Angling for the Spoils of Peace : Sudden U.S. Interest Unsettles All the Iran-Iraq War Watchers

Canny players of the world power market, like canny stockbrokers everywhere, discount major events in advance.

After years of no policy concerning the Iran-Iraq war--the professed “policy” of “let the carnage last till doomsday” being no more than an inhumane cover for a reluctance or an inability to face any realistic postwar scenarios--the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Soviet Union are slowly facing up to the fact that this war, like all others, will end.

In that cold light dawning, they are beginning to hedge their bets and look for a silver lining.

The Soviets have long feared that a gearing-down of the fighting, particularly along the southern sector of the Iran-Iraq border around Shatt al Arab, might be followed by an acceleration of Iranian material and political aid to the Islamic guerrillas struggling against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan.

The Reagan Administration, which has professed to see nothing but evil beneath the mullahs’ turbans, has ignored this perspective and has fed Arab fears that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s legions, after the victory party in Baghdad, will march off to overthrow Kuwait or Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

This has been reinforced by a visceral popular disgust with the Iranian regime--despite the fact that in many of its alleged unattractive particulars it closely resembles the Saudi regime, which is regarded as a U.S. ally, and the Afghan Moujahedeen, who are viewed in this country as anti-communist freedom fighters.

Iranian military success in the Fao peninsula campaign of last winter and Iraqi military failure in the central sector, or Mehran, campaign last summer have at last moved such speculations about the post-war political environment off the back burner.

Despite its massive superiority in arms, it now seems that Iraq cannot win, and may lose. Iran may make decisive gains in its next offensive. And the rumored delivery of Chinese jet fighter planes to Iran early in 1987, if true, could further sway the opinions of observers about the likely outcome of the war. Like the American spare parts that reportedly were delivered to Iran in return for the release of hostages in Lebanon, the Chinese planes might make little difference on the battlefield. But the image of two of the world’s major powers helping formerly isolated Iran cannot be ignored.

In the case of former national-security adviser Robert C. McFarlane’s reported contacts with Tehran, the medium is the message. The message is: “Let’s talk.” About what? About hostages, to be sure. But if McFarlane did make a trip to Tehran, as has been reported, it is unlikely that a close and now conveniently unofficial adviser of the President could travel so far with so thin an agenda. (McFarlane said Thursday that stories about a journey to Iran were “fanciful,” but he would not deny that he had made overtures to the Iranian government.)

The other players in the Middle East power game scarcely know what to believe. To hedge their bets, they will have to assume that the possibility exists of a rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

To the Arab rulers in the Persian Gulf states, this means that it may be time to cut a deal with Tehran and trade Iranian predominance in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries for continued tenure in power. Hence, the removal of Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani as the Saudi oil minister was generally interpreted as a nod within OPEC toward Iran.

To the Soviets, all this means a time of anxiety. They are wondering how bad an American-Iranian rapprochement, or even an American-brokered peace in the Iran-Iraq war, might be. At best, it could lessen the perception of Iran as an unpredictable and destabilizing force in the region.

The Soviet Union tends to benefit from instability in the Middle East. At worst, the United States might maneuver a change of government in Baghdad that would facilitate a modest Iranian victory while preserving a modicum of Iraqi autonomy and dignity. Then Washington could confirm its strategic hegemony in the Persian Gulf region, reassure its Arab allies, strengthen the position of the West-leaning faction in Tehran and dangerously raise the cost of continuing the Soviet suppression of Afghanistan. We would like this. The Chinese would like it. The Soviets would hate it.

So, do the McFarlane contacts mean that Washington has finally realized that the Islamic Republic of Iran is not only here to stay but is also capable of pragmatic and even moderate behavior? Perhaps not. But as long as the possibility is not laid to rest, international political actors will behave as though it does.

By deliberation or not, McFarlane appears to be the flagman signaling the Iranian victory train leaving the station with the United States on board.

Perhaps the question now is: Who will succeed in tying Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to the tracks first--the Americans who stand to gain so much by sponsoring a peace, or the Soviets who stand to lose so much by letting the Americans do it?