Tanker in Gulf Convoy Hits Mine : None Hurt; U.S. Retaliation Isn’t Seen ‘at This Time’

A Kuwaiti supertanker, recently re-registered under the American flag, hit an explosive mine Friday as it passed with its escort of three U.S. Navy ships near an Iranian island in the upper Persian Gulf.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said that “retaliation is not a consideration at this time” since “at this point we don’t know who is responsible. A mine is a kind of thing that’s very difficult to pinpoint.”

No casualties were reported among the 26-man crew aboard the 401,382-ton Bridgeton when it hit the mine around 7 a.m. an estimated 18 miles west of the Iranian island of Farsi.

Fitzwater said President Reagan was awakened at 2 a.m. Washington time, about two hours after the explosion, and was informed of it by National Security Adviser Frank C. Carlucci.

Setback to Operation

The incident came as a serious setback to America’s planned escort operation intended to provide safe passage through the gulf for 11 Kuwaiti tankers.

Iran, which has been blamed for sowing seabed mines in Kuwait’s deep-water channel, about 40 miles north of the location where the Bridgeton struck the mine, called the incident an “irreparable blow on America’s political and military prestige.”

“The U.S. schemes were foiled by invisible hands, and it was proved how vulnerable the Americans are despite their huge and unprecedented military expedition in the Persian Gulf to escort Kuwaiti tankers,” Iran’s prime minister, Hussein Moussavi, was quoted as saying by the official Iranian news agency.

Congressional critics of the so-called reflagging operation, in which Kuwaiti ships have been re-registered in the United States so that they can qualify for escort by U.S. warships, have repeatedly warned of the dangers of mines in the waters of the gulf. They have repeatedly pointed out that there is no certainty who placed the explosives, making retaliation difficult to justify.

‘Ill-Conceived Plan’

Senate Democratic leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia said the explosion was “one of those things I think we foresaw, one of the perils of the Administration’s . . . ill-conceived plan. This is one of the things that we warned against. It’s fraught with peril and uncertainties.”

In London, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher counseled a calm reaction to the mine incident.

“The important thing in the gulf now is to see that we protect the vessels that are going up and to keep very calm and not react suddenly,” she said in a British Broadcasting Corp. interview. “The whole strategy is to de-escalate things in the gulf and keep freedom of navigation going.”

The Bridgeton, the largest tanker in the Arab world, was hit below the waterline. It reportedly took on water and soon was listing slightly. But it continued its journey after reducing speed and using pumps to control the intake of water through its damaged hull. It anchored a few miles from its original destination, Kuwait’s offshore oil terminal at Al Ahmadi, a few hours later.

The second reflagged vessel in the U.S. convoy, the Gas Prince, tied up at the terminal a few minutes later. The three U.S. Navy ships that had escorted the two tankers had turned their charges over to Kuwaiti patrol boats shortly before and anchored out of Kuwait waters.

Until Friday, there had been no incidents in the so-called tanker war in the gulf for four days, since the U.N. Security Council demanded a cease-fire in the war Monday and ordered both countries to withdraw troops to internationally recognized boundaries. Only Iran presently occupies enemy territory, and it has shown no signs of complying with the U.N. withdrawal order.

200 Feet From Bow

According to a dispatch from the pool of Pentagon reporters aboard the escorting U.S. destroyer Kidd, the explosion on the Bridgeton occurred on the port side about 200 feet from the bow.

Navy Lt. Richard Vogel, who was aboard the Bridgeton, was quoted as saying that officers and crew standing on the bridge about 1,000 feet away were nearly knocked off their feet by the force of the blast.

“We’ve been hit,” Vogel radioed to the Kidd.

Lookouts with rifles were quickly posted in the bow of the Kidd to shoot at suspicious objects in the water in the hopes of detonating any mines.

Reporters aboard the Kidd said they saw objects in the water but were unsure whether they were mines.

The Kidd’s captain, Cmdr. Daniel J. Murphy Jr., noted later that the mine hit by the Bridgeton was extremely powerful.

Much Damage Possible

“If we had hit that, it would have done enormous damage to the Kidd,” he said.

After the Bridgeton presented such vivid evidence of the presence of mines, the convoy fell into single file behind the huge tanker, which because of its size and empty oil tanks can better withstand mine damage.

On the U.S. cruiser Fox, Capt. William Mathis told a news magazine reporter that the Bridgeton “can take hits easier than we can.”

The Bridgeton,” he added, “will be acting as a deep-draft minesweeper.”

The U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Anthony C. E. Quainton, said that Kuwaiti divers would inspect the hull of the Bridgeton today to determine whether the ship can be repaired here or must be overhauled in drydock in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates. Kuwait lacks large-scale drydock facilities, and four tankers that hit mines near Kuwait during the past three months were all towed to Dubai.

Envoy Won’t Speculate

“I wouldn’t want to speculate on the effect on future transits by these ships,” Quainton said. “Obviously, it was a matter of considerable regret that the Bridgeton was hit.”

The Bridgeton, which was named the Al Rekkah until Tuesday, was to ferry petroleum from Kuwait’s offshore oil terminal to the port of Khawr Fakkan, in the Gulf of Oman, just beyond the mouth of the Persian Gulf. There, it would transfer its cargo to other tankers before returning to Kuwait for another load.

It was expected to carry about 20% of all of Kuwait’s oil exports, and an extensive period in drydock could curtail those shipments.

Last week, a team of U.S. Navy “mine countermeasures” experts assisted by the Kuwaiti navy and two Saudi minesweepers removed eight mines from the channel leading to the Kuwaiti terminal.

Mine Not Anticipated

The American experts, who use sophisticated sonar equipment, have remained in Kuwait to help with mine clearing. White House spokesman Fitzwater conceded in Washington, however, that the U.S. escort operation had not anticipated a mine, whether moored or drifting, in the deep-water ship channel where the Bridgeton was sailing.

“A mine placed in the open waters could strike any ship going through there, belonging to any country, and I think the thing that this points up is that we’re glad we’re there,” Fitzwater said.

“You can’t sweep the whole gulf,” he added. “You sweep in those areas where mines have been spotted or where they are most likely to be. And this ship was in an open channel area where one might not normally expect mines to be.”

The Bridgeton struck the mine near Iran’s Farsi Island, an area that is shown on maritime charts as being on Iran’s continental shelf. The island itself is within Iran’s declared “exclusion zone,” an area that Iran has warned foreign shipping to avoid; the United States does not observe that stricture.

Bases for Attacks

Farsi Island is believed to be one of the bases from which Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have launched attacks against gulf shipping using lightweight gunboats. The island was attacked by Iraqi warplanes last week after gunboat attacks on Arab shipping.

Naval experts say it is almost impossible to prevent Iran from laying mines using the high-speed boats.

Fitzwater said the Bridgeton hit the mine “some 18 miles . . . from Farsi Island,” where “there has been Iranian speedboat activity. . . . But we don’t have any reports that we can confirm which tie this mine to any specific speedboats within the last several days.”

Pentagon officials said they believe that the Bridgeton hit a moored mine, not a floating device, planted well before the re-flagging operation began.

But Murphy, the Kidd’s skipper, said he thought the mine was brought out Thursday night from Farsi Island.

Finger Pointed at Iran

“We haven’t gotten any proof,” Murphy said. “It’s difficult to assess who places a mine. The track record, however, would clearly point the finger to Iran.”

Meanwhile, in another clear threat to Kuwait, Iran announced Friday that it has adopted a new policy of retaliating against the economies of Iraq’s allies in the almost seven-year-old Iran-Iraq War if Iraq continues to strike at Iranian targets.

“If our economic centers and installations are attacked this time, we will hit back at economic centers belonging to Iraq’s allies,” Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, said in Tehran. “This new policy is one of the outcomes of American interventions in the Persian Gulf.”

While many of the gulf’s Arab countries have aided Iraq, Iran has considered Kuwait a principal ally of the Baghdad regime and has targeted its shipping in recent months.

Times staff writer Oswald Johnston, in Washington, contributed to this article.