Khomeini: A Quest for Vengeance

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For weeks the revolutionary government in Iran had debated how far the country should go in "punishing" Saddam Hussein. Iranian moderates, led by Majlis Speaker Ali Hashemi Rafsanjani, suggested that the $150 billion in reparations demanded of Iraq by President Ali Khamene'i, a hardliner, was negotiable. But the fanatics wanted nothing less than the destruction of Iraq's Baath Party and the establishment of an Islamic republic in Baghdad.

Until June 21, Khomeini deliberately remained neutral in the debate, allowing subordinates ample time to state their positions. Then, characteristically, he made a speech fully supporting, and indeed surpassing, the positions of the extremists. Khomeini even criticized some of his own aides for paying more attention to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon than to the Iran-Iraq war. "We shall get to Lebanon, and to Jerusalem, through Iraq," said Khomeini, but "first we have to defeat this sinister [Baath] party."

Khomeini's "Iraq first" policy quickly gained the support of Iran's two Arab allies, Syria and Libya, and soon Iran's Revolutionary Guards command was issuing a call for volunteers. Syria's position is based on its longstanding hatred of Saddam and the enmity between the Iraqi and Syrian branches of the Baath Party. Syria had sided with Iran while Iraqi forces were on Iranian soil, but its continued support of Iran, now that Khomeini's forces have invaded Arab Iraq, is a somewhat more awkward position for Syria to be taking. Syria has also been embarrassed by recent events in Lebanon. It has refused to offer temporary sanctuary to the leadership and guerrillas of the P.L.O., possibly because it is holding out for a better deal from the Saudis and the other oil-rich Arabs who would finance such a solution to the problem of the trapped P.L.O. forces. Furthermore, in battles with the Israelis last month, Syria lost at least 86 MiG aircraft. One apparent reason: Syria lacks skilled fighter pilots, partly because it prefers that its new pilots be members of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam to which President Hafez Assad belongs.

Like Assad, Saddam Hussein is a member of a minority group within his own nation. He is a Sunni Muslim in a country whose population of 14 million is 55% Shi'ite. Iran has assumed that this fact alone makes Saddam vulnerable to being overthrown, but that reasoning may not be correct. Saddam has created a cult of personality around himself. Today his face can be seen everywhere in his capital city, in a wide variety of sizes and demeanors. A huge painting on Rashid Street, for example, shows him in uniform, leading a tank assault, while in the background swirls a visionary horse charge by the Iraqi cavalrymen who routed a Persian invasion in the 9th century. Though outnumbered ten to one, the horsemen were victorious in an epic three-day battle, and saved Iraq.