U.S. Should Expect a ‘Hit’ in Gulf, Specialists Warn

The United States has to be ready to “take a hit” from Iranian speedboats starting this week when the Navy begins escorting reflagged Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf, specialists in and out of the government say.

But it would be a blunder should the Reagan Administration and Congress allow such an attack to reverse U.S. policy and drive U.S. warships from the gulf, they say.

“Iran’s capability is largely to harass and embarrass, not to halt the flow of oil through the gulf, unless we decide to withdraw,” said Anthony Cordesman, a defense specialist with Eaton Analytical Assessments Center in Washington.

The danger, said Jim Placke, a former U.S. diplomat with Mideast expertise, is that further American casualties “could cause the United States to cut and run.”

“If the United States pulls out of the gulf, it would be the greatest Iranian victory of the revolution and could lead to Iranian supremacy in the gulf over Kuwait and Iraq” and other Arab states, said Thomas McNaugher, a Middle East specialist at the Brookings Institution. “You have to be prepared to take a hit in the region,” said McNaugher.

The Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, has promised to try to further embarrass President Reagan and the United States. When U.S. warships enter the gulf, said Rafsanjani, “we will point part of our artillery at the Yankees and take American captives with their hands on their heads with humiliation.”

Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, in a report to Congress on security in the gulf, said the greatest risks come “from unconventional threats, such as Iranian terrorism or sabotage.”

The most likely threat to U.S. forces are numerous small boats that zealous Revolutionary Guards have been using against tankers in the gulf war, according to Pentagon analysts. As McNaugher put it, “The main risk is a swarm of Revolutionary Guards in speedboats loaded with dynamite.”