Iran Flotilla Flees as U.S. Vessels Near : Tensions Rise in Gulf; Saudis Deny Scrambling Jets

A large flotilla of Iranian gunboats approached an oil terminal run by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in the northern Persian Gulf early Saturday but dispersed and retreated as U.S. warships sped to the scene to confront them, diplomats and maritime sources said.

Shipping officials, quoting eyewitness accounts from workers on offshore oil platforms in the area, said that Saudi jet fighters also scrambled to repel the invaders, and there were unconfirmed reports that at least one of the planes may have opened fire.

Although U.S. officials said they could not confirm reports of hostilities breaking out, the incident raised tensions in the crucial waterway to a peak where the possibility of a U.S.-Iranian clash could be imminent, diplomats in the region agreed.

‘Going Up Notch by Notch’

“There doesn’t seem to be any way to wind down the tension,” one Western diplomat said. “It keeps going up notch by notch. Now everybody is just waiting for the match that lights the fuse.”

It was a day that tested the nerves of naval commanders at both ends of the gulf, where the resources of a 10-ship U.S. task force have been stretched thin in recent days by a new wave of Iranian attacks on tankers and by the discovery of more underwater mines in the area.

As four U.S. warships raced northward through the night toward the Saudi coast, a tense confrontation also took place at the southern end of the waterway, where an Iranian warship locked its missile-firing radar onto a U.S. Navy ship and ignored initial warnings to stand down.

Iranian Vessel Warned

The identity of the U.S. ship involved and the exact location of the confrontation were not clear. But journalists monitoring maritime radio traffic off Dubai, at the southern end of the gulf, overheard the U.S. ship broadcast a firm warning to the Iranian vessel.

“Iranian warship, Iranian warship. . . . You have locked your fire control radar on a U.S. warship bearing 291 (and) 16,600 yards from you. Secure it immediately. This is your only warning,” the broadcast said.

The incident occurred at 6:08 a.m. Saturday, and the warning was repeated three times over the next eight minutes before the Iranian ship finally obeyed.

A U.S. military source noted that targeting a U.S. ship amounts to an act of “hostile intent” which, under the rules of engagement for U.S. forces operating in the gulf, would have justified a preemptive attack on the Iranian vessel. But the source added that the decision to open fire is “left to the discretion of the individual commander,” who in this case decided to stand down the Iranian ship.

However, it was the unusually large and threatening Iranian naval movements at the northern end of the gulf that caused the most concern and prompted an emergency redeployment of U.S. forces during the night.

A senior diplomatic source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a “huge” flotilla of Iranian speedboats, said to number at least 50 vessels, left their bases at Farsi and Kharg islands in the northern gulf in the pre-dawn hours and headed toward the Ras al Khafji oil terminal operated jointly by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, Iraq’s two staunchest Arab allies in the Iran-Iraq War.

The terminal, whose oil is used to help finance Iraq’s war effort, is located about 30 miles offshore, Oil experts estimate that Iraq receives more than $4 million per day in proceeds from the sale of oil pumped from the offshore field.

Knowledge Denied

Strangely, Saudia Arabia and Kuwait both denied any knowledge of the approaching Iranian flotilla. Kuwait said its air and sea surveillance units detected no signs of unusual activity in the region during the night, and Saudi Arabia flatly denied that any confrontation had taken place.

“No Iranian or non-Iranian boat approached Saudi territorial waters and no Saudi air force jet intercepted any Iranian gunboats in the gulf,” a Saudi Defense Ministry spokesman insisted.

However, diplomats described the denials as attempts to lower tensions in the aftermath of the affair, which appeared to end without bloodshed when the Iranians withdrew shortly before daybreak.

Despite their growing anger with Iran, neither Saudi Arabia nor Kuwait wants to risk a war with their larger and more powerful neighbor across the gulf, the diplomats noted. “They probably did not count on the reports spreading so fast and thought they could get away with denying it,” one diplomat said.

Talking Off the Record

Because of the fears and extreme sensitivities of the small Arab states on the western side of the gulf to any suggestion that they could be drawn into the war against Iran, diplomats and other officials agreed to discuss the Ras al Khafji incident only on the condition that they not be identified by either name or nationality.

However, information pieced together from several extremely reliable sources provided the following account:

After the Iranian speedboats left their bases at Farsi and Kharg islands, they converged from two directions on Ras al Khafji. Kharg lies about 70 miles northeast of the Saudi-Kuwaiti oil terminal, while Farsi is about 70 miles southeast of it. Both islands serve as bases from which Iranian Revolutionary Guards venture forth to mount speedboat attacks on shipping in the northern end of the gulf.

Although confirmation that the high-speed boats were heading for the Saudi-Kuwaiti neutral zone was not received until about 2 a.m., the United States had detected enough signs of unusual activity in the region to order the La Salle, command ship of the U.S. gulf task force, to head for the northern end of the gulf several hours before the speedboat flotilla actually got underway.

Command Ship Breaks Off

Members of a journalists’ pool on board the La Salle reported that the 11,000-ton command ship abruptly left a convoy of U.S. warships escorting a re-registered Kuwaiti gas tanker southward through the gulf Friday evening and headed north at close to its top speed of 17 knots.

The La Salle joined up with three other U.S. warships--the amphibious assault ship Guadalcanal and the frigates Ford and Thach--before arriving in the northern gulf at about 7 a.m. Saturday.

By that time, however, most of the Iranian boats had already dispersed. “Nothing much was happening by the time we got there. We had no contact with Iranian vessels,” one source said.

Nevertheless, the source added, the La Salle maintained a tense daylong vigil amid reports that at least some of the Iranian gunboats were still in the area.

“Some activity is still going on up there, but we’re not sure what,” one official said.

The area around Farsi, where the supertanker Bridgeton hit a mine on the first U.S.-escorted convoy of re-registered Kuwaiti tankers last July, is kept under close surveillance by U.S. AWACS reconnaissance planes based in Saudi Arabia, and it is believed that the first indications of unusual Iranian activity around the islands came from this aerial intelligence.

Rear Adm. Harold J. Bersen, the gulf task force commander, left the La Salle during the day to confer with U.S. officials in Bahrain, where the administrative center for the Navy’s operations in the gulf is located. Bersen returned to the La Salle in the afternoon.

It was not clear how close to the Ras al Khafji facility the Iranian vessels came before withdrawing, but maritime officials and other sources in the region noted reports from oil platform workers that jet fighters, believed to be Saudi, were seen diving at boats.

One shipping source said that, while a few of the boats came “quite close” to the terminal, the bulk of the flotilla remained about 20 miles off.

Puzzling Behavior

A number of officials said they were puzzled by the Iranian behavior in dispatching what appeared to be an attack force against the oil terminal and then not attacking. They said they found this especially odd in view of the strenuous Saudi denials that they had chased off the boats.

But other sources speculated that the Iranian move might have been a “scare tactic” aimed at intimidating the Saudis and Kuwaitis by showing them how vulnerable they are to attack.

“It could also have been a prelude, a literal testing of the waters, so to speak,” to judge the speed and nature of the U.S. response, another source added.

Whatever the motive, the effect of the Iranian maneuvers was to sharply escalate tensions that already were running high after last month’s U.S. attack on an Iranian mine-laying vessel, the Iran Ajr, and a subsequent spate of retaliatory strikes by Iran against international shipping in the gulf.

It also deepened a conviction, shared by many diplomats and officials in the gulf, that, as the U.S. role in the region grows, a major confrontation between the United States and Iran is all but inevitable.

‘Real Problem’ for U.S.

“The United States faces a real problem in the gulf,” one Western diplomat said. Noting that the war, now in its eighth year, could drag on for several more years, the diplomat said he does not believe the United States is prepared to accept the consequences of an “open-ended commitment” in the face of repeated Iranian attempts to undermine it.

Iran has effectively done this by stepping up attacks on unprotected tankers and by laying mines at both ends of the gulf. As a result, shipping has become a much riskier business since the U.S. Navy arrived to safeguard it, and the 11 Kuwaiti tankers re-registered under the American flag are moving oil and gas out of the gulf at a far slower rate than they were before the Navy started escorting them.

“The Americans cannot allow this situation to continue, but they cannot pull out either because that would be seen as an Iranian victory,” the diplomat said.

With a U.N. peace effort apparently going nowhere, the only means of reversing what is likely to become an intolerable situation for the U.S. Navy is a military one, the diplomat added.

“It’s a pretty gloomy picture,” he said.

Killing of two anti-Khomeini activists raised fears of an Iranian hit team in London. Page 26.