The Struggle in Iran

By Robert G. Hazo

What seems to be most discussed and, paradoxically, least understood about the current square off between Iran and the United States is what each side hopes to achieve. Speculation about US motives has been unusually intense in part because of the pundits' justified habit of taking the public statements of our leaders as the interpretation of last resort.

One clear example of dissimulation in public rhetoric by Secretary of State George Shultz was revealed in the course of the Iran-contra hearings. When it quickly became clear that Israel initiated the idea of shipping US arms to Iran, Shultz observed that Israel certainly could not be blamed since the US government was obliged to take full responsibility for its own decisions. Pressed by Senator James McClure (R-ID) during the hearings, however, former White House Chief of Staff Donald Reagan said that, on two occasions, Shultz had observed in government meetings that Israel had "suckered us into this" so that the US could not complain of Israeli arms sales to Iran, a policy that Shultz vehemently opposed.

Shultz Less Than Candid

Another good example, directly related to the subject at hand, is Shultz's claim that the reflagging and protection of Kuwaiti ships does not mean a tilt in favor of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. In fact the US has taken sides, not necessarily to work toward an Iranian defeat but certainly to preclude an Iranian victory, as Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage said in public testimony. There is also good reason to believe, given the nature of the Reagan administration, that our action in the Gulf was, first and foremost, an anti-Soviet move, to counter a strengthening of Soviet relations with the Arab oil-producing countries.

One of the more obvious reasons offered to justify the reflagging was to restore US credibility with and reassure the Arab states friendly to the US who felt betrayed when they learned America had supplied weapons to Iran. Though Kuwait's action in inviting Soviet protection for its ships triggered the US entry in force into the Gulf and the resultant confrontation with Iran, the speed with which Kuwait accepted the US offer and turned away from the Soviet Union's (except for a token leasing of several Soviet tankers as a gesture of gratitude for the USSR's prompt willingness to help) reaffirms the assumption that the current governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the other Gulf states are not likely to turn away from America and the West short of revolution in those countries.

The argument that we are assembling an armada in the Gulf to uphold the principle of freedom of navigation is not entirely true either, since we clearly have no intention of protecting all merchant ships. One addition to our armada in the Gulf, the battleship USS Missouri, does raise the suspicion that somewhere in the presidential mind lurks the desire to erase the disgrace of our intervention in Lebanon, a prominent symbol of which was the battleship USS New Jersey's futile firing of 2,000-pound shells into the hills surrounding Beirut. A successful military action against Iran could be seen in the White House as eclipsing the humiliation inflicted on the US by Iranian-backed fundamentalists in Lebanon.

Soviet Overtures Under Consideration in Iran

Whatever the motives, pending a second UN Security Council resolution decreeing sanctions against Iran, the American strategy initially has caused more problems for Iran than Iran. After the reflagging decision was made, the Iranians announced that they would not attack any ships bound for Kuwait unless ships carrying Iranian oil were attacked. The Iraqis, who had intensified their attacks on ships carrying Iranian oil, were asked to stop by Secretary Shultz. This neutralized Iraq's overwhelming air superiority, and enabled Iran to export more oil until Iraq resumed its attacks. Meanwhile, the US buildup in the Gulf seemed to push Iran closer to the USSR. Though no actual economic agreements were signed, the Iranians announced that "the two sides discussed the building of an oil pipeline, expansion of cooperation in the areas of power and steel, oil refining, preliminary progress in shipping in the Caspian Sea, and plans to build a railroad linking the Soviet border to the Persian Gulf." Not included in the statement, but reportedly also discussed, was the opening of the gas pipeline from Iran to the Soviet Union—closed by Khomeini in 1979—and converting it, over time, to an alternate route for exporting oil, should the Gulf be blocked.

This cozying up to the Soviet Union underscores the fact that, whatever Iran's motives, somewhere in the leadership there is the realization that Iran can no longer afford to alienate both superpowers simultaneously. It seems clear, however, that the violent Iranian demonstrations in Mecca, and the Iranian naval maneuvers codenamed "Operation Martyrdom," were responses to what is seen in Iran as an American military threat in the Gulf. They were intended to demonstrate Iranian fearlessness and, perhaps, also to renew Iranian revolutionary fervor, sapped by a long stretch without encouraging military developments on the Iraqi front. Very possibly, Iranian leaders also sought to dampen any popular resentment against them for having done business with Israel and the United States in the course of what they call "the McFarlane affair."

This last consideration cannot be dismissed since Iran is operating under a form of authoritarian populism that is animated by a fervent belief in the charisma of its leader. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is clearly audacious and stubborn, and is presumed to be incorruptible as well as wise. It is, therefore, of the highest import for those concerned with the future of the Iranian revolution that Khomeini's image be preserved, since the devotion it inspires would be diminished or destroyed by widespread disenchantment with him.

We know that Khomeini probably authorized negotiations with the United States and that he has forbidden any criticism of those dealings. We know also that his endorsement of the arrest of Mehdi Hashemi, an aide to his designated successor, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, on charges of murder and other crimes, led Hashemi's followers to leak the news of the Iranian-American connection to a Lebanese journal. That, in turn, led to the breaking of the story in the US. We do not know whether Khomeini also knew Iran had for years been (and presumably still is) purchasing equipment from Israel, a fact that is still publicly denied by Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Said Rajaie Khorasani. The fact that heads did not roll after the Israeli connection became public knowledge suggests not so much that Khomeini is corruptible, but that he can be manipulated by those close to him. He may still believe that the arms were purchased on the world market. Some were, after all, delivered by Danish ships. Or, he may have been convinced that securing arms in this fashion from one of his arch enemies was a master stroke. The statement attributed to him, "We shall use the arms of the devil to defeat the devil," or words to that effect, may have been intended to cover not only the American connection, but also the Israeli connection.

Khomeini Charts Islamic Revolution's Path

Americans who have talked with Khomeini say that if one grants Khomeini his premises, he must be seen as both dedicated and consistent. He deals only with grand strategy and handles tactical details only when forced to. He is described as basically not living in "this world." Because, early in the war with Iraq, his direct military command more often than not produced disappointing and even disastrous results, he has gradually come to consult with and defer to military authorities. Reports of his preoccupation with the big picture seem borne out by the fact that regional authorities within Iran enjoy unprecedented decentralized power. Khomeini dwells on foreign policy, talking frequently about the divine mission of fighting the heretics within the Islamic world and, indeed, of Islam's destiny to encompass the world. He embodies both supreme authority and a quixotic vision.

Leaving aside the military, two factions compete for his attention and his favor: The purists, led by his disciple and designated successor, Montazeri, and the pragmatists, led by the powerful and ambitious speaker of the Iranian parliament, Hajatolislam Rafsanjani. Rafsanjani himself stated openly in 1986 that there were two factions in Iran in frequent disagreement and that they "may in fact be regarded as two parties without names." They cannot, however, be described as "radical" and "moderate," the terms used by those in the National Security Council seeking to rationalize US arms sales. Such terms are not only irrelevant, but ludicrous. The chief difference between the factions lies in the purists' desire to export the revolution and the pragmatists' insistence that the primary effort should be to consolidate the revolution in Iran. Over these two groups and their respective leaders Khomeini presides, sometimes heeding one, sometimes the other, and sometimes neither. This accounts, in some measure, for Iran's erratic, sometimes violent and radical, and occasionally unanticipated lurches in foreign policy.

Revolutionary Purists Have Upper Hand

The competition between the purists and the pragmatists, however, did not begin with Montazeri and Rafsanjani. When Abolhassan Bani Sadr was president, for example, he felt retention of the American Embassy hostages drained energy from more important work that needed to be done in Iran.

So long as Khomeini lives, the purists are likely to have an edge, since the Ayatollah by nature tilts more toward revolutionary expansionism than internal reform and consolidation. Though in the Iran-Iraq war the latter has been labeled the aggressor, there is considerable substance to Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein's charge that long before 1980 Iran was inciting Iraq's Shiites to overturn his regime. The Iraqi military assault was therefore a great boon for the purists, since it focused national attention on an external enemy who could easily be labeled a heretic. What started as a defense of Iranian territory was quickly converted into a holy war, whose goal went far beyond the overturning of the secular Iraqi government and its replacement by an Islamic fundamentalists regime. The war with Iraq was even named the Jerusalem campaign, signaling that it would be a step toward the liberation of other parts of the Middle East. After the recent demonstration and riot in Mecca resulted in so many Iranian deaths, Montazeri had the perfect lever to persuade Khomeini to widen the Iranian mission in the area by calling the Saudi regime an unworthy guardian of the holy places.

Iran: Future Unclear After Khomeini

There is truth to the contention that no one can predict what will happen to Iran after Khomeini dies, except to guess that it will remain a fundamentalist regime. The shape or form of authoritarian populism seldom if ever outlasts its charismatic leader. As of now, however, the direction Iran takes is almost exclusively a function of Khomeini's wishes.

The willingness to sacrifice all for a just cause that seems urgent, necessary, and just was described in Eric Hoffer's seminal work, The True Believer.

What Khomeini has been able to do, however, is partly a function of the intense and widespread resentment of the Shah in Iran, and the virulence of the hatred for his principal backer, America. Khomeini's achievements are also a function of his charisma. Although to us he appears an eccentric, fanatic, or even a "lunatic," as Anwar Sadat once called him, somewhere in his character lies the rare ability to tap one of the most powerful desires that can capture the human spirit: The willingness to sacrifice all for a cause that seems urgent, necessary, and just. Great leaders can call forth an almost superhuman dedication that confers on their followers a form of purification through working for a religious or national cause above and beyond calculations of self-interest. In America we have not in recent times really been close to the kind of motivation that Eric Hoffer analyzed so powerfully in his seminal work, The True Believer.

The history of this century, however, is full of examples of such motivation. Winston Churchill, a leader who could evoke and shape such a mood, noted that when England was fighting the Nazis all alone in the summer of 1940, "the sense of fear seemed entirely lacking in the people" and there "was a white glow, overpowering, sublime which ran through our island from end to end."

Mao Tse Tung was able to inspire this kind of dedication and eventually emerge triumphant, although the vast majority of his original followers were lost during the fabled "long march." Ho Chi Minh kept Vietnamese morale high for more than a quarter of a century, during which his nation of only eight million suffered a million casualties. The Algerians also never faltered in their struggle, despite comparable losses from a comparable population.

We must therefore remind ourselves that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini leads a movement that has transformed a nation and which, if unchecked, could change the political geography as well as the balance of power in the Middle East. Since this current movement is not animated by conventional or pedestrian motivations, to deal with it successfully calls for an approach based upon knowledge, coordination with the other nations affected, and careful, sophisticated diplomacy that is within hailing distance of the complexity of the problem. It must also be a planned and open approach based upon public opinion and, ideally, a national consensus—the very antithesis of the secrecy, ignorance, and susceptibility to Israeli manipulation which has characterized our approach to the Middle East in general—and Iran in particular—during the first six years of the Reagan administration.

Robert G. Hazo is chairman of the Middle East Policy Association. He has lectured extensively on the Middle East, both in the US and abroad.