At War on All Fronts

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Khomeini swiftly learned the value of dire pronouncements that are never actually carried out. The Ayatullah used the 1979-81 U.S. hostage crisis to inflame his own people and cement his revolution. But when Khomeini no longer needed the hostages, he let them go and agreed to drop demands for a U.S. apology and the return of assets of the former Shah. Since the hostage crisis, Khomeini has repeatedly found that a combination of bullying and pragmatic concessions has kept his enemies off-balance. Observes Richard Bulliet, a professor of Middle East history at Columbia University: "Khomeini is not the lunatic that many people in the West take him for."

Now other nations must again find a way to deal with that figure. For all the problems that Reagan's Kuwaiti escort service has encountered, the President seems determined to continue with the operation indefinitely. Says a senior Administration official: "He's committed to demonstrating support to our friends in the region." Still, the White House began muting its military role in the gulf last week. Senior officials insisted that the reflagging was first and foremost a display of solidarity toward the moderate Arabs, not a show of muscle.

Whatever Washington's intent, Iran can ill afford a direct clash with the U.S. Not only would Tehran have little chance of winning, but a fight would drain vital resources from the all important war against Iraq. Still, Western military analysts are worried about a possible suicide bomb attack from an explosives-packed plane or boat.

The greatest threat to Khomeini's Iran may finally come not from the battlefield but from the country's almost suicidal tendency to cut itself off from the rest of the world. Each time Iran begins to make overtures to other nations, it seems instinctively to stop and pull back. Tehran's tenuous links with Washington, Paris and London have all been shattered in the past year. So too have been the painstaking efforts of some Iranian leaders to improve ties with Saudi Arabia. Whether Iran can leave such traits behind will ultimately rest with Khomeini's successors. All the indications are that the pragmatic Rafsanjani, 53, is locked in a fierce power struggle with the hard-liner Montazeri. Without a clear winner, the two men could wind up sharing authority in an arrangement that would make Montazeri the religious leader and Rafsanjani the political head of state. Most experts predict that a turbulent transition will follow Khomeini's death.

One power broker may be Khomeini's son Ahmed, 43. While members of the Ayatullah's family have traditionally been left on the sidelines, Khomeini brought Ahmed into government affairs late last year to oversee Tehran's two major newspapers and supervise state TV and radio stations and the national IRNA news agency. Iranian experts now consider Ahmed a full-fledged member of Khomeini's inner circle, along with Rafsanjani and Montazeri.