It is difficult to say whether President Mitterrand has been courageous or reckless in providing five Super Etendard warplanes to Iraq. The answer to this question will depend on what President Saddam Hussein finally does with them. If he uses these planes to attack Iran’s oil facilities on the Kharg island as is widely feared, and if in that eventuality Teheran carries out its threat to close the straits of Hormuz and thus block the movement of oil from the gulf, President Mitterrand will have contributed to a grave international crisis. If, on the other hand, Baghdad utilizes these aircraft mainly to build up pressure on Ayatollah Khomeini so that he can be made to see reason and to agree to end the war, the French leader can then claim to have honored his commitment to Iraq without unleashing a dangerous chain of events. But one has only to state this latter proposition to expose its weakness. The Ayatollah is engaged in what he going regards as a holy war. He has made it his life’s (whatever is left of it) mission to bring down the present regime in Baghdad. He has demonstrated it again and again that he considers no sacrifice too great for achieving his objective. He is not likely to be deterred by the possibility that Iraq might destroy his oil facilities and thereby deprive him of his principal source of foreign exchange. President Mitterrand must know all this. This leads to two inferences. Either he has secured a promise from the Iraqis that they will not use the planes to attack Iranian oil facilities, or he has allowed himself to be coerced by them. We do not know which one of these inferences is accurate. But supposing that he has got an assurance from Baghdad, how is he going to ensure that it lives up to it.
We also do not know how desperate is President Saddam Hussein. He is doubtless in a difficult position. He has virtually exhausted his once impressive foreign exchange reserves ($ 35 billion before the war with Iran); he is able to export only 700,000 barrels of oil a day against over three million earlier; Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are said to have reduced their financial support to him from $ 12 billion a year to $ six billion; he is not in a position to pay foreign contractors; and, inevitably he has had to cut down drastically his ambitious development projects. But it does not necessarily follow that he has reached the end of his tether and would not mind plunging the world into a crisis the consequences of which it is not possible to anticipate. He may be desperate or he may not be. We can only speculate. Similarly, it is difficult to say at this stage how the US will handle the new situation. It has no influence in Teheran and it remains to be seen whether President Hussein will heed its counsel for restraint. If the worst happens, it can doubtless clear the Hormuz straits. But a decision to do so will not be easy to take. Iran is too important and its leaders too mercurial for President Reagan to wish to offend too much. All in all, the situation is messy. No light is visible at the end of the tunnel. In fact, the end of the dark tunnel itself is not in sight.