Ending 10-Day Lull, Iraq Mounts New Tanker Raids

Iraq ended a 10-day lull in the Persian Gulf shipping war as its jets mounted new raids on Iranian oil tankers, dampening hopes of Syrian-brokered efforts to defuse tension in the region.

Gulf-based shipping officials said an Iraqi jet fired an Exocet missile into the 280,476-ton tanker Khark 3 on Sunday night, shortly after the vessel left Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal near the northern end of the waterway.

Two hours earlier, another Iraqi jet fired a missile into what was thought to be an already damaged tanker now moored empty at Kharg Island as a decoy, the shipping officials said.

Not Seriously Damaged

The Khark 3, one of about 25 tankers used by Iran to shuttle its oil down the gulf from Kharg Island, was not seriously damaged.

The French-made Exocet penetrated a fuel tank, but the space had been filled with water to absorb the shock, a tactic used by many tankers in the gulf. No crew members were hurt.

Western diplomats said Iraq’s resumption of attacks on Iran’s oil lifeline cast a pall over hopes that Arab states could succeed where the United Nations has so far failed to negotiate an end to the seven-year-long Iran-Iraq War.

“It is only a matter of time before Iran retaliates with attacks of its own. . . . Then we are back to square one,” said one salvage operator.

The absence of Iraqi or Iranian shipping raids in the first days of 1988 was in marked contrast to December, which saw 25 confirmed attacks and 22 merchant seamen killed in the most violent month on record since the tanker war flared up in 1984.

Optimism had been mounting that a peace shuttle between Tehran and gulf states conducted by high-ranking Syrian officials was on the verge of bringing gulf Arab leaders and Iran to the conference table. But it was unclear whether Iraq’s tanker raids had jeopardized those talks; Tehran had no immediate reaction to the attacks.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati met a United Arab Emirates envoy in Tehran on Sunday night and said Iran was optimistic about any cooperation that would reduce the influence of foreign powers in the gulf.

A Complicated Deal

Some diplomats suggested that a complicated deal had been struck whereby Iraq had bowed to pressure from its major ally Saudi Arabia to halt attacks on Iranian oil tankers.

In return, Syria--non-Arab Iran’s principal ally in the Arab world--persuaded Iran to cancel or at least postpone a long-anticipated attack on Iraq’s southern port city of Basra.

But that agreement seemed fragile after Iraq’s new raids, and some diplomats speculated that Iran had in any case been playing for time since it lacked air cover and manpower to mount an effective winter offensive against Basra.

Iraq’s raids came only hours after U.S. Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci left Saudi Arabia for Paris at the end of a weeklong tour of the gulf.

The attacks also coincided with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s tour of gulf states, marking Cairo’s rehabilitation in the region after a virtual boycott after its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.