Iran, Iraq Hail Truce; Baghdad Will Test Gulf

This country and Iran hailed the cease-fire in the Persian Gulf War as successful Saturday, with the Baghdad government calling it “a historic moment.”

In Iran, the official Tehran Radio declared that the cease-fire is the beginning of a “new chapter in the Islamic revolution.”

At the same time, Iraq announced Saturday that it was sending its first loaded tanker in the eight years of the war through the gulf as a test of the cease-fire at sea.

For its part, Iran warned that it reserved the right to search inbound foreign ships for contraband cargo.

However, the official Iraqi News Agency said that Iraq’s naval commander rejects Iran’s right to stop shipping, adding that he hopes the Iranian statement was a “slip of the tongue.”

The Iraqi tanker Ain-Zala was loaded from a temporary platform off the Faw Peninsula, according to Iraqi sources. It had been waiting for the cease-fire before taking aboard a cargo of crude oil and heading for the Strait of Hormuz, which is patrolled by Iranian ships and aircraft and is within range of Iranian missiles.

Oil Minister Issam Abdul Rahim said that Iraq is showing the world “the resumption of our oil exports from the gulf, which will gradually increase in capacity.”

Oil exports from Iraq and Iran largely financed the vastly expensive war.

‘Everything Is Holding’

As for the U.N. observer force hastily deployed along the 740-mile border, Irish Col. William Phillips at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad said: “We sent out lots of patrols. There were no snags. No violations. Everything is holding.”

(The Iraqi News Agency did report an Iraqi soldier killed by a sniper on the central war front, but U.N. headquarters in Baghdad said the report could not immediately be confirmed.)

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, en route to Geneva for direct peace talks between the two belligerents scheduled to begin Thursday, expressed optimism over a favorable cease-fire and future peace accord.

In celebration, guns in Baghdad fired off 101 blank salutes in thanksgiving for the cease-fire.

The apparent cessation of hostilities, supervised by the 350-man U.N. observer group, ends an eight-year conflict that most Western observers here believe should never have been fought.

‘A Mindless War’

“It was a mindless war neither side could win, given their military tactics,” a defense specialist here commented.

Stalemated almost from the start, the war dragged on, both on land and sea, with the two sides now back to about where they were tactically on Sept. 22, 1980, when Iraqi forces invaded Iran.

Military attaches have drawn several conclusions from the course of the war, which may or may not be shared by senior officers of the two warring powers.

Divisions did attack and then pause--allowing the other side to regroup, as the Iranians did.

Iraq’s failure to press the military advantage--using tanks as a mobile striking force--led to a standoff developing in 1981 and the lengthening of a war that was ultimately to cost an estimated 1 million lives.

Enormous Loss of Life

A second lesson is that simply sending massed formations of troops against well-prepared defenses, as the Iranians did against the Iraqis, is a recipe for enormous loss of life, without commensurate strategic gain.

And this principle favoring an intelligent defense could encourage forces of the Atlantic Alliance in Europe, which numerically are outgunned by the Warsaw Pact armies by a margin of 2 or 3 to 1.

In 1982, Iranian troops operating from a population base advantage of 3 to 1 began a major offensive along the southern front, the objective being the port city of Basra, Iraq’s second largest.

The Iranians gained ground inside Iraq--though failing to take Basra--but they also lost tens of thousands of fervent young volunteers.

Iran’s 1982 offensive led Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to call for a truce, which Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, would not accept unless Hussein stepped down.

Start of ‘Tanker War’

In 1984, the heaviest action shifted to the Persian Gulf, in the so-called tanker war, with the Iraqi air force attacking oil tankers moving in and out of Iranian ports. But Iran responded by hitting ships of non-belligerent Arab gulf nations that supported Iraq.

Both Iran and Iraq saw their oil exports and revenues reduced--but not cut off.

Though the attacks made the gulf the world’s most dangerous waterway, the results showed that planes alone--at least as thus employed--could not shut off the flow of oil from the region.

In 1985, Iraq stopped a massive Iranian ground attack. In 1986, Iran made its biggest gains with a surprise crossing of the Shatt al Arab waterway and occupied the Faw Peninsula, adjacent to Iraq’s opening to the gulf. However, once again Iran failed to press its advantage and was unable to take Basra.

Decisive Turning Point

This may have been a decisive turning point against Iran.

The tide of the war changed dramatically this year when--for still largely unexplained reasons--the Iranian military machine collapsed, allowing the Iraqi army to retake the Faw Peninsula and recover almost all of the Iraqi territory occupied by Iran along the entire front. Military specialists say this may have been caused by the accumulated lack of training and professionalism among members of the fanatical, paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Tehran’s regular army and their failure to coordinate.

Or it may have been due to a cooling of religious militancy in Iran and a resultant lack of morale among troops at the front, analysts here say.

Missile Bombardment

Certainly, Iranian civilian morale was impaired early this year when Iraq fired about 200 ground-to-ground missiles onto the capital of Tehran and also struck at other Iranian cities.

At sea, two of the best ships in the Iranian navy were put out of action after encounters with the U.S. fleet, whose elements had been reinforced beginning in July, 1987, to protect U.S.-flagged commercial shipping in the region.

Then last month, the U.S. cruiser Vincennes mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger jet with the loss of 290 lives.

Ironically, that painful tragedy may have hastened Iranian agreement on the cease-fire.

One experienced observer here commented: “The fact that Iran saw no worldwide condemnation of the United States, just as there had been no widespread outcry over the use of chemical weapons, may have convinced those around Khomeini--and the ayatollah himself--finally to accept the U.N. cease-fire.”