Gulf Supply Ship Hits Mine, Sinks : Another Blast Rocks Saudi Plant on Coast; Iranian Sabotage Hinted

A small supply ship struck a mine and sank Saturday just outside the Persian Gulf in an area used by the U.S. Navy to assemble its convoys of re-registered Kuwaiti tankers.

Shipping sources said that one crewman was killed while four others, including the British captain of the Emirates-based ship, are missing and presumed dead.

In Saudi Arabia, a massive explosion rocked a major natural gas complex operated by the Arabian American Oil Co. (Aramco) on the Persian Gulf coast.

Saudi officials said the blast at the gas plant of Juaymah injured four people and was caused by an electrical fault.

Sabotage Not Discounted

However, gulf shipping sources, who were openly skeptical of the Saudi explanation, said the possibility of sabotage by Iranian or pro-Iranian agents could not be excluded.

They said the blast, which was heard as far as 15 miles away, killed and injured as many as 37 people.

A number of Americans work at the Juaymah plant, which produces butane, ethane and propane, among other liquefied petroleum products. However, it was understood that no Americans were among the casualties.

Relations between the Saudis and Iran have been extremely tense since bloody rioting July 31 in the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, left more than 400 people dead, including 275 Iranian pilgrims, and prompted calls by Iran’s revolutionary leadership for the overthrow of the Saudi ruling family. The Saudis said Iranian demonstrators provoked the violence, while Iran blamed the United States, accusing Saudi authorities of firing on the demonstrators on orders from Washington.

At the eastern end of the Persian Gulf, the tiny United Arab Emirates also faced a new crisis in its uneasy relations with Iran after the supply ship owned by a local shipping company hit a mine and exploded in a Gulf of Oman coastal anchorage crowded with oil tankers and with U.S., British and French warships.

Emirates officials immediately declared a shipping alert and warned commercial vessels to stay 10 miles away from the coast, reimposing a ban that had been lifted only two days earlier when coast guard patrols declared the area free of mines.

Jittery officials also imposed a news blackout on the incident, which occurred about nine miles off the eastern port of Fujaira in the same area where the U.S.-owned supertanker Texaco Caribbean hit a mine last Monday.

However, shipping sources in the Emirates said that the Anita, a 156-foot-long supply ship, was taking several South Korean crewmen back to their ship anchored off Fujaira when it struck the mine and exploded in a ball of flames.

The sources said that Emirates air and sea rescue teams recovered six survivors, all of whom were seriously injured but that the British captain, two Indian crewmen and a South Korean sailor were missing and feared dead. A seventh survivor died later in a hospital, they added.

‘There Was Nothing Left’

“The boat was blown right out of the water. There was nothing left of it,” one source said.

Shortly after the explosion, helicopters spotted two more mines floating in the vicinity, prompting officials to reissue a shipping alert for a 50-mile-long sea corridor paralleling the eastern coast of the Emirates, just below the Strait of Hormuz, gateway to the Persian Gulf.

Several mines, widely believed to have been laid by Iran, have been sighted in the area over the past week.

The Anita is the sixth vessel to be hit by a mine in or near the Persian Gulf in the past three months. However, until the Texaco Caribbean struck a similar device in the same area Aug. 10, no mines had ever been found outside the gulf, in what was formerly considered the last safe anchorage and assembly point for ships entering the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s Timing Noted

Shipping sources and other specialists here strongly suspect that Iran chose this moment to mine the area in an attempt to disrupt the convoys of Kuwaiti tankers that the U.S. Navy began escorting through the gulf last month.

These convoys use the area around Fujaira to transfer their cargoes of oil and gas to other tankers before reassembling for the 550-mile trip back up the gulf.

According to reports from Kuwait, three Kuwaiti tankers, re-registered as U.S. vessels, loaded their cargoes Saturday in preparation for what will be the third U.S.-escorted convoy through the perilous gulf.

Their departure was being kept secret, but shipping sources said they expected the convoy to get underway today. Sandstorms that sharply reduce visibility across the narrow gulf are forecast.

‘Good Time to Go’

“That will be a good time for them to go, because small boats can’t operate in those conditions,” one maritime source said, referring to the danger posed by Iranian speedboats that menace the upper portion of the gulf.

Those speedboats, which could be used to fire rockets or, packed with explosives, to ram ships, have not been used against the convoys thus far. Instead, Iran appears to be concentrating its efforts laying mines in order to exploit what has clearly been a serious deficiency in the U.S. Navy’s minesweeping capabilities in the gulf.

That situation may change in the next few days, when the amphibious assault ship Guadalcanal arrives in the region with eight Sea Stallion minesweeping helicopters. Britain and France have also decided to dispatch minesweepers to the area following the appearance of mines off the Emirates in the Gulf of Oman.

More Potent Motive Seen

However, analysts here also see another and, in the long run, more potent motive for the mining of the Gulf of Oman--which ironically poses as much of a risk for tankers carrying Iranian oil as it does for ships bearing cargoes from the Arab states that support Iraq in the Persian Gulf War with Iran.

The Emirates, a federation of seven tiny sheikdoms on the eastern tip of the Gulf, have long lived in an uneasy but polite and economically profitable coexistence with Iran, and the mining of their waters is seen as Tehran’s way of reminding these tiny, timid sheikdoms of the risks they run by cooperating with the United States or tilting too far toward Iraq in the gulf war.

Analysts said that although it risks alienating a small but strategically placed neighbor on the Persian Gulf, Iran may have thought the reminder necessary following the Mecca rioting, which deeply shocked the whole Arab world.

Nearly all Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates, rallied to the Saudi side following the rioting that many believe was instigated by Iranian Revolutionary Guards disguised as religious pilgrims.

“The mining of (Emirates) waters is typical of the tactics of intimidation Iran employs to try to keep its smaller neighbors in line,” one diplomat said. “It’s their way of reminding the tiny gulf states closest to them who’s boss.”

No Details of Explosion Given

The explosion at the Juaymah gas complex in Saudi Arabia may also be part of Iran’s attempt to increase the pressure on those states that support the new U.S. involvement in the gulf, this and other regional experts said.

Official Saudi denials notwithstanding, the suspicion among shipping sources and diplomats that the explosion may have been an act of sabotage was reinforced by the fact that hospitals, ARAMCO spokesmen and other officials contacted by phone in Saudi Arabia tersely refused to give information about casualties or other details of the incident.

The gas complex itself was also reported to have been sealed off by troops manning roadblocks.

The sources noted that the Juaymah complex, a showcase oil installation opened in 1980, is located in Saudi Arabia’s eastern Hasa province, the only area of the kingdom with a large concentration of Shia Muslims, many of whom are believed to be sympathetic toward their fellow Shias in Iran, which is a Muslim, but not an Arab, nation.

Long-Standing Enmity

Saudi Arabia is ruled by members of the Wahhabi branch of Sunni Islam, whose enmity toward Shia Muslims has deep historical and religious roots.

These long-standing strains have been exacerbated by the Iranian revolution and its attempts to spread Shia fundamentalism to the Arab world and especially to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, site of the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

After the Mecca rioting, the Iranian leadership called upon Shias to rise up and overthrow the “Wahhabi hooligans.”

If the explosion was the result of sabotage, it would not be unprecedented.

On May 22, a bomb severely damaged Kuwait’s Al Ahmahdi oil field, touching off a fire that took three days to bring under control. Police later announced that the saboteur was a Kuwaiti Shia Muslim.