America's War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History (18 page)

In retrospect, two aspects of this episode are striking. The first is Washington’s credulous acceptance of Saddam’s version of events. The second is the advantage that accrued to Iraq as a direct result. (The resemblance to the June 1967 Israeli attack on the USS
Liberty
, another lethal assault quickly deemed accidental and benefiting the perpetrators, is difficult to miss.) Rather than inducing second thoughts about the direction of U.S. policy, the
Stark
incident reinforced the Reagan administration’s pro-Iraq tilt. Whether truly accidental or, as skeptics believed, undertaken with malice aforethought, Iraq’s killing of thirty-seven Americans drew the United States into the First Gulf War as a full-fledged, if still undeclared, belligerent—with Saddam himself the principal beneficiary.
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The Reagan administration had seemingly learned its lesson. Gone were the too-clever-by-half expectations that the United States could play both sides and get away with it. With the arms-for-hostages ploy blown sky high, Saddam’s fight had now tacitly become America’s fight. Valiant damage control efforts onboard the
Stark
had kept that vessel afloat. So Reagan administration efforts to limit the self-inflicted wound caused by its foolish dealings with Iran helped keep Saddam afloat, while effectively allowing him to get away with murdering American sailors.
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After the
Stark
episode, preparations to bring the Kuwaiti tanker fleet under U.S. protection continued apace. On July 21, thanks to paperwork and paintbrushes, the first reflagging occurred. The mammoth
Al-Rekkah,
longer than three football fields and displacing 413,000 tons when fully loaded, now became the
Bridgeton.
Flying the stars and stripes from its stern, with Philadelphia its supposed homeport, the
Bridgeton
thereby qualified for U.S. taxpayer–funded security.

One day later, escort operations, carrying the codename Earnest Will, commenced. With U.S. Navy warships fore and aft and air cover above, the
Bridgeton
weighed anchor and departed Oman, heading toward Kuwait some 750 miles distant. Initially, all went well. Then on July 24, the
Bridgeton
struck a mine, assumed to be of Iranian origin. The mission to protect had gotten off to a rocky start. Although the ship itself sustained only minor damage, the navy suffered acute embarrassment.

Here, in spades, was a demonstration of what purveyors of military jargon subsequently dubbed “asymmetric warfare”—relatively primitive weapons giving the technologically superior U.S. military fits. This too emerged as an ongoing theme in America’s War for the Greater Middle East. In this instance, the weapon in question derived from a 1908 design attributed to Czarist Russia. Although not especially sophisticated, it more than sufficed against an adversary given to treating mine warfare as an afterthought.
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Meanwhile, the irrepressible Moamar Gaddafi, sensing an opportunity and apparently having forgotten whatever lesson El Dorado Canyon was supposed to have taught him, was soon offering to provide Iran with mines from his own stockpiles.
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The navy put Earnest Will temporarily on hold while it assessed the problem and made the necessary adjustments. Henceforth, whenever mines posed a threat, the relatively unsinkable tankers would lead, with the much smaller and more vulnerable warships trailing behind. Yet even as convoying resumed without further incident, CENTCOM headquarters concluded that a strictly defensive posture was not going to suffice. Rather than allowing Iran to exercise the initiative, CENTCOM adopted a more proactive response—preventing the enemy from sowing mines in the first place.

To create the potential for offensive operations, the Pentagon quietly began assembling additional combat assets in the Gulf. Among the first to arrive were Navy SEALs, to include Special Boat Unit 20 with four 65-foot Mark III patrol boats. From Fort Campbell, Kentucky, came elements of the army’s highly classified Task Force 160, its MH-6 and AH-6 “Little Bird” choppers especially adept at night operations. CENTCOM also acquired and refurbished a sizable barge to serve as a floating base for these forces. The number of American warships operating in the Gulf itself more than doubled. Beyond the Straits of Hormuz, one and sometimes two carrier battle groups, augmented by yet another refurbished World War II battleship, stood ready to provide support.
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After nightfall on September 21, the American counteroffensive commenced. A team of “Little Birds” ambushed the
Iran Ajr,
a small, lightly armed rust-bucket caught in the act of laying mines. Rocket and machine gun fire cut down some of the Iranian crewmembers and forced the rest to flee. SEALs swept in and scrambled aboard to claim their prize and take into custody the surviving crew. After American sailors subjected the
Iran Ajr
to a thorough scrubbing, Washington notables came calling to inspect the trophy, among them Caspar Weinberger. Declaring that “here was not only a smoking gun but a blazing gun,” the defense secretary ordered the
Iran Ajr
sunk.
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On September 26, well-placed explosive charges consigned it to the deep.
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As a milestone in America’s evolving War for the Greater Middle East, the seizure of the
Iran Ajr
ranks as a very modest occurrence with very large implications. Here the Reagan administration was crossing an important threshold. Unlike in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, the United States was no longer content to work through proxies. In contrast to its efforts in Lebanon, it no longer styled its purposes as “peacekeeping.” Unlike in Libya, it no longer expected a single gesture to settle the issue. “We’re very hopeful that this one episode will be a sufficient warning so that they will stop it,” Weinberger remarked, “but we are not going to go on the basis of hopes.”
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When they—the Iranians—did not stop, neither did the Americans.

Instead, the capture of the
Iran Ajr
initiated a sequence of escalating events. Taken together, those events constituted a distinct military campaign. The campaign’s immediate purpose, of course, was to “protect the oil.” But in a broader sense, its purpose was to dictate the First Gulf War’s outcome. Denying victory to Iran would establish the United States as the region’s ultimate arbiter, asserting a mandate heretofore implicit within the Carter Doctrine. This was the unstated mission of the U.S. forces now gathering in the Persian Gulf in ever greater numbers.

On October 8, again at night, Little Birds from Task Force 160 ambushed a boghammer and two smaller boats, sinking one and damaging the others. SEALs dispatched to the scene captured six members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, two of whom died of wounds while being evacuated. They also recovered a component from a Stinger missile with a serial number matching one that the United States had provided to the Afghan mujahedin.
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As with Gaddafi’s offer of mines, the various threads of America’s War for the Greater Middle East were already beginning to converge.

For the moment at least, Tehran remained undeterred. One week later, on October 15, a Chinese Silkworm, an antiship missile recently added to the Iranian arsenal, struck the
Sungari,
an American-owned, Liberian-flagged tanker at anchor off Kuwait. A formidable weapon mounting a thousand-pound warhead, the Silkworm was capable of inflicting serious damage. It did just that. A day later, another Silkworm plowed into the
Sea Isle City,
previously known as the
Umm al Maradem
but now proudly displaying Old Glory.
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Iran was upping the ante. The United States could either call or fold.

Taking out the Silkworms, whose launch sites were located on the Faw Peninsula, seemed the logical and appropriate response. But this was easier said than done. In early 1986, Iran had captured this key bit of territory, which had provided Iraq with its sole outlet to the sea. Intent on keeping what they had taken, Iranian commanders poured in reinforcements. These included some of the same Hawk air defense missiles that the Reagan administration had secretly sold to Iran.
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Attacking the Silkworm sites therefore risked the possibility of U.S. aircraft being shot down by U.S.-manufactured missiles. Unwilling to accept that risk, CENTCOM passed, opting instead for an easier target—two largely undefended Iranian oil platforms in the middle of the Persian Gulf.

In appearance, these ungainly structures, both located in international waters, looked like something built from a giant Erector Set. Having been previously targeted by Iraq, they were no longer pumping oil. Yet U.S. commanders believed that Iran was using them as observation posts and tactical bases to support its anti-shipping campaign. The purpose of CENTCOM’s Operation Nimble Archer was to put an end to that activity.

Early on the afternoon of October 19, four navy destroyers,
Hoel, Kidd, Leftwich,
and
John Young,
converged on the larger of the two platforms, known as Rashadt. After radioing orders to evacuate and pausing for a suitable interval, the warships opened fire. Over the course of the next eighty-five minutes, they bombarded the Rashadt with over a thousand rounds of unanswered cannon fire. When the shelling ended and the Rashadt had been reduced to a burning hulk, SEALs boarded the second, as yet untouched platform. Finding it unoccupied, they searched it and then set it ablaze. Their work finished and having sustained no casualties, the Americans left the scene. This was asymmetric warfare inverted: using weapons superiority to hit an enemy lacking the capacity to hit back. Yet soon thereafter, as if in response, Iran let loose another Silkworm aimed at Kuwait.
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Although these small actions may have appeared cut-and-dried, they were not. While U.S. forces enjoyed very considerable advantages—operating virtually unseen or beyond enemy reach—each encounter occurred in an operational environment of unnerving complexity, with alarms, false alarms, close calls, and near misses occurring daily. Then as now, the Persian Gulf was nothing if not crowded. On any given day, as many as four hundred oceangoing ships, along with even larger numbers of lesser craft, crisscrossed this confined space. Overhead flew scores of commercial and military aircraft, making it one of the world’s busiest airspaces. Indeed, the onset of the Tanker War had the perverse effect of adding to the congestion and therefore the uncertainties confronting U.S. commanders on the scene. The fate of the
Stark
(and its captain) served as a constant reminder of the perils that even a momentary lapse in alertness could entail.
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In the unlikely event of U.S. commanders needing a further reminder, the frigate
Samuel B. Roberts
provided it. One of some two dozen American warships now patrolling the Persian Gulf, the
Roberts,
on April 14, 1988, inadvertently wandered into a field of floating mines. A vigilant crewman spotted the problem. Commander Paul X. Rinn brought his ship to a halt and gingerly attempted to back out to safety. The attempt failed when the ship brushed up against a mine. The resulting detonation lifted the
Roberts
out of the water and split open the hull just above the main engine room, which quickly filled with seawater. With helicopters arriving to evacuate the wounded, sailors frantically worked through the night to put out fires and prevent their ship from sinking. Amazingly, they succeeded. More amazing still, no one was killed in the attack, although the damage sustained by the
Roberts
kept it out of action for over a year, with repairs running to almost $90 million.
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By happenstance, this incident—the first time Iranian action had harmed a U.S. military asset—occurred just as the First Gulf War was reaching a critical turning point. Intensifying Iraqi missile strikes targeting Tehran and other cities were taking a toll on Iranian morale. The last in a series of Iranian offensives aimed at seizing the Iraqi city of Basra had failed miserably. Iran was approaching exhaustion, its will and capacity to continue the struggle all but spent. Then, just days after the near-sinking of the
Roberts,
Iraqi forces launched a massive ground attack aimed at “liberating” the Faw Peninsula. It succeeded with astonishing ease. For the first time since the war’s earliest stages, Saddam was back on top.
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While these dramatic events were unfolding, more immediate concerns absorbed American attention: determining how to respond to the punishment that the
Roberts
had absorbed. That the United States would act was a given; the only question was how. As message traffic flew back and forth among Washington, CENTCOM headquarters in Tampa, and U.S. forces in the Gulf, a range of punitive options received consideration. In the end, Reagan opted for the least provocative. To diminish Iran’s ability to conduct further seaborne attacks, he approved a modest escalation of hostilities. While ports, airfields, and military installations would remain off-limits, U.S. forces set out to cripple Iran’s already weak naval forces. The result was Operation Praying Mantis.

The smallest fighting ship in the United States Navy easily outgunned the largest ship in Iran’s navy. The plan for Praying Mantis aimed to capitalize on this differential in firepower. At 8:00
A.M.
on April 18, near the Straits of Hormuz, a flotilla consisting of eight American warships opened fire on a pair of Iranian gas-oil separation platforms. Although Iranians onboard responded, their light weapons could not range the American ships. When the shelling ceased, CH-46 helicopters carrying Marine assault teams, flanked by AH-1 Cobra gunships, swooped in to occupy the larger platform, now severely damaged and abandoned. The Americans raised the national and Marine Corps colors, thoroughly searched their objective, and blew it up upon departing.
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