Word: kuwaiti
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Ever since Sir Percy Cox of Great Britain drafted Kuwait's boundaries in 1922, Kuwaiti foreign policy has been in a state of delicate balance. The country has resolutely avoided attachments to any of its more powerful neighbors, notably Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran, which is separated from Kuwait by a slender, 25-mile finger of Iraq. Notes one Western diplomat: "The only things the Kuwaitis have are diplomacy and money. They either try to talk themselves out of trouble or buy themselves out." During the past six months, the Kuwaitis have been doing a lot of both. Despite...
...Jidda: "They are timid balancers. Their power is in their pocketbooks, not their guns." The Saudis can avoid a clash as long as the Iranians limit their attacks to tankers at sea. If they hit ships in the vicinity of the Saudi port of Ras Tanura or the Kuwaiti port of Mena al Ahmadi, a Saudi or Kuwaiti response might be unavoidable. Even more serious would be an Iranian attack on Saudi or Kuwaiti desalinization or electric power plants...
...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 ago. But on Saturday the Iraqis struck and sank a Greek-owned...
...latest round in the tanker war began early last week when a Kuwaiti-owned tanker of medium size, the Umm Casbah, was hit by rockets after leaving the Kuwaiti port of Mina al-Ahmadi. The Britain-bound ship was only slightly damaged, and after an emergency stop at Bahrain it sailed on toward the Strait of Hormuz with its cargo of fuel oil. The same evening, Iraq declared that it had not fired on gulf shipping for four days. If true, it could only mean that Iran had joined the tanker war at last...
...tankers in the vicinity of Kharg Island. Both the Greek-owned Esperanza No. 2 and the Iranian-owned Tabriz were set ablaze. The ships were in the area where the Al Ahood, hit a week earlier, was still floundering and in danger of breaking up. Later that day, a Kuwaiti tanker, the Bahrah, was struck by a rocket after being circled by two unidentified planes. One aircraft returned to fire a second rocket, but the ship was able to continue to a Kuwaiti port. The Kuwaiti Cabinet subsequently issued a statement blaming Iran for the attack...