Iraq Attacks America (Accidentally?), 1987

The Stark lists to port after being struck by an Iraqi-launched Exocet missile, May 17, 1987.

Twenty years ago today, at 9:09 p.m. on May 17, 1987, the forward lookout on the USS Stark, a navy frigate on patrol in the Persian Gulf, noticed “a bright flash” followed by “a small blue dot on the horizon.” A full two minutes later, suddenly recognizing the danger, he screamed a warning. “Inbound missile!”

It was too late. An Exocet missile fired by an Iraqi warplane tore through the Stark’s hull at 600 miles an hour. The warhead didn’t explode, but its hundreds of pounds of flammable propellant turned the ship’s interior into an inferno. Moments later, a second ocean-skimming missile crashed into the ship and did explode.

The crew faced a nightmare. More than two dozen sailors were killed immediately, and the death toll would eventually reach 37. The missiles severed water mains, hampering firefighting and cutting off drinking water. All of the ship’s communications were knocked out.

The sailors fought a gallant 16-hour battle to save the Stark. The fire became so hot that decks glowed red and water from hoses flashed to steam. By late the next morning, with the help of sailors from another Navy ship, the crew was finally able to bring the fire under control.

An official investigation cited the Stark’s skipper, Capt. Glenn R. Brindel, for dereliction of duty in the “total collapse” of the ship’s defenses. Brindel was nowhere to be found in the minutes before the attack, even though he had been warned of the approaching Mirage F1 jet an hour earlier. He later claimed he had left the bridge “to make a head call.” None of the ship’s defenses had been effectively activated, and the crew had not sent out warnings to the Iraqi pilot until the last minute.

The Navy brass decided against the court-martial that the investigating panel recommended for Brindel and allowed him to retire and collect his pension. The Iraqis claimed that the attack had been a mistake. Iraqi president Saddam Hussein made what U.S. authorities called a “very fulsome apology,” and his government agreed to pay compensation amounting to $29.6 million, even while accusing the Stark of having strayed into an “exclusion zone.”

It was clear that confusion and incompetence had reigned at sea. To many, the incident was also emblematic of the weak, reactive, and incoherent policy that the United States was pursuing in the Middle East. The administration was not backing up military action with a comprehensive diplomatic strategy.

The Stark was in the Gulf because the war between Iraq and Iran was endangering shipping there. The Iraqis had started the conflict in 1980 over a border dispute. Four years later, they had begun to attack Iranian and some neutral shipping. The Iranians countered with attacks on the ships of Iraq and its Arab allies. President Ronald Reagan sent American naval vessels to keep the shipping lanes open.

But the U.S. position was riddled with contradictions:

—Though European nations were much more dependent than the United States on Gulf oil, the American Navy was saddled with the policing duty. Europe profited from arms sales to the belligerents (the Iraqi Exocet and the Mirage jet were both French-made).

—Reagan had declared the United States neutral in the Iraq-Iran war, but the U.S. had tilted strongly toward Iraq, with an eye toward containing Iran’s Islamic revolutionary fervor.

—In spite of his determination not to allow Iran to win the war, Reagan had decided to sell U.S. arms to Iran. The secret deals became public in November 1986, and the resulting embarrassment prompted the United States to make an even stronger show of support for the Iraqi side.

—This support included a commitment to place 11 oil tankers from Kuwait, an Iraqi ally, under the U.S. flag and supply them with naval escorts. The United States was preparing to implement this policy at the time of the Stark attack.

—Attacks on shipping in the Gulf actually increased after the United States stepped up its military presence.

—Iraq had made many more indiscriminate attacks on neutral shipping than had Iran, and had fired the missiles that devastated the Stark, yet Reagan asserted Iran “was the real villain in the piece” for not negotiating an end to the war. But when Iran formally offered to consider a cease-fire, in February 1988, the United States resisted United Nations efforts to follow up on the proposal.

In the end, the attack on the Stark and the deaths of the American sailors had the ironic effect of pushing the United States closer to Iraq. And the commitment to protect Kuwaiti vessels helped the Iraqi side while leaving the U.S. vulnerable.

The following April the U.S. frigate Samuel B. Roberts, sister ship of the Stark, was ripped open by an Iranian mine in the Gulf and almost sank. Three months later the American cruiser Vincennes mistakenly shot down Iran Air Flight 655 soon after it took off from Bandar Abbas airfield, killing 290 persons and fueling anti-American sentiment in Iran. “We need to rethink exactly what we are doing in the Persian Gulf,” said Republican Sen. Robert Dole. He sponsored a bipartisan resolution demanding that the President explain the strategy, goals, and risks of the mission there.

America’s role in the Mideast is hardly a less contentious and confusing matter today. The vexed occupation of Iraq, growing discord with Iran, and hectoring admonitions from even our Saudi allies, all make a clear, simple policy all but impossible.

In March of this year, Iranians captured 15 British sailors in a dispute reminiscent of this “tanker war” of the 1980s. The response of the United States, which continues to eschew almost all diplomatic contact with Iran, echoed that of 1987: President Bush immediately ordered the largest naval exercise in the region since the invasion of Iraq.

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).