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After Iranian President Khamenei denied before the U.N. that the Ajr had been laying mines, U.S. diplomats briefly hoped that the 15-member Security Council would be emboldened into a unanimous vote for an arms embargo against Iran. But Khamenei had scoffed at the U.N. as a "paper factory for issuing worthless and ineffective orders," and the futility of the sanctions effort seemed to prove his point. Last July the council unanimously called for a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war, which Iraq declared it would accept. But Iran stalled, refusing to clarify its intentions even when visited by U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar during his unsuccessful peace mission to the gulf area two weeks ago.
Since any one of the five permanent members of the council (the U.S., Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China) can veto a resolution, an embargo rested heavily on Moscow and Peking. The Chinese, whom U.S. officials charged with regularly selling arms to Iran, have been cool to an embargo. In a U.N. address that was generally easy on the U.S., Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze sidestepped the sanctions issue and instead called for joint U.N. protection of gulf shipping.
After Secretary of State George Shultz held a one-hour meeting with Shevardnadze and lunched with China's Foreign Minister Wu Xueqian, the Reagan Administration seemed to give up hope of a quick sanctions vote. Instead, the U.S. showed more interest in preserving unity among the five permanent council members. The five did agree on a renewed effort to get Iran to endorse a cease-fire, threatening possible Soviet and Chinese votes for an embargo if it does not.
The capture of the Iran Ajr renewed another debate that seemed to have a similar lack of substantive effect. On Capitol Hill, a group of Senators claimed that the U.S. clearly was engaged in hostilities in the gulf. That, they argued, required the President to observe the War Powers Resolution. Under the law, Reagan is required to notify Congress of the use of U.S. military forces in a hostile situation; the troops would have to be withdrawn in 60 days unless both houses approved the assignment.
Noting that the law makes no distinction between offensive and defensive hostilities, Republican Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut challenged his colleagues to face their constitutional duties squarely as the branch of Government empowered to decide whether to declare war. A Senate vote to invoke the law had lost, 50 to 41, only a week earlier. Weicker accused both the President and Congress of being unwilling to take a stand on the military situation in the gulf. "Both the Congress and the President would prefer a fog, where if things go wrong, nobody can find you," Weicker charged.
Indeed, neither branch was eager to force the war-powers issue just after the politically popular U.S. military action. To mollify the Senate and House, Reagan sent letters to both bodies reporting on the U.S. seizure of the Iran Ajr and defending it as "necessary to protect U.S. vessels and U.S. lives from unlawful attacks." More such action would follow if needed, Reagan wrote. He made this report, he explained, in a "spirit of mutual cooperation toward a common goal." The ploy may have helped defuse the congressional rebellion. The Senate postponed until this week any decision on whether to press the issue.