Khomeini: A Quest for Vengeance

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Mubarak knows it could be a mistake for him to send troops to assist Saddam in Iraq. Such a move not only might antagonize Egypt's generals, but would also anger the Islamic fundamentalists in the country. It was the fundamentalists who assassinated President Sadat last October, and they remain a threat in spite of Mubarak's crackdowns. Nonetheless Mubarak is prepared to offer Egyptian troops to defend Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the other gulf states, under the terms of the 30-year-old Joint Arab Defense Pact, if the arrangement is approved by the states involved and supported militarily by the U.S. Considering Mubarak's reluctance to send forces anywhere outside Egypt, the current discussion of such a mission is an indication of how worried he is about the spread of Islamic revolution.

Even some of Khomeini's friends are upset about the Iranian invasion of Iraq. The P.L.O., which has generally supported

Khomeini out of deference to Syria, is furious with the Iranians for launching an invasion that can only divert attention from the Palestinians' plight in Lebanon. Arab and Western diplomats feared that the Iranian attack would enable Israel to move briskly into West Beirut to settle the problem of the stubborn P.L.O. Not that such an argument would carry much weight with the ruler of Iran, which has once more become the primary power in the gulf. If the Palestinians want Jerusalem as the capital of a state of their own, Khomeini wants it as the goal of a holy crusade.

Officially, Iranians quarrel with the notion that they are committed to the overthrow of Arab governments. They also deny that they have fallen under the influence of the Soviet Union. As Iran's Ambassador to the U.N., Rajaie Khorasani, said last week, "We have proved that a nation armed with the ideology of Islam need not choose between the superpowers but can stand on its own feet." It is true that a wave of Islamic revolutionary fervor moving across the Middle East would not necessarily serve the interests of the Soviet Union any more than it would help the West. But since it would damage existing ties of all kinds, cultural as well as political and economic, it would have a greater impact on the Arab world's links with the West than on those with the Soviet Union and its allies.

Still to be determined is the effect of the gulf war on world oil prices and markets. Taken together, Iran and Iraq have about half the oil reserves and export capacity of Saudi Arabia, the world leader. In recent months, Iran's refusal to abide by production ceilings set by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has helped keep world prices down as global output continued to exceed demand. There was no evidence last week that either prices or supplies had yet been affected by the fighting in Iraq.