Iran Missile Deployment Worries Officials Anti-Aircraft Missiles’ Position Could Threaten Persian Gulf Oil Shipments

Iran has deployed Hawk anti-aircraft missiles on strategic islands around the Strait of Hormuz, the potential choke point for oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, President Clinton and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. John Shalikashvili said Tuesday.

In addition, U.S. intelligence has spotted Iran moving artillery into forward positions on the islands, Shalikashvili said. Although the Hawks are an older system originally sold to Tehran by the United States, Iran can use them to cut off traffic bound to or from the 550-mile waterway bordering eight Gulf states.

“All of that can lead you to lots of conclusions. One of them is that they want to have the capability to interdict the shipping traffic in the Straits of Hormuz,” Shalikashvili said during a breakfast meeting with reporters. “What this is all about bothers us very much.”

At a news conference later in the day, Clinton said Iran’s military moves appear to pose “no undue cause for concern at this moment.

“We’re monitoring them, trying to evaluate exactly everything we need to know about them, but we’re on top of the situation,” Clinton said at a joint news conference with Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok.

But U.S. officials said the moves underscore Iran’s “incremental” military buildup in recent months.

The missile launchers were deployed late last fall, at about the same time as the U.S. buildup in the Persian Gulf in response to Iraq’s dispatch of troops toward the Kuwaiti border.

Neither the president nor the nation’s top general identified the specific islands, but U.S. officials told the Los Angeles Times that the missiles were deployed on Abu Musa and Tumbs, two islands near the mouth of the strait.

U.S. analysts initially concluded that Iran did not intend to use the missiles to threaten civilian or military aircraft. “It appeared they were deployed mainly for defensive purposes,” one official said.

U.S. and Gulf fears were held in check particularly because the Hawk missiles were not loaded onto the launchers.

But the Hawk systems were activated for the first time in recent days.