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As for protecting the flow of oil out of the gulf, American officials remained confident that an Iranian threat to mine the Strait of Hormuz if other countries intervened in the conflict was a bluff. U.S. intelligence found no evidence that Iran was manufacturing mines or acquiring them from abroad. But just in case, helicopters rigged for minesweeping were standing by on U.S. carriers in the nearby Arabian Sea. "There is no question that we can keep the strait open," Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs David McGiffert told TIME.
While marginally more confident than earlier that the crisis could be contained, official observers in Washington and elsewhere last week began to focus on what could be the most important and troublesome consequences of the crisis. No matter how long it lasts or how it ends, the war has perilously exacerbated the instability of the Middle East by setting off a scramble among the countries in the region to choose sides. It has also led to potentially dangerous jostling between the superpowers to position themselves as advantageously as possible along the sidelines.
The Middle East has long been the scene of pacts and battle lines that can shift almost as suddenly and capriciously as the sands of the desert. But the web of political and military ties emerging around the Iraq-Iran conflict is complex and paradox-ridden even by Middle Eastern standards. The basic line-up—Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Jordan versus Iran, Syria and Libya—cuts across almost every political, ideological and sectarian bond in the region and once again makes the old slogan of Arab unity ring hollow.
Iraq is ruled by the revolutionary Baath Party. So is Syria. Yet they are on opposite sides. The overwhelming majority of Syrian and Libyan Arabs are Sunni Muslims. Yet they are allied with the Shi'ite Persians of Iran, whom devout Sunnis consider schismatics. Revolutionary Iraq is fighting its war against Iran with Soviet rifles, tanks, planes and missiles. Its new ally, the ultraconservative monarchy of Saudi Arabia, defends itself against Iran's U.S.-made Phantom jets with the latest American equipment. As Iran chants its hatred of "the Great Satan America," its armed forces are surprising the world, thanks largely to the huge stockpiles of U.S. arms laid away by the late Shah and the skills of U.S.-trained Iranian pilots.
There is piquant historical irony in the burgeoning partnership between Iraqi Strongman Saddam Hussein and Jordan's King Hussein. The King's cousin, King Faisal II of Iraq, was slaughtered by the Iraqi military in 1958. Hafez Assad's Syria has negotiated a phony "merger" with Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, even though Gaddafi until recently was suspected of financing the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, an underground organization dedicated to the assassination of Assad's fellow Alawites, members of a minority Muslim sect that controls the Damascus regime, and in 1976 Gaddafi sent his guerrillas into Lebanon to fight alongside Palestinians against the Syrian army.