Analysis : Gulf War Accelerates Into 8th Year : Outside Involvement Grows in Battle Between Iran, Iraq

The Iran-Iraq war is seven years old this month, and in Tehran they are throwing a birthday party of sorts.

Demonstrations are to be held in the Iranian capital and other cities from Monday to Sunday to commemorate battles and various other events associated with the war.

One of the longest running conventional conflicts of this century, the war has already claimed well over 1 million casualties, destroyed or damaged more than 350 commercial vessels in tit-for-tat shipping attacks and all but ruined the economies of two of the most powerful nations in the Persian Gulf region.

Moreover, as it careens into its eighth year, the war increasingly seems, in one diplomat’s words, “like a car about to spin out of control.” Despite current efforts by the U.N. Security Council to apply a diplomatic brake, the conflict is accelerating at a pace that most would have deemed unimaginable only a year ago.

The growing presence in the Persian Gulf of warships from the United States and several European nations, the bloody clashes between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security forces in the holy city of Mecca in July and Iraq’s resumption of its air strikes against Iranian economic targets have each raised the likelihood of outside involvement, with all the concomitant risks this entails.

Against this tense backdrop, America looks increasingly like it has stumbled into the wrong movie in the Persian Gulf. For this is not a “Top Gun” movie, and there are no good guys and bad guys--only bad guys and worse ones who both seem intent on trying to turn the growing U.S. involvement in the Gulf towards their own ends.

In the middle of all this, the Iranians have found cause to celebrate.

Tuesday, which by Iran’s reckoning marks the anniversary of the war, is “Military Readiness Day.” This is to be followed by “War and School Day,” “Sacrifice Day,” and “Teach Iraq a Lesson Day,” among other theme-for-a-day celebrations.

Throughout it all, there will be parades and demonstrations, speeches and picture exhibits and, on the seventh and climactic day, a “grand dispatch” of tens of thousands of new recruits to the war fronts, according to an announcement by Tehran’s War Information Office.

Clearly, this is not at all what Iraq had in mind when, in response to a string of provocative border incidents and Iranian calls for the overthrow of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, it sent its army across the Iranian frontier in September, 1980, to “teach a lesson” to the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s young Islamic revolutionary government.

The world appeared to care little, back in those days, about who started the war. Until Khomeini came along, it was Saddam Hussein who, in regional terms, had the reputation of being the meanest bully on the block. Indeed, until Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979, it was to Iran that many of the small Arab states on the western shore of the gulf looked to check what was then perceived as the Iraqi menace. The only pity, as Henry A. Kissinger noted at the time in a since oft-quoted remark, was that both sides couldn’t lose.

All that soon began to change, however.

Underestimating Iranian tenacity as well as being overconfident of their own abilities, the Iraqis allowed the tide of the war to turn. Soon they were on the run, retreating first to their own border and then beyond it as the Iranians began to capture Iraqi territory with their grisly, World War I-style “human wave” offensives.

Unable to win the war on the ground, Iraq changed tactics and launched the so-called “tanker war” in 1983, using its superior air power to attack Iranian oil fields, offshore loading facilities and ships transporting Iranian oil.

The Iraqis were, by this time, less concerned with winning the war than with not losing it, and their new aim was to compel Iran to accept a truce by destroying its ability to finance further offensives.

This strategy relied on using Iraq’s greatest strength against Iran’s worst weakness. Iran’s only means of exporting oil to earn the hard currency it needs to buy weapons is via the Persian Gulf shipping route. Iraq does not share this vulnerability, however. It exports all its oil via pipelines through Saudi Arabia and Turkey and receives most of its imports via overland routes through Kuwait.

Unable to respond in kind, the Iranians began attacking ships belonging to Baghdad’s allies, especially Kuwait, which serves as the main transit point for arms to Iraq. However, with no air force to speak of, the Iranian attacks, by Revolutionary Guards firing rockets and machine guns from speedboats, were largely ineffective. They killed a number of crewmen and pushed up insurance premiums in the gulf but did little to stop oil from reaching the West.

Then came the catalyst that suddenly changed everything, drew in the superpowers and introduced a whole new set of risks into what until then had still been a relatively contained crisis.

Warning that if Iraq closed the gulf to Iran, Iran would close it to everybody, the Iranians began installing newly acquired batteries of Chinese Silkworm missiles along their side of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow hinge of water connecting the Persian and Omani gulfs. The Silkworms have a range of 55 miles, just enough to cover the strait, and can carry 1,000 pounds of explosives, enough to sink a tanker.

U.S. Reflagged Tankers

Feeling suddenly vulnerable, the Kuwaitis requested superpower protection for their tanker fleet. Washington initially waffled, but changed its mind when Moscow offered to lease several ships to Kuwait. The Reagan Administration, moving to check what it saw as an expansion of Soviet influence in the gulf, put the U.S. flag on 11 Kuwaiti tankers, thereby enabling U.S. warships to escort them through the gulf.

Then last May, shortly before the reflagging operation was to have begun, the American frigate Stark was hit by two Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi plane. The attack, in which 37 U.S. sailors died, was said to have been an accident, yet it dramatically illustrated the risks involved in the reflagging operation. If accidents like that could happen, how much greater was the risk of a U.S. ship being attacked by a hostile power like Iran?

At the same time, the Iranians were busy fulminating about how they would blow up American ships and take their crews hostage if the U.S. Navy dared to enter the gulf--rhetoric that did not exactly endear them to the Reagan Administration, which was still smarting from its humiliation over the Iran- contra arms scandal.

Tensions Grew

Thus, what might have started out as a relatively low-key and unprovocative escort mission ballooned, by the time it finally got under way in mid-July, into the biggest U.S. naval operation since the Vietnam war.

With an awesome assemblage of warships, an almost equally formidable armada of television crews and a lot of tough talk about the need to “stand down” Iran, the United States strutted onto the gulf stage like the sheriff in a shoot-’em-up Western.

And this, most diplomats following the war from here agree, is exactly what Iraq wanted.

Desperate to make peace at almost any price short of meeting Iran’s demand for Hussein’s ouster, Iraq has tried for some time to internationalize the conflict to bring outside pressure to bear on Iran to negotiate.

For a while, it looked like they might just succeed.

Alarmed at the buildup of tensions, the U.N. Security Council, in a rare display of unanimity, voted July 20 to demand a cease-fire in the gulf war--and threatened sanctions against Iran if it refused to accept it.

At the same time, the bloody and apparently premeditated Iranian riots in Mecca, followed a few weeks later by an Iranian missile attack on Kuwait, seem to have backfired on Iran, diplomats agree.

Far from having the intimidating effect that was apparently intended, the attacks have mobilized Arab and Muslim opinion against Iran, leading to its censure by the 21-member Arab League, which has also demanded that Tehran accept the U.N. cease-fire resolution.

“The Iranians are more isolated now than they ever have been before,” one diplomat said.

“The West is mad at them, the Soviets are impatient with them and the Chinese are plainly embarrassed,” another analyst said. “Among the Arabs, their only supporter now is Syria, and even their support may be wavering.”

Yet things have not worked out entirely the way Iraq intended, for Iran, the Artful Dodger of diplomacy in this part of the world, so far has managed both to avoid accepting the U.N. resolution and to dilute any resolve by the Security Council to impose sanctions.

According to leaked portions of a report by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who visited the region last week, Iran offered to respect a temporary truce provided Iraq is tried before an international tribunal and condemned for starting the war. Presumably, the temporary truce would become permanent only if Iran was satisfied with the outcome of this judgment.

While this appeared to represent something of a concession--given Iran’s previous (and still not renounced) demand for Saddam Hussein’s head--it is hardly likely to be any more acceptable to Iraq.

Indeed, Iraq last week seemed to be showing the world what it thought of Iran’s stand by resuming the tanker war with a determined fury.

Some analysts think that Iran may yet be dragged to the negotiating table, and they say that any sign of flexibility in Tehran’s previously rigid position should be encouraged.

“It’s a baby step forward, and in diplomacy, baby steps are better than nothing,” notes James A. Bill, an Iran expert and director of the Center of International Studies at the College of William and Mary in Virginia.

Others, however, think that Iran’s new conciliatory approach is merely a maneuver and that, far from looking for a way to end the war, it is trying to create conditions more favorable to continuing it.

They noted, for instance, that during last month’s de facto truce in the tanker war, Iran was exporting 2.2 million barrels of oil per day through the Strait of Hormuz--400,000 barrels above its quota set by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. “The Iranians were taking advantage of the truce to send out oil as fast as they could pump it,” one Dubai-based shipping source said.

Diplomats also note that Iran is widely rumored to be planning another large ground offensive in November and that it is badly in need of cash right now following another major round of arms purchases from China and North Korea. “A temporary truce that would allow Iran to further replenish its war coffers before the next big battle might just suit them,” one diplomat said.

Whatever its true intentions are, the fact that opinion about Iran has been re-divided works to Tehran’s advantage--as does the fact that Iraq has been severely criticized by the West for resuming the tanker war.

Meanwhile, as long as there is no peace, the danger of the United States’ being drawn into the war, either by accident or design, remains high, experts agree.

“There may yet be some surprising new twists to this script,” one analyst said.

Indeed, as the war enters its eighth year, its plot may just be starting to thicken.