Sunday, June 26, 1988

Iraqi Troops Recapture Big Oil Field

New York Times
By YOUSSEF M. IBRAHIM
June 26, 1988

PARIS, June 25 - … A few days ago, Iraqi troops attacked the Iranian border town of Mehran and then handed it over to Iranian guerrillas belonging to the Mujahedeen Khalq movement, to convey an impression that Iranians are rising in military revolt against their own Government, Arab diplomats here asserted. Earlier reports from Baghdad said the guerrillas had captured the town without the aid of Iraqi troops.

The Iraqi-led attack on Mehran was prompted by orders from Iraq's Defense Minister, Gen. Adnan Khairallah, to take ''territories used by the enemy as a springpoint to attack borders.'' He also named other Iranian border towns, including Mehran, Dehloran, Qasr-e-Sherin and Soma, as future targets. A few days ago, Iraq attacked 10 oil industry targets including several Iranian oil fields and offshore platforms in the Persian Gulf, causing significant damage.

Thursday, June 23, 1988

Iran Says It Defeated Iraqi Counterattack At Northern Frontier

The New York Times
June 23, 1988


Associated Press
NICOSIA, Cyprus, June 22 - … In action reported at another part of the front, 200 miles to the south, Iranian rebels based in Iraq said they had withdrawn from the Iranian town of Mehran after a three-day offensive. They reported capturing tanks, missiles and other military hardware.

Leaders of the rebel group, the People's Mujahedeen, an Islamic socialist organization, said their fighting wing, the National Liberation Army, had taken Mehran on Sunday. Iran acknowledged the attack but said it was repulsed with thousands of enemy casualties.

Wednesday, June 22, 1988

Iranian Rebels Withdraw; Iran Claims to Repel Iraqi Assault

Iranian Rebels Withdraw; Iran Claims to Repel Iraqi Assault
Associated Press
ED BLANCHE
June 22, 1988

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) _ Iraq said its troops, backed by helicopter gunships, on Wednesday recaptured two mountain peaks in its northern border region. Iran said it repulsed an Iraqi attack in the area and killed or wounded 3,000 Iraqi soldiers.

Farther south along the countries’ 730-mile border, Iranian rebels based in Iraq said they withdrew from the town of Mehran after a three-day offensive, in which they reported capturing military hardware they estimated to be worth $2 billion.

In the Persian Gulf, Iran said its navy destroyed an unidentified Iraqi ship during a clash with ″several enemy vessels″ in the northern end of the waterway. Iraq denied the report.

The offical Iraqi News Agency said Iraqi troops recaptured the heights of Safrah and Basawa in a three-day battle that began Monday. The two mountains are about five miles northwest of Mawat, a town in the Kurdistan mountains of northeastern Iraq.

Iraq said its helicopter gunships flew 337 missions in the battle Wednesday.

The Iraqis last Friday claimed to have recaptured Mawat and several other peaks, all seized by Iran last summer.

Iran reported its fighter bombers on Wednesday ″heavily bombed Iraqi positions and troop concentration sites in the Mawat region.″ The bombing inflicted ″considerable losses in men and equipment,″ said the report by the official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Nicosia.

Tehran radio, also monitored in Nicosia, said Iranian forces on Tuesday destroyed at least 15 tanks and set ammunition dumps ablaze and 3,000 Iraqi troops in the region.

Iraqi forces in recent weeks have driven the Iranians out of territory captured in southern Iraq earlier in the 8-year-old war and have been pressing Iranian forces in the Kurdistan mountains for 10 days.

On April 16, Iraq seized the initiative in the stalemated land war with an assault that recaptured the Faw Peninsula in southern Iraq, ending two years of Iranian occupation.

A sudden Iraqi switch from years of static warfare behind formidable defenses caught the Iranians by surprise. Iraq struck again a month later, driving Iran’s forces from their bridgehead around Salamcheh, east of the southern port city of Basra.

Two defeats in a row jolted the Iranians and forced them onto the defensive for the first time since early in the war, which began with an Iraqi invasion in September 1980 after weeks of border skirmishes.

Iran was hit again Saturday night when Iraqi-backed Iranian rebels of the National Liberation Army crossed in the central border sector to capture Mehran, which has been fought over several times and devastated by the war.

Dispatches from Tehran said the three-pronged assault was carried out by Iraqi regulars supported by fighter-bombers dropping chemical bombs, but rebel commander Massoud Rajavi denied the ″hollow claims.″

Statements from the National Liberation Army said 22 of its fighting brigades, including armored units and one made up of women, seized hills around Mehran several miles inside western Iran on Sunday and occupied the town.

Jeffrey Ulbrich, an Associated Press correspondent taken to Mehran by the rebels Sunday, said it was filled with jubilant NLA fighters.

A rebel statement received Wednesday from NLA headquarters in Baghdad said the insurgents withdrew across the border Tuesday night.

The offensive, called ″Operation Forty Stars,″ was the biggest since Rajavi organized the rebel army a year ago around his Mujahedeen Khalq (People’s Holy Warriors), the main movement opposed to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

According to the statement, 8,000 Iranians were killed or wounded and more than 1,500 captured in the battle for Mehran, and about 16,000 Iranians were involved. The NLA gave its own losses as 71 killed and 240 wounded.

Iran acknowledged the attack but said it was repulsed with thousands of enemy casualties.

Conflicting claims cannot be reconciled because foreign journalists are not allowed into battle areas except for occasional guided tours like the one on which Ulbrich was taken.

Rebel units using tanks captured in earlier battles cut the main Iranian supply routes in the sector and blew up two bridges. The statement said captured materiel was worth $2 billion and included 40 tanks, 20 armored personnel carriers, scores of 155mm and 130mm artillery pieces, U.S.-built TOW anti-tank missiles and batteries of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles, also American-made.

Reporters taken to the area said roads were jammed with rebel trucks hauling the booty home.

In the Persian Gulf, an American missile cruiser on patrol off Saudi Arabia rescued six crewmen from the Greek oil-rig supply boat Notora, which later sank, U.S. officials reported.

They quoted the captain as saying the Notora apparently foundered because of a leak in its engine room.

Maj. Charles Boyd of the U.S. Central Command said the missile cruiser Halsey went to the Notora’s aid after it radioed a distress signal at 10:54 p.m. Tuesday from 40 miles northeast of the Saudi oil port Ras Tanura.

Tuesday, June 21, 1988

New Blow for Iran: Town Lost to Rebels

Psychological Defeat Seen as Khomeini Foes Score Major Success
Los Angeles Times
June 21, 1988

BY CHARLES WALLACE

NICOSIA, Cyprus—Iran appeared to have suffered another severe psychological defeat Monday as rebel forces consolidated their hold on the central border town of Mehran.

The capture Sunday night of Mehran, just inside the Iranian border and about 125 mites east of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, is the greatest military success to date for the rebel National Liberation Army.

The army, a force supported by Iraq and made up of exiled opponents of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was formed a year ago. Diplomats put its strength at about 10,000 troops.

In a communiqué, the rebel force said that its members do not intend to take up defensive positions around the town and thus become pinned down.

“On the contrary,” said Mahmoud Attai, identified as the group’s chief of staff, “we are contemplating much larger offensives for which the capture of the city of Mehran is considered only a prelude.”

The Liberation Army forces are expected to hold the town for a few days and then withdraw back into Iraq.

Western journalists who accompanied the rebels into Mehran said they saw little sign of fighting in the streets; and this suggested to Western military analysts that the Iranian military did not offer much resistance.’

Don Kerr, an analyst at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, said: “The success at Mehran is noteworthy on two counts. The Iraqis are continuing to push the Iranians, and something is not right in the Iranian armed forces.”

Other analysts said the fact that it was rebel Iranian units based in Iraq. not regular Iraqi army units, that moved into Mehran also was significant. If Iraqi troops had been involved, they said, the incident might have caused a turnaround in public support for Khomeini, which is believed to be ebbing.

Political Setback

Historically, Mehran’ has had little strategic value, but the fact that it has been taken by rebels is politically important. And its loss is the latest in a growing list of political setbacks suffered by the Iranian government in recent months. Among the others:

— The Faw Peninsula, captured by Iran in February; 1986, has been retaken by Iraqi troops.
— In a confrontation with the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf, six ships of the Iranian navy were lost or severely damaged.
— Iranian forces have lost ground east of the southern city of l3asra. The area had been taken by the Iranians at the cost of many casualties.

According to military analysts, Iran’s recent setbacks seem to have been caused not so much by Iraqi prowess on the battlefield as by a lack of Leadership in Tehran. This point of view appeared to have been bolstered last month when Khomeini named Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, to the post of armed forces commander in chief.

In other action in the region, Iraq claimed to have shot down an invading Iranian F-5 warplane on the northern front. Another Iranian F-S narrowly escaped, according to a communiqué issued in Baghdad. There was no immediate comment from Tehran.

Monday, June 20, 1988

Iranian Rebels Occupy Town Near Iraq

Iranian Rebels Occupy Town Near Iraq
New York Times
June 20, 1988

Associated Press
MEHRAN, Iran, June 19 - Troops of an Iranian rebel movement seeking to topple the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini captured this town on the Iraqi border today. Iran asserted that Iraqi Army units had attacked Mehran, using chemical weapons ''on a large scale.''

The town, which is now largely in ruins from earlier battles between the Iranian and Iraqi armies, was filled with cheering soldiers of the National Liberation Army, the fighting force of the People's Mujahedeen.

Mehran, which is situated on the central front about 100 miles east of Baghdad, has changed hands four times since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in September 1980.

Today, there was no indication of a major battle in the town - no bodies, no wounded, no destroyed vehicles or fires.

Leaders of the Mujahedeen, an Islamic socialist group, said that most of the fighting took place in foothills north and south of the town, areas dominated by artillery, and that the offensive pushed 12 miles into Iran at its deepest point.

A press officer at Mujahedeen headquarters in Baghdad said that his group ''liberated'' Mehran in a major offensive that started Saturday night.

The Mujahedeen leader, Massoud Rajavi, said in a statement that the capture of Mehran this morning ''is a great victory and a basic step toward the overthrow of Khomeini's oppressive regime.''

Without giving detailed figures, the statement added that ''thousands of enemy troops under Khomeini's command have either been killed, wounded or captured.''

Mujahedeen leaders in Mehran said 1,400 soldiers of the Iranian Government had been taken prisoner. They said that 48 of their fighters were known to have been killed but that casualty figures were incomplete.

A report by the official Iranian press agency said that ''a large number of Iranian Moslem combatants were martyred and injured when Iraqi warplanes chemically bombed the Changuleh region east of Mehran.

''Earlier in the day, Iraqi warplanes had chemically bombed the town of Mehran,'' it added.

The agency said Iranian special units had been dispatched to ''neutralize the chemical weapons, using special techniques'' and that hundreds of Iraqis were killed in fighting near the town.

It also reported that Iranian planes flew five bombing missions against Iraqi positions in the Mehran area.

Iraq denied that its forces were involved in the attack on Mehran or that chemical weapons were used.

Iranian charges that chemical weapons had been used in Mehran are ''nothing more than a pretext to explain away a new military setback,'' said Latif Nusayif Jasim, Iraq's Information Minister.

''The attack was mounted by forces of the National Liberation Army, which have no chemical weapons in their possession,'' Mr. Jasim said in a statement carried by the Iraqi press agency.

The Mujahedeen said the drive, code-named Forty Stars, was the largest operation undertaken by its forces and involved 22 brigades of combat and support troops and covered a front 30 miles wide. Their statement did not say how many troops are in each brigade or give an overall figure for the number of fighters involved.

Supported by Iraq, the Mujahedeen army has been playing a small but growing role in the war.




Wednesday, June 01, 1988

Iranian Rebels Based in Baghdad Unhappy With Iraq’s War Strategy

The Washington Post
June I, 1988
By Patrick E. Tyler


BAGHDAD, Iraq—Iran’s armed opposition move­ment, the People’s Mujaheddin, which is based in and backed by Iraq, is deeply concerned that Iraq’s use of missiles and chemical weapons against civilian targets in the Persian Gulf war is undercutting its attempts to build political support inside Iran.

The People’s Mujaheddin, already politically bur­dened by its association with the Iraqi regime that has been fighting Iran for more than 7½ years, is seeking to distance itself from Iraq’s new strategy of missile and chemical warfare.

“We are not in any way happy that the Iraqis are fir­ing missiles at Iran,” said Mohammed Mohaddessin, the political director of the Baghdad-based movement, in an interview.

The People’s Mujaheddin, which fields a National Liberation Army in camps on the Iraqi side of the war front, has cheered Iraq’s recent major victories over Iran in the war, and blames the war’s continuation on Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

But the movement’s young leadership is voicing dis­tinct discomfort that Iraq fired 160 missiles into Tehran and other Iranian cities during a six-week barrage that ended last month and which the Mujaheddin estimate killed or wounded 5,000 civilians. During the same pe­riod, Iran fired more than 40 missiles against Baghdad in an offshoot of the conflict known as the “war of the cities.”

“For any Iranian,” Mohaddessin said, “including us, it is very tough to see our compatriots under the rubble, getting killed in the war of the cities. People have been forced to leave their belongings, their houses and resort to putting up tents in the desert?

Mohaddessin deplored the “war of the cities” that raged between the two sides between Feb. 29 and April 18 as inhuman,” and said the escalating use of chemical weapons, particularly in civilian areas, “is even more inhuman.” His organization, which monitors events in­side Iran through a network of sympathizers, estimates that 4 million of Tehran’s 10 million people fled the Iranian capital during the missile exchanges.

In the past, the People’s Mujaheddin leader, Massoud Rajavi, had achieved moderate success in convincing the Iraqi regime to stop aerial bombing of civilian tar­gets in Iran. But with Iraq now relying heavily on long-range missiles as a strategic weapon to deter Iranian aggression, he showed no confidence that his group could influence the Iraqi leadership.

“I have my own concerns as to the restart of the war of the cities,” he said, adding, “we have our own limi­tations in this regard.”

For the moment, Mohaddessin said, the group is forced to live with the stigma of its association with Iraq. “We have a saying in Persian,” Mohaddessin said through an interpreter, “The enemy of your enemy is on your side.”

“Naturally when we fight against Khomeini,” he added, “the Iraqis are happy. It consumes some of Kho­meini’s energy.”

While both the People’s Mujaheddin and Iraq aim to apply military pressure on Tehran’s revolutionary lead­ership, Mohaddessin noted that their goals inevitably will diverge.

“Our war,” he said, “is offensive for the purpose of overthrowing Khomeini whereas the Iraqis are just fighting a defensive war in order to protect them­selves.”

The People’s Mujaheddin was founded in 1965 with a leftist orientation and allied with Khomeini in the move­ment that toppled Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979. The mu­jaheddin, or “holy fighters,” are unconnected with the Afghan anticommunist movement that uses the same name.

When Khomeini’s government cracked down on the People’s Mujaheddin in 1981, its leadership moved to France until 1986, when the French government, locked in its own political confrontation with Tehran, agreed to expel Rajavi and his followers.

Rajavi then announced that it was time the Mujaheddin took their opposition onto the battlefield, Iran’s only neighbor willing to accept a guerrilla force against Kho­meini’s government was Iraq.

After a year of organization, the group established camps in the central and northern sectors of the 700-mile war front. Several thousand fighters, including women, have been equipped and trained, receiving mil­itary and logistical support from the Iraqi army, accord­ing to diplomatic sources.

The consensus of military and diplomatic sources here-is that the Mujaheddin’s National Liberation Army has played a minor role in harassing Iranian forces in cross-border raids.

“I can’t see that they are much of a factor in the war,” said one western political analyst.

Yet at a time when Iran has relied more heavily on exploiting Iraq’s rebellious Kurdish minority in the north as a proxy army, Iraq appears to be assisting the People’s Mujaheddin to train and equip its forces to play a similar proxy role.

In its most successful attack, the Mujaheddin on March 28 crossed into Iran from the central Iraqi bor­der town of Fekkeh and struck the rear defense area held by Iran’s 77th Khorassan division.

Baghdad-based correspondents for western news agencies who visited the Mujaheddin forces after they returned across the Iraqi border said several hundred Iranian soldiers had been taken prisoner in the raid and a large cache of weapons seized, including four aging M47 tanks.

The Mujaheddin claimed to have killed 2,000 troops and wounded 1,500, but western military sources said they were skeptical of the claims.