Word: etendard
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...expected to step up its attacks on ships departing from Iran's main oil terminal at Kharg Island. Baghdad's oft-stated goal is to cut off Iran's oil exports, which has hitherto been impossible to achieve with its meager fleet of three Super Etendard fighters...
...past month, the Iraqis have started to make good on their threat, using five French-made Super Etendard fighter planes to fire at vessels carrying Iranian oil, including some owned by Saudi Arabia, an ally of Iraq's, and by other Arab states. Last week, for the first time, the Iranians began to retaliate by attacking Saudi and Kuwaiti tankers in the gulf. So far, half a dozen are known to have been damaged. None has yet been destroyed, though the Saudi supertanker Al Ahood has been ablaze since it was struck by Iraqi missiles two weeks...
Ever since last October, when the French delivered five Super Etendard fighter planes, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been threatening to use the sophisticated weaponry to stop Iran from exporting oil from its Kharg Island terminal. That threat roused international concern. If Saddam Hussein proved as bad as his word, the war between Iraq and Iran might extend to other parts of the Persian Gulf and affect oil shipments of such Iraqi neighbors and benefactors as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Last week those fears came closer to facts. Baghdad sent the French planes into action, striking two ships...
...exports. Along the border near Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, troops loyal to the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini massed for yet another offensive. Iraq appeared to have lost a bit of its much vaunted technological edge with the news that one of the five Super Etendard fighter-bombers it had bought from France had been damaged in a training flight. But for the moment the mass carnage appeared to subside. Still, the end of the fratricidal bloodletting was not in sight...
...ground, they believe, Iraq may feel compelled to attack Kharg. Saddam Hussein probably could not destroy the facility, since it is well protected, but he could bomb the tankers at the loading docks and disrupt Iran's oil exports. In October Iraq received from France five sophisticated Super Etendard fighter-bombers, which can be equipped with lethal Exocet missiles...