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Iraq
The Tanker War, 1984-87
Naval operations came to a halt, presumably because Iraq and
Iran had lost many of their ships, by early 1981; the lull in
the fighting lasted for two years. In March 1984, Iraq initiated
sustained naval operations in its self-declared 1,126-kilometer
maritime exclusion zone, extending from the mouth of the Shatt
al Arab to Iran's port of Bushehr. In 1981 Baghdad had attacked
Iranian ports and oil complexes as well as neutral tankers and
ships sailing to and from Iran; in 1984 Iraq expanded the socalled
tanker war by using French Super-Etendard combat aircraft armed
with Exocet missiles. Neutral merchant ships became favorite targets,
and the long-range Super-Etendards flew sorties farther south.
Seventy-one merchant ships were attacked in 1984 alone, compared
with forty-eight in the first three years of the war. Iraq's motives
in increasing the tempo included a desire to break the stalemate,
presumably by cutting off Iran's oil exports and by thus forcing
Tehran to the negotiating table. Repeated Iraqi efforts failed
to put Iran's main oil exporting terminal at Khark Island out
of commission, however. Iran retaliated by attacking first a Kuwaiti
oil tanker near Bahrain on May 13 and then a Saudi tanker in Saudi
waters five days later, making it clear that if Iraq continued
to interfere with Iran's shipping, no Gulf state would be safe.
These sustained attacks cut Iranian oil exports in half, reduced
shipping in the Gulf by 25 percent, led Lloyd's of London to increase
its insurance rates on tankers, and slowed Gulf oil supplies to
the rest of the world; moreover, the Saudi decision in 1984 to
shoot down an Iranian Phantom jet intruding in Saudi territorial
waters played an important role in ending both belligerents' attempts
to internationalize the tanker war. Iraq and Iran accepted a 1984
UN-sponsored moratorium on the shelling of civilian targets, and
Tehran later proposed an extension of the moratorium to include
Gulf shipping, a proposal the Iraqis rejected unless it were to
included their own Gulf ports.
Iraq began ignoring the moratorium soon after it went into effect
and stepped up its air raids on tankers serving Iran and Iranian
oil-exporting facilities in 1986 and 1987, attacking even vessels
that belonged to the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
Iran responded by escalating its attacks on shipping serving Arab
ports in the Gulf. As Kuwaiti vessels made up a large portion
of the targets in these retaliatory raids, the Kuwaiti government
sought protection from the international community in the fall
of 1986. The Soviet Union responded first, agreeing to charter
several Soviet tankers to Kuwait in early 1987. Washington, which
has been approached first by Kuwait and which had postponed its
decision, eventually followed Moscow's lead. United States involvement
was sealed by the May 17, 1987, Iraqi missile attack on the USS
Stark, in which thirtyseven crew members were killed.
Baghdad apologized and claimed that the attack was a mistake.
Ironically, Washington used the Stark incident to blame
Iran for escalating the war and sent its own ships to the Gulf
to escort eleven Kuwaiti tankers that were "reflagged" with the
American flag and had American crews. Iran refrained from attacking
the United States naval force directly, but it used various forms
of harassment, including mines, hit-and-run attacks by small patrol
boats, and periodic stop-and-search operations. On several occasions,
Tehran fired its Chinese-made Silkworm missiles on Kuwait from
Al Faw Peninsula. When Iranian forces hit the reflagged tanker
Sea Isle City in October 1987, Washington retaliated
by destroying an oil platform in the Rostam field and by using
the United States Navy's Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) commandos to
blow up a second one nearby.
Within a few weeks of the Stark incident, Iraq resumed
its raids on tankers but moved its attacks farther south, near
the Strait of Hormuz. Washington played a central role in framing
UN Security Council Resolution 598 on the Gulf war, passed unanimously
on July 20; Western attempts to isolate Iran were frustrated,
however, when Tehran rejected the resolution because it did not
meet its requirement that Iraq should be punished for initiating
the conflict.
In early 1988, the Gulf was a crowded theater of operations.
At least ten Western navies and eight regional navies were patrolling
the area, the site of weekly incidents in which merchant vessels
were crippled. The Arab Ship Repair Yard in Bahrain and its counterpart
in Dubayy, United Arab Emirates (UAE), were unable to keep up
with the repairs needed by the ships damaged in these attacks.
Data as of May 1988
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