May 14, 1983

From their offices on the 68th floor of the World Trade Center, the people who run the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey can look out over the harbor toward the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, where the battleship Iowa was built and from which she steamed away in 1943. Now, more than a decade since the Navy pulled out of the ports of Boston, Newport, R.I., and New York, the return of the Iowa and a battle group of supporting ships stands like a golden question mark just offshore. As part of the Reagan Administration's plan to expand and disperse the Navy, the Iowa is being refitted for modern war. When assigned a new home port as the centerpiece of what the Navy calls a Surface Action Group, she will bring with her a fortune in Navy paychecks and civilian jobs -and the sobering complement of almost 100 Tomahawk cruise missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger yesterday warned the Soviet Union and ''any proxies they may have in Syria'' that any aggression by them in the region would be met by ''a retaliatory force.'' He added that Moscow was ''making a profound and dangerous mistake'' if it thought it could force the United States to abandon its commitment to Israel's security. Mr. Weinberger, speaking at a meeting of the American Jewish Committee in New York, predicted that the withdrawal of Syrian, Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization forces from Lebanon was ''reasonably close.'' Shultz Offer to Syria In Washington, Secretary of State George P. Shultz offered to renew contacts and improve relations with Syria as part of the American effort to bring about such a withdrawal by the three forces. Mr. Shultz avoided any criticism of Syria in his remarks.

Once upon a time, it was decreed throughout the land that when the traffic light turned yellow, the car should slow down. This was many years ago, when young people said ''sir'' and ''ma'am,'' when subway cars rarely smelled of marijuana, when there was no need to take out a loan to rent an apartment. In fact, there are apparently still areas in which this is true today, but they are not in New York City. In New York City, the yellow light has lost all meaning, or else it means, as one cabdriver said yesterday, that you should run like hell to beat the red.

Salvadoran political leaders say they are disturbed and bewildered by the discussions in Washington over how much aid their country should receive and what their Government must do to receive any aid at all. The Salvadoran leaders, who represent a broad political spectrum, said in interviews over the last two days that they felt the entire Congressional debate in Washington had progressed under a false assumption that one country could decide the future of another. Foreign Minister Fidel Chavez Mena said that ''it's not very pleasant'' to hear your country's future debated more than 2,000 miles away. 'The Determining Factor' ''For us,'' he said, ''the United States is the determining factor in helping us to consolidate the democratic political process, but the relationship must be based on mutual respect.''

Four men were convicted here yesterday of plotting to smuggle guns, explosives and surface-to-air missiles to the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the outlawed group battling British rule in Northern Ireland. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation said the convictions were the first in cases in which F.B.I. investigations had led to indictments in the last decade of 18 I.R.A. sympathizers on weapons or other charges in the United States. The spokesman, Lane Bonner, said nine people were awaiting trial or were fugitives. Other I.R.A.-related prosecutions, he said, might have resulted from investigations by other agencies, but he did not know their results.