Everybody's Doing It

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The Reagan Administration is not the only government struggling to cope with the problem of clandestine and illegal weapons sales to Iran. From Portugal, France and Sweden have come revelations that several Western countries are heavily embroiled in a variety of such illicit dealings. In almost every case, the motivations behind the traffic have been commercial rather than political, and its discovery abroad has led to considerably less domestic tumult than in Washington. Quipped one U.S. official: "The real question is, Who isn't selling arms to Iran?"

The most comic episode of European arms smuggling to surface involves a 4,300-ton West German freighter that has been sailing back and forth off the coast of Portugal for nearly a month. Gretl, owned by a Hamburg shipper, was carrying $6.8 million worth of Portuguese-made munitions, including some 67,000 120-mm mortar shells that were originally bound from the port of Setubal to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. The shipment in a West German flag carrier was illegal under a Bonn law that forbids the transport of armaments to "areas of tension." The delivery was contracted for by the Danish shipping firm of Finn J. Poulsen, which has an indirect connection with Iranscam. Last April the company sold a 163-ft. ship to shadowy private partners of Oliver North, who paid with funds from North's Geneva bank account. That ship was used to deliver arms to the Nicaraguan contras.

West Germany was alerted on Feb. 9 to Gretl's illicit actions by members of the national seamen's union. The Bonn government immediately demanded that the ship put in at the nearest port of the twelve-member European Community. Not eager to have its cargo confiscated, Gretl headed back to off-load in Setubal.

The Portuguese government had other ideas. Anxious to prop up its shaky , domestic arms industry, Portugal has lifted all strictures against arms sales to Iran or its enemy Iraq. Insisting that Gretl's shipment was legal and should be delivered to Iran, the Lisbon government refused to let Gretl's crew dump its high-explosive cargo back on Portuguese docks. Ever since, the ship and its hapless crew have been condemned to their Iberian shuttle, at a cost of roughly $10,000 a day, while the West German shipper, the Danish charterer and the governments involved try to untangle the mess.

The Portuguese arms shipment might never have come to light had the weapons been transported as originally planned aboard Adonis, a freighter of Panamanian registry. Panama, like Portugal, has no strictures on arms sales or shipments to Iran. But Adonis was already on its way to Iran, reportedly laden with a 1,200-ton shipment of war materiel from Spain that was originally, and fraudulently, listed for a final destination in Portugal. Tipped off about the subterfuge, Lisbon did not permit Adonis to dock, and on Jan. 14 the ship canceled its request. Thus, when it came time to ship the country's own armaments to Iran, a vessel had to be chartered. Enter the ill-fated Gretl.