Heat goes on in Gulf tanker war

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 20

Heat goes on in Gulf tanker war

From The Economist,’ London

The world feels so much impatience and anxiety about the six-year-old war between Iran and Iraq that many people have started wondering, for the umpteenth time, whether Iran is preparing a “final offensive.” It may be doing just that. The Iraqis say they are on full alert because of Iranian troop concentrations of unusual size just behind the front lines. But from the war’s early days Iraq has had an offensive strategy of its own: to use its air power to throttle Iran’s ability to export oil — and hence, the Iraqis hope, its ability to go on paying for the war.

Over the last month Iraq has been demonstrating that it can now do this better than ever before. Its war against the oil tankers may not bring Iran to the negotiating table, but it could make a nervous Iran throw even more men and boys into that “final offensive.”

The change is that Iraq now has the entire length of the Gulf within bombing range. It demonstrated this on August 12, when its Mirage aircraft mounted a particularly destructive raid on the Iranian oil terminal of Sirri Island. ‘. r .\-

The Iraqis had long been attacking Iran’s main, but weakly defended, oil terminal at Kharg Island, and the adjacent pumping station at Ganaveh: they have made 120 sorties against Kharg alone in the past 12 months. The Iranians responded by using the terminal at Sirri as a transshipment point for foreign tankers unwilling to venture as far as Kharg. They believed that Sirri, some 400 miles from Kharg and 150 miles from the Strait of Hormuz, was beyond the, range of Iraqi aircraft. Then, in June, Iraqi Mirages began reconnaissance flights over Sirri. At first, Iran reacted by moving most of its trans-shipment activities to a make-shift installa-

tion at Larak Island, 100 miles beyond Sirri. But in early August the Iranians abandoned Larak. The transfer operations had been troubled by bad weather, there was not enough administrative back-up, and the Iranians feared for the security of their nearby naval base at Bandar Abbas. So the transfer of oil at Sirri was in full swing when the Mirages delivered their blow on August 12, setting three tankers ablaze. Distance now offers Iran scant protection from the Iraqi air force. The Mirage fighterbombers — Iraq has about 100 of them — normally have a combat range of 500 miles, but the Iraqis were able to lengthen their range for this attack by using aerial tankers, believed to be converted Russian AN-12 transport aircraft, to refuel the Mirages in mid-flight. Now that the Iraqis have shown they can use the aerialrefuelling technique, they can threaten all the potential transshipment points in the Gulf (see map). The destruction in the tanker war, mostly inflicted by the Iraqis, is sobering. So far this year 55 tankers have been hit, more than in the whole of 1985. Nearly 7 million deadweight tonnes of shipping have been destroyed and about 30 seamen killed.

On August 18 and 19 alone, Iraq is reported to have attacked a cargo vessel or tanker off the Iranian coast; an Iranian helicopter attacked a chemical tanker, killing two seamen, and Iranian missiles set the supertanker Akarita ablaze. The effect of Iraq’s assaults has been less than it might have been on the Iranians, because practice has made them expert at quick repair and improvisation. They got a small terminal going on Forur Island, near Sirri, a few days after the raid of August 12.

But Sirri still seems to be out of commission, and they have had to move most of their transshipment operations back to Larak. Putting their best face on it, the Iranians claim that Larak will be able to handle 1 million barrels a day once the weather improves in September. And while Larak is just within range of Iraqi aircraft, it is small and hard to hit

Iran’s nimble-footedness, combined with the huge capacity of the Kharg and Ganaveh facilities (6 million barrels a day), has kept the Iraqis from cutting Iran’s oil lifeline. They have, however, squeezed it hard, cutting Iran’s oil exports back from a high of 1.6 million barrels a day last year to 1.1 million now.

That is just about enough to keep Iran’s war effort going. A precious 100,000 barrels a day of this goes free of charge to Syria to keep it on Iran’s side. The Iraqi attacks have also obliged Iran to pay $l2O million for 20 chartered tankers which it uses to shuttle oil between loading and trans-shipment points, and to store oil at places unequipped with storage tanks. Shuttle tankers cost $40,000 a day to run, and storage tankers half that.

But the tanker war has also cost Iran millions of dollars in destroyed shuttle tankers and big increases in insurance premiums, which the Iranians pay on behalf of shipowners. Insurance rates on ships serving the sourthern island terminals have doubled since the Iraqi raid, and those on their cargoes have tripled. All this is inflicting hardship on Iran, but it is not breaking the mullahs’ will to continue to fight. The Iraqis cannot realistically hope to force a change in Iran’s policies unless they can reduce the outflow of Iranian oil to around 750,000 barrels a day (at the present price of about $l2 per barrel), and keep it there. That is not impossible — the

Iraqis managed to do it for a few months last year — but it will be difficult. And Iran’s loss of oil revenue might be at least partly made good by money from another quarter.

The Iranian oil minister was in Moscow last month, reportedly to discuss the resumption of gas exports to Russia. The financial pressure on Iran will be greatly eased if it reaches a deal with the Soviet Union to resume selling gas in the quantities Russia used to buy from the Shah. Iran’s response to the pressure on its oil jugular will probably come in the form of an increase in the size of that “final offensive.” This assault is, however, still subject to some mystery.

The influential senior cleric, Hashemi Rafsanjani, has poohpoohed talked of anything really “final,” and dismissed speculation that the war might be over by the end of the Persian calendar year next March. Even the Iraqis say they do not expect a

big offensive before early October: the battlefront’s summer? time temperature, which can. reach 130 deg. F, makes tlie handling of any.weapon difficult, and sitting inside tanks virtually unbearable.

A more realistic guess is that the Iranians will wait for six months to give their pilots time to learn how to fly the 50 MIG--218 they have got from China in a swap for oil. Iran badly needs better air cover: the massed infantry attacks that are its threatened ultimate weapon — it has three times as many men as Iraq — are hideously vulnerable to air attack. The Iraqis say confidently that they can stop any Iranian offensive, even one mounted simultaneously on several sectors. So far, the armies have fought only; on one sector at a time. If the predicted great attack comes all along the 800-mile line, Iraq will be facing its moment of truth. ' Copyright — The Economist.