NEWSWEEK has learned that U.S. cruise missiles have been programmed to fly up the spin of Iran’s Zagros Mountains just east of the Iraqi border. After 250 miles, the missiles swing southwestward down the Diyala River to Baghdad. Though Pentagon officials believe Iranian radar has never detected the low-flying bombs, Iran may now possess a technology gold mine. In January’s raid on an Iraqi industrial site, one cruise missile disappeared over the Zagros range. The Pentagon hopes it exploded.
The routing does clear up one mystery: how a cruise missile hit the Al-Rasheed Hotel in downtown Baghdad during the January attack. The targeted factory complex was to the city’s southeast, so a cruise missile launched from the gulf would presumably never have reached the capital’s center. At the time, the Pentagon suggested the missile veered off course when struck by antiaircraft fire. in fact, the weapon had come from the north.
But another mystery remains. What about the cruise missiles fired from U.S. warships in the Red Sea, across Iraq’s equally featureless western desert? A Pentagon official is cryptic: “All I will say is, you only have half the story.”
