At War on All Fronts

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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.