Iran Foreign Relations Iraq

U.S. warships and aircraft sank or heavily damaged six Iranian navy ships Monday as a major confrontation erupted in the Persian Gulf in the wake of the United States' early morning strike against two Iranian oil platforms, the Reagan Administration said. U.S. and Iranian forces fired on each other in the broadest and most direct conflict yet, suddenly escalating what for months had been a war of nerves in the volatile waterway. After ordering U.S.

Twenty years ago, Iraq and Iran launched into a bitter war, killing hundreds of thousands of people on both sides and wiping the largest Iranian port off the map. On Wednesday, the longtime rivals will confront each other once again, this time in front of 50,000 fans on a soccer field in Beirut in a tournament for the Asian Cup.

Iranian President Ali Khamenei said Tuesday that his forces will block all oil movement in the Persian Gulf if its tankers are stopped, the Iranian news agency IRNA reported. If Iran fails to export its oil, "there would be no way for any other country to do the same through the waterway," IRNA, monitored in Nicosia, quoted him as saying.

Iran said it had held "positive" talks with neighboring Iraq to patch up the differences remaining from their 1980-88 war. "We have reached positive results to solve all pending issues," Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said at the end of a two-day visit to Iraq. Kharrazi said the two nations had decided to resurrect a 1975 border and security pact that has been in limbo since Iraq invaded Iran in 1980.

The ink had barely dried on last month's Arab League decision to allow member states to resume diplomatic ties with Egypt when, with great public fanfare, a high-ranking Egyptian military delegation flew to Kuwait to make a point that it was hoped would not be lost on Iran. Egypt, the unwritten message said, was back in the Arab fold and ready to commit its substantial military resources to the defense of its smaller Persian Gulf allies, should the need arise.

A U.S. Navy destroyer helped rescue 40 people from a Cypriot-registered supertanker that caught fire Saturday in the Persian Gulf after being attacked by an Iranian warship. Officials said that it was the first time U.S. Navy personnel had undertaken a major rescue operation since being on station in the Persian Gulf, where a 12-ship task force is currently providing escorts to Kuwaiti oil tankers transiting the waterway.

Businesses or governments in at least 26 countries have sold weapons to both sides in the Iran-Iraq War, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its annual report Wednesday. Policy-makers are losing control of the arms trade to businessmen, and many of the sales took place without the knowledge or support of the governments named, the institute said in its 1986 yearbook.

As the Reagan Administration proceeds with plans to provide naval escorts for Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf, diplomats and Arab officials are expressing growing concern that the United States may be drawn into an unpredictable situation with uncontrollable consequences. Until now, the nearly seven-year-old Persian Gulf War, while devastating to the combatants, Iran and Iraq, has had little impact on the outside world. However, the U.S.

The French-built Exocet missile used against the U.S. frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf was the same type of missile that sank the British destroyer Sheffield in the 1982 Falklands War, killing 20 crew members. The weapon, which has a warhead similar to a torpedo and travels just under the speed of sound, provides a "fire-and-forget" attack capability against surface ships, according to Jane's All the World's Aircraft, a standard military reference work.

A U.S. congressional delegation conferred with Kuwaiti leaders Saturday on a plan for U.S. warships to protect Kuwaiti oil tankers flying the American flag. The delegation, led by Rep. Les Aspin (D-Wis.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, includes 11 other congressmen and 15 staff members. It is seeking to evaluate the risks involved in the plan to re-register 11 Kuwaiti oil tankers as American ships and to provide them with U.S. Navy escorts in the gulf.

To aid Iraq's largest sanctions-busting operation, Iran has opened its strategic Qeys island for secret transfers of illicit Iraqi oil to ships that can evade a United Nations blockade, according to Clinton administration officials. Traffic has become so heavy in recent weeks that the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is smuggling as much as 100,000 barrels of oil a day, netting as much as $42 million a month that is being used in part to rebuild Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, U.S.

In an unexpected reversal, Iran has opened its protected sea lanes to dozens of ships carrying illegal shipments of Iraqi oil in violation of U.N. sanctions on Saddam Hussein's government, U.S. officials said Monday. The Clinton administration considers the about-face alarming because oil smuggling is Hussein's only major source of independent income. U.S. officials have estimated that unfettered access to Iranian waters could generate as much as $1 billion for his regime this year.

Six rockets slammed into a residential quarter of Baghdad and wounded eight civilians, the official Iraqi News Agency reported. Iraq holds "the Iranian authorities responsible for this criminal operation and reserves the right to revenge at the appropriate time," the agency said. Residents of the Baghdad neighborhood said they heard at least three explosions at 11:30 p.m. Monday, and one rocket gouged a big hole in an apartment.

Thousands of relatives today welcomed home about 500 Iraqi prisoners of war held for more than a decade by Iran. Soldiers on both sides of the border clapped and waved banners as the weary, unsteady Iraqi prisoners were hugged by their relatives, some of whom had spent two nights in the desert waiting for the release. Iranian officers carried disabled Iraqi prisoners and handed them over to Iraqi counterparts. Iranian soldiers helped the sick to stretchers and onto ambulances.

Iran will soon release up to 2,000 Iraqi prisoners who had been reported missing during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, the head of the Red Cross in Iraq said Wednesday. Beat Schweizer said he expected the release to take place Saturday at the Iran-Iraq border. The International Committee of the Red Cross has been negotiating the release with Iran, which earlier this year allowed a delegation to visit Iraqi POWs. A Tehran daily, Iran, quoted Iranian Brig. Gen.

An Iranian exile group based in Iraq said that a bomb exploded near its headquarters in Baghdad, killing three Iraqis and seriously wounding 11. The Moujahedeen Khalq said in a statement that the bomb killed a 4-year-old girl, a 65-year-old street vendor and his 15-year-old son. The bomb also damaged buildings and shops, the statement said. The group blamed the attack on the "clerical regime's terrorists." An Iraqi civil defense source confirmed the blast.

The war against shipping in the Persian Gulf flared again Tuesday after a monthlong lull that had given rise to hope for a more lasting truce. Iraq announced that its aircraft scored a direct hit on a "large naval target" near the Iranian coast, the customary Iraqi description for a tanker shuttling oil south from Iran's Kharg Island terminal. Iraq's last confirmed attack on an Iranian ship in the gulf took place Feb.

Last month's attack on the guided missile frigate Stark, which killed 37 sailors, might have been prevented by the use of a simple and inexpensive decoy device available since 1970, a published report said. The Chicago Tribune reported in Sunday's editions that while the Navy is spending tens of billions of dollars researching high-technology defenses against anti-ship missiles, it has failed to deploy the decoy device originally known as "Rubber Duckie."

In a major break for U.S. efforts to close loopholes in the economic embargo of Iraq, the government of Iran has launched a crackdown on sanctions-busting oil shipments that have earned Saddam Hussein's regime hundreds of millions of dollars over the past two years. The move is widely interpreted in Washington as a positive political gesture by Iran to the United States, according to senior U.S. officials and regional experts.

Iran declares it has a "right" to launch attacks inside Iraq against the military bases of Iraqi-sponsored Iranian dissidents. Iraq responds that it has a duty to defend its sovereign territory from Iranian "aggression" despite the international sanctions imposed upon it.