Cruising for a Bruising: The U.S. in the Gulf
Kedourie, Elie
Elie Kedourie CRUISING FOR A BRUISING: THE U.S. IN THE GULF The ayatollahs know what they want—but what do we want? T he downfall of the Shah at the 1 beginning of 1979, the seizure of power by...
...policy must be formulated in terms of U.S...
...This was the case in Egypt following Sadat's assassination in October 1981, and in Syria where an uprising in Hama in February 1982 was crushed with much bloodshed...
...Embassy in Tehran and the seizure as hostages of its occupants had a direct and powerful effect on the internal politics of the U.S...
...Only when the United States is seen as able and willing to bring its considerable power to bear can it prevent its rival from exploiting the opportunities which may arise in the wake of the Iran-Iraq war...
...This was possible because the ecclesiastics now in power had at their disposal all the resources and facilities of the state, including control of the newspapers, radio, and television...
...Sadr was murdered by Qaddafi in Libya in 1978, but he had prepared the ground which, unexpectedly, Khomeini's emissaries began shortly afterwards to till...
...It is to the credit of Robert McFarlane and William Casey that they came to see this clearly...
...This threat of destabilization may indeed have been one of the reasons which led the Iraqis to attack Iran...
...Iran has threatened that United States action here will result in the same fiasco as the expedition to Lebanon in 1982-83...
...Given that Shi'ism has the allegiance of the great majority, in city or countryside, the abjuration of the West and all its works has elicited little if any opposition...
...interests as, principally, to prevent the disintegration of Iran and to preserve it as a buffer between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf, to limit Soviet political opportunities in Iran, to maintain access to Gulf oil, and, lastly, to end Iranian sponsorship of terrorism...
...This would be an even worse repetition of the failed policy, adopted at the beginning of the seventies, to rest the safeguarding of U.S...
...T he downfall of the Shah at the 1 beginning of 1979, the seizure of power by divines, and the establishment of an Islamic Republic under the control of the Ayatollah Khomeini have had sequels and reverberations which are far from being exhausted...
...In a memorandum of June 1985 cited by the Tower Commission, McFarlane defined immediate U.S...
...For if the Shah's regime had still been in existence we can safely assume that it would not have occurred to Saddam Husayn to attack his neighbor...
...Out of enmity towards Baathist Iraq, Baathist Syria became the ally of the Islamic Republic and allowed the establishment of terrorist bases there...
...Tehran became the center whence a vast propaganda for the purification of Islam, and for the assertion of its rightful superiority over Christians and Jews, began zealously and systematically to be spread...
...Such an undertaking is no doubt very expensive and troublesome, but what is necessary to do for oneself cannot be delegated or left to others...
...Iran to exploit the sympathies of the Shi'ite majority for Iranian fellow-Shi'ites now seen to be triumphant...
...As for the Sunni varieties of fundamentalism, as propagated by the Muslim Brethren and its offshoots in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere in the Arab world, these are much older than Khomeini's movement...
...For such a policy to succeed, however, requires time, single-mindedness, and patience—all of which are in short supply...
...The attempt, undertaken in 1985-86 by officials of the National Security Council, to re-establish relations with the Islamic regime by supplying Iran with small quantities of arms, has also had consequences which may prove as deleterious to the Republicans in the 1988 elections as the hostage crisis had for the Democrats eight years before...
...A stalemate again is by its nature an unstable state of affairs, which one side or the other will continuously try to upset to its own advantage...
...Toensure this, the United States cannot rely on the power or goodwill of any state in the region...
...His conclusion was that the officials he was dealing with "really are rug merchants...
...Fear of Iranian activism has, however, led to the view that Iran must notwin, and that the best outcome would be either a continuous stalemate or a settlement in which there are no winners and no losers...
...a recent graduate student became Secretary of State...
...Syria to give its quietus to fellow-Baathis, hated with the sectarian hatred which ideological politics so well nourish...
...The Westernized legal system has been dismantled and Islamic norms and methods reinstated...
...A new constitution has made Khomeini the unchallenged ruler on whose directives everything depends...
...These are superficial conclusions...
...The regime THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 21 would come under threat only if it sustained a serious military defeat, or the economy were utterly ruined...
...interests, which today require not that Iraq or Iran win, or that neither win, or that Kuwaiti tankers escape Iranian attack...
...First, that U.S...
...But the Soviet Union is much better placed, both geographically and politically, to exploit sudden changes on the ground and to effect swift changes of policy...
...When support for the Shah was not forthcoming in the crisis of 1978, his regime crashed to the ground...
...In this they were very successful because the Syrians had occupied the Bekaa in Eastern Lebanon, with its large Shi'ite populations...
...This is because Lebanon has been, since 1975, in the throes of civil disorder and its government in dissolution...
...policy in the region, but was now controlled by a group proclaiming its undying enmity...
...The turmoil might be such as to tempt, or force, Iraq's neighbors to intervene: Turkey to safeguard its southern border against Kurdish militancy...
...From the Bekaa the terrorists have been able to organize an activist and aggressive following both in southern Lebanon, which is the main Shi'ite area, and in West Beirut, which had become full of Shi'ite refugees, driven from the southby the insecurity resulting from continuous warfare between Israel and the PLO...
...would be an invitation to outsiders to intervene, and the United States is obviously not in a good position to do so...
...and a bookie became the interlocutor for all discourse with foreign countries...
...And the money Elie Kedourie is professor of politics at the University of London and editor of Middle Eastern Studies...
...interests in the region on the "twin pillars" of the Shah's Iran and Saudi Arabia...
...from oil, in prodigious amounts, was theirs to spend as they liked...
...The prime issue is strategic, namely whether Iran risks falling within the Soviet orbit, whether this risk can be obviated or, better still, whether the country can be made again to adopt a friendly stance towards the U.S., more or less in the manner which obtained before 1979...
...It is such a prospect, rather than the Iran-Iraq war taken on its own, or Iran's encouragement of activism and terrorism outside its borders, which must give us pause...
...What is in prospect, however, is a struggle for the succession when Khomeini goes...
...Action is indeed being taken to protect ships in the Gulf flying the United States flag...
...Neither is likely...
...The manner in which the U.S...
...Both Iraq and Iran will emerge much weaker and more unstable from this long and costly war, and their regimes may sustain dangerous shocks in the transition from war to peace...
...policy must not be dragged in the wake of what Iraq or Iran or Kuwait may choose to do...
...Activism and terrorism as such, unpleasant as they are, have not, it must be said, achieved much when tried among Iran's neighbors...
...But it is even more important that U.S...
...policy should not become the hostage of what Iran, Iraq, or Kuwait regard as their own interests, or what they may choose to do or not to do...
...There is little doubt that McFarlane's judgment is correct, but it does not follow that this threatens the regime or will even diminish its stability, since what he describes has traditionally been the standard of government in Iran, and the population expects nothing different...
...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1987 The lesson of that crisis, fully applicable today, is twofold...
...It is in another country with a very large Shi'ite population, Lebanon, that Iranian-inspired activism and terrorism have had most success...
...What can be said with some certainty is that here too the Soviet Union is better placed to exploit such opportunities as may occur...
...Should a stalemate appear to be moving in Iran's favor, the Soviet Union would be well placed to secure the friendship or the goodwill of the regime...
...diplomats who had been captured by Khomeini's followers in November 1979 had still not been released...
...and greatly influenced the outcome of the 1980 presidential elections...
...Only in Lebanon is there wide scope for it, but this is because it is a polity in dissolution, where other groups also engage in terrorism, and because Syria has facilitated the establishment of terrorist bases in areas under its control...
...It is to these prospects rather than the possible spread of fundamentalism that thought has, to be directed...
...The policy became discredited following leaks from Tehran which led to further revelations in Washington, which in turn set in train congressional and criminal investigations...
...The Lebanese Shi'ites had earlier been radicalized by a religious leader, Imam Musa al-Sadr, who proved to have some of Khomeini's power to rouse the masses...
...Since the Iraqis also attack shipping—indeed it was the Iraqis who began such attacks in 1984 and have drawn no objection or protest from the United States—it must be assumed that the primary object of the United States is not to protect shipping, but to intervene in the Iran-Iraq war in favor of one side...
...It will be a struggle between various ecclesiastical figures and their factions...
...And beyond these domestic elements, there looms the possibility of intervention in the local political struggle by a neighboring superpower, namely the Soviet Union...
...The resulting situation, which had not been sought, made for a paradox: both the Soviet Union and the United States were ranged, to a greater or lesser extent, against Iran...
...Whatever the arms dealer's motive in giving this advice, the advice itself is wholesome...
...The Islamic Republic sent a powerful wave of ideological fervor over the Middle East...
...What the object of such a policy is, and whether naval action in the bottleneck of the Persian Gulf can achieve this object, is extremely obscure...
...Seldom in Iranian history has a government been able to depend, as the present one does, on both the administrative and the religious network in controlling the country...
...The United States therefore felt very hostile to the Ayatollah's regime, and had no reason to support a state which had so recently formed a pillar of U.S...
...minesweeping helicopters to use Saudi or Kuwaiti territory, even though they are in the Gulf to protect Kuwaiti ships...
...However, it is only against Iranian attacks that action is being taken...
...But an Iraqi defeat would not necessarily mean an irresistible fundamentalist upsurge in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, or the United Arab Emirates...
...It is not at all clear that these by no means agreeable possibilities have been considered in Washington and plans made to cope with them...
...As things are, with the failure of the National Security Council initiative, the United States could do little to hinder such a development...
...The defense of U.S...
...A settlement with no winners or losers will not herald a return to things as they were in September 1980...
...attempted to secure these interests, of course, left much to be desired...
...In these circumstances not only has it become impossible to pursue some such policy as that adumbrated by McFarlane and Casey, but just as impossible for the issues to be considered coolly and rationally, and for the great dangers to Western interests lurking in the Iran-Iraq war to be weighed and guarded against...
...He thought, or was persuaded to believe, that Iran under Khomeini was in dissolution, and a military expedition a simple walkover...
...T he consequences of the Islamic 1 revolution have been, of course, most marked in Iran itself...
...W hen Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, the U.S...
...interests, these regimes themselves had to be supported...
...Some seven years and hundreds of thousands of casualties later, there is no end to the war in sight...
...Their success or failure does not depend on the outcome of the Iraq-Iran war, and their challenge to established regimes has so far been contained or defeated...
...Today the United States and the Soviet Union are, so to speak, unnaturally conjoined in the support of Iraq...
...But this in no way diminishes the great importance of these interests, or makes them any less vital today than they were in 1985...
...Iran also became the center and active patron of terrorism, designed to destabilize neighbors and increase the reach of the ayatollahs., These terrorists were meant to operate chiefly where they could find help and refuge among sympathetic Shi'ite populations whose disaffection from their Sunni regimes could be exacerbated and exploited: Bahrain where the majority is Shi'ite, Kuwait where Shi'ites are a sizable minority, Saudi Arabia where Shi'ites predominate in Hasa, the oil bearing province, and Iraq where, again, the majority is Shi'ite...
...This was justified not only by Iran's open hostility to all things American, but later also by the fear that an Iranian victory would encourage Iran to pursue aggressive policies in the Gulf and beyond and would release a great wave of Islamic fundamentalism which would endanger friendly Arab regimes...
...Others may join in, such as the regular army and the Revolutionary Guards...
...Far from acting as a shield for U.S...
...interests require that Soviet power or influence not be extended to the Persian Gulf...
...The course and outcome of such turmoil is impossible to predict...
...In a conversation with United States officials, reported by the Tower Commission, Manucher Ghorbanifar said that the United States should not become hostage to the Beirut hostages...
...It is true that the United States did not supply arms to Iraq as the Soviet Union did, but it did, as the term goes, tilt towards it...
...How little it can so rely is indicated by the inability of the U.S...
...It is in Lebanon that the Islamic Republic hopes to establish a solid following and create a duplicate of itself to combat the Jewish usurpers of Palestine, and spread Khomeini's ideals through the whole region...
...The invasion of the U.S...
...Thus for the United States to concentrate on the issue of terrorism and the related one of the hostages is to adopt the wrong priorities...
...The reversal of alliances as between Somalia and Ethiopia in 1977-78 is very much a case in point...
...But in these countries the Iranian terrorist threat has been contained (the harsh Saudi response this August to the Iranian-directed riots in Mecca being a case in point), and their regimes have so far survived...
...In schools and universities, likewise, Islamic teaching is supreme...
...Khomeini's triumph in February 1979 directly led to the Iran-Iraq war in September 1980...
...interests must be carried out by the United States itself...
...If this is so in the case of the Gulf as well, it will not have been Iran's doing if the United States sustains yet another defeat, just as it was the United States which was the author of its own defeat in Lebanon, and not the terrorists who murdered the Marines in Beirut...
...This would also be the case if the long war were to come to an endthrough the Tehran regime cracking up...
...When Robert McFarlane visited Tehran in May 1986, he sent to Washington his impressions of the manner in which Iran is governed: It may be best for us [he wrote in a cable quoted by the Tower Commission] to try to picture what it would be like if after nuclear attack, a surviving Tatar became Vice President...
...If this were to happen, the ensuing struggle for power by various clerical factions, by the Revolutionary Guards, by the army, and by various ethnic groups (Baluchis, Turkomans, Kurds, etc...
...The prime issue is strategic, namely whether Iran risks falling within the Soviet orbit, whether this risk can be obviated or, better still, whether the country can be made again to adopt a friendly stance towards the U.S...
...All these areas are governed by Sunni regimes already on their guard against Shi'ite subversion, and there is no one on the horizon who can play the same role as Khomeini did in Iran...
...More particularly, the release of the hostages seized in Lebanon and the financing of the contra operations in Nicaragua were allowed fatally to interfere with these overriding aims...
...The reason for that fiasco was precisely that the policy behind the expedition was ill thought-out, or the means to carry it out were insufficient, or else that there was no policy at all, but simply improvised reactions to unfolding events...
...Again, if the stalemate is broken to Iraq's detriment, its new protector the United States would be facing a country likely to be in dissolution, with Shi'ites, Kurds, and others seeking revenge for years of heavy-handed and cruel Baathist rule...
...In the second place, therefore, U.S...
Vol. 20 • October 1987 • No. 10
