “ . . . Many Americans have lost their lives.”

Sheikholeslam suggested that Iraq deliberately attacked the Stark in an effort to increase the involvement of the United States and other Western nations.

“Iraq . . . welcomes the increase of tension,” he said.

The Iranian official refused to comment on reports that China has been selling weapons to both sides in the Persian Gulf war.

“We are buying weapons from many countries, even from your country,” he told an American reporter. “But it is not our policy to announce from whom we buy. . . . We are a country in a state of war, and many countries have regulations that they should not sell weapons to countries in a state of war.”

The only countries from which Iran will not buy weapons are Israel and South Africa, he said.

An Iranian statement issued to the press said that Sheikholeslam is in China to discuss relations between China and Iran and the situation in the Persian Gulf. The official Chinese press has paid little attention to his visit.