Arms trade

America Needs to Rethink Who It Sells Arms To

Ask anyone who served onboard U.S. naval vessels in the Persian Gulf in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and they’ll probably tell you that there wasn’t that much that frightened them. Truth be told, the countries in the region were no match for Uncle Sam. On April 18, 1988, for example, Operation Praying Mantis pitted nearly all of the ships in Iran’s navy—three of them, plus some speed boats—against a handful of American combatants, and aircraft from the carrier Enterprise. It wasn’t much of a fight. By the end of the day, two Iranian vessels were sunk, and a third was disabled.

But Iran’s Harpoon anti-ship missiles were no laughing matter. Before it was sent to Davy Jones’ Locker, the 265-ton gunboat Joshan managed to launch one of these ship-killers at the cruiser USS Wainwright. Thankfully, it missed. And how, you might ask, did the Iranians get such a state-of-the-art weapon? Uncle Sam sold the missiles, along with F-14s capable of carrying them, to the Shah. In 1979, these gems fell into the hands of the revolutionaries who overthrew the Shah—and who hated America in large measure because of our support for him.