Byline: Combined wire services
The U.S. Navy early today scuttled an Iranian ship that was caught sowing mines in the Persian Gulf, and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger said the United States would tolerate no more mining.
U.S. sailors on Friday placed explosives aboard the 180- foot, 1,662-ton Iran Ajr, towed it to deep waters off Bahrain, and later detonated the charges, sinking the vessel, the Pentagon announced in Washington.
"The ship was sunk in a location where it will pose no hazard to shipping," said Col. Marvin Braman, a spokesman for the Pentagon.
"We're very hopeful that this one episode will be a sufficient warning so that they will stop it, but we are not going to go on the basis of hopes," Weinberger said during a tour of U.S. warships in the gulf.
Weinberger's announcement aboard the command vessel USS LaSalle that the Iran Ajr, flying the Stars and Stripes from its mast, would be blown up was greeted by applause and cheers from about 200 sailors, according to reporters traveling in the Defense Department pool.
Also, Pentagon officials confirmed reports that some of the 26 captured crewmen from the Iran Ajr had divulged the general location of nine mines, and Navy divers detonated one of them, sending a hundred-foot gusher of water into the air.
"We're not going to let that ship go back out and do it again," Weinberger said during his seven-hour tour.
Calling the Ajr's capture "a fair-sized lesson" to Iran, Weinberger said the Navy was "prepared and ready to do whatever is necessary to drive home the lesson that they can't do this with impunity."
The nine mines found on the Ajr's deck, he said, were "proof positive" of charges, denied by Tehran, that Iran has mined international waters in the gulf.
In similar speeches to 620 crewmen aboard the LaSalle, the frigate USS Hawes and the helicopter carrier USS Guadalcanal, Weinberger said President Reagan had asked him to convey his "great appreciation" for their work escorting 11 reflagged Kuwaiti tankers to guard them from Iranian attacks.
Weinberger also criticized Congress for cutting the defense budget and trying to limit Reagan's options in the gulf by imposing a War Powers Act restriction on the U.S. deployment in the region.
The secretary also acknowledged that the escort campaign needs international help and at one point made a brief reference to the Navy's need for "more basing facilities" - apparently referring to the refusal by gulf Arab moderates to allow U.S. forces to operate from their territory.
U.S. forces have been getting more and more international cooperation as the escort operation unfolds, he said, and gulf Arabs are beginning to realize "that you can't get anything out of Iran by being nice to them."
Pentagon officials said Japan has agreed to help with a sophisticated navigational system needed to establish the precise location of mines, and West Germany will replace any U.S. forces shifted from Europe to the gulf.
Still, in a sign of Arab discomfort with the U.S. military presence in the gulf, Weinberger had to fly by helicopter to the warships from the Saudi Arabian port of Dahran because Bahrain, which is much closer to the ships, did not want to be linked to the Ajr incident, officials said.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported that the Reagan administration moved to block the shipment of U.S.- made scuba gear and other diving equipment to Iran, suggesting that the devices pose a "direct threat" to shipping in the Persian Gulf.
Commerce Department spokeswoman Patricia Woodward said U.S. sales to Iran of scuba gear and related equipment totaled $83,000 in 1986.
In Tehran, President Ali Khamenei told worshipers at a Friday mass prayer meeting that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had asked him "to tell the Iranian people that ... we will respond to America's wicked acts."
The president said Iran's 86-year-old spiritual leader, seldom seem in public in the past year, also told him that Iran would make "no compromise whatsoever" to end the Iran-Iraq war, now in its eighth year.
Iraq announced that its warplanes Friday attacked a "large naval target" in the gulf - its euphemism for tankers carrying Iranian oil - and charged that Iranian artillery had hit the southern city of Basra, killing seven civilians.
Pentagon officials accompanying Weinberger said some of the 26 captured Ajr crew men - who will be freed Saturday in Oman at the entrance to the gulf - provided U.S. forces with the general location of nine mines they had rolled into the water before they were attacked.
The Times of London reported that Navy commandos stormed the ship after the initial attack and fired at Iranian crewmen to stop them from sliding the rest of the ship's mines into the gulf.
State Department sources, meanwhile, said "no consideration" had been given to asking Iran to release Jon Pattis, a jailed Rockville, Md., telecommunications engineer, in return for the seamen. Pattis is serving a 10-year sentence on charges of spying for the CIA.
There was no indication of how many mines have been physically located, but one of them bobbed to the surface Friday, apparently after one of the Navy's giant H-653 mine sweepers passed over it and sliced its mooring cable.
Navy television film released to the press pool showed two Navy divers jumping off a rubber boat and swimming under the 1,000-pound mine to avoid its detonating horns while they fixed an explosive charge to its belly.
The divers swam quickly back to the boat and the craft sped off as the eight-minute timer on the charge ticked down and finally set off the mine, sending a column of water 100 feet into the air.
Weinberger reportedly returned to Saudi Arabia Friday night and was scheduled to go to Bahrain on Sunday for a private meeting with the ruling family.
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