The Second Battle of Britain - a Soviet Sealion

5 – The Bear gets its fur wet


Back at the beginning of 1980, before he left office a year later, then-President Carter had spoken before Congress and the watching American people about how the United States would react should a ‘foreign power’ attempt to seize control of the Persian Gulf. Everything up to the use of force was promised in what was afterwards deemed the Carter Doctrine. This speech had occurred following the Iranian Revolution, the storming of the US Embassy there to take hostages and then the Soviet Union moving into Afghanistan: it was before the Iran-Iraq War started. There had beforehand been the announcement of a multi-service US military commitment to out-of-area operations worldwide and this, the Rapid Deployment Force, which became the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force (RDJTF) later on, was soon tied to possible Gulf operations under the Carter Doctrine. That foreign power was the Soviet Union despite it not being directly named. Saddam had then launched his war against Iran with the border fighting expanding to ballistic missile attacks by each other against urban areas – the War of the Cities – as well as into the Gulf where oil tankers & facilities were targeted by each side. Reagan had beaten Carter at the polls by this time and taken office, with the hostages from Tehran being released at that point, yet the Carter Doctrine and the option of using the RDJTF remained in-place. The Soviets were in Afghanistan and had also established a small presence – but a presence nonetheless – over in Iran as well as supplying Iraq with arms. The transport of oil out of the Gulf via tankers was what the West feared that the Soviets wanted to control should they move closer yet the fighting already taking place caused a lot of worry. That oil was the lifeblood of the West’s economy. It had to keep flowing in the face of Soviet desires as well as Iran and Iraq trading shots with one another.

The United States Navy, like the Royal Navy too, established a naval presence in the Gulf. They had access to port facilities (not real bases though) among the Gulf Arab Monarchies. For the British, this was the Armilla patrol with the rotation of a warship along with a supporting vessel. The Americans did things on a larger scale. When Reagan would later expand the RDJTF into Central Command – CENTCOM: a multi-service geographical combat command on par with SACEUR – there was the regular commitment of a carrier battle group to the Arabian Sea, which lay just outside of the Persian Gulf, in addition to several warships at a time going into the Gulf itself all with that nearby air power on-call. Attacks on tankers, those of the belligerent nations in the Iran-Iraq War but also those of neutral countries by Iran which they considered to be aiding Iraq’s war efforts, gained more and more American attention. There were calls in Washington for CENTCOM to prepare missions to escort tankers if this continued. The focus of the Americans remained on Iran with that nation being considered hostile in this process, more so than the Soviets to be honest.

Saddam’s death and the subsequent ending of the war which he had started at first led to talk of scaling back this Western military presence. Withdrawal of the Armilla Patrol and the redeployment of the always overstretched Royal Navy was something that there were calls to see done back in London. Even in Washington, there was consideration given to possibly easing up on the commitment: the attacks on oil tankers had ceased and the Soviets remained landlocked in Afghanistan. American hostility towards revolutionary Iran and then the worry from the Saudis and others that Rashid might do as Saddam had done and start another war kept the United States, even the British, committed to the Middle East though. The efforts of cost-cutters and the beliefs of geo-political strategists on Western politicians could have changed minds given time yet then the Soviets started making their presence felt in the Gulf when staging out of Iraq. This hadn’t been foreseen in Western capitals. It was happening though.

Ships from the Soviet Navy’s Indian Ocean Squadron had port access to facilities in Ethiopia and Yemen, some distance from the Gulf, but now Iraq allowed them to use Umm Qasr too. Their well-armed cruisers and destroyers made their presence felt in sailing through the Gulf, the Arabian Sea and out into the ocean too. Iraq’s own navy was receiving ships built in Italy and long impounded there as well as receiving some Soviet-built ships. However, it was these Soviet Navy ships which caused all of the uproar. The Armilla Patrol was outgunned significantly and despite having serious firepower among whichever carrier group was on-station, the Americans still couldn’t ignore those Soviet vessels. Moscow responded to diplomatic enquiries with the remarks that it had established a military presence in the Gulf to keep the peace. It didn’t look like that to everyone else.

There too was that presence of their aircraft. They were flying naval-rolled combat aircraft out of Iraq which flew out over the Gulf. Their fighters and tactical strike aircraft didn’t have much range but their bombers & patrol aircraft did. The strategic balance here was upset by this presence. In Western capitals they didn’t like how the Bear was getting its fur wet here and they were receiving visitors from their regional allies stating that they felt intimidated by the Soviet presence in Iraq. The reaction from the Saudis and the Gulf Arab Monarchies was done in private though. In public, they had an image to maintain. When at the same time as the Soviets were showing this overt support for Iraq, Rashid had his army, one he proclaimed as ‘victorious’ in the fight with Iran, on exercise throughout southern parts of his country. From out of Saudi Arabia, there came the worry that was expressed to the US secretary of state when he visited the region in September of 1986 that a nightmare situation might occur where the Soviets would forge an alliance between themselves, Iran and Iran together against the Gulf countries. It was an overblown fear, not one likely at all, though was something latched onto back home in Washington by certain figures pushing an agenda. Such an idea wasn’t fully dismissed though.

The following month, as CENTCOM retained its naval presence due to Soviet naval & air activities, the Americans watched as one of those Soviet ships was involved in an incident in the Straits of Hormuz at the head of the Persian Gulf. Here between Iran and Oman, a Qatari vessel was stopped on the high seas and a hostile boarding operation took place. The Soviets would afterwards state that they were responding to a distress call – this was a lie – and stumbled upon the shipment to Afghanistan, via Qatar and then Pakistan, of arms. Qatar denied the ship had been carrying weapons – they lied too – and claimed international piracy. The vessel was then afterwards forced to dock at Bandar Abbas in Iran where from Tehran the act of Qatar shipping arms to Afghanistan was denounced.

That claim from Riyadh before about an Iran-Iraq-Soviet axis now didn’t look so silly, did it?

An American military commitment to the Middle East would likely be that big, yes. Several Army divisions and at least one marine division.
Also there would be a couple of carriers and multiple USAF air wings.
All of which wouldn't be available to be sent elsewhere in the world.
Should it come to it, any Soviet force in the Middle East would be on the scale you suggest too: smaller. They would have supply issues but if Iran opened the way - not something assured - than that would make things far easier. With their own lighter, capable units, they too would miss them elsewhere in the world yet not as much as the Americans would.

I likewise wouldn't expect much from the Iraqi military.
As to the Iranians, they won't be going nowhere. That is all paranoia of the localised and Cold War kind.

7 – Deterrence


The deal didn’t hold up.

The handshake between Rashid and Jaber had taken place at the beginning of November 1986 and a long series of negotiations had begun with that. Those fell apart though once the New Year came around. The Iraqi number-crunchers reported back to Rashid what the Kuwaiti offer at settling the financial dispute really meant in the long term. On the face of things, it appeared to be fair yet when examined such as they had done, the Kuwaitis were being extraordinarily greedy. Jaber and his partners to the south were going to receive a significant sum from Iraq and the minute details of the deal would see Iraq tied economically to them for the foreseeable future. Rashid had the talks cut off following a confirmation of this from outside sources. There were some West German economists, in whom he had faith because they were ‘Frankfurt bankers’ as far as he was concerned, who looked over the whole matter and agreed with what his own people were telling him. The Kuwaiti negotiation team was sent home from Baghdad was undue haste and little diplomatic niceties.

In contact direct with Kuwait’s ruling sheikh, Rashid told him that Iraq had been insulted by Kuwaiti double-dealing. He would have nothing more to do with him and would too seek a suitable response for callous betrayal which he regarded as having taken place of his trust.

Such a smashing of promising new relations came at a time where Iraq was hit once more by unrest. The domestic economical situation hadn’t been fixed. Many foreign workers had gone home after last year’s troubles and their jobs taken by demobilised Iraqi soldiers yet that wasn’t that widely done. There was much unemployment in the country with angry young men out of work and angry. To whip them up, there once more came interference from opposition groups. Rashid had ruled out making any promises of elections but he had said that political reforms would come. They hadn’t taken place. Regardless, such actions were never going to placate the opposition. They found Rashid soft too, unwilling to do what Saddam had done. That wasn’t true because the current president had flooded Iraqi streets with soldiers last year when the deceased president had never gone that far but the truth here didn’t matter that much anymore.

Perception was key.

Like the Kuwaitis, Rashid’s internal opponents underestimated him. He sent in his soldiers again against a big demonstration in the capital. The men obeyed orders and put down a peaceful series of marches with violence. Rashid would afterwards feel ‘forced’ to start using his military intelligence services against opposition figures where they would act as a secret police. Saddam’s pet killers had been long let go and Rashid had done without such a force but no longer. He also used what happened to his advantage. Knowing that the domestic situation remained volatile with the public mood whipped up, he sought to direct that anger as much as he could elsewhere. That direction was towards Kuwait. Government-organised – and policed – marches took place against the Kuwaitis in late January.


Among their allies, and to the international community too, Kuwait played the innocent victim card. They had been reasonable with Iraq and what had they received in exchange? Insults and threats followed by Rashid having the Iraqi people on the streets marching against Kuwait with claims that their country was part of Iraq, stolen from them. There were plenty who understood what the Kuwaitis had been up to and been caught doing. Yet… Iraq was who got the bad press behind this while Jaber skated free. The issue with the renewed Iraqi claims that Kuwait was rightfully a part of Iraq was the defining factor behind this. Jaber received messages of support from regional allies and found to that among the international community, especially nations to which Kuwait exported oil, there remained the long-standing hostility to Iraq.

Back in 1981, Kuwait had been one of several countries which had formed the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were the other founding members. There was an economic and diplomatic focus with the GCC though the fundamental independence of each nation wasn’t affected by this partnership. As the Iran-Iraq War had continued, the GCC agreed to establish what was called the ‘Peninsula Shield Force’. This would be a joint, deployable military force to be used within the Gulf. It was a lofty goal to get this up and running: making it effective was even more of a challenge. The GCC wasn’t NATO nor the Warsaw Pact and thus was unable to have the political will neither the military capabilities to build a credible armed component. They tried though.

Oman refused to add an attachment to the Peninsula Shield Force when it was stood-up in the field come February ’87 on Saudi soil. Kuwait kept its own troops at home but the other four nations each made a commitment to what was in effect a brigade of combat troops. Starting out at Dhahran, the brigade then moved northwards to near the Kuwaiti-Saudi border, not inside Kuwait itself. This was a deterrent force and not something designed to try an intimidate the Iraqis. Such was the reason for no forward deployment given. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia both had other military forces active on their own soil too.

Nothing any of the GCC countries had organised as a ground force, individually or collectively, compared in any way to the Iraqi Army. Should it come to a fight, there would only be one winner. No one wanted that fight though.

9 – First shots


In the eyes of Kuwait, Iraq was beginning the first stages of a maritime blockade against them. Sheikh Jaber and his advisors knew what Saddam had done with Iranian shipping and the consequences of Rashid following that approach with them wasn’t something they were willing to accept. From Riyadh and other Arab capitals, the Kuwaitis had messages of support and the GCC had established the Peninsula Shield Force just over the border inside Saudi Arabia. Along with aircraft, if it came to a fight with the Iraqis on & over land, there was confidence that an Iraqi invasion could be stalled. Not stopped but brought to a crawl. Nothing that was done there though which changed the situation at sea where, fresh from new arrivals of warships built in Italian shipyards, those also Soviet-supplied vessels coming from Polish yards too, the Iraqis had that strong naval presence. Britain and America sent a handful of ships yet as March arrived, they seemed more concerned with Soviet aircraft in the skies over the Gulf rather than the Iraqi Navy. Those Western ships were on-station and from London & Washington there came assurances that they stood with Kuwait. Well… they did nothing when the latest Iraqi ‘inspection’ took place as a tanker outbound from Kuwait was stopped in international waters. The vessel was let go after a night being held in waters which the Iraqis said were theirs, yet this blatant act of piracy went unchecked.

No longer could this be allowed to continue.

Kuwait’s navy was small. It was a coastal defence force rather than an ocean-going fleet. The warships that Kuwait operated were fast attack craft with guns and missiles. Several of them had been at sea since these Iraqi actions began though they had found themselves unable to stop what was happening. The Iraqis intimidated them out of the way using warning shots and ‘nudging’ too while efforts were made to lure those at-sea one way while another Iraqi vessel would go after a civilian ship. New orders came, direct from Jaber, where the next time the Iraqis went after a tanker, the Kuwaiti Navy would do all that was necessary to stop that: ‘all that was necessary’ was up to and including using force stopping armed piracy in Kuwaiti waters.


The Iraqis went after another tanker on March 9th. They used their frigate Basra – a Lupo-class ship which had been built in Italy’s Riva Trigoso shipyard and before Saddam’s death meant to have been called the Al Yarmouk when no longer impounded – to stop another tanker claiming it was inside Iraqi waters illegally. The pair of the American destroyers were far out to sea and attracted the attention of a flight of Soviet missile-bombers – Backfires – using them for mock target practice and the US Navy’s on-station frigate was out of position too. Britain’s Alacrity, that frigate of theirs, was fast on the scene responding to the distress calls from the tanker’s captain as the Basra forced him to stop after firing warning shots. The Kuwaiti Navy quickly turned up. One of their West German-built fast attack boats, Al Sanbouk, escaped the attentions of an Iraqi missile boat elsewhere and raced towards the tanker. This approach was watched by the Iraqis in shock. The Kuwaitis had for the first time refused to be cowed!

In any fight between the Basra and the Al Sanbouk, the former had the advantage but the latter was no push over. The Iraqis brought up that Osa-class missile boat too – late but present soon enough – to outnumber the Kuwaitis. They intended to do what they had long been doing to others with the tanker which they had halted: making passage to Kuwait for international tankers and unwelcome proposition. Radio messages issuing warnings from the Al Sanbouk were treated almost as a joke… until, when a ‘deadline’ expired to stop molesting that tanker, the Kuwaitis opened fire.

The Kuwaiti boat had Exocet missiles yet used its 76mm main gun instead to fire upon the Basra. Multiple hits were achieved along the superstructure of the frigate including the bridge area. There was excellent handling shown as the Al Sanbouk fired on the move and kept out of defensive fire range of the Basra while also running rings around the Osa. That other Iraqi ship had only missiles and the Kuwaitis aimed to keep inside minimum range of those but able to turn on the boat at will should the need arise.

In the midst of all of this gunfire, the tanker started its engines and made a dash for it. The vessel was an inferno waiting to happen if struck and the cargo aboard was valuable. On the Alacrity, the ROE kept the Royal Navy out of this fight. They could defend themselves, and the tanker if it was attacked (though only in very specific circumstances), but the Iraqi-Kuwaiti fight was something which they couldn’t intervene in. The Kuwaiti boat handling was admired by the Brits yet they waited for things to go wrong. The Iraqis were sure to hit back. That was done. The Osa pulled back from the fight and launched a missile. This soon smashed into the Al Sanbouk and set the Kuwaiti boat on fire. It was enough to end this. Yet, a second anti-ship missile broke free from the smaller Iraqi boat. The Alacrity was at action stations with defensive weapons spun up but the Styx missile went elsewhere.

It struck the fleeing tanker.

There was an explosion though the huge vessel which was Panamanian-flagged, Greek-owned & Kuwaiti-chartered didn’t erupt in a fireball. It took the hit ‘well’ too, using its bulk to absorb the blast of the missile’s warhead. The tanker came to a stop and made another distress call. It would survive, towed into Kuwait the next day. Meanwhile, the Al Sanbouk would burn itself out and be abandoned (injured crewmen being rescued by the Alacrity) whereas the two Iraqi warships would leave the area to head back to Umm Qasr.

Though this exchange of fire was between the navies of Iraq & Kuwait, those shells & missiles used would, with hindsight, be the first shots of the upcoming Third World War.

11 – Running the gauntlet


Just as Kuwait was suffering under the impact of an effective maritime blockade imposed upon it by Iraq, so was the world economy. This wasn’t enough to bring about global recession or anything as big as that but there was still a negative effect there regardless. Western governments were feeling the pressure on this. Moreover, there was the geo-strategic factor involved too. Iraq was menacing Kuwait and despite what lies were peddled about Baghdad only wishing to aid the oppressed people there – blah blah – the real intention of Rashid was suspected by others. He wanted Kuwait’s oil wealth. To add that to Iraq’s own would allow for Saddam’s successor to bring that under his control. Rashid had allied himself with the Soviet Union and thus this would mean, from the point of view of the West, that Moscow would have an indirect influence thus on a significant portion of the world’s oil reserves here in the Middle East. This couldn’t be allowed to happen.

After establishing their own presence at-sea, the navies of several countries of the West sought now to protect shipping inbound & outbound from Kuwait. Agreements were made with insurers and shipping agents – nation states backing them should they face losses on this – to see for tankers to start making their way into Kuwaiti waters once more. This wasn’t done in secret. Through diplomatic channels, it was made clear to Rashid that there would be consequences should he attack shipping under their protection. America, Britain and France all had different ideas as to what this would entail in such hypothetical circumstances. There were disagreements among them on how to handle Iraq. Regardless, they presented a united front to Baghdad on the matter. With Western warships in Kuwaiti waters and out into the open Gulf beyond too, tankers began making voyages to Kuwait once more. It was the considered view of some that they were soon running a gauntlet: there was preparation made by others to make sure that these tankers moved in the face of intimidation and threats.

Yet, Iraq, nor the Soviets who had their own presence too, made an effort to interfere… not at this initial stage anyway.


Far inland, across the deserts of southern Iraq, Rashid was meanwhile busy. The Iraqi Army was out under the sun once more on exercise. This was an unbeaten army, announcements from Baghdad came, which had first forced Iran to defeat and would do that same to the armies of Sheikh Jaber too. There was new equipment, many personnel changes and also a rearrangement in terms of structure. Saddam’s supposedly ‘elite’ Republican Guard were long gone. Rashid, a long-serving military officer, wanted no favouritism like that present among his army. He saw that as something that undermined the army.

A poor performance was put in during the war games which Rashid had ordered. Units got lost and there were friendly-fire casualties aplenty during live fire exercises. Military observers from overseas had been invited to watch what was happening. Strenuous efforts were made to hide the incompetence on display yet it was impossible to cover up. Attendees from the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and both Arab & African countries friendly to Iraq were witness to this. All of the new military equipment on show – fresh Soviet gear – couldn’t make up for the fact that the Iraqi Army just was no good at this business of war. One thing they had have though, a strength that any regional opponent bar Iran again couldn’t match, was the strength of numbers. Rashid hadn’t forcefully re-conscripted so many men let go when the Iran-Iraq War had ended but there had been volunteers when efforts were made starting in the New Year to recruit extra soldiers. These were men not long out of uniform who had found civilian life offered them nothing but hunger whereas while discipline in the army was intense, they could provide for themselves and their families back in service. One of the several reasons Rashid had done this was to get those young men off the streets and away from regime opponents too.

Honest reports came back to Rashid of the bad performance of his army. This wasn’t Saddam’s Iraq where he country’s leader wasn’t told bad news. Rashid did things differently. On military matters especially, he always demanded the truth. He had already understood that this would happen yet had the exercises occur to try to iron out the difficulties. He hoped too that the news of the new of them would get out… hopefully with the difficulties downplayed! There was a reason for this. He wanted Jaber down in Kuwait, but also King Fahd off in Riyadh as well, to understand that he had a big army in the field. Should the mood take him, he aimed to get them to believe, he could send that army off on ‘an adventure’.

The assembled army was his stick. He had a carrot too. Not set on war despite what the fears were elsewhere, close and far to Iraq, Rashid still wanted this whole wider situation resolved. The Kuwaiti naval attack had occurred and he was mad about that but he hoped that would play into his latest approach. Rashid had his diplomats made contact with Jaber’s people as this time Baghdad attempted to open Iraq-Kuwait talks. Rashid’s offer would put a lot of things on the table which Rashid would regard as concessions: forgiving Kuwait’s ‘illegal’ attack was one of them. Through an intermediary, contact was made with Jaber and he was told that Iraq wanted to re-open talks.