Persian Gulf: Drums Along the Border

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After nearly two years of war, Iran is poised into invade Iraq

As the Israeli siege of Beirut turned last week into an anguished negotiating drama over the withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization, ominous events were taking shape in another part of the Middle East. TIME has learned that American reconnaissance photographs of the 700-mile border between Iran and Iraq show that Iranian forces are massing for a full-scale invasion. Units from all over Iran, including eight divisions formerly posted on the Soviet border, are moving rapidly into place. U.S. experts believe that the Iranians may be ready to attack as early as this week. In addition, TIME has learned, the Reagan Administration has determined that the Soviet Union intends to provide support to Iran once the invasion begins.

Iranian armed forces are poised for an assault at three points along the Iraqi border: in the south, where the reconnaissance information indicates that Iranian troops are concentrated near the port of Basra, the site of Iraq's major oil production facilities; in the center, near Amara, where Iranian troops are solidly entrenched within 200 miles of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital; and in the north, where Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini has persuaded Kurdish dissidents to foment new trouble for the regime of President Saddam Hussein. In Tehran last week, Iran's Defense Minister, Mohammed Salimi, sounded a clear-cut warning: "Despite the superpowers' opposition, a push into Iraqi territory has become inevitable."

The impending showdown constitutes a survival test for Saddam Hussein's leadership. On the eve of battle, he moves peripatetically among his soldiers and civilians, escorting Western visitors around Baghdad to convince them that he enjoys the full support of his people. He clearly does, despite the increasingly disastrous consequences of the war. Some 100,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded in a fruitless bid to seize control of the Shatt al Arab waterway and Iran's oil-rich Khuzistan province. Yet most Iraqis despise Khomeini's brand of Islamic fanaticism and prefer the secular nature of Saddam Hussein's government. Saddam Hussein's downfall would also provoke grave apprehensions in the gulf sheikdoms (Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates). Those states and Saudi Arabia have poured at least $20 billion into Iraqi coffers to help keep the advancing Iranian forces at bay. If Iraq succumbs to Khomeini's aggression, it would probably become a Shi'ite-ruled Arab nation inclined to spread the Islamic revolutionary gospel throughout the Arabian peninsula, where sizable Shi'ite populations have long resented the clannish Sunni monarchies that rule them. The tiny island state of Bahrain, where 55% of the population are Shi'ites (some of Iranian origin), nearly fell victim last December to a Khomeini-inspired coup attempt.