Iran Attacks Neutral Tanker in Gulf Despite Earlier Pledge

Iranian gunboats attacked a Norwegian tanker Thursday in the Persian Gulf, the first major attack on civilian shipping since Iran accepted a cease-fire call in the war with Iraq.

The incident occurred just four days after an Iranian envoy had pledged that Iran would refrain from attacking neutral shipping while talks are taking place to arrange a cease-fire in the gulf war.

There were no injuries reported in the attack on the tanker, the 284,502-ton Berge Lord, which was carrying crude oil from Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The ship was 25 miles off Dubai in the southern gulf at the time of the attack.

Leif Klausen, the Berge Lord’s captain, said the ship was hit by machine-gun fire after he refused an Iranian request to stop and be searched. Under international law, countries at war have the right to search neutral ships to determine whether they are carrying goods for the enemy.

After the attack began, Klausen appealed for help by radio, and the U.S. guided missile cruiser Halsey responded. But Klausen declined an offer to be escorted and steamed independently through the Strait of Hormuz into the Arabian Sea.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Ali Mohammed Besharati, had told reporters in the United Arab Emirates earlier in the week that until a cease-fire is implemented, “we will not do anything to shipping.”

Iran announced on July 18 that it was accepting the U.N. Security Council’s Resolution 598 calling for a cease-fire in the gulf war. The resolution had been adopted a year earlier and accepted by Iraq. But Iraq recently demanded that any cease-fire be preceded by direct negotiations between the two sides.

Although Thursday’s incident was obviously an attack on unarmed shipping, diplomats in the region reacted cautiously. They said they doubted that the action represented any change in official Iranian policy.

The attack followed Iraqi bombings Wednesday of a gas production facility in which several civilians were killed. In the past, the Iranians have attacked neutral shipping in the Persian Gulf in retaliation for Iraqi attacks on their oil production and shipping installations.

Meanwhile, Iraq denied Iranian charges that its warplanes had dropped chemical weapons on a civilian village in Kurdistan. It said the Iranian charge was made “to continue its policy of aggression.”

The Iranians said on Thursday that the casualty toll in the attack, on the town of Oshnoviyeh in northern Iran, had risen to 1,700.