Confrontation in the Persian Gulf : Soviets Report U.S. ‘Banditry,’ More Mines

The Soviet press Tuesday condemned the U.S. attack on Iran’s oil platforms in the Persian Gulf as “banditry” but indicated that Soviet naval ships had come close to firing on Iranian gunboats in the past.

One Soviet newspaper also disclosed that Soviet warships in the gulf had recently encountered a huge mine field--presumably laid by the Iranians--apparently before a U.S. Navy frigate struck a mine last week. The paper did not indicate whether the presence of the mine field was made known to Western vessels in the gulf.

In the first Soviet reaction to the American attack Monday, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda said it appeared to be designed to give the U.S. Navy a pretext for maintaining a presence in the region.

The newspaper dismissed the Reagan Administration’s efforts to describe the attacks as retaliatory, saying: “No matter how you describe it, it still appears as banditry. You cannot give any other name for an attack on oil rigs pumping oil from the sea floor.”

The Reagan Administration had described its strike against the two offshore Iranian platforms as retaliation for Iran’s planting of mines in the gulf, one of which seriously damaged the U.S. frigate Samuel B. Roberts last Thursday, injuring 10 crew members.

In an apparent effort to balance its criticism of the American action, Pravda also said the “piratical actions” of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, who man the speedboats that attack civilian shipping in the gulf, could not be justified.

Pravda made no mention of the U.S. Navy’s battles with several Iranian gunboats and two frigates that followed the attack on the oil platforms. The Soviets thus appeared to be drawing a distinction between the gunboats, obvious military targets, and the oil platforms, which have a nominal civilian role but which the Pentagon asserts are used for command and control of Iranian naval forces.

The Soviet government newspaper Izvestia picked up the same theme Tuesday, questioning whether the platforms were a valid military target.

The Pravda commentary suggested that a connection existed between the attack on the Iranian facilities and Israel’s alleged involvement in the assassination in Tunisia of the deputy military commander of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Khalil Wazir.

“Washington and Tel Aviv have shown that they are not only on the same team but also act in unison in the Middle East,” the newspaper said.

The Soviet Union has been extremely cautious in its criticism of Iran in recent weeks, apparently in hopes that the revolutionary government in Tehran will not interfere with the recently signed agreement that will allow Moscow to begin withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan starting May 15. The clergy-dominated Iranian regime is said to have considerable influence with Afghanistan’s rebels, who are devout Muslims.

Moscow’s Arab allies have grown increasingly impatient with the Soviet Union’s efforts to delay action in the U.N. Security Council to impose an arms embargo against non-Arab Iran for failing to heed the council’s call last July for a cease-fire in the long-running Iran-Iraq War.

‘Deepens Crisis’

Leonid M. Zamyatin, the Soviet ambassador to Britain, said the Kremlin view of the American action in the gulf is that it appeared to “deepen a crisis in an area where strains are already great.”

“It sets a dangerous precedent,” Zamyatin said, “when a state assumes the right to punish other states for actions that they may or may not have taken.”

Zamyatin asserted that there was no conclusive evidence that Iran had begun laying more mines.

Like the Americans, the Soviets were invited to provide naval escorts for Kuwaiti shipping last summer by the oil-rich sheikdom’s government. Unlike the Americans, the Soviets turned down the offer.

An intriguing glimpse of the Soviet military view of the gulf was given in Tuesday’s Red Star, the newspaper of the Defense Ministry. In an eyewitness report from a Soviet minesweeper, the Kursky Komsomoletz, the newspaper said a convoy of Soviet ships recently passed through a mine field consisting of at least 19 mines in the space of a few hours.

The article gave no location or date, but a reference to an approaching Saudi gunboat suggested that it was in the central area of the waterway.

The Red Star account did not make clear if the Soviets had warned international shipping about the discovery of the mine field. Also left vague was whether the mine field was in the same area where the Roberts struck a mine last week.

The captain of the Soviet minesweeper was quoted as saying the discovery of the mine field represented only the second time he had felt so threatened. The first incident occurred sometime earlier, he said, when a convoy of Soviet ships was approached by 12 Iranian gunboats.

The captain, identified as A. Golodov, described the Iranian speedboats as being packed with explosives, and he said the crews wore the flowing white robes that normally identify Iranian suicide crews.

As the speedboats approached, a special group of Soviet machine gunners prepared to open fire, but at the last moment the Iranian boats veered away.

The newspaper noted that if one of the speedboats had suffered a steering failure and failed to veer away, the captain would have opened fire.