At War on All Fronts

By John Greenwald

They jammed Revolution Avenue in the heart of Tehran last week, a million Iranians raising their fists and shouting as if with one voice, "Revenge! Revenge! Revenge!" The clutches of women dressed in black chadors, the phalanxes of men bearing placards that said DOWN WITH U.S.: the angry scene had been played out before. This time, however, the crowd seemed reinvigorated, its fury fresh and lethal. "Death to America!" they chanted in the near 100 degrees heat. Their rage rose higher still as Hashemi Rafsanjani, the speaker of Iran's parliament, called upon Allah to "avenge the blood" of nearly 300 Iranian pilgrims who had been killed a week earlier in Mecca, Islam's holiest city. Rafsanjani also uttered a demand that sent a tremor through the Arab world and beyond: the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the keepers of Mecca, must be "uprooted."

Then came the hypnotic voice of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, 87, still the country's supreme leader. Speaking in fierce whispers over nationwide radio, Khomeini first lashed out at the "inept and spineless" Saudi Arabian royal family. But he placed the blame for the bloody deaths in Mecca squarely on the U.S., still the "Great Satan" in the eyes of the fevered Iranian nation, and vowed vengeance. Promised Khomeini: "God willing, at the opportune time we shall deal with her."

That confrontation suddenly seemed at hand last week -- for America and for the world. Since he took power in 1979, the Ayatullah has threatened to spread his uncompromising brand of Islamic fundamentalism across the fragile, oil- rich states that line the Persian Gulf and to upset the global balance of power. He has sought his goals openly in Iran's seven-year war with Iraq, and he has promoted them stealthily through terrorist bombings and kidnapings abroad. Now Khomeini's brooding presence loomed larger than ever as he seemed ready, even eager, to take on a host of nations.

Angered by Washington's decision to reflag and escort Kuwaiti tankers through the gulf, Iran announced with great fanfare that it would stage four days of war games in the Strait of Hormuz, the entryway to the gulf. In case there was any doubt about the intent of the maneuvers, they were code-named "Martyrdom." One of the reflagged ships, the fully loaded Gas Prince, slipped quietly out of harm's way and toward its destination in Japan before the exercises began. But the supertanker Bridgeton, damaged last month by a mine that may have been planted by the Iranians, remained in Kuwait. Meanwhile, Washington found itself in the humiliating position of pleading with its European allies to send minesweepers to the gulf, a request that all spurned. At week's end the U.S. was rushing eight Sea Stallion minesweeping helicopters to the region, while three more Kuwaiti tankers moved into the gulf escorted by American warships.

Khomeini's anti-American fervor echoed those 444 days in 1979-81 when Iran held 52 Americans captive in the U.S. embassy in Tehran. "The American presence in the gulf has turned back the clock to the years of the hostage crisis," said an Iranian journalist. "That is the atmosphere now." But a major factor in the new frenzy was the congressional hearings on the U.S. arms-for-hostages deal with Iran, which Iranians followed closely by newspaper and radio. The public revelations of those dealings last November and the fresh airing given the scandal on Capitol Hill over the past three months revealed Khomeini's willingness to traffic with the Great Satan and thus deeply embarrassed Tehran. In order to restore its credibility, Khomeini's regime apparently felt it imperative to demonstrate anew its hatred of America. "It all was like waving a red flag in front of Iran," says Gary Sick, a former Carter Administration official and expert on Iran. "They had to respond, to redeem themselves both domestically and internationally."

But the U.S. is only one target of Khomeini's wrath. Iran has been locked in a face-off with France since the two nations broke off relations last month. The French aircraft carrier Clemenceau last week steamed to the gulf as Iranian police continued to hold 15 French citizens hostage in the French embassy in Tehran. Tensions remained high between Iran and Britain over earlier incidents involving their diplomats. After the Mecca tragedy, gangs ransacked the Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian embassies in the Iranian capital and took four Saudis prisoner.

Amid the rage, however, Tehran was still capable of making shrewd diplomatic maneuvers. In one such move that promised to heighten superpower tensions in the region, Iran and the Soviet Union last week began to negotiate plans to reopen oil pipelines and build a second rail link from Iran to Soviet Central Asia. While the Soviets and the U.S. are officially neutral in the Iran-Iraq war, the superpowers appeared to be moving into opposite corners: Washington seemed to tie itself to Baghdad by aiding its ally Kuwait, while Moscow warmed to Tehran.

The Soviet pact spotlighted Iran's strategic importance. One of the world's leading oil producers, Iran (pop. 50 million) has more people than all the other gulf states combined and geographically dominates the richest petroleum- producing region on earth. The country is a vast land bridge between the gulf and the Soviets on the north, the Turks on the west, and the Asian nations of Afghanistan and Pakistan on the east. Washington rightfully views any increase in Soviet influence in Iran as worrisome indeed.

But it is the gulf states that fear their brawling neighbor the most. As the world's only Shi'ite-ruled Muslim country, Iran seeks to export its brand of Islamic revolution throughout the region and to overthrow the Sunni-ruled Muslim regimes in countries like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The two religious factions have been fierce rivals for centuries. Painfully vulnerable to Iranian subversion, the Sunni gulf nations have been understandably reluctant to alienate Tehran.

Since Khomeini came to power in 1979, tensions have been especially high during the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that annually attracts more than 2 million Muslims from some 130 countries. Khomeini viewed the sacred occasion as the ideal time to deliver his revolutionary message, but the Saudis blocked that goal by banning demonstrations and limiting the number of Iranians allowed into the country. Last year Saudi police discovered more than 110 lbs. of explosives hidden in the luggage of 500 Iranian pilgrims.

Two weeks ago, however, the Saudis were not as lucky. According to accounts pieced together last week, the trouble began on Friday, only minutes after the end of midday prayer services. In 115 degrees heat, a white-robed sea of penitents swarmed around the Sacred Mosque, where the devout come to touch the Black Stone, a meteorite inside the shrine that millions of pilgrims have worn smooth over the centuries in the belief that it will absolve them of sin. Suddenly the worshipers' hymns and shouts of Allahu-Akhbar! (God is great) were drowned out. Crying "Death to America! Death to the Soviet Union! Death to Israel!," ragged lines of Iranian demonstrators began weaving through the crowds. Many carried posters of Khomeini that they waved over the heads of the faithful. Their alleged aim: to seize the Sacred Mosque and proclaim Khomeini leader of all Islam.

Police rushed in as the pilgrims and intruders began to clash. Waves of Iranians charged the officers, hurling rocks and other objects. Some agitators brandished clubs and knives. Others set fire to nearby cars and motorcycles. Terrified bystanders dashed for cover, their white robes frantically flapping. By the time police regained control, 402 people, including at least 275 Iranians, lay dead or dying and an additional 649 had been injured.

Tehran quickly claimed that the Saudis had machine-gunned the victims in cold blood. Riyadh replied that the Iranians had charged police and were trampled to death in the melee.The Saudis buttressed their story with videotape clips that showed an Iranian rampage. Ali Hassan Ash-Shaer, Saudi Arabia's Information Minister, insisted that "not a single bullet was fired" by Saudi forces.

On Saturday, Tehran awoke to a terse 7 a.m. newscast that reported that "scores of Iranian pilgrims have been shot dead by the Saudi police." By 8 a.m. a crowd of 600 had gathered outside the Saudi embassy. After briefly being restrained by armed police, the growing mob burst into the two-story villa, smashing windows and destroying embassy documents. Last week thousands of mourners walked through Tehran alongside coffins containing bodies brought back from Saudi Arabia. Chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to the fascist Saudi police!" filled the air.

For the conservative Saudi rulers, the bloodshed at Mecca was appalling and terrifying. Iran's revolutionary zeal had penetrated the borders of one of the most cautious and security-conscious countries in the world. "We are determined to defend our land and our holy places by all means," declared King Fahd. Arab leaders from Bahrain to Morocco rallied behind Riyadh and condemned the rioters.

Four days after the Mecca riots, Iran reported launching its "Martyrdom" maneuvers in the gulf. According to Tehran radio, frogmen, pilotless aircraft and explosive-laden vessels staged mock attacks. Iranian television showed "suicide" speedboats skimming the waters, apparently practicing for the day when they would be called upon to crash into enemy warships. The Iranians even claimed to have launched their first submarine.

Iran's noisy saber rattling is only the latest lurch in its erratic foreign policy. Though Khomeini has often declared his hatred for the West, Iran's dealings with other countries are determined as much by its domestic politics as by ideology. After several years of insisting that Iran's only goal was to spread its brand of Islam across the globe, Khomeini began in late 1984 to soften his rhetoric in order to rebuild ties with other countries. The move reflected the fact that Iran desperately needed help: four years of war with Iraq had devastated the economy, and Khomeini's implacable hostility toward the outside world had turned his nation into an international pariah. In short order, Iran signed a trade pact with China, opened negotiations with France to resolve a $1 billion dispute, and entered fence-mending agreements with the Arab world that included a limit on the number of Iranian pilgrims who would make the yearly trek to Mecca.

Beneath Iran's public diplomacy, however, its politics was seething, its national leadership split. On one side were the relative pragmatists like Rafsanjani, who favored accommodation abroad. On the other were the hard- liners such as the Ayatullah Hussein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini's designated successor, and Mehdi Hashemi, a key Montazeri aide, who shunned contact with the West. Rafsanjani acknowledged the split in a 1986 speech, in which he declared that "two relatively powerful factions in our country" disagreed on virtually every policy and "may in fact be regarded as two parties without names." Khomeini presided over this division like a fond father, encouraging first one side and then the other.

The split became a chasm after Iran decided in late 1985 to buy arms from the U.S. The decision did not reflect a fundamental shift in policy; the arrangement only illustrated Tehran's fanatical desire to defeat Iraq, no matter who supplied the weapons. In addition, Washington's eagerness to swap TOW missiles for hostages was interpreted by many in Iran as proof that terrorism paid off. Nonetheless, the deal infuriated extreme hard-liners like Hashemi. There was little they could do about it since the Ayatullah had approved the negotiations. When former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane undertook his now famous mission to Tehran in May 1986, supporters of Hashemi tried to have him kidnaped, but Rafsanjani's followers intervened.

That trip might still remain secret today if Hashemi and dozens of his associates had not been arrested in Tehran last October on murder and other charges. Several days later friends of Hashemi leaked details of the McFarlane visit to the Lebanese weekly magazine Ash-Shiraa. The sensational account made worldwide headlines and sent the pragmatists scurrying for cover.

Though Khomeini has forbidden public criticism of the arms deal, the explosive revelations have forced all factions in Tehran to talk and act tough. "To be perceived as nonrevolutionary in Iran is the kiss of death," says Iranian Expert Gary Sick. Almost overnight the softening face that Iran presented to the world reverted to a furious scowl. Khomeini reportedly was in his blackest mood in years as the annual Mecca pilgrimage neared. "Break the teeth of the Americans," he told the 150,000 Iranians who set out on the trip.

The war with Iraq continues to dominate Iranian policy at home and abroad. Since Baghdad started the conflict by invading Iran in September 1980, some 300,000 Iranians and 200,000 Iraqis have lost their lives in the fighting. Tehran's hopes for victory soared in January, when its troops pushed within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. In the past few months, however, Iran has made little headway in its drive to crush Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Indeed, the Iraqis have succeeded in reclaiming much of their lost ground.

Even the number of Iranian war victims reflects the country's political divisions. Iranian troops are split among the regular military, the fanatical Revolutionary Guards and the often ragtag volunteer corps known as the basij. During Iran's moderate phase in the mid-1980s, Tehran reduced the death toll by relying on trained professional soldiers for most of the fighting. Rafsanjani announced in 1985 that Iran intended "to achieve victory with as few casualties as possible." But last year champions of the zealous Guards gained a stronger voice in ruling circles. The Guards have scant concern for casualties and favor launching human waves against enemy positions. In a unanimous vote last month, the U.N. Security Council demanded that Iran and Iraq declare a cease-fire, and last week the U.S. pushed efforts for a resolution calling for an arms embargo on Iran.

The relentless war with Iraq is only the most visible sign of Khomeini's determination to defeat heretics. No less important are Tehran's ties with the terrorist networks of Shi'ite radicals that stand ready to do the Ayatullah's bidding. Though tactics may shift, Khomeini's ultimate goal remains the same as when he came to power in Iran in 1979: to extend Shi'ite fundamentalism over all of Islam and recover the unity and power that the Muslim world has lost since the Middle Ages. "Khomeini is a one-track fanatic," contends a senior Israeli official. "But he is very cunning, very clever and knows what he wants to do."

So far, though, Khomeini has failed to export his revolution much farther than Beirut. That is the stronghold of the Hizballah, or Party of God, terrorists who revere Khomeini. Acting under such names as the Islamic Jihad and the Revolutionary Justice Organization, the Hizballah is suspected of holding most of the 24 foreign hostages, including nine Americans and Anglican Envoy Terry Waite, who are missing in Lebanon. As the Iran-contra hearings showed, Reagan's arms sales to Iran were designed primarily to pry Americans from Hizballah's grasp. The deals apparently did secure the release of three Americans -- though four more were subsequently kidnaped -- just as French contacts with Iran appeared to win freedom for five Frenchmen last year.

Hizballah's exploits are not confined to kidnaping. With the probable aid of 2,000 Revolutionary Guards stationed in the Bekaa Valley and 400 in southern Lebanon, the Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for six suicide attacks between 1982 and 1984 that took more than 500 lives and helped drive American, French and Israeli troops out of Lebanon. The campaign included the 1983 truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen billeted in Beirut.

Hizballah's ties to Tehran are abundantly clear. Leaders visit the Iranian capital regularly and reportedly get instructions from Iranian embassies in Damascus and Beirut. Khomeini is said to spend anywhere from $15 million to $50 million a year to finance Hizballah activities. Many Lebanese villages have so embraced Khomeini's way that their mosques and squares are adorned with pictures of the Ayatullah and even Iranian flags. Tehran reciprocates by putting pictures of Lebanese Shi'ite "martyrs" on Iranian postage stamps. Says Hussein Musawi, leader of the Hizballah-allied Islamic Amal: "We do not believe in the presence of a state called Lebanon. We regard the entire Islamic world as our homeland."

Other countries have reason to fear that Hizballah will carry out terrorist acts on behalf of Iran. Last month a suspected member of Hizballah commandeered an Air Afrique jet, singled out a French passenger and shot him dead. Though the hijacking was staged ostensibly to force West Germany to release two jailed Hizballah operatives, the killing of the Frenchman suggested another motive: to pressure Paris to end the continuing diplomatic standoff between France and Iran. Washington last week quietly warned government installations at home and abroad to be alert to the Iranian threat. In West Berlin, the Allied Command ordered a number of Iranian diplomats to leave the city "in the interests of public order and security."

Tehran's ties with Hizballah have put it into conflict with its friends as well. Though Syria depends on Iran for much of its oil, relations between the two countries have deteriorated recently over events in Lebanon. Hizballah fought Syria's forces after Syrian President Hafez Assad sent troops into Beirut last February to restore law-and-order. Now Hizballah-set bombs explode almost nightly near Syrian military posts in the Lebanese capital. Hizballah's most serious provocation came in June, when the group kidnaped U.S. Journalist Charles Glass near a Syrian checkpoint that was supposedly guarding the area.

Khomeini's relations with Saudi Arabia seem almost beyond repair. Ironically, the break follows a period in which Iran seemed to moderate its religious rivalry with the House of Saud. In a conciliatory move two years ago Khomeini replaced his religious representative in Mecca, a hard-line cleric whom the Saudis loathed. Before the start of this year's hajj, however, Khomeini's hatred had revived. Not only were the Saudis still bankrolling Iraq, they openly supported Kuwait's assistance to Baghdad. Many observers expect Iran to avenge the Mecca deaths by launching terrorist acts on Saudi Arabian soil or by fomenting trouble among the country's 350,000 or so Shi'ites, most of whom live in the oil-rich eastern provinces.

Tehran and Paris have been at daggers' points since mid-July, when France tried to question Wahid Gordji, an Iranian embassy translator. French police suspect that Gordji, who took refuge in the embassy, is linked to a string of Paris bombings last fall. When French officers surrounded the Iranian embassy to prevent Gordji's escape, Iran sealed off the French embassy in Tehran.

Speaking in a televised interview last week, French Premier Jacques Chirac declared that "we have no intention of giving in to blackmail." In an obvious reference to French warships headed for the gulf, Chirac vowed that "we will intervene" if Iran launched a military attack. Yet Chirac's room for maneuver is sharply limited. Any French military action could endanger the lives of the embassy captives in Tehran and the five French hostages held in Lebanon.

Britain treaded more cautiously last week. London's relations with Tehran have been tense since May, when an Iranian diplomat was arrested for shoplifting. After Iranian Revolutionary Guards beat a British embassy official in response, the two countries began to expel one another's diplomats. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has not wanted to push the quarrel any further, though. Sounded out privately two weeks ago by Washington about sending minesweepers to the gulf, she politely said no. Thatcher reportedly was furious when U.S. Ambassador Charles Price formally repeated the same request, forcing her to reject the U.S. again, this time in public. Thatcher has added reason to look askance at the highly publicized American escort operation: London has quietly escorted British tankers through gulf waters for the past six years.

The Soviet Union, meanwhile, gladly seized the opportunity to play a larger role in the gulf. Indeed, it was a Soviet decision last spring to charter three oil tankers to Kuwait that drove the Reagan Administration to counter the move by reflagging Kuwaiti vessels. But in reporting last week's negotiations with Iran, the Soviet news agency TASS noted that both Moscow and Tehran expressed mutual concern over the "unprecedented buildup of the U.S. military presence in the region." Nonetheless, the potential partnership poses problems for both countries. The Soviet Union remains a major arms supplier to Iraq. And Moscow cannot ignore the potential appeal of Khomeini's fiery fundamentalism to Soviet Muslim communities in Central Asia.

Yet Iran's economic woes seem to be nudging it toward the Kremlin. The turning point came last year with the arrival of the highest-ranking Soviet delegation to visit Tehran since the 1979 revolution. Then in December Tehran reported that the Soviets had agreed in principle to resume imports of Iranian natural gas and that the two countries were exploring the joint production of steel and petrochemicals.

For all his bluster, Khomeini is adept at turning the fears and jealousies of rival nations to his own advantage. "Look at Iran's position today," says a senior Israeli. "No one can ignore it. And many will even admire it." Part of that success stems from Khomeini's shrewd cynicism and ability to size up opponents. Speaking of Washington two years ago, the Ayatullah dryly observed, "It is clear that if we take one step toward the U.S., they take 100 in return."

Khomeini swiftly learned the value of dire pronouncements that are never actually carried out. The Ayatullah used the 1979-81 U.S. hostage crisis to inflame his own people and cement his revolution. But when Khomeini no longer needed the hostages, he let them go and agreed to drop demands for a U.S. apology and the return of assets of the former Shah. Since the hostage crisis, Khomeini has repeatedly found that a combination of bullying and pragmatic concessions has kept his enemies off-balance. Observes Richard Bulliet, a professor of Middle East history at Columbia University: "Khomeini is not the lunatic that many people in the West take him for."

Now other nations must again find a way to deal with that figure. For all the problems that Reagan's Kuwaiti escort service has encountered, the President seems determined to continue with the operation indefinitely. Says a senior Administration official: "He's committed to demonstrating support to our friends in the region." Still, the White House began muting its military role in the gulf last week. Senior officials insisted that the reflagging was first and foremost a display of solidarity toward the moderate Arabs, not a show of muscle.

Whatever Washington's intent, Iran can ill afford a direct clash with the U.S. Not only would Tehran have little chance of winning, but a fight would drain vital resources from the all important war against Iraq. Still, Western military analysts are worried about a possible suicide bomb attack from an explosives-packed plane or boat.

The greatest threat to Khomeini's Iran may finally come not from the battlefield but from the country's almost suicidal tendency to cut itself off from the rest of the world. Each time Iran begins to make overtures to other nations, it seems instinctively to stop and pull back. Tehran's tenuous links with Washington, Paris and London have all been shattered in the past year. So too have been the painstaking efforts of some Iranian leaders to improve ties with Saudi Arabia. Whether Iran can leave such traits behind will ultimately rest with Khomeini's successors. All the indications are that the pragmatic Rafsanjani, 53, is locked in a fierce power struggle with the hard-liner Montazeri. Without a clear winner, the two men could wind up sharing authority in an arrangement that would make Montazeri the religious leader and Rafsanjani the political head of state. Most experts predict that a turbulent transition will follow Khomeini's death.

One power broker may be Khomeini's son Ahmed, 43. While members of the Ayatullah's family have traditionally been left on the sidelines, Khomeini brought Ahmed into government affairs late last year to oversee Tehran's two major newspapers and supervise state TV and radio stations and the national IRNA news agency. Iranian experts now consider Ahmed a full-fledged member of Khomeini's inner circle, along with Rafsanjani and Montazeri.

For all the speculation about Khomeini's successor, the Ayatullah remains very much the spiritual force behind the Iranian revolution. Reportedly afflicted with a weakening heart and prostate cancer, Khomeini nonetheless grants public audiences, meets weekly with the families of martyrs and even performs Islamic marriage ceremonies. On most days, though, he remains secluded in his house in north Tehran, emerging from time to time to issue the whispery proclamations that echo around the world. Intimates say the Ayatullah yearns to ensure that the revolution will survive long after he is gone. That may not be possible, given the nation's fractious politics and the fact that none of the potential successors possesses Khomeini's ability to mesmerize the country. But for now, the brooding leader remains a formidable force, an old man who can at will command the attention of both the superpowers and all of his Arab neighbors. As he first proved eight years ago and continues to prove, the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has transformed Iran into a state that the world must reckon with.

With reporting by David S. Jackson/Abu Dhabi and Scott MacLeod/Cairo, with other bureaus