GULF WAR the biggest play to the clash, describing the American technical assistance involved and portraying the military confrontation as larger and potentially more serious than the Saudis did
According to the US authorities, a major air battle was averted when eleven Iranian fighters on their way to join the fight turned back.
US officials failed, if they tried, to conceal satisfaction at the confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabai.
The International Herald Tribune (June 6, 1984) quoted a "Washington source" as saying, "This was a big psychological breakthrough for the Saudis. The paper commented: "US officials have expressed irritation with what they viewed as Saudi Arabia's reluctance to take a leading role in protecting Gulf shipping against air attacks, preferring instead to call on outside help."
The Paris daily Liberation, which is
Tension and manoeuvres grow in Gulf war well informed on the Middle East, commented on the US reaction:
"The Pentagon specialists are not bothering to hide their satisfaction and relief at seeing Saudi Arabia finally agree' to confront the Iranians."
When attacks on Gulf shipping first
Diplomatic and military moves have been speeding up in the Persian Gulf area as the momentum has built up in Iran for another big push into Iraq.
On Friday, June 8, the Iranian government issued an appeal for all persons with military training to report to mobilization points before Thursday, June 14.
For some weeks, there had been reports of volunteers
On June 1, the Iraqi military reported that Iranian forces had begun new attempts to infiltrate the marshes in the Basra area, in particular around the Majnun Islands. It claimed that "ten enemy landing attempts have been annihilated."
After the mobilization appeal, it seemed likely that Iran would launch its new assault on the anniversary of Imam Ali's murder on the 19 of
Ramadam, 661 A.D. (June 19).
Gerry FOLEY
June 1 issue, the Iran Times
In its an independent Persian-language weekly serving all the overseas Iranian communities) reported that the Revolutionary
Guards had been demanding a new offensive
"there are because now sufficient human and moral resources, and the marshes in the Basra area are dry."
The response of the Iranian regular military reportedly was that these conditions had existed also during the previous assaults but that the end results had been defeats and heavy losses.
In his Friday sermon preceding the mobilization order, Mullah Khamenei, president of the Islamic Republic, issued a new warning to the Arabian peninsula states in particular to back off from supporting Iraq:
"Put pressure on Iraq so that it will stop setting the Persian Gulf afire. If you think that after all the help you have given Iraq that it will not listen to it, then stop helping it.
Stop offering it your money and your propaganda; get out of this war. We have nothing against you.
If you continue, if the countries in the region do not want to recognize the power of the Islamic Republic, if they do not want to be reasonable, we will be
International Viewpoint 18 June 1984 justified in moving against all those who
Despite these threats, however, the Islamic Republic Khamenei represents has moved notably cautiously during the countdown for its long promised "final outstanding example was when interceptors guided by US Awac radar tracking planes and refueled in the air by other American aircraft shot down two Iranian F-4 fighters over the Persian Gulf on June 5.
The Saudis played down the incident, reporting only that an unidentified aircraft had been shot down. propaganda machine remained silent. The first notice of the event was the report on Iranian radio June 7 that a diplomatic note of protest had been delivered to the Saudi government. note in question contained only a vague
"The Islamic Republic of Iran warns that if such an act is repeated, and if Iranian planes, whose only mission is to stabilize the region, are again attacked, the Islamic Republic will respond severely."
Interestingly, it was "diplomatic sources" International Herald Tribune, June 6, 1984) in Washington who gave escalating in May, the US authorities stressed that in order to defend the oil routes, the American forces would need bases on the Arabian peninsula. That is, they used the danger to the oil trade to step up the pressure on Saudi Arabia to accord them bases, a step that the Saudis are obviously reUS plans for Saudi Arabia
In the June 2 Christian Science Monitor, a paper known to be a faithful reflector of State Department brief. ings, a staff writer described the key strategic problems for the US in the Gulf war as follows:
"The military balance of power in the troubled Persian Gulf region increasingly focuses on a kingdom with modern weapons but little experience or appetite for conflict and a Goliath of sorts that is forced to remain on the sidelines.
"The first is Saudi Arabia and the second is the United States.
"As military analysts look at the threats that continue to spread from the Iran-Iraq war to neighbors in the Middle East and beyond, they see a situation in which theoretical military advantage is not necessarily the key determinant.
"If Saudi Arabia were to jump wholeheartedly into the war against Iran, it might easily tip the balance in Iraq's favor. And if the US had only sporadic attacks on Gulf shipping to worry about, it could do the same. But geography and geopolitics are complicating the issue for both countries....
"The main dampers on US military action are lack of an invitation from friendly Gulf states and the prospect
3
that the Soviet Union could be drawn in if Iran were to become any less stable than it already is.
"We are not in a position to dictate or to conciliate, since we have no relationship with Iraq," Dr Brzezinski
"The Soviets gain if we do nothing or if we do something on our own.
"Still, attention on the military balance in the Saudi Arabia's favor." ious to prevent an Iranian victory, but it puts this in the context of extending the gains it has already derived from the Gulf war — that is, to deepen the conflict between Iran and the Arab states and in the process to force Saudi Arabia to accept a closer relationship and greater dependence on, the United
The Islamic Republic's stated aims remain to overthrow the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. What the ruling Iranian group actually expects and how far it is prepared to go, of course, are
It itself probably cannot entirely determine the pace of events.
The argument between the military and the Pasdaran is evident. All of the material pressures in the mass organizations created by the Islamic regime are for continuing and ating the war.
Furthermore, goes on and the greater pressure it puts come a military necessity. government representatives the only effective answer to tempts to disrupt Iranian oil exports is by a big escalation in the land war.
On the other hand, the attacks on tankers carrying Iranian oil seem to have been having an uneven effect. Exports, which were halved at the start of the campaign, from 1.8 million barrels a day to 0.8, were reportedly back up to 1.2 to 1.4 million barrels a day by early June.
The enduring effect has been to swell the insurance rates enormously, offering the imperialist
The Iranian propaganda buildup for the offensive has been notably muted by comparison with the previous big on-
Despite the mobilization order and the massive numbers massed on the Iraqi front, it was not clear in advance of the expected Ramadan offensive how ambitious the Iranian objectives were. It could be simply to make further tactical gains, as in the previous offenand to maintain the credibility of war for the Iranian masses, particular the base of the Islamic regime.
The credibility of the war and important to those layers that benefit Islamic Republic and to the unity of the
The recent elections for the Islamic parliament were marked by sharp divisions among the clerical factions and per-
The results were annulled in some places and Khomeini had to make appeals for the interested parties to respect the electoral tribunal's decisions,
Since the elections, an argument has developed among the clergy about how far to carry the rules on "female mod-
For example, a Friday or two before Khamenei's sermon on the war, his subject was the dangers of oncoming summer weather and the tendency of women to cover themselves less care-
"Why are they unheedful of the feelings and passions of men. they know that men will become ner-
Don't they know that brother sister Hezbollahis [members of the "Party of God"] will react?" (Iran Times, June 1, 1984.)
On the other hand, the more liberal wing of the clergy has been complaining about zealots who carry the separation of the sexes in education to the point of building walls to separate male and female students.
In this crusade is obviously important to maintain the coherence of the clerical system and the morale of its devotees.
In the recent period also, the repression against the Tudeh Party has continto deepen, accompanied by more
For example, in early May, the Islamic regime put Ehsan Tabari, the leading theoretician of the Tudeh party on TV. He repudiated his life's work The Iran Times of May 11 reported (in English), "He said his works on Islamic history and philosophy should be discarded because they were based either on foreign sources - Zionists, imperialists or Marxists with their own axes to grind -or on Iranian sources who toadied to the shah or were the agents of freemasonry."
Tabari said over TV that he had suffered a stroke in prison and had come to his new understanding only after a long period of reflection in his prison cell. He made a special attack on the Soviet Union, saying that the World Council for Peace, which he described as a Soviet creation, had never condemned Iraq for attacking Iran. Soviet press on Iran
The May 30 Izvestia carried a statement in response from the exile leadership of the Tudeh Party which said, among other things, "The ruling regime in Iran, which is wracked by a deep political and social-economic crisis produced by the continuing destruction of the Iran-Iraq war and the inability of the regime to run the affairs of the country, into opposition from the popular masses in the Majlis elections. In order to distract the masses from the sorry state the country is in, they are preparing a new evil operation.
"The Iranian courts are preparing a wave of trials against hundreds of Tudeh Party members. In order to whip up an atmosphere of terror and to suppress expressions of mass discontent, intend to sentence arrested Tudeh Party members to death. The recent TV spectacular organized with the help of former agents of the shah's secret police who are now in the service of the Islamic republic indicated the beginning of this bloody plot."
Nothing appears in either or Pravda on international political questions except by express decision of the Soviet bureaucracy. the Kremlin does not let repression of companies bonanza as long as the attacks remain sporadic, even if numerous.
Ayatollah Khomeini now lives in retirement in Qom (DR)
"confessions" of imprisoned Tudeh leadlocal Communists ling bloc in relations with regimes with which it seeks good relations.
In the present context, the appearance of such an article almost certainly antagonism by the leadership toward the Islamic Republic on foreign policy questions.
Yasser Arafat has travelled to the Far East to try to persuade the North Koreans and Chinese to stop selling arms to Iran. has declared the PLO's demand for peace "with no annexations of Arab land."
Furthermore, in the last few weeks, an Iranian delegation travelled to the Soviet Union for talks with the Kremlin leaders. The upcoming Iranian offensive must certainly have been on the agenda. The Soviet Union could easily
International Viewpoint 18 June 1984