At War on All Fronts

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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.