At War on All Fronts

(6 of 9)
Hizballah's exploits are not confined to kidnaping. With the probable aid of 2,000 Revolutionary Guards stationed in the Bekaa Valley and 400 in southern Lebanon, the Islamic Jihad has claimed responsibility for six suicide attacks between 1982 and 1984 that took more than 500 lives and helped drive American, French and Israeli troops out of Lebanon. The campaign included the 1983 truck bombing that killed 241 U.S. servicemen billeted in Beirut.

Hizballah's ties to Tehran are abundantly clear. Leaders visit the Iranian capital regularly and reportedly get instructions from Iranian embassies in Damascus and Beirut. Khomeini is said to spend anywhere from $15 million to $50 million a year to finance Hizballah activities. Many Lebanese villages have so embraced Khomeini's way that their mosques and squares are adorned with pictures of the Ayatullah and even Iranian flags. Tehran reciprocates by putting pictures of Lebanese Shi'ite "martyrs" on Iranian postage stamps. Says Hussein Musawi, leader of the Hizballah-allied Islamic Amal: "We do not believe in the presence of a state called Lebanon. We regard the entire Islamic world as our homeland."

Other countries have reason to fear that Hizballah will carry out terrorist acts on behalf of Iran. Last month a suspected member of Hizballah commandeered an Air Afrique jet, singled out a French passenger and shot him dead. Though the hijacking was staged ostensibly to force West Germany to release two jailed Hizballah operatives, the killing of the Frenchman suggested another motive: to pressure Paris to end the continuing diplomatic standoff between France and Iran. Washington last week quietly warned government installations at home and abroad to be alert to the Iranian threat. In West Berlin, the Allied Command ordered a number of Iranian diplomats to leave the city "in the interests of public order and security."

Tehran's ties with Hizballah have put it into conflict with its friends as well. Though Syria depends on Iran for much of its oil, relations between the two countries have deteriorated recently over events in Lebanon. Hizballah fought Syria's forces after Syrian President Hafez Assad sent troops into Beirut last February to restore law-and-order. Now Hizballah-set bombs explode almost nightly near Syrian military posts in the Lebanese capital. Hizballah's most serious provocation came in June, when the group kidnaped U.S. Journalist Charles Glass near a Syrian checkpoint that was supposedly guarding the area.

Khomeini's relations with Saudi Arabia seem almost beyond repair. Ironically, the break follows a period in which Iran seemed to moderate its religious rivalry with the House of Saud. In a conciliatory move two years ago Khomeini replaced his religious representative in Mecca, a hard-line cleric whom the Saudis loathed. Before the start of this year's hajj, however, Khomeini's hatred had revived. Not only were the Saudis still bankrolling Iraq, they openly supported Kuwait's assistance to Baghdad. Many observers expect Iran to avenge the Mecca deaths by launching terrorist acts on Saudi Arabian soil or by fomenting trouble among the country's 350,000 or so Shi'ites, most of whom live in the oil-rich eastern provinces.