United States and Atlantic alliance intelligence analysts say they think Iran has put off a major new offensive against Iraq largely because of concern over whether it can provide sufficient air and tank support for its ground troops. United States analysts say Iranian military leaders, most of them from the Revolutionary Guards, have expressed concern that without such support, the assault would be repulsed by well-armed and well-entrenched Iraqi forces, with prohibitive casualties. This argument, the sources say, has been made to leading figures in the Government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Iran’s most serious weakness is in the air. Western analysts estimate combat aircraft strength at 35 to 40 aircraft. Teheran has tried to buy fighters and fighter bombers from North Korea and in Eastern Europe. All such aircraft would be Soviet made. But no such planes have been identified.
Some recently reported movements indicate that the Iranians have continued to mass most of their remaining 400 tanks in the area east of Basra. Although it has been assumed that the attack would be launched through the area north of the city, some analysts say it is just as likely that the Iranians will move across the terrain south of Basra and then swing north. Iranian planning for an offensive may have to be modified, qualified sources said, by Iraq’s recent flooding of the area north of Basra and just west of the frontier with Iran. Foreign diplomats in Baghdad reportedly believe that the flooded area is about 1,500 square miles with a depth of nine feet in some places. A water barrier of that size, military sources said, would certainly hamper an attacking army’s supply problems and, perhaps, channel the offensive along avenues of approach swept by Iraqi artillery fire.
The Soviet Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon was hit by a rocket tonight, causing damage but no casualties, the police said. It was the second attack on the Soviet diplomatic compound this year. In April rockets were fired at the Soviet cultural center. In the attack tonight, a B-7 anti-tank rocket, a weapon commonly carried by many militiamen here, was fired at the fenced-off embassy on Cornish Maazra in a predominantly Muslim section of West Beirut. Responsibility for the attack in April was claimed by the Islamic Holy War organization, which said it was in retaliation for Soviet policies in Afghanistan.
A male telephone caller told The Associated Press bureau in Beirut about an hour after the attack that it had been carried out by the Organization of the Sharp Sword, a group not heard of before. He said such attacks would continue unless the Russians stopped “interfering in Lebanese internal politics.” The caller read a statement that said the attack was directed against the “Soviet espionage center.” The statement he read added, “The will which forced the Marines and French out of Beirut is capable of shaking the earth under the feet of the Russians.”
120 Poles defected in Austria, authorities at the Traiskirchen refugee camp said. They said four tour buses carrying 180 Poles of Ukrainian descent made a detour Thursday to Austria’s main refugee camp, 25 miles south of Vienna. A camp official said the remaining 60 Poles went on to Rome in two buses, and that most of the refugees were members of the Greek Catholic Church who wanted to emigrate to Canada.
West Germany detained a truck from the Soviet Union with a mysterious nine-ton cargo as it was about to cross the East German frontier, officials said. The truck’s two-member crew had previously been prevented from unloading the cargo at the Soviet Mission in Geneva by Swiss officials who refused to recognize a Soviet claim of diplomatic immunity. West German officials said they would hold the truck until they could determine whether its contents corresponded to its diplomatic manifest.
Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany paid tribute today to the German officers who tried to assassinate Hitler 40 years ago today. “Today, 40 years on, we remember the Germans who paid with their lives for their courageous stand for human rights and freedom, for justice and truth.” said Mr. Kohl, who was 15 years old when World War II ended in 1945. The Chancellor has said that Count Claus von Stauffenberg, the leading figure in the unsuccessful plot, is the historical figure he most admires. Colonel von Stauffenberg planted a briefcase bomb under a heavy table at a military command meeting with Hitler on July 20, 1944.
An end to Britain’s dock strike seemed near. Some longshoremen returned to work after a tentative agreement was reached to end the 11-day nationwide strike. Other union members were scheduled to learn the terms of the agreement on Saturday. The leadership of the dock workers’ union, the Transport and General Workers Union, will formally recommend that all of the country’s 35,000 dock workers return to their jobs. The dock strike, which began without warning, paralyzed Britain’s imports and exports and brought predictions of shortages and layoffs in other industries. Coming on the heels of the miners’ strike, now in its 20th week, it created such an atmosphere of crisis that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher Thursday night called the two strikes “an attack on democracy and the rule of law.”
The Netherlands has warned UNESCO that it might leave the organization if it does not agree to fundamental changes, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said today. He said the Dutch delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Martin Mourik, delivered a letter to its headquarters in Paris on Wednesday. It said that if changes were not made and if one or more nations withdrew from UNESCO, the Netherlands would review its membership. The letter supported criticism by the United States, which last December threatened to leave at the end of 1984. Britain has said it will reconsider membership unless there are signs of change. The main objections are to the size of UNESCO’s budget, what is seen as the agency’s growing politicization and the structure of its secretariat.
Laos agreed to allow U.S. officials to excavate a site to search for the remains of 13 American servicemen whose plane crashed there nearly 12 years ago, President Reagan said. Mr. Reagan made the announcement at a White House ceremony observing National P.O.W./M.I.A. Recognition Day. He affirmed his Administration’s determination to recover the remains and press for information on 2,489 Americans unaccounted for from the Vietnam War and 8,177 from the Korean War.
The Communist Party said today that it would begin delegating important powers to lower-level party officials in an effort to promote younger, more talented people. The change, which is to take effect August 1, calls for the party Central Committee to delegate authority for two-thirds of China’s senior personnel to lower-level committees, the official party newspaper, People’s Daily, said. “Basically, the change means greater power for lower authorities in appointing and promoting officials,” said the official New China News Agency in a related report today. The changes are the final phase of a three-stage party reorganization started in 1982 to root out radical leftist, incompetent and aged officials and make room for better-educated leaders for China’s modernization drive.
Roman Catholic bishops in the Philippines today criticized the decision of President Ferdinand E. Marcos to deploy “secret marshals,” who have killed at least 45 people in Manila since last month. A pastoral letter issued by the country’s Catholic bishops’ conference also said the President’s decree-making powers caused anxiety because they contained no guarantees against abuse. The letter, the first in more than a year to be read in all Catholic churches across the country, said the authority of the marshals to kill went against “our Christian concept of man and the value we put to human life.” The undercover marshals were deployed on Manila’s streets on the President’s orders to round up crime suspects. But there have been charges that their mission is to stamp out dissent.
Relatives of missing Guatemalans have started to band together in an effort to find their relatives and end the many unsolved disappearances. Such organizations have long been active in other Latin American countries where kidnapping has become a favorite way of disposing of real or imagined enemies.
Debates with President Reagan would be a key part of Walter F. Mondale’s campaign. He opened his national campaign against the Republicans by challenging Mr. Reagan to a series of six debates on topics ranging from arms control to the environment. Representative Geraldine A. Ferraro, Mr. Mondale’s running mate, also reiterated her call for a debate with Vice President Bush and said she would accept any format he proposed.
The White House scoffed at Walter F. Mondale’s contention that President Reagan would raise taxes next year, but a White House spokesman would not disclose any details about Mr. Reagan’s plans for tax simplification if he is re-elected.
The President and First Lady participate in a ceremony in recognition of National POW/MIA Day, 1984.
President Reagan attends a ceremony honoring the Apollo Astronauts commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Lunar landing.
On the 15th anniversary of man’s first steps on the moon, President Reagan today announced a series of initiatives intended to speed commercial development of outer space. The Reagan Administration plans to remove immediately several regulatory and tax obstacles to industrial use of space, according to an official who briefed reporters. It will also propose legislation to remedy “discrimination” in the tax code against space ventures, he said.
A teenager charged with threatening the life of President Reagan in an obscene telephone call to a woman hanged himself today in his jail cell, the authorities said. Joseph Rudees, 18 years old, of Hollywood, Florida, was found dead at the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center, said Ronald Szego, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Miami office. Mr. Rudees had been arrested February 12. Mr. Rudees made numerous telephone calls to women, Mr. Szego said, and in one he said, “the statement was made, among others, ‘Meet me or I’m going to kill the President of the United States.’ “
Meanwhile, Federal Magistrate Herbert Shapiro ordered a psychiatric examination today for Dwight Loring Armel, 26, of Miami, who is charged with sending a threatening letter to the President in June. According to an affidavit from a Secret Service agent, Peter L. Lindsley, the two-page typewritten message said the sender was going to bomb the President.
Alton Coleman, the fugitive accused of of a monthlong spree of murder, rape and kidnapping in six states, was quietly arrested with a female companion today while sitting in a suburban Chicago park, the authorities said. The 28-year-old fugitive was seen by an Evanston police detective about noon as he and his companion, Debra Brown, 21 years old, sat in a row of bleachers facing several basketball courts. Mr. Coleman had a knife in his pocket and another hidden in a boot, and Miss Brown had a .38-caliber revolver in her purse, but they offered no resistance, the police said. The police said they were told that Mr. Coleman was in the area by a childhood friend who recognized him walking through the downtown business district.
A 90 percent cut in gasoline lead in the next four years will be the aim of new rules soon to be proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Lead would be removed entirely from gasoline by 1995, under the agency’s proposals.
A severe drought in Texas has reduced water supplies so drastically that 67 cities have imposed voluntary or mandatory restrictions on the use of municipal water.
Five heavily armed men swooped down in a stolen helicopter today and robbed a small North Texas bank in a replay of a Louisiana bank holdup last winter in which $163,000 was taken.
The blue and white five-passenger helicopter was stolen at night from Scholes Field, Galveston, Texas. At 9:25 AM, the helicopter landed on the parking lot of the Valley View National Bank, about 50 miles north of Dallas. Federal agents said four men, armed with sidearms and shoulder weapons, forced eight people in the bank to stand against the wall as the robbers cleaned out the cash drawers. Mayor Mary Bierschenk of Valley View said she was going into the bank when she met one of the robbers.
A Mexican bridge champion was feared abducted from her hotel in Washington. Edith Rosenkranz, 60 years old, of Mexico City, was led away at gunpoint by a black male in his 20’s. Mrs. Rosenkranz was attending the Summer National of the American Contract Bridge League. Her husband, George Rosenkranz, helped develop the first birth-control pill.
Pharmacists are using computers to prevent dangerous interactions among prescription drugs patients take, the foods they eat, their allergies and the over-the-counter medicines they use. Such interactions cause over 100 deaths annually and are responsible for $4.5 billion in hospital bills, according to the Boston Collaborative Drug Surveillance Program at Boston University, a clearinghouse for information on the side effects of drugs.
Two steel contractors were sentenced in Washington to 10 years in prison or selling the Navy inferior steel for the renovation of warships including the battleship New Jersey, and for the space-shuttle project. Jerald R. Hedden and Russell D. Roper received 10- year terms.
Vanessa Williams should relinquish her crown and the title of Miss America 1984, the executive committee of the Miss America Pageant voted unanimously. The vote followed Penthouse magazine’s announcement that it planned to publish in its September issue a 10-page layout of nude photographs posed for by Miss Williams, some of them in intimate scenes with another woman.
The police in Montana today began winding down an intensive manhunt for two men who kidnapped a young woman and shot her would-be rescuer Monday. John France, sheriff of Madison County, who has been leading the search, called off aerial searches and sent home a heavily armed special weapons team after a morning flight seemed fruitless. “We’ll keep looking in a few minor spots, but it’s my opinion that they are out of here,” Sheriff France said at a news conference.
Meanwhile, murder and kidnapping charges were filed in Bozeman today against Don Nichols, 53, and his son, Dan, 19 years old. The two have lived in the rugged Madison Mountains for the last year and on Sunday kidnapped Kari Swenson, a world-class competitor in the Olympic biathlon while she was jogging near the Big Sky guest ranch, where she worked as a waitress. Miss Swenson was held overnight and rescued Monday morning by fellow workers at the resort.
Richard Hargraves, jailed two days for refusing to name his sources for an editorial that is the subject of a libel suit, has confirmed that his information came from officials who have identified themselves. “I’ve just done the most repugnant thing in my life,” Mr. Hargraves said today after admitting that two members of the St. Clair County Board, Edward R. Anderson and David E. Hickey, were the sources. Mr. Hargraves was ordered to the St. Clair County Jail earlier this month after unsuccessful appeals to the U.S. and Illinois supreme courts.
He was released after Mr. Anderson and Mr. Hickey named themselves as his sources, but Hargraves had refused to confirm or deny their identities. He made the disclosure during a pretrial deposition with Amiel Cueto, the attorney representing Board Chairman Jerry Costello in the official’s libel suit against Mr. Hargraves and The Belleville News-Democrat. Mr. Hargraves said he interviewed Mr. Anderson and Mr. Hickey before writing a 1980 editorial that called Mr. Costello a liar.
Uwe Hohn of East Germany throws the javelin a record 104.8 meters.
Trailing 3–1 entering the 9th inning, the Toronto Blue Jays score 11 times on 11 hits and hangs on to beat the Seattle Mariners, 12–7. Alvin Davis has a grand slam for the Mariners in the bottom of the inning as the two teams combine for a record 15 runs in the frame.
Barbaro Garbey and Chet Lemon homered and Dave Rozema ran his home winning streak to 15 games as the Detroit Tigers posted their seventh victory in eight games, a 3–1 decision over the Texas Rangers, who have lost seven of their last eight. Rozema, who has not lost at Tiger Stadium since 1981, allowed six hits, struck out four and did not walk a batter as he improved his record to 7–1. Willie Hernandez came on to pitch the ninth inning for Detroit and earned his 18th save.
Jim Rice doubled in the 10th inning, driving in Jackie Gutierrez with the deciding run for Boston as the Red Sox edged the California Angels, 4–3. Gutierrez led off with a single off Don Aase (0–1). Wase Boggs bunted down the third base line and Gutierrez beat Ron Jackson’s throw to second. Dwight Evans, who ripped a two-run homer in the third, struck out. Then, Rice punched his double down the rightfield line to score Gutierrez.
Manny Trillo made three standout plays in only his second game at third base and singled to launch a three-run rally in the fourth inning to lead the San Francisco Giants to a 3–2 victory over the Chicago Cubs. Jeff Robinson (5-11) allowed three hits over seven innings, but did not return after a rain delay. Greg Minton pitched the last two innings for his 10th save. Trillo, a four-time Gold Glove winner as a second baseman, made his three exceptional plays in the sixth inning. He robbed Ryne Sandberg of a double when he grabbed his smash down the line and threw him out, made a fine play on Matthews’ grounder and then made a diving catch of Leon Durham’s liner.
Craig Reynolds tripled to highlight a four-run first inning, and Enos Cabell and Terry Puhl drove in two runs each to lead the Houston Astros to a 8–4 thumping of the Montreal Expos. Bob Knepper (9–8) allowed 11 hits and three runs in six innings, walking one with three strikeouts.
Dwight Gooden struck out 11 batters and outpitched Jay Tibbs tonight when the two former teammates from the low minor leagues met as rivals in the big leagues on national television. But neither pitcher was still in the game when the Mets scored a run in the top of the 11th inning to defeat the Cincinnati Reds, 3–2. By then, center stage was held by Keith Hernandez, who drove in the winning run with a 400-foot sacrifice fly, and Jesse Orosco, who succeeded Gooden in the 10th and won his eighth game of the season in relief. As a result, after a sloppy 9–6 loss Thursday night, the Mets regained their composure, won for the 15th time in 19 starts in July and widened their lead to 1½ games over the Chicago Cubs in the National League’s East.
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 1101.37 (-1.55).
Born:
Alexi Casilla, Dominican MLB second baseman and shortstop (Minnesota Twins, Baltimore Orioles), in San Cristóbal, Dominican Republic.
Danny Dorn, MLB pinch hitter, outfielder, and first baseman (Arizona Diamondbacks), in San Dimas, California.
Troy Smith, College and NFL quarterback (Heisman Trophy 2006, Ohio State; NFL: Baltimore Ravens, San Francisco 49ers), in Cleveland, Ohio.
Matt Gilroy, NHL defenseman (New York Rangers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Ottawa Senators, Florida Panthers), in North Bellmore, New York.
Died:
Jim Fixx, 52, American jogger and writer (“Jim Fixx on Running”).
History Diaries 