GULF WAR End the slaughter BY RESUMING its attacks on August 29 against Iranian oil installations and the tankers serving them, the Iraqi airforce provoked a new flare-up of hostilities on a vast scale in the ArabPersian Gulf. Within three days, a dozen merchant ships of various nationalities had been hit by Baghdad's planes or Tehran's patrol boats. SALAH JABER T M HE NEW EXPLOSION of the
Gulf war, and in particular of attacks on maritime traffic, followed a tacitly observed truce between the two belligerents that had been in effect since July 20. On that day, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution No. 598 demanding an immediate cease-fire between Iran and Iraq and the withdrawal of their forces to internationally recognized borders.
The adoption of this resolution came shortly before convoys of US warships in the waters began escorting Kuwaiti tankers flying the American flag. The discovery of mines in August provided a pretext for reinforcing the imperialist military presence in this part of the world, with British ships being sent to the Arab-Persian Gulf and French ships to the Gulf of Oman. This vast deployment of floating engines of war was to create a climate of relative security for merchant shipping in the seaway separating the Arabian peninsula from Iran.
Paradoxically, it was Iran that was the main beneficiary from this situation. Iranian oil exports rose spectacularly in August. This stepped-up flow of oil out of the country — plus the price rises resulting from the higher demand created by the military tension and the July 30-August 1 riots in Mecca — boosted Tehran's oil income by $20 million a day over the 1986 level.
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This windfall for Iran naturally bolstered the arguments of the "bitter enders" in the ayatollahs' regime, who favor "war until victory" against the Ba'athist regime of Saddam Hussein. In these conditions, it could not be expected that Tehran would accept the cease-fire called for by the UN. To keep the international organization off its back, however, Iran decided to take an evasive course. It was the continuation of this attitude that prompted Iraq to break the truce that had lasted through August.
Nerve center of Iran's war effort
Finding it more and more difficult to resist the Iranian offenses, and having lost all hope of turning the military situation to its advantage, Baghdad had no other choice but to try to force Tehran to end the fighting by cutting off its financial resources.
Since Iraq's meager outlet to the sea had long been blocked, Baghdad fell back on building pipelines. Today they enable it to export 2.5 million barrels a day, its total production, through Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Iran, on the other hand, remains dependent on maritime traffic in the Gulf, in particular from its Kharg Island terminal. So Baghdad began attacks in 1982 on this nerve center of Iran's war effort.
Tehran, however, has found an effective way to parry this move by threatening to block all navigation in the Gulf, which would penalize Iraq's Arab allies and severely affect oil supplies to the European and Japanese econo-
MIDDLE EAST mies. Nonetheless, Baghdad decided in 1985-86 to brave the Iranian threats and the pressures of its allies. The Iraqi airforce stepped up its attacks, and extended them to all Iran's oil terminals.
In reprisal, Tehran started attacking Kuwaiti exports in 1986, picking on an ally of Baghdad that had no military forces of its own. Kuwait then demanded that the Western powers, above all the United States, protect its oil fleet. When they refused to "get involved" in a conflict with Iran, the emirate turned to the USSR, which put three Soviet tankers at its disposal.
In this way, Moscow sought to embarrass Washington at a time when the Reagan administration's stock was lowest in the eyes of its traditional Arab allies as a result of the Irangate revelations. What followed is well-known.
If there is a common denominator in the policies of the great powers toward the Gulf, it is their duplicity and their ignominious exploitation of the enormous market for arms of all kinds that it has offered.
United States playing both sides along
The United States has been playing both sides. Through the intermediary of Israel, notably, it has been arming the Iranians. The USSR and France have been Baghdad's main arms suppliers and at the same time have been trying to improve their relations with Tehran by "indirect" sales of military material. And even China has become involved in the game. 3
Britain, West Germany and Italy have September 14, 1987 • International Viewpoint
MIDDLE EAST/SOUTH AFRICA been selling arms and material to both sides but especially to Iran, all the while condemning the war. Such a chorus of hypocrisy has rarely been equalled in world history.
Saddam Hussein's Iraq — which yesterday triumphantly invaded Iranian territory and today can barely contain the Iranian advance on its own soil — was not mollified by the praise it got from world powers for the peaceful intentions it now proclaims. That is why it chose to turn Iran's blackmail back on Tehran itself and provoke an internationalization of the conflict, so that the war will begin to become a real thorn in the flesh of the imperialist powers. Baghdad's objective is to get them to impose an end to the fighting that Tehran obstinately rejects.
The Gulf war has already lasted too long. It has cost the lives of nearly a million people, according to the most recent estimates, without counting the huge numbers of wounded and crippled. It has brought on material destruction and economic backwardness that will take both countries decades to make up for, to the great profit of the imperialist exporters.
Chemical and biological weapons threatened
The human cost of this insane war threatens to mount still higher, with the threat by both belligerents to resume their bombing of civilian zones and to resort to chemical and bacteriological weapons.
But imperialist intervention will certainly not end this carnage — quite the contrary. Instead of adding their own arms to those of the belligerents, the world powers would be better advised to stop feeding this conflict by suspending the delivery of all sorts of arms to the two enemy states. This is all the more true because the present intervention of the imperialist powers in the Gulf carries with it the threat of increasing tension between them and the USSR. That is why Moscow has proposed the withdrawal from the Gulf of all warships from countries outside the region.
It is not simply out of an international duty toward the Iraqi and Iranian working people, victims of the war of extermination waged by their governments, but also in the interests of all peoples that the international workers' movement must today resolutely raise the following demands:
• For an immediate withdrawal of all foreign fleets from the Gulf and adjacent areas!
• For a total embargo on all shipments of arms to Iran and Iraq! 4 • For an immediate and unconditional cease-fire! * International Viewpoint • September 14, 1987