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Kuwait: Suddenly Very Popular
Sheik Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, the Emir of Kuwait, is using a foreign policy ploy which Gamal Abdul Nasser discovered more than 30 years ago: The only way a moderate Arab state can get any serious attention from the United States is to flirt with the Soviet Union.
Kuwait, a tiny city-state of only 1.7 million, has been greatly concerned for some time about the Iranian military forces in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border. Kuwait-bound ships have been victims of 17 of the last 22 Iranian missile strikes in the Gulf. The Iranians are well aware that the Kuwaitis provide their fellow Arabs in Iraq with significant financial assistance and that Kuwait's port facilities are used for transhipment of supplies to Iraq.
Kuwait asked Washington late last year to agree to place its increasingly threatened ships under the American flag. According to the Washington Post, the US reply to the urgent request for help consisted of a US Coast Guard brochure outlining the regulations involved and the procedures required. This information was mailed about six weeks after the Kuwaiti request arrived in Washington!
In early March, however, US officials were alerted to the fact that Kuwait and the Soviet Union had reached an understanding to place some Kuwaiti vessels under the Soviet flag. Only five days after hearing the report of the Soviet deal, Washington informed Kuwait that the US would be pleased to accept the responsibility of protecting some Kuwaiti shipping.
President Reagan announced in the White House pressroom that "The use of the vital sea lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians. These lanes will not be allowed to come under the control of the Soviet Union. The Persian Gulf will remain open to navigation by the nations of the world."
What Reagan meant, but did not say, was that the Gulf would be kept open only for selected ship owners. Recent requests by Liberia and Panama for US flag protection for their...