[2] It was the largest naval convoy operation since World War II, and flowed from Resolution 598 which had been adopted three days earlier.

U.S. Air Force AWACS radar planes provided surveillance and U.S. Army special-operations helicopters hunted for possible attackers.

[5] Besides concerns about the intensified Tanker War, the superpowers feared that the possible fall of Basra, which was now under threat, might lead to a pro-Iranian Islamic republic in largely Shia-populated southern Iraq.

[6] In December 1986, Kuwait's government asked the Reagan administration to send the U.S. Navy to protect Kuwaiti tankers against Iranian attacks.

[7] Although members of both the U.S. House and Senate opposed the reflagging policy,[8] the executive debated this idea and finally agreed to it on 7 March 1987.

[1] On the very first escort mission, on 24 July 1987, the Kuwaiti oil tanker al-Rekkah, re-flagged as the U.S. tanker MV Bridgeton and accompanied by US navy warships, struck an Iranian underwater mine planted some 20 miles (32 km) west of Farsi Island the night earlier by a Pasdaran special unit, damaging the ship, but causing no injuries.

Iran's Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi called it an "irreparable blow to America's political and military prestige",[14] and said that it was the "invisible hands [of God]" that hit the US-flagged ship, and expressed hope that the U.S. Congress would put an immediate end to the Administration's plan.

[20] Earnest Will overlapped with Operation Prime Chance, a largely secret effort to stop Iranian forces from attacking Persian Gulf shipping.

Despite the protection offered by U.S. Navy vessels, Iran used mines and small boats to harass the convoys steaming to and from Kuwait, at the time a principal ally of Iraq.

In late July 1987, Rear Admiral Harold J. Bernsen, commander of the Middle East Force, requested Naval Special Warfare assets.

[21] The Middle East Force decided to convert two oil service barges, Hercules and Wimbrown VII, into mobile sea bases.

These were moored in the northern Persian Gulf, allowing special operations forces to thwart clandestine Iranian mining and small boat attacks.

USS Hawes towed the mine layer (a converted tank landing craft) to the Iran-Iraq war zone.

On 14 April 1988, 65 miles (105 km) east of Bahrain, the frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts hit a mine, blowing an immense hole in its hull.

On 18 April, U.S. forces launched Operation Praying Mantis, attacking the Iranian fast-attack craft Joshan, the frigates Sabalan and Sahand and Revolutionary Guard bases in the Sirri and Sassan oil fields.

On 3 July 1988, USS Vincennes, mistook Iran Air Flight 655 for an Iranian F-14 and shot it down over the Strait of Hormuz.