13 Ships to Head for Gulf, May Expand Role of U.S.

The United States will dispatch 13 warships to the Persian Gulf region next week, the Pentagon announced Thursday, as the Administration pondered whether to extend U.S. naval protection there to ships that do not fly the American flag.

Pentagon spokesman Dan Howard described the deployment as a “long-planned rotation, a changing of the guard” designed to relieve some of the 29 ships on duty in the region. But defense officials said privately that the new deployments provide the possibility that a beefed-up, overlapping force will be there at least temporarily--potentially for greater protection efforts and as a show of force against any Iranian retaliation.

The deployment will begin with the departure of the aircraft carrier Forrestal and seven escorts Monday, a week after U.S. and Iranian forces engaged in one of the largest naval encounters since World War II. In the wake of the clash, the Reagan Administration, responding partly to urgings from some lawmakers, is reassessing the policy that has limited U.S. naval protection in the gulf to 11 U.S.-flagged Kuwaiti oil tankers.

The Administration is considering whether to give protection to other nations’ ships that have been attacked in the Tehran government’s effort to disrupt commerce with Iraq.

Meanwhile, in Congress, Sen. Brock Adams (D-Wash.) declared that he will seek a new vote on invoking the War Powers Resolution to give Congress greater control over the U.S. gulf mission.

Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, also accused the Administration of overreacting in moving to destroy two Iranian oil platforms in the gulf in retribution for renewed Iranian mining of the waterway. Aspin’s criticism was among the first voiced in Congress about the Administration’s retaliatory action, which led to the naval battle that crippled six Iranian vessels and reportedly killed 40 sailors.

For the third day in a row, Iranian leaders vowed publicly to exact revenge.

“We will not forget the pure blood of the Iranians shed by the U.S. mercenaries in the Persian Gulf,” Iranian Prime Minister Hussein Moussavi said after a Cabinet meeting in Tehran, according to the state-run Iranian news agency IRNA. “The U.S. should know that the Persian Gulf will not tolerate the presence of filthy Americans.”

The Pentagon’s new naval deployment is to include a destroyer and four missile frigates, scheduled to leave their home ports on the East Coast next Wednesday. The ships are expected to take roughly three weeks to reach their stations in the gulf, a senior defense official said.

“If circumstances should dictate, you’ll have two (aircraft carrier battle groups) in the area, and if need be, you can keep them there at the time,” the official said. The Administration employed a similar strategy in March, 1986, as tensions heightened with Libya, rotating more ships to the Mediterranean shortly before U.S. planes bombed Tripoli and Benghazi.

Original Strategy

In announcing the ship movement, Howard also revealed new details of Monday’s U.S. strike against Iranian targets, including the original extent of the planned retaliation and the degree to which leaders in Washington kept a tight rein over the operations.

The original blueprint included a plan to strike an Iranian frigate, the Sabalan, because of what Howard described as that ship’s leaders’ “propensity to use their guns to fire on the crew quarters of the tankers and other merchant vessels that it attacked.” The planned targets also included three oil platforms used by Iran in its attacks against ships in the gulf, Howard said.

After dropping one of the oil platforms from the plan, U.S. forces struck the other two. But before they could attack the Sabalan, Howard said, a smaller Iranian ship, the Joshan, challenged U.S. forces and was sunk. A second Iranian frigate, the Sahand, then made a dash for U.S. forces at high speed and was set ablaze by U.S. Harpoon missiles.

The Sabalan, laying back near the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, was damaged by a single bomb from a Navy A-6 aircraft. Howard said Secretary of Defense Frank C. Carlucci made the decision to call off further strikes on the Sabalan.

During the operation itself, Howard said, Reagan was called upon to make only one command decision. He approved the decision authorizing A-6 jets to fire on three Iranian speedboats that had fired on small craft near the Mubarak oil field. All three speedboats, Swedish-built Boghammars, were hit and at least one was sunk, according to U.S. officials.

If Adams persuades Congress to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution, the President would be forced to withdraw U.S. forces from the gulf within 90 days unless Congress explicitly authorized their presence.

Mission to Perform

“I am not trying to force the withdrawal of American forces from the Persian Gulf,” Adams insisted. “We have a right to be there, and we have a mission to perform there.”

But, he said, Congress should have an opportunity to exercise its authority. The Reagan Administration has called the War Powers Resolution an unconstitutional encroachment on the executive branch’s responsibilities.