Word: tankerous
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Iraq revived the tanker war on Aug. 29 after a 45-day lull that coincided with the U.S. military buildup and the Security Council resolution. Iraqi fighter jets swooped down over three Iranian oil facilities in widely separated locations. In the southern gulf, they set ablaze the tanker Alvand at Sirri Island as the ship was being loaded with Iranian oil. In the central gulf, they attacked an oil-loading facility on the island of Lavan. In the north they bombed and strafed the island of Farsi, used by Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a base for speedboat assaults against gulf...
Although Tehran threatened to include reflagged Kuwaiti ships in its attacks, two U.S.-protected convoys made their way through the gulf unmolested while the new tanker war raged around them. As they proceeded, yet another flotilla of U.S. warships sailed into the Gulf of Oman. The arrival of the battleship U.S.S. Missouri and five escort vessels brought the total U.S. naval force in the region to 46 ships. The Western armada may soon exceed 60 ships when additional British and French vessels arrive. And last week Italy announced that it was sending a naval task force to the gulf...
...Washington, the reaction to the Iraqi resumption of the tanker war was thinly disguised exasperation. After the initial Iraqi air attacks, Richard Murphy, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, summoned Iraqi Ambassador Nazir Hamdoon to his office for a firm dressing down. Under Secretary of State Michael Armacost later summed up the U.S. view by saying the Iraqi action was "very regrettable, extremely unfortunate." The timing of the raids was "deplorable," he said, both because they create a new threat to U.S. warships in the gulf and because they came at a moment when Iran...
Washington had plenty of reasons to be impatient with Baghad. After all, it was Iraq that started the war by attacking Iran in 1980, and it was Iraq that expanded the fighting into the Persian Gulf in 1984 by initiating the tanker war, thus endangering international oil shipments. The U.S. became an inadvertent victim of the last phase of the tanker war when on May 17 an Iraqi Exocet missile hit the cruiser U.S.S. Stark, killing 37 American sailors. The incident increased Administration resolve to protect neutral shipping in the gulf by reflagging and escorting the Kuwaiti tankers. Said...
Though Baghdad claims otherwise, the Iraqi sorties have only temporarily and sporadically impeded Iran's oil shipments and have not hampered its ability to finance the conflict. Moreover, by renewing the tanker war now, said Assistant Secretary Murphy, Iraq is giving up the moral high ground to the Iranians, who can claim that Iraq's actions threaten the U.N. peace effort...