Iraqi military authorities suddenly limited the war zone to visiting journalists last week. Though there was no official explanation, the motive seemed obvious: in the space of little more than a week, an apparently unstoppable Iraqi advance had, in fact, been halted and transformed into a stalemate in which the Iranians were more than holding their own. Before the ban, TIME Correspondent William Drozdiak was able to catch the change in the war firsthand in repeated visits to Basra, and near Khorramshahr in occupied Iran. His report:
Despite the shrill peal of air-raid sirens regularly echoing throughout the port of Basra early last week, the absence of air strikes for four days had nurtured a languid mood among the Iraqi soldiers and civilians in the town. Troops from the front lines recounted boastful tales of Iranians fleeing before their artillery barrages, while the television pumped out scenes of Iraqi attacks to martial music and announced the claim that Ahwaz, 45 miles into Iran, had just been captured. "Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day," boasted Captain Abu Rashid, beaming proudly in his black beret and crisp green fatigues. "But victory will be ours."
That serene facade was shattered moments later. At precisely 12 noon, the windowpanes in the Shatt al Arab Hotel were blasted by a concussive boom. As explosion after explosion followed, everyone in the lobby dived to the floor or huddled next to pillars for protection from the surprise raid by two Iranian Phantoms skimming 100 yds. above the port. In less than a minute it was over. We poured outside and crossed a rickety wooden bridge to view the damage: just 300 yds. away on Sinbad Island, bright orange flames and thick black smoke curled from a coastal dredging vessel that had been nearly cut in half by a direct hit. Fire engines raced to the scene and sprayed water and foam to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby military craft.
That bold Iranian air strike served as a sobering harbinger of Iraq's shifting fortunes in the war. We saw a number of subsequent attacks by the Phantoms on oil installations around Basra. Swooping in low to avoid radar detection, they dodged Iraqi efforts to bring them down with Soviet-made surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) that invariably fizzled off in erratic curves and exploded aimlessly in the desert dust. Soon there was evidence that the ground war was also beginning to go less well than the Iraqis had anticipated. Iraqi ground forces had staked early claims to victory in their advance toward Khorramshahr; along with four other Western correspondents, I went to see how, in fact, the week-old campaign was faring.
The journey began with a brief ferry trip across the Shatt waterway, then a hired taxi to Khorramshahr. Crossing a flat, dusty plain, laden with mud-camouflaged military vehicles, our party reached the Iraq-Iran border post of Shalamche. There, eight miles from Khorramshahr, dozens of 130mm artillery guns were hunkered down in a vast arc, pelting the Iranian-held port with booming shells.