Iran Braces to Get Blamed for Bombing of U.S. Site

Iranian forces deployed in and along the Persian Gulf have gone on high alert in anticipation of a U.S. military strike, retaliating for Iran’s alleged role in the June bombing of American airmen in Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The move is part of a “concerted Iranian effort” in recent days to try to control the damage from a Saudi-led campaign to finger Iran for the terrorist bombing that killed 19 U.S. airmen at Dhahran’s Khobar Towers military housing complex, a senior Pentagon official said.

Since the weekend, Iran’s navy has been put on alert, as have troops based on disputed Abu Musa and Tunb islands near the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the Gulf’s oil exports pass en route to the outside world, the sources added.

“They seem to be very spun up,” a senior administration official said. “We assume they’re trying to put out an exculpatory set of statements preemptively” to lessen the damage of open public accusations and to prevent American retaliation.

Saudi officials have been hinting for weeks that a final report on the Khobar bombing, naming specific suspects and their sponsors, is imminent. And Pentagon sources have said contingency plans for strikes against Iranian military targets have been formulated in the event an Iranian link is proved.

The other half of Iran’s campaign is a public relations offensive. On Monday, Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani announced that his government had intelligence proving that Saudis carried out the Khobar bombing.

After hearing that some suspects may have escaped from Saudi Arabia to Iran, the Iranian government ordered a “comprehensive investigation” but found “no trace” of them, he told a Saudi-owned newspaper.

Instead, Iran discovered that one of the Saudi suspects, a Shiite Muslim, had died in a Syrian jail. Shiites are a minority in Saudi Arabia with long-standing grievances against the Sunni Muslim regime. Iran is a predominantly Shiite nation with a long record of aiding its Shiite brethren in the Gulf and Lebanon.

The suspect, referred to by Rafsanjani only as “Marouf” but named this week in the Arabic press as Jafar el Marzouk al Shwaikjt, was reportedly a Saudi national resident in Syria who has been accused of smuggling explosives to Saudi Arabia for use in the Khobar bombing.

Both U.S. and Saudi investigators have tentatively concluded that Shiite Muslim extremists were behind the second of two attacks on U.S. military targets over the past 13 months in which 24 Americans were killed.

*

But unlike Saudi officials, the Clinton administration insists it has neither forensic nor circumstantial proof to indicate a direct Iranian role, officials said Tuesday. “That investigation is still under way, and we have not yet drawn conclusions. Iran is at least three steps ahead of the game now,” the senior administration official said.

The Pentagon official added: “The Iranians think we know more than we do. They’re spooked.”

But Iran’s military and diplomatic moves and tentative U.S. military planning reflect growing tensions between the two governments. Washington is also concerned about the imminent delivery of the third and final Russian submarine ordered by Iran as part of an effort to modernize its navy and upgrade its capabilities in the strategic Gulf. The Kilo-class submarines could be used for offensive operations, such as attacking tankers and laying mines, although their maneuverability will be limited by the Gulf’s shallow waters. No other Gulf navy has submarines.