The supertanker Bridgeton remained moored Saturday in Kuwait`s territorial waters as Kuwaiti and U.S. officials examined ways to protect tankers from further mine attacks in the Persian Gulf.
Weeks of U.S. bravado about America`s ability to protect commercial shipping in the troubled waters of the gulf was dealt a severe blow when the U.S. Navy`s ”high-tech armada” failed to detect a relatively simple underwater mine that ruptured the side of the Bridgeton and sent it limping into the port of this oil-rich Arab nation late Friday.
Divers on Saturday were inspecting the damage caused by the mine. They found a hole in the hull of the ship, raising questions about whether the damage would delay the vessel`s return trip carrying crude oil to the mouth of the gulf.
American and Kuwaiti officials struggled to put the best face on the situation.
U.S. Navy officials quoted the Bridgeton skipper as saying the tanker could be repaired over the weekend and back in business within four to five days. Shipping sources in Kuwait and Dubai, however, were skeptical about the Bridgeton`s ability to resume operations that quickly. High-ranking Kuwaiti government officials were scheduled to meet Sunday to discuss the ship`s fate. Three Navy ships that escorted the Bridgeton to Kuwait Saturday returned to the waters around Bahrain, about 200 miles to the south. They were awaiting word on whether the Bridgeton would have to be taken elsewhere for repairs.
In Washington, the Pentagon considered sending minesweepers to the waters off Kuwait. There are no minesweepers among the 17 U.S. Navy vessels in and around the gulf.
No one was killed by the explosion that occurred Friday when the Bridgeton hit the mine about 120 miles out of Kuwait.
The U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Anthony Quainton, said: ”I don`t think it hurts our credibility any more than the Marshal Chuykov (a Soviet tanker that hit a similar mine in May) hurt Soviet credibility. I have no doubt we`ll go on with our effort.”
He and other U.S. officials said they doubt there will be any U.S. retaliation, which would further heighten tensions in the gulf.
But privately, a senior Western diplomat commented glumly on the devastating image of a huge tanker wounded while under the protection of U.S. warships because of mines that probably were sown by Iranians in a speedboat. Looking off into the distance, he said: ”We look awful.”
In the final analysis, the Navy`s ”high-tech armada” lacked adequate mine-detection capability. It actually followed the Bridgeton through the mine field because the huge supertanker was better able to absorb a hit.
Thus, the protected ended up being the protector.
That the massive Bridgeton, the first of 11 Kuwaiti tankers selected to fly the American flag, hit the mine was especially grating for the U.S. Kuwait last year asked the Reagan administration to extend naval protection to its tankers, which had been under persistent attack from Iran in the gulf, a major battleground in the Iran-Iraq war.
The Bridgeton is symbolic of America`s status as a major power in the gulf. Even though it is owned by Kuwait`s state-owned oil tanker company, the reflagging scheme gave the vessel American identity.
The Bridgeton also plays a crucial role in the reflagging scheme. It is as long as four football fields and can carry 3 million barrels of oil, or three days` worth of Kuwait`s entire oil production. Under Operation Earnest Will, as the escort plan is known, the vessel was to act as a massive shuttle ferrying oil through the perilous waters of the gulf to several smaller tankers waiting just outside the mouth of the gulf.
The Bridgeton is so large that there are few dry docks on the gulf big enough to handle it if major repairs are needed, Quainton said.
He said officials of the Kuwaiti Oil Tanker Co. will assess the damage. If the damage is serious, the Bridgeton will have to be moved, or towed, to another repair yard, probably in Dubai near the mouth of the gulf.
In private, Western diplomats in Kuwait said the mine collision probably will hobble the naval escort operation by changing its pace.
”I think there will probably have to be some more mine-sweeping (or)
mine-hunting efforts in the area where the Bridgeton was hit. How long that will take, I don`t know,” said a Western diplomat who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.
The explosion of the mine also was a blow to U.S. prestige in the gulf, a body of water that Washington considers crucial to the strategic interests of America.
Initially, the reflagging scheme was a low-key operation that was accepted reluctantly by the Reagan administration to keep the Soviets from assuming the role of naval protector in the gulf.
The Iraqi jet attack on the USS Stark in May that killed 37 American sailors, however, raised the profile of the escort plan in the U.S. and in the Arab world.
In the weeks before the operation actually began, for example, Kuwaiti newspapers carried headlines quoting Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger as saying that the U.S. has the capability to respond to any attack on the convoy that might be launched by Iran, which was attacking Kuwait`s ships because of that country`s support for Iraq in the nearly 7-year-old gulf war.
In recent weeks, Kuwaiti leaders interviewed agreed that the U.S. should be prepared to respond to an Iranian attack unless it wanted to be viewed as a ”paper tiger” by the Arab states surrounding the crucial waterway.
But the U.S. is unable to prove that Iran laid the mine that the Bridgeton hit. As a result, America now is in a no-win position: If it strikes at Iran, it will be viewed as provocative. If it doesn`t, it will raise the specter of Lebanon, where American forces were pulled out when things got tough.
American troops were withdrawn from Lebanon after 241 U.S. servicemen were killed in October, 1983, by a terrorist who drove a truck bomb into the Marine headquarters barracks outside Beirut.
One Western diplomat said he didn`t think the U.S. would retaliate against Iran unless U.S. lives were lost, or at least severely threatened.
The shock waves from the mine blast also were felt in Kuwait. Kuwaiti leaders ostensibly requested the escorts to protect their tankers carrying oil, the major source of income for the monarchy.
But one senior executive at the state-owned tanker company recently admitted that the Iranian attacks on the tankers really didn`t hurt Kuwait`s flow of oil.
He said the company had fed data into its computers on more than 300 attacks on tankers since 1980 and had ”pretty well” determined how to avoid most of them.
”We`ve met our schedules all along,” he said, adding that the uncertainty spawned by the tanker reflagging scheme actually helped Kuwait by raising the price of Middle East oil.
The true goal of the Kuwaiti reflagging scheme was to
”internationalize” the Iran-Iraq war, political analysts say, and help end the conflict, which is causing severe domestic political problems in Kuwait. Officials clearly were not expecting a setback such as the collision with a mine.
But the party that may suffer the most is the U.S. Navy, which assembled the armada to escort the Kuwaiti tankers from the Gulf of Oman to Kuwait and back.
The Navy has guided-missile cruisers in the gulf and destroyers, frigates and an aircraft carrier with 50 warplanes nearby. It has radars that can detect missile sites and radars that can target Iranian F-4 fighters.
But it didn`t have any of the mine-sweeping ships or mine-hunting helicopters assigned to the Middle East Task Force protecting the ships in the gulf.
When asked about the lack of mine-sweepers before the escort operation got underway last Wednesday, a Navy spokesman said, ”There are others over there taking care of that.”
