Mess Management Specialist 2nd Class Williams Hendrickson scans for mines from the bow of the guided missile frigate USS NICHOLAS (FFG-47) during an Earnest Will convoy mission in which tankers are led through the waters of the Gulf by U.S. naval ships (USN)
The US is now at war with Iran, but not for the first time. There was another such war, not one most people remember.
In 1987 and 1988, during the final years of the Iran–Iraq War, the United States launched Operation Earnest Will, a Navy escort mission to protect oil tankers in the Persian Gulf. It became the largest convoy operation conducted by the U.S. Navy since World War II.
By the mid-1980s, the Iran–Iraq War had spread into the Persian Gulf itself as each side attacked the other’s oil tankers and cargo ships in an effort to cripple its economy. This was known as the Tanker War.
Shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz were and are among the most strategically important waterways on earth. When Iranian attacks began targeting Kuwaiti tankers, Kuwait turned to Washington for protection.
The Reagan administration responded with a controversial but creative solution: reflagging Kuwaiti tankers under the U.S. flag so they could legally sail under the protection of the US Navy.
American warships then escorted those tankers through some of the most dangerous waters in the world.
On the very first escort mission in July 1987, a reflagged tanker struck an Iranian mine in the Gulf. The convoy continued, but the incident made clear that the United States had entered a shadow war with Iran at sea.
Over the next fourteen months, dozens of US warships rotated through the region escorting tankers and protecting shipping lanes. US forces also conducted special operations to hun Iranian mine-layers at night and conducted strikes against Iranian military positions and ships.
The mission wasn’t a small one, consuming 30 US Navy ships at one time.
When the USS Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine in April 1988, the US responded with Operation Praying Mantis, an effort to destroy Iranian vessels and oil-platforms.
Despite its scale, Operation Earnest Will never became a household name. Like with other such conflicts around the world, it was subsumed within the larger shadow of the Cold War and never involved ground troops.
Still, it was the US’s first war with Iran and raised issues and flash points still with us today, including the importance of the Strait of Hormuz, the sensitivity of military operations in a region where wars escalate and expand, and the need for careful measuring of the diplomacy-military balance.
Few people understand Operation Earnest Will better than Tom Duffy, a US Navy officer who served in this mission and later spent decades in the Foreign Service in places like Colombia, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
His new book Tanker War in the Gulf explores how the United States navigated a complex mix of naval operations, diplomacy, and strategic restraint during that earlier confrontation with Iran.
Tom Duffy will join VBC LIVE on June 25 to talk about this forgotten history of the Tanker War and what lessons Earnest Will might hold for us today.
