14
Liberating Kuwait
Khuzestan along Iraq’s southeastern border, but it did not push to take large swaths of Iranian territory.51 Iraq’s ground offensives in 1988 were matched by a renewal of the so-called War of the Cities, utilizing Scud surface-to-surface missiles the Iraqis had reengineered in order to dramatically increase their range. Over the next several months, Iraq launched over 200 missiles against a variety of civilian targets in Iran, bringing the Iran-Iraq War home to parts of Iran that had not previously experienced the war directly. Iran’s response was weak because it now lacked the number of missiles required to retaliate fully against Iraq.52
The Tanker War As noted earlier, the Iraqis responded to the stalemate of the early 1980s by striking at Iran’s oil industry through air strikes on oil production facilities and ships. These attacks were not effective, but Iran retaliated against shipping heading for Iraqi ports
with its own relatively ineffective attacks. As the stalemate lengthened, the intensity of the war over each nation’s oil lifeline increased, although neither state could effectively strike at the other. Iraq’s air force lacked the capability to effectively strike the distant Iranian targets, yet much of Iraq’s oil flowed through pipelines out of Iran’s reach or passed through nonbelligerent Kuwait and sailed through the Persian Gulf in neutral tankers. Kuwait and other Gulf states provided extensive financial support to Iraq’s war effort and provided neutral ports for war material bound for Iraq.53 Throughout 1986 Iranian attacks on Kuwaiti vessels increased, and the Iranians took the al-Faw Peninsula. The Kuwaitis responded in December 1986 by asking the United States if some Kuwaiti tankers could be reflagged as American vessels and escorted safely through the Persian Gulf by the U.S. Navy. In February 1987 the Iranians installed HY-2 Hai Ying “Silkworm” antiship missiles along the Strait of Hormuz, and in March President Ronald W. Rea-
Reprinted from Edward J. Marolda and Robert J. Schneller Jr., Shield and Sword: The United States Navy and the Persian Gulf War (Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 1998), p. 34
