by David Crist
By 1986, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s navy comprised fifteen thousand men and eighteen warships. But spare-parts shortages and losses reduced the combatant ships by half, and at any one time, only one or two ships of the Iranian fleet were at sea. Iran had only one functioning Harpoon antiship missile, placed on the missile boat Joshan, and for years tracking this single missile became a minor fixation at the Office of Naval Intelligence.14 The bulk of the Iranian operations fell to the four small British-built frigates, each armed with small “Sea Killer” antiship missiles and a 4.5-inch rapid-fire gun.
The Iranian leadership held the regular navy in some disdain; it suspected the officer corps of harboring sympathies for their old friends in the U.S. Navy and rightly questioned their overall loyalty to the Islamic Republic. The navy had produced few martyrs, and the Revolutionary Guard believed the force lacked the proper dedication and aggressiveness. In July 1985, Revolutionary Guardsmen manning small powerboats executed their first naval operation, seizing the Kuwaiti freighter al-Muharraq. With no other resources to expand their naval operations, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, as their naval arm was labeled, grew quickly, and by early 1987 it became the primary means of attacking shipping.
While the Iranian navy comprised a professional, Western-trained force, the Revolutionary Guard consisted of amateur officers who made up for their lack of training with enthusiasm. The guard’s rank and file was a blend of dedicated revolutionaries and impressed conscripts. One Revolutionary Guard sailor happened to be a deserter from the army who went to Bushehr to visit a friend serving in the navy. The Revolutionary Guards scooped him off the street, and twenty-four hours later he found himself manning a machine gun on a small boat in the middle of the Persian Gulf.
The backbone of this fleet was an improvised fleet of several hundred small boats, a mix of Boston Whaler–type boats and fast speedboats. If one could picture a swarm of bass-fishing boats armed with rocket launchers and machine guns attacking a tanker the length of three football fields, this gives an idea of what this new menace in the Gulf resembled. This mosquito fleet lacked the firepower to sink an oil tanker, but it could inflict serious damage and kill crewmen.
In 1984, over American objections, the Swedish government allowed nearly forty Boghammers, labeled as “cabin cruisers,” to be sold to Iran. The Revolutionary Guard impressed every boat.15 Forty-one feet long and powered by twin Volvo engines, they could reach speeds of forty-five knots. Armed with 107-mm rockets, RPG-7s, and 12.7-mm machine guns, they became the backbone of the guard naval flotilla.
The Revolutionary Guard’s navy used simple procedures to attack ships. Operating in groups of three to five boats, they approached close to their intended victim, then sprinted ahead of the tanker and simply waited for the ship to go by and raked its bridge and superstructure with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Later, they developed more sophisticated tactics. They would approach a ship at high speed from opposite directions, spraying the ship with gunfire in repeated, coordinated passing attacks. Their first attack occurred in April 1987, with forty-two other vessels meeting a similar fate that year.16 On September 16, 1987, a significant event occurred that was a precursor to changing Iranian tactics. For the first time in Gulf war history, a speedboat was used to attack a Kuwaiti tanker, the al-Funtas, in an unprecedented night attack. This took away the safe haven of night transit.
The guard operated from the same bases as the Iranian navy, particularly Bandar Abbas and Bushehr. However, the Revolutionary Guard maintained a parallel, but independent, command. Both the regular navy and the Revolutionary Guard were (and still are) divided into four district commands. Each had the same designation, so the 1st Naval District in Bandar Abbas or the 2nd in Bushehr was the same headquarters name for the navy and the Revolutionary Guard. But other than the title, the two commands operated independently. In 1987, the Iranians attempted to form a joint headquarters to coordinate Revolutionary Guard and regular naval operations, but this effort failed when the Revolutionary Guard refused to cooperate and subjugate their operations under a single command.
The relationship between the Revolutionary Guard and the Iranian navy was poor. Privately, many professional Iranian naval officers held the Revolutionary Guard in contempt, viewing them as arrogant and undisciplined. The Revolutionary Guard saw the navy as too conservative and still harboring sympathies for its former ally, the U.S. Navy. The two factions exchanged gunfire on several occasions, including one incident between an Iranian navy helicopter and a Revolutionary Guard small boat near one of the oil platforms. But the Revolutionary Guard rapidly became the more powerful. In one case, the guard forced the commander of the Iranian navy to resign when he opposed their seizure of a Kuwaiti freighter.
At times, neither force showed great discipline. Individual commanders disregarded orders from their respective district headquarters. In July 1987, Hashemi Rafsanjani assured Japan’s foreign minister that Iran would not attack Japanese shipping in the Gulf. But independent-minded Revolutionary Guard officers subsequently attacked two Japanese tankers.17 The captain of the navy frigate Sabalan, Lieutenant Commander Abdollah Manavi, who later rose to vice admiral and head of naval operations, earned the reputation of being a rogue commander. A zealot, on numerous occasions he ignored orders from 1st Naval District in Bandar Abbas not to fire on specific merchant ships. Manavi acknowledged receipt of the order and then opened fire on the hapless tanker. He deliberately aimed at the bridge and living quarters to kill as many of the crew as possible. For this, Captain Manavi earned the apt nickname “Captain Nasty.”
In order to find the tankers to attack, Iran relied on a few American-made P-3 surveillance planes and Iranian C-130s—several outfitted with signals intelligence collection equipment provided by the CIA before the fall of the shah. This equipment proved useful in monitoring ship radio communications, ascertaining port destinations, and relaying information down to the naval district.
The key link in the Iranian monitoring scheme was the Iranian-held islands and oil platforms in the Persian Gulf, which sat astride the tanker routes. Under the command of the regular Iranian navy, these locales served as both command and control sites and as forward operating bases. They became staging bases, initially for helicopters and later for Revolutionary Guard small boats. They provided an important communications link between the land-based headquarters and naval forces operating in the Gulf some one hundred to two hundred miles away. With the exception of Farsi Island, which reported back to 2nd Naval District in Bushehr, all of the platforms and island bases reported back to the larger 1st Naval District command in Bandar Abbas.
In February 1986, the 1st Naval District headquarters published a detailed operations order for tracking and monitoring prospective targets, including U.S. Navy warships. The command divided the southern Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz into eastern and western zones and formed subordinate headquarters on Larak, Abu Musa, and Sirik Post (just outside the Gulf at the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz). These subordinates reported directly back to Bandar Abbas over a common radio network to notify the Iranian command of any “suspicious” vessels. Additionally, the navy stationed four men on each platform. Operating undercover as employees of the National Iranian Oil Company, it was their mission to monitor all ships passing their respective platforms and to relay this information back to Bandar Abbas.18 If the district commander determined one should be attacked, the order would be relayed to any one of the platforms or islands along the ship’s projected path, and naval vessels or Revolutionary Guard small boats would sally forth. More than one-third of all Iranian attacks on shipping occurred within fifty nautical miles of the three key platforms of Sirri, Rostam, and Sassan.19
While the Iranian navy ran the operations on the platforms, the Revolutionary Guard small boats required them for staging bases as they could not operate for any length of time out in the open water. On any given day, Revolutionary Guard small boats clustered around each pla
tform, using the navy’s radios to relay messages back to the Revolutionary Guard headquarters.
The guard and the regular navy escalated their strikes on Saudi and Kuwaiti vessels, attacking forty-one tankers, most of them in the central Gulf and off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), including one tanker waiting to take on crude in Dubai itself.20 Beginning in September 1986, they shifted their fury to the vulnerable Kuwait. Of Iran’s next thirty-one attacks, twenty-eight were directed at Kuwaiti tankers.21 Lloyd’s of London increased the insurance premium fivefold for ships bound to Kuwait.22 Tankers tried to make the run to Kuwait at night, hoping to avoid the Iranian navy.23 Iran ratcheted up the pressure by sending in saboteurs, who blew up two of Kuwait’s main crude oil manifolds.
Kuwait was not a particularly sympathetic victim. An accident of geography placed its tiny population atop one of the world’s largest oil reserves. The country owed its entire existence to Great Britain. The once great colonial power had carved out the protectorate, and after independence in 1961 sent seven thousand soldiers and marines to prevent Iraq, which claimed with some basis that Kuwait historically was part of it, from gobbling up the new nation. Kuwait imported tens of thousands of better-educated Palestinians to run its bureaucracy and develop its oil industry, but refused to enfranchise their Arab brothers and held them in fearful contempt.
During the Cold War, Kuwait tried to play the United States and the Soviet Union off each other for its own advantage. It was the only Gulf state to maintain full diplomatic relations with the Soviets, a constant thorn in the side of U.S.-Kuwaiti relations.24 Despite Kuwait’s diplomatic balancing acts, it remained a defenseless state surrounded by wolves. The constant artillery fire rattling the windows of Kuwait City served as a reminder to the ruling al-Sabah family of their vulnerability. Kuwait feared the Iranians, but threw its support behind the duplicitous Saddam Hussein, who coveted Kuwait and refused to resolve their long-standing border dispute. While Kuwait kept the United States at arm’s length so as not to anger its Persian neighbor, in the end it looked to the United States for its survival.
“The Kuwaitis pretend neutrality, but when they put their money down, they put it on the West,” observed the State Department’s political adviser to CENTCOM and later ambassador to Kuwait, Nathaniel Howell.25
The Kuwaiti oil minister Sheik Ali Khalifa grew increasingly concerned by Iranian attacks on his tankers. With a mustache and soft features, Ali Khalifa looked more like an international businessman than an Arab Bedouin. Within the ruling family, he was seen as smart, with a good business sense, which is why the ruling emir, Sheik Jabir al-Sabah, appointed him to run Kuwait’s most important commercial venture. At twenty-nine, he took over running the Kuwait Oil Company, helping transform it into a global concern, including installing four thousand gas stations in Europe.26
In the summer of 1986, Ali Khalifa and the other senior members of the al-Sabah family discussed how to respond to Iran’s attacks. Unlike Tehran’s terrorist attacks, these went to the heart of Kuwait’s economy. They briefly considered using Kuwait’s small navy to protect their ships, but defense minister Sheik Salem al-Sabah countered that Iran would simply attack their patrol boats and thus draw them into the Iran-Iraq War. Ali Khalifa agreed. Only the protection offered by a superpower would deter Iran, he felt.27
The real question that weighed on the minds of Kuwaiti leaders was whether they could trust the United States. If the tanker war grew worse, would Washington cut and run as it had in Beirut two years earlier, leaving tiny Kuwait to deal with Iran’s wrath? Ali Khalifa decided to test the American waters.
On December 10, the American embassy in Kuwait City received an unusual inquiry from the Kuwait Oil Company asking about the requirements for registering ships in the United States.28 Edward Gnehm at State, later ambassador to the country, was asked whether any reflagged tankers would then receive “U.S. Navy protection.”29 The same day, the manager of fleet development for the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, Tim Stafford, telexed the U.S. Coast Guard requesting guidance on the possible reflagging of four of Kuwait’s liquid petroleum gas carriers, currently registered in France, under the American flag.
The coast guard responded to Tim Stafford with a mind-numbing list of regulations, from the number of fire extinguishers needed on board to pollution control requirements. Any tanker the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company wanted to register under the U.S. flag must: 1) have a U.S. citizen as the ship’s master; 2) have at least 75 percent of the crew be American citizens; 3) be owned by a U.S. company or a corporation where the majority of the board members were American citizens; and 4) be liable for use by the U.S. military during a war.30
But Sheik Ali Khalifa had hedged his policy and quietly approached Washington’s adversary. He met with the Soviet ambassador about registering some ships under the hammer and sickle. Moscow responded immediately and favorably with no concerns about fire extinguishers or corporations. The next day, Khalifa telephoned the American ambassador, Anthony Quainton, to brief him on a Soviet offer to transport all of Kuwait’s oil using either Soviet tankers or Kuwaiti ships under the Soviet flag. “Would the United States be willing to match the Soviet commitment by reflagging some or all of Kuwait’s tankers?” he politely asked. “It smacked a little bit of blackmail,” recalled the national security adviser, Frank Carlucci.31
Sheik Ali Khalifa’s call set in motion yet one more debate within an administration still struggling with its Middle East foreign policy in the wake of Iran-Contra. While the basic tenets of containing Soviet and Iranian expansion were never questioned, there were divisions about whether this unexpected Kuwaiti overture helped these goals. In a private memo for senior officials, Shultz summed up his views: “It is not the role of the United States to take the lead in protecting neutral shipping in the Gulf.”32 Overall, the State Department remained hesitant about rushing in and accepting the Kuwaiti request. It appeared to be little more than a blatant attempt to pressure the United States into saving Kuwait’s economy with very little in return.33
Once again, Weinberger clashed with Shultz. The United States had a request for assistance in an area vital to American security, Weinberger argued, and this presented a grand opportunity to develop the closer military ties needed for U.S. security—what the New Splendor effort envisioned. Inaction risked undermining the U.S. position in the Persian Gulf and would open the Persian Gulf door to the Soviets.34 As to the legalities of reflagging, the secretary of defense asserted that whether the ships were under U.S. registry or not was immaterial. If we decided to safeguard Kuwaiti ships, he asserted, we could do it because it was in our interests and served to ensure our principle of freedom of the seas. “There wasn’t the slightest question about propriety of the request and the purpose of our helping them,” Weinberger said of his position. “It was in international waters, we and everyone needed the oil, so why not do it?”35
Although Weinberger later said the Iran-Contra debacle had not influenced his decision, Richard Armitage and Robert Oakley on the NSC staff both viewed the Kuwaiti request through the lens of the scandal. “This presented a golden opportunity to assist the moderate Arabs and restore U.S. reliability after Iran-Contra, having devastated them by lying,” said Armitage.36 Oakley agreed, adding that the U.S. policy was in tatters and the fear of an Iranian victory was serious.37 Sheik Ali Khalifa’s request offered Washington the opportunity to clearly demonstrate American support for our allies in the Gulf and to show which side we were on regarding Iran.38
Winter soon gave way to spring with still no firm American commitment to Kuwait.
Finally a frustrated Kuwait dropped a bombshell. Sheik Abdul Fattah al-Bader of the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company announced to startled American diplomats that Kuwait and the Soviet Union had reached an agreement to reflag five tankers, to be manned entirely by Soviet crews and escorted by three Soviet warships between Khor Fakkan, UAE, and Kuwait.39 The Kuwaiti government still wanted to proceed with registering six ships with th
e Americans, but the Soviets had been much more responsive. The entire process would take just one week, as opposed to twenty weeks with the U.S. Coast Guard.
This news created consternation on the third floor of the Pentagon. Sandy Charles, director for Middle Eastern affairs, drafted a memo for Weinberger for his weekly breakfast meeting the next morning with Carlucci and Shultz.40 She recommended that the United States offer to protect all eleven of the tankers in question—including the five offered to Moscow—regardless of coast guard paperwork or even if they flew the Stars and Stripes.41
The next morning, Weinberger broke the logjam. The United States risked an expanded Soviet military presence in the Gulf if it failed to act. We cannot sit by and allow the Iranians to intimidate Kuwait, he said. While Carlucci concurred, Shultz remained unconvinced. After an hour of debating, Weinberger called the president directly. Reagan agreed to protect all eleven Kuwaiti tankers.42
Weinberger immediately sent a letter to the Kuwaiti defense minister, Sheik Salem al-Sabah:
The President believes continued attacks on non-belligerent shipping, coupled with the Iranian Silkworm threat, pose a serious threat to our mutual security interests. The President has asked me to convey to you his readiness to provide protection for these eleven tankers, currently under Kuwaiti registry. We would be prepared to provide this protection to Kuwait’s vessels whether or not Kuwait sought to register them under the U.S. flag.43
