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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
In early 1987, both superpowers indicated their interest in the
security of the region. Soviet deputy foreign minister Vladimir
Petrovsky made a Middle East tour expressing his country's concern
over the effects of the Iran-Iraq War. In May 1987, United States
assistant secretary of state Richard Murphy also toured the Gulf
emphasizing to friendly Arab states the United States commitment in
the region, a commitment which had become suspect as a result of
Washington's transfer of arms to the Iranians, officially as an
incentive for them to assist in freeing American hostages held in
Lebanon. In another diplomatic effort, both superpowers supported
the UN Security Council resolutions seeking an end to the war
(see Foreign Policy
, ch. 4).
The war appeared to be entering a new phase in which the
superpowers were becoming more involved. For instance, the Soviet
Union, which had ended military supplies to both Iran and Iraq in
1980, resumed large-scale arms shipments to Iraq in 1982 after Iran
banned the Tudeh and tried and executed most of its leaders.
Subsequently, despite its professed neutrality, the Soviet Union
became the major supplier of sophisticated arms to Iraq. In 1985
the United States began clandestine direct and indirect
negotiations with Iranian officials that resulted in several arms
shipments to Iran.
Iranian military gains inside Iraq after 1984 were a major
reason for increased superpower involvement in the war. In February
1986, Iranian units captured the port of Al Faw, which had oil
facilities and was one of Iraq's major oil-exporting ports before
the war.
By late 1986, rumors of a final Iranian offensive against Basra
proliferated. On January 8, Operation Karbala Five began, with
Iranian units pushing westward between Fish Lake and the Shatt al
Arab. They captured the town of Duayji and inflicted 20,000
casualties on Iraq, but at the cost of 65,000 Iranian casualties.
In this intensive operation, Baghdad also lost forty-five
airplanes. Attempting to capture Basra, Tehran launched several
attacks, some of them well-disguised diversion assaults such as
Operation Karbala Six and Operation Karbala Seven. Iran finally
aborted Operation Karbala Five on February 26.
In late May 1987, just when the war seemed to have reached a
complete stalemate on the southern front, reports from Iran
indicated that the conflict was intensifying on Iraq's northern
front. This assault, Operation Karbala Ten, was a joint effort by
Iranian units and Iraqi Kurdish rebels. They surrounded the
garrison at Mawat, endangering Iraq's oil fields near Kirkuk and
the northern oil pipeline to Turkey.
By late spring of 1987, the superpowers became more directly
involved because they feared that the fall of Basra might lead to
a pro-Iranian Islamic republic in largely Shia-populated southern
Iraq. They were also concerned about the intensified tanker war.
During the first four months of 1987, Iran attacked twenty ships
and Iraq assaulted fifteen. Kuwaiti ships were favorite targets
because Iran strongly objected to Kuwait's close relationship with
the Baghdad regime. Kuwait turned to the superpowers, partly to
protect oil exports but largely to seek an end to the war through
superpower intervention. Moscow leased three tankers to Kuwait, and
by June the United States had reflagged half of Kuwait's fleet of
twenty-two tankers. Finally, direct attacks on the superpowers'
ships drew them into the conflict. On May 6, for the first time, a
Soviet freighter was attacked in the southern Gulf region, hit by
rockets from Iranian gunboats. Ten days later, a Soviet tanker was
damaged by a mine allegedly placed by Iranians near the Kuwait
coast. More shocking to the United States was the May 17 accidental
Iraqi air attack on the U.S.S Stark in which thirty-seven
sailors died. The attack highlighted the danger to international
shipping in the Gulf.
Data as of December 1987
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