Until a few weeks ago, the Fao Peninsula in southeastern Iraq was a sparsely inhabited outpost of little interest to anyone. By last week it had become the locus of some of the fiercest fighting in the Iran-Iraq war, as Iraqi troops mounted a blistering counterattack against dug-in Iranian invaders. By week's end Iran still held its grip on the peninsula. And neighboring Arab sheikdoms began to wonder whether Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had lost the initiative on the battlefield to the Iranian juggernaut.
More than a week after Iran's surprise Feb. 9 invasion, the initial progress of the Iraqi counteroffensive...