THE UNDISPUTED PRIORITY

Iran's major land offensive, long promised by Tehran and equally expected by Baghdad, has brought Iranian troops to the Iraqi west bank of the Shatt al Arab waterway - for the first time in the five and a half year old Gulf war. Both sides have made the usual conflicting military claims and the communiques of the two sides are as unreliable as they are categoric. But the impartial cameras of the western intelligence satellites showed that the Iranians have succeeded in establishing themselves in the Iraqi oil port of Al Faw on the river estuary, and threaten to cut the highway between Basra and Kuwait.