Word: phantoms
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...kind of stalemate set in. The enemies exchanged thundering barrages of artillery across the Shatt al Arab estuary. Iraqi infantrymen intent on consolidating their sliver of captured Iranian territory took heavy losses in hand-to-hand fighting for possession of three key towns and a vital port installation. Iranian Phantom fighter-bombers streaked low under the radar in deep penetration raids all the way to the enemy capital of Baghdad. Beneath the orange fireballs and black smoke gushing from bombarded storage tanks, the oil refining and shipping facilities of both countries suffered such severe damage that years of reconstruction...
...apparent that there was no compelling cause for Arab jubilation at Iran's expense and that hopes for a swift Iraqi conquest were exaggerated. The Iranians, recovering from the surprise attack and beginning to fight back, promptly advised everybody in earshot-and within range of their fleet of Phantom jets-that overt support of Iraq would be considered a hostile act, and implied that the fragile and exposed oil facilities of the gulf states would be the first Iranian targets...
...last week, Iraqi pilots flying Soviet-built MiGs headed eastward for bombing raids on military targets and oil facilities across the Iranian border, including the Tigris-Euphrates estuary known as Shatt al Arab. Caught by surprise at first, the Iranians responded with attacks of their own, sending American-made Phantom F-4 fighter-bombers against Iraqi cities and installations. A fearful battle was under way. Iraqi armor and infantry punched across 500 miles of desert front at many points, surrounding two key Iranian cities but running into stubborn resistance and counterattacks. In the Shatt and in the northern gulf, naval...
...face this panoply of forces, Iran threw in units and equipment diminished by revolutionary confusion and the decimation of the military's top echelons, but still formidable in regional terms. Its air force included 445 combat planes, among them not only 188 Phantom F-4s and 166 F-5s but also 77 advanced F-14 interceptors. The principal problems with the planes as well as with the Iranian navy and ground forces: lack of maintenance and spare parts. According to Western analysts, only eight of the F-14s were airworthy and one-third of the army...
...Persian Gulf, Carter will send in the Navy, the Air Force and--if necessary--the Army. It means that, even though world oil supplies will become inadequate within two or three decades with the best possible supply situation, Carter believes it is worth fighting today to preserve this phantom of national security, our oil imports. It means, most of all, that the United States is committed to sending its soldiers to die for the defense of an oil supply which could be supplanted with a vigorous national campaign of conservation, gasoline rationing, and alternative sources of energy...