Confrontation in the Persian Gulf : Cycle of Retaliation: U.S. Is Considering How Far It Should Go

Although the United States inflicted severe military damage on Iran in Monday’s Persian Gulf clashes, U.S. officials are concerned that Iranian retaliation--in the gulf or elsewhere--could draw the United States into a broader and more dangerous confrontation.

Iran retains a number of potent weapons--from land-based Silkworm missiles to F-4 jets to shoulder-launched rockets--capable of inflicting heavy losses on American ships or on ships under U.S. protection. The Tehran regime also can marshal forces for terrorist attacks on U.S. forces or friendly Arab states.

A new Iranian attack would pose vexing questions for U.S. policy-makers and military planners: How can the United States respond without being drawn into an unending action-reaction cycle with Iran? For the United States, such reactions might involve direct strikes inside Iranian territory.

In addition, what responses would minimize the risks to U.S. forces while deterring further Iranian attacks? How can Congress and the allies be convinced that the United States is merely protecting its vital interests and not being drawn into a general war with Iran?

Acts Demand Retaliation

Administration officials from President Reagan to Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci have emphasized that the United States does not seek confrontation with Iran. Yet to the Administration, recent Iranian actions appear to demand U.S. retaliation.

Reports reached Washington on Tuesday, for instance, that Iran had fired five missiles, possibly Silkworms with 1,000-pound warheads, at the U.S. frigate Jack Williams as it patrolled in the Strait of Hormuz on Monday. The missiles missed their target when the Williams took evasive action and fired decoys to confuse their radar guidance systems.

The United States has warned Iran repeatedly and publicly that it will not tolerate the use of the land-based Silkworms to intimidate shipping in the vital strait. Privately, U.S. military officials said that American forces would “take out” the Silkworm sites if evidence showed missile launches or intended launches.

“If the Iranians used those missiles in a hostile manner . . . we would take appropriate action,” Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard said Tuesday.

Such a move by U.S. forces would escalate the conflict significantly because it would mark the first attack on Iranian territory, as opposed to naval targets and oil platforms in international waters.

Pentagon Uncertain of Type

The Pentagon, trying to play down the severity of Monday’s attack on the Jack Williams, said Tuesday that it is not certain that the missiles fired at the U.S. frigate were Silkworms.

Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. denied to congressional leaders that Silkworms had been fired at the Williams, but officials later corrected his statement to say that it is not yet known what type of missiles were launched.

If Iran were to persist in its attacks on U.S. interests in the gulf, the American response likely would move a rung up the “escalation ladder” from firing on Iranian oil platforms.

“Those platforms are a very low blow on the scale, especially when you give (the Iranians) a chance to get off of them and there’s no damage to civilians. You make a point without seeming too warlike. But we’re not binding ourselves to that level, and I could see it going up a notch or two, depending on the level of provocation,” a senior Pentagon official said.

Among the U.S. options that would ratchet upward the level of retaliation in the gulf would be further attacks on working oil rigs, which would deny the Iranians a key source of cash to continue their war with Iraq. The Reagan Administration considered attacking a third oil platform along with the Sirri and Sassan platforms--a smaller rig named Rashan--but decided to concentrate its blows on the larger ones Monday.

In addition, the United States could launch an attack on any one of several small islands off the Iranian mainland with military value in the Persian Gulf shipping war. One such target, Abu Musa, has served as a camp and monitoring station for Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

One of the United States’ strongest plausible actions, however, is thought to be an attack on Bandar Abbas, the Iranians’ principal air and naval base on the waterway. Such a strike, officials said, would likely be mounted using aircraft based aboard the carrier Enterprise, now steaming in the North Arabian Sea, and perhaps by a second carrier that probably would be moved into the area.

As part of the reassessment of U.S. gulf policy now taking place, defense officials said, the Reagan Administration is considering dispatching a second aircraft carrier task force to join the Enterprise. Any attack on land targets beyond the Strait of Hormuz would require a large force of attack aircraft and an accompanying fleet of tankers to refuel the warplanes in the air, Pentagon officials said.

From the Iranian point of view, the potential loss of the Faw Peninsula to advancing Iraqi forces in the northern end of the gulf is more damaging than the battle with the Americans, according to Frederick Axelgard of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, author of a recent book on the Iran-Iraq War.

“If Iraq indeed does take charge of that southern sector of the war front, that is a brand new phase in the war. Add that to the embarrassment in the gulf, add that to the ‘war of the cities,’ and things are piling up on Iran in a bad way,” Axelgard said.

“Putting people in corners is always bad. It’s pretty much a guarantee you’ll see unpredictable and untoward things happen.”