Hatred Without Discrimination

By Pico Iyer

IRAN

Khomeini finds a convenient new scapegoat: the Communists

It was a peculiarly bloodless demolition of a largely toothless group. On TV broadcasts videotaped in jail, glum leaders of Iran's Tudeh Communist Party confessed, one by one, to being Soviet spies. Haggard and morose, First Secretary Nureddin Kianuri conceded that since its inception in 1941, the party had been "an instrument of espionage and treason," and added that he had been spying for Moscow since 1945. After seven colleagues elaborated on the details of their treachery, Ali Amou'i, a ranking Central Committee member, warned Iranian youths not to follow his example and calmly declared the dissolution of the entire Tudeh Party. Then, heaping insult upon injury, the Islamic regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini informed 18 Soviet diplomats that they would have 48 hours to leave Iran. Proclaimed a triumphant Khomeini: "The Islamic umma [nation] of Iran should glory in its self-sacrificing and devoted combatants who have ensnared the treacherous Tudeh Party chiefs."

Those words seemed more important than the gaudy actions that preceded them. Despite its fanatical loyalty to Moscow, the widely reviled and politically ineffective Tudeh Party (membership: between 2,000 and 3,000) seemed to be nothing more than a symbolic victim. Many analysts noted that Khomeini thrives on crisis, habitually seeking to dramatize his strength and distract his restive populace by pummeling some scapegoat. Past offenders have included the U.S., which Khomeimi frequently calls the great Satan," the Mujahedin-e Khalq guerrillas, who oppose the regime, and the army of neighboring Iraq. Late last year, Khomeini added the Soviet Union to his list. It was a startling switch, especially for U.S. policymakers, who have been anxious about the possibility that the Soviets would make mischief in Iran ever since the fall of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. As a State Department analyst noted last week, "Khomeini seems to be living up to his 'neither East nor West' promise."

Moscow-Tehran relations have, in fact, long been characterized by mutual and mistrustful exploitation. The Soviets were far from enthusiastic in their support for Khomeini in the months just before his 1979 overthrow of the Shah. The reason, as a Tudeh member now in jail puts it, was that "Moscow perceived the clergy as incorrigible reactionaries." Those fears were well founded. Right-wing clergymen routinely reviled the Soviets as godless Communists, while Khomeini opposed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But Moscow wooed Tehran by offering assistance against the nettlesome Mujahedin guerrillas. In response, the mullahs invited KGB agents to Iran to provide military and economic advice. Last year Moscow proposed a treaty of friendship and mutual assistance with Iran, while offering repeatedly to mediate in Khomeini's 2 1/2-year-old war against Iraq, a longtime Soviet client.

Set on his own course, however, Khomeini indulged the Soviets only as long as they were of use to him. Last autumn, despairing of his two-year campaign to obtain major sophisticated weapons systems from Moscow and to halt Soviet arms shipments to the Iraqis, Khomeini began tightening the screws on the Tudeh Party, at first through restrictions in their publications, later through sporadic arrests. Finally, about six months ago, some 25 Communist leaders were casually arrested.

After last week's outburst, both nations were eyeing each other more warily. Iranian authorities nervously tried to squelch rumors that the Soviet embassy in Tehran would be seized, as its U.S. counterpart had been in November 1979. The Soviet party newspaper Pravda vigorously asserted that the Soviet people "resolutely reject" the charges against the Tudeh. The article went on to argue, speciously, that the Tudeh was unlikely to know any important secrets and, disingenuously, that the U.S. had instigated the sudden crackdown.

Nonetheless, one-third of Iran's imports still travel through Soviet territory and, with its biggest port, Khorramshahr, closed, Iran is dependent on Soviet rail transport. The Soviets could retaliate by stemming those imports, courting the Mujahedin guerrillas or increasing their already considerable supply of sophisticated arms to Iraq. Soviet KGB agents from nearby Soviet Azerbaijan have reportedly infiltrated Iran to replace the agents who were arrested.

The purge against the Communist Party and Soviet diplomats is further evidence of the paranoia that afflicts the Khomeini regime. Ardeshir Asgari, a defected Islamic Guard now living in Spain, maintains that Iran is haunted by internecine savagery and ubiquitous suspicion. The mullahs, he notes, "encourage officers to spy on one another," while forming special squads to eliminate officials suspected of harboring anti-Khomeini sympathies. Moreover, says Asgari, the Khomeini regime is terrified of the Mujahedin guerrillas. Often, he reports, his colleagues would gun down suspected dissidents in the streets, only to discover too late that they were unarmed and apolitical civilians.

Major Mohammed Hassan Mansouri, a former air force pilot who fled to Canada, claims that "because of their medieval mentality and abysmal ignorance, the mullahs feel intimidated by modern skills." This has made them especially hostile toward the air force. "They can neither understand its sophisticated equipment nor fool its better educated cadres," Mansouri explains. The result: air force officers mysteriously vanish. Mansouri describes one pilot, whose plane was shot down, bleeding to death because the clergy refused to rescue him.

The drawn-out war against Iraq has clearly helped the regime to deflect attention from much of its internal strife. The offensive occupies an army that could otherwise become dangerously restless, while allowing Khomeini through assassinations and contrived battlefield accidents to get rid of certain "undesirables." Says Mansouri: "Khomeini is the time bomb the Shah bequeathed to Iran when he fled." It is a lesson even the Soviets have had to learn the hard way. --By Pico Iyer. Reported by Raji Samghabadi/New York

With reporting by Raji Samghabadi/New York This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.