U.S. Weighs Expansion of Forces, Role in Gulf : May Extend Protection to Vessels Not Flying American Flag; 2 Crewmen Are Still Missing

Reagan Administration officials said Tuesday that they plan to reassess U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf in the wake of Monday’s battles with the Iranian navy, with the possibility that more warships might be added and that protection might be extended to some commercial vessels that do not fly the U.S. flag.

U.S. officials, in considering an expansion of the U.S. mission, expressed growing concerns that the naval protection of U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti tankers is making the shipping and oil facilities of other friendly states more inviting targets for Iranian retaliation.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that Iranian speedboats attacked a Bahamian ship and a United Arab Emirates vessel, setting the latter ablaze.

However, an expansion of the U.S. mission in the aftermath of the greatest U.S.-Iranian confrontation in the gulf would be a controversial move and could inflame fears in Congress that the United States is being drawn more deeply into the Iran-Iraq War.

President Reagan said that “things seem to be quieting down” in the battle zone, one day after U.S. forces sank or heavily damaged six Iranian ships and destroyed two Iranian oil platforms.

Tehran Radio said that more than 40 Iranians were killed in the clashes and vowed to take revenge against U.S. interests.

The Pentagon said it has confirmed no U.S. casualties, but hopes were dimming for the two crewmen of a Marine AH-1 Cobra helicopter that disappeared during a gulf patrol mission Monday evening.

Asked about the fate of the crewmen, Reagan said during a photo session at the White House: “Nine ships right now are trying to find the answer to that.” Fifteen helicopters were assigned to the search, but no sign of the aircraft had been found.

Tehran Radio quoted the commander of the Revolutionary Guards naval forces, Hussein Alaei, as saying that the American helicopter “burst into flames and sank with its crew to the bottom of the Persian Gulf” after being hit by Iranian fire. U.S. officials said they have no information on such an incident.

Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard, assessing the battles that erupted after the U.S. destroyed the oil platforms in retribution for renewed Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf, said: “The forces that were there acquitted themselves marvelously well. But we may want to change their size and composition.”

Defense officials said they are considering the possibility of dispatching a second aircraft carrier battle group to the northern Arabian Sea, just outside the Gulf of Oman, where the carrier Enterprise is already deployed.

In the event of a drastic escalation of the U.S.-Iran conflict, such a move would double the capability of U.S. warplanes to strike Iranian missile sites or military installations on the Iranian mainland.

U.S. officials stressed that no buildup decision has yet been made and that they are hopeful that such retaliation will never be necessary. So far, U.S. forces have only attacked Iranian craft and offshore facilities in the waterway.

Report Given to Congress

Late Tuesday, the Administration provided a written report to Congress to help blunt any demand for invoking the 1973 War Powers Resolution, under which the President must notify Congress within 48 hours that U.S. troops have been sent into hostilities or that they face imminent hostilities.

“We have completed these self-defense actions and consider the matter closed,” Reagan said in his report. “Our forces remain prepared to take any additional action necessary to protect themselves, U.S.-flag vessels and U.S. lives.”

On Tuesday, Reagan presided over a meeting with Republican congressional leaders at which Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave brief summaries on the military action and portrayed the Iranian attacks as “testing our resolve,” one participant said later.

Responding to a question during a photo session, Reagan said that “things seem to be quieting down in the gulf. We hope it continues that way.”

The military action continued to draw support from Republican and Democratic members of Congress, but some leaders in both parties echoed the Pentagon in saying that the U.S. mission in the gulf should be reassessed.

“We need to re-examine our policy of protecting only 11 (Kuwaiti) ships,” Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a television interview. “Many people don’t realize it, but if a British ship or a French ship is attacked by an . . . aircraft right in the sight of our own American ship, we don’t do anything. That has given the perception that we have lined up with the Iraqis” by protecting only ships of a nation allied with Iraq in the war.

He warned against turning the Persian Gulf battle into a U.S.-Iranian war, however. Officially, the United States is neutral in the 7 1/2-year Iran-Iraq War.

Pentagon officials said that expanding U.S. military protection in the gulf is an option under consideration.

Virginia Sen. John W. Warner, the committee’s senior Republican, said in a broadcast interview: “We’d like to see a more coordinated participation by our allies (in the gulf). Our allies are there, but thus far they have declined efforts by our nation to suggest that we work at a more coordinated fashion.”

But White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, citing a public expression of support from Britain and private support messages from other allies, said that “we have been very pleased by the degree of international support” for Monday’s action and the overall support of the “multinational force” deployed in the gulf.

Pentagon spokesman Howard, citing the minesweeping assistance provided by other navies, said that French forces found three mines in the gulf Tuesday and that two mines had been found by Dutch units. In addition, U.S. Navy divers have detonated three mines, he said.

Administration officials denied that the clashes Monday would prompt a delay in the U.S. Navy’s convoy escorts for Kuwaiti tankers in the gulf.

“There’s no change in our intent or our policy with regard to guarding the convoys,” Fitzwater said.

In the aftermath of the battle, the search for the missing helicopter crew became one of the naval force’s chief priorities.

2 Crewmen Identified

The missing crewmen were identified as Capt. Stephen C. Leslie of New Bern, N.C., and Capt. Kenneth W. Hill of Thomasville, N.C. Both are assigned to the New River, N.C., Marine Corps Air Station.

“I’m not going to speculate” on what happened to them, Carlucci said in a brief interview. “We’re continuing to look, and I’m certainly hopeful.”

Of the Iranian forces involved in the battles, Howard said that one of the two Iranian frigates blasted by U.S. missiles Monday, the Sabalan, was towed to a port in Iran by two tugboats. The other, the Sahan, which suffered much greater damage and was left listing in the water, “has disappeared, and you can reach your own logical conclusion on that one,” he said.

He said U.S. forces could have fired more than one missile into the Sabalan but chose not to do so “to close the incident.”

Pentagon officials disputed a report from a news media pool aboard the frigate Jack Williams in the gulf that Iran had fired five Silkworm missiles at the ship. The Chinese-made Silkworms are deployed on shore, and their use against American targets would raise the possibility of U.S. strikes at land-based batteries.

Pentagon and White House officials said they could not confirm that the missiles were Silkworms and suggested that they might have been another type of missile fired by one of the Iranian frigates.

The operation Monday began with the early morning attack on the oil platforms, said by the United States to have been used as Iranian military command and control sites, and mushroomed into a daylong clash that produced the greatest exchange of fire yet between U.S. and Iranian forces.

The White House said that Reagan ordered the strikes on the oil platforms in retaliation for Iran’s alleged placement of mines in the gulf, one of which damaged a U.S. frigate, the Samuel B. Roberts, last Thursday.

The damage to the Roberts was the first to a U.S. warship from an Iranian mine. In recent months the Kuwaiti oil tankers escorted by U.S. ships have passed through the gulf without incident, while other commercial traffic has been hit by sporadic Iranian attacks.

Since an Iranian missile hit the U.S. tanker Sungari, which was flying a Liberian flag, last Oct. 15, American shipping and petroleum firms have lobbied the Reagan Administration aggressively to win protection for their ships and oil rigs in the Persian Gulf.

The clamor for wider U.S. naval protection has grown as some oil rigs owned by U.S. facilities have suffered damage.

Defense officials said an expansion of the U.S. mission would not necessarily require a substantially larger force of ships in the gulf. In addition, the policy has some backing among U.S. naval officials.

“It might be easier to protect the whole forest rather than individual trees,” one defense official said.

“It’s also easier to draw a solid line in the sand and tell the Iranians that if they cross over it, they’ll get knocked over.