RETALIATION IN THE GULF
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on
America's military plans after the attack on USS Stark
Washington IRAN is 'the real villain', says President Reagan. Curious, it was Iraq that began the war seven years ago with an opportu- nistic grab at Abadan. It was Iraq that first started attacking oil tankers and that con- tinues to sink the lion's share. And it was an Iraqi Exocet that incinerated 37 Amer- ican sailors in their bunks aboard the USS Stark. Yet the Ayatollah is to blame, it seems, because he gloats too much, and because he won't stop the war until he gets Saddam Hussein's scalp.
Mr Reagan's concern over ending the Gulf war comes late. (Very late, in fact, points out the Kuwaiti daily Al-Anbaa, after 'fuelling the fire' himself for so many years. Nevertheless, the administration, undaunted by its miserable record in such matters, is once again trying to dissuade allies from selling weapons to Iran. This so-called 'Operation Staunch', already a byword for hypocrisy, is even being ex- tended to communist countries, and US diplomats are now busy lecturing the Chinese, North Koreans and Poles.
It pays to attack American frigates `inadvertently', it seems, though the strike may yet turn out to have been pure revenge. Iraq lost the Fao peninsula last year because of doctored US intelligence, and it has since lost scores of aircraft to those same Hawk missiles that helped feed the Nicaraguan Contras. Alternatively Iraq, as a Soviet ally, might have been pressured into making an experimental strike to see if a weakened administration, nagged by a skittish Congress, could be cowed into flight from the Gulf.
`We'll not be intimidated; we'll not be driven from the Gulf,' is the answer of the Defence Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, to that possibility. 'The Soviet policy over the years has been to gain access to the oil fields, to deny oil to the West which urgently needs it, and it's a situation we simply can't allow.'
The Russian navy is no longer a coast- guard of home waters. It is striking that the Pacific fleet, with 327 combat vessels including two of Russia's four Kirov aircraft-carriers has grown the fastest of the four fleets and has done so with a marked stress on offensive projection of force. The United States still dominates the Pacific but the transformation of Cam Rahn Bay, once an American port in Vietnam and now the Soviet Union's big- gest foreign base, is a worrying sign that the Russian navy will edge across the underbelly of Asia. So when Kuwait re- quested, and was granted, a lease on Soviet tankers earlier this year the Reagan admi- nistration reacted quickly by agreeing to let 11 Kuwaiti tankers fly the American flag.
Congressman Tom Lantos says it is `horrendously ill-advised' and warns that America 'is about to cross the Rubicon'. Under the pretence of protecting interna- tional shipping, the United States would in fact be helping only one side, the side that has suffered least from tanker attacks.
The assistant Secretary of State, Richard Murphy, says Iran has so far been careful to avoid American ships but admits that `we cannot be totally sure of anything where Iran is concerned'. Indeed not. The Iranian army and the revolutionary guards, with their respective clerico-political pat- rons, are pitted against each other and tend to make rash moves in foreign policy in order to gain domestic advantage. Hence, for example, the plan by guardsmen to kidnap Robert McFarlane on his ill-fated trip to Teheran last year, forestalled by the great 'pragmatist' speaker Rafsanjani. This same pragmatist is now boasting that America 'is as helpless as a baby in the Gulf', and warns that his men will board the Kuwaiti ships and carry away the American flags.
Mr Murphy dismisses such chatter. 'Iran has not won that war [with Iraq] and we think it would be reluctant to initiate actions that would provoke a second.' A second? Are we willing to go to war?' asked Senator John Glenn. The White House promptly declared that Murphy was not 'authorised' to talk about war, adding that the US role would be strictly one of deterrence. For most congressmen, howev- er, deterrence means retaliation, which means war, which means invoking the War Powers Act. The White House chief of staff, Howard Baker, was reportedly un- able to persuade President Reagan to meet Congress half way on this. The Senate has already passed an amendment with over- whelming bipartisan support demanding that the administration report to Congress on its exact plans before reflagging the Kuwaiti ships. It is not that they oppose the policy. 'I'm not against being in the Persian Gulf,' said Senator Nunn, 'but we ought to make sure we don't put inadequate force in harm's way, we're going to need more ships in there, we're going to have to have an Aegis cruiser, at least one, we're going to have to have a battleship, and we're going to have to have land-based air.'
Land-based air means Saudi Arabia, which is in double disgrace with Congress for secretly funding the Contras and for refusing to intercept the rogue Iraqi fight- er. In principle air-cover could be pro- vided, though at a higher risk, by the aircraft-carrier Constellation, now steam- ing towards the Gulf, but there is a sense in Washington that the United States should not be there alone, that there should be a collective effort by allies or none at all.
Indignation with Saudi Arabia is turning into a broader dissatisfaction, always thre- atening in this era of trade wars and equilateralism, with allies in general. One after another, members of Congress stood up and reproached Europe and Japan, which respectively get about 30 and 60 per cent of their oil from the Gulf, for leaving the United States, which gets only 7 per cent, with the sole burden of patroll- ing its waters. Congressmen lumped all Europe together in their usual crude way and seemed unaware that Britain, an oil exporter, has two frigates and a destroyer shadowing tankers in the Gulf.
Even if we accept that Europe should do more for Western defence, this is hardly the occasion. True, there is a Soviet threat, but it is not yet acute. Perhaps most Americans would welcome the chance to bomb Iran, the country that has poisoned both the Carter and Reagan administra- tions, that sponsored the Beirut embassy killings, that has taunted once too often. That is their quarrel, not ours. Only if the United States really intends to keep ship- ping open, escorting Iranian tankers as well as those of Iraqi allies, should we get involved.
Caspar Weinberger has spared Europe the reproaches, arguing that America should do whatever its own interests dic- tate, with or without support. He has the majestic Reagan navy, the other face of the majestic Reagan debt: 14 aircraft-carrier battle groups, bursting with the latest in guns and gadgets, and invested with a `forward strategy' that includes attacks on mainland Russia and seeks total control of the oceans. Critics have been saying it is a waste of money, that the strategy is inoper- able, and that the ships are vulnerable to sophisticated missiles. The Stark suggested they were right. Weinberger may now have a much fuller opportunity to try to prove them wrong.
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