LATEST RAIDS SEEN MISSING KHARG ISLAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470031-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: September 4, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470031-5
ARTICLE APEEARFD_
ON PAGE
WASHINGTON POST
4 September 1985
Latest Raids
Seen Missing
Kharg Island
By George C. Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Iraqi bombers appear to have
missed all their targets in their two
most recent raids on Iran's oil fa`
cility at Kharg Island in the Persian
Gulf, U. S. officials said yesterday.
The Iraqi planes came in so high
and fast that their bombs apparent-
ly harmlessly into the water,
according to intelligence reports on
the raids of Monday and Friday.
These cautious bombing tactics
were in sharp contrast to the raids
Aug. 15 and 25, officials said, when
about a dozen bombers flew in low
and virtually destroyed a T-shaped
oil-pumping complex on the eastern
'side of Kharg. But that failed to re-
duce Iran's export of oil because
another small island pumping sta-
tion can pump far more oil than Iran
is exporting now, officals said.
The return to cautious high-level
bombing after the comparatively
effective lower-level raids received
varying interpretations at the Pen-
tagon and State Department.
. One official saw the change as an
indication that Iraq cannot escalate
the war without inflaming its pop-
ulace against the protracted con-
flict. Another said Iraq has fought in
fits and starts all along and might go
back to riskier raids by sending its
bombers in low again.
"Weighed against the losses Iraq
will suffer if Iran goes ahead with
another main force offensive," one
U.S. official said, "the loss of some
planes would be more than accept-
able if this brought a negotiated end
to the war that has been full of trag-
ic miscalculations on both sides."
The Iraqis have been bombing
Kharg Island with French Mirage
F1 fighter-bombers, sources said.
The F1 can fly as high as 60,000
feet. Bombers diving on small tar-
gets, like the oil pipelines on Kharg,
go below 5,000 feet, making them
vulnerable to ground fire. The Iraqi
planes made no such low-level runs
in the last two raids, officials said.
Iran has a formidable air defense
around Kharg Island, officials said,
including U.S. Hawk missiles.
The U.S. government's view that
Iraq's four recent raids against
Kharg have failed to reduce Iran's
oil exports was shared by oil indus-
try specialists in London yesterday.
"There has been no significant
dent on Iranian oil exports yet,"
Michael Humphries, an oil, analyst
for Samuel Montagu erchant
bankers of London told United
Press International.
A spokesman for the Howard
Houlder shipping firm of London
said, "There doesn't seem to be any
interruption in the amount of oil
getting out."
Because of falling demand, U.S.
officials said, [ran has not been
pumping its Organization of Petro-
leum Exporting Countries quota of
oil, making it easier to overcome
the effect of Iraqi bombings.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000807470031-5