Analysis : Iran’s Predicament: Adhere to Ideology or Benefit From U.N. Cease-Fire

The U.N. Security Council decision to impose a cease-fire in the Persian Gulf War has presented Iran with a thorny dilemma: whether to adhere to goals dictated by revolutionary ideology or to reap some pragmatic gains from the respite offered by a truce.

Iran has given no official response so far to the 10-point resolution adopted unanimously by the Security Council on Monday. The resolution, which is theoretically binding on Iran and Iraq as members of the United Nations, calls for an immediate cease-fire in the almost seven-year-old war and withdrawal of all troops to recognized international boundaries.

In Bonn on Thursday, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati repeated Iran’s long-held position that it rejects any U.N. cease-fire resolution that does not label Iraq the aggressor. However, he also said his country will not fire on ships in the Persian Gulf unless its own vessels are attacked or Iraq resumes attacks on shipping.

Distaste for U.N. Action

In general, Iranian authorities have left little doubt about their distaste for the Security Council’s action.

President Ali Khamenei said Wednesday that his government “will pursue the war until the elimination of the regime governing Iraq,” according to press agency accounts from Tehran.

This is in accordance with Iran’s longstanding condition for ending the war, which began in September, 1980, when Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein, hoping to take advantage of weaknesses in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolutionary regime in Tehran, sent his troops across the border.

In the intervening seven years, the Iranians have battled the Iraqis back to the border on all fronts, even going beyond that in a small Analysis

salient of Iraqi territory that they occupied last year, and still hold, near the Iraqi port of Al Faw.

The 87-year-old Khomeini, Iran’s spiritual leader, has declared that Iran will not enter negotiations to settle the conflict until Hussein and his Arab Baath Socialist Party are overthrown and Iraq agrees to pay war reparations. For obvious reasons, the conditions have never received much of a hearing in Baghdad.

In addition to the strong patriotic argument against giving up the struggle before achieving victory--Iranians often cite America’s attitude toward the Japanese in World War II--diplomats in the region also see domestic political reasons supporting the revolutionary rationale for continuing to fight. Among the reasons cited by one regional envoy are these:

--The war serves to keep in check contending factions in Tehran, which have been jostling for power in recent months.

--If the war were to end suddenly, a rash of economic problems, including large-scale unemployment, would suddenly surface.

--Within Iran, there does not appear to be widespread discontent with current conditions. The diplomat noted that the majority of Iranians, even under the late Shah of Iran, lived in relatively austere conditions, without such amenities as running water or electricity.

--The army’s image has been skillfully turned into that of a victorious people’s militia. If the war ends, the army’s leaders will return to the capital as a new power center with which the mullah-politicians would have to contend.

--To accept the cease-fire terms now would put Iranian leaders in an awkward position since they were offered essentially the same terms four years ago. It would be difficult to justify the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of additional casualties suffered without apparent gain for Iran.

Whatever Iranian officials say about the resolution, the true test of Tehran’s intentions will come in the ensuing weeks, when U.S. Navy warships settle down into the routine of escorting re-registered Kuwaiti tankers through the gulf.

In large measure, diplomats believe, Iran’s actions will be governed by Iraq, which is under immense Western and Soviet pressure to abide by the cease-fire. Since the start of the “tanker war” in the gulf in 1983, Iran has attacked shipping from Arab ports only after Iraqi warplanes have attacked tankers carrying Iranian crude oil from Iran’s Kharg Island terminal.

Diplomatic Weight

The diplomatic weight of the resolution will be hard to ignore. It is a rare occasion when the five permanent members of the council--the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, France and China--can agree on using the U.N. Charter to force an end to a conflict.

The last time that the council invoked that power, which is laid out in Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, was over the Korean War in the 1950s, according to diplomats here, and that action took place only after the Soviet Union boycotted the event.

Important to both sides is the fact that under Chapter 7, whichever party first violates the truce becomes the aggressor, no matter who started the war.

But diplomats believe that, these considerations aside, Iran will exercise even greater pragmatism in observing a de facto truce.

Without a tanker war, Iran would be free to export its oil to the Far East at appreciably lower costs than before. Shipping costs would be reduced, as would repair of damaged installations.

With oil prices hovering around $20 a barrel, Iran stands to gain significantly at a time when it needs to refill its empty coffers with foreign exchange.

Iran buys most of its weaponry on the international black market, at prices considerably higher than those charged by national governments.

Replenishing Stockpiles

If Iran is worried about the consequences of an arms embargo--the penalty that observers consider most likely to be applied by the United Nations if Iran does not comply with the resolution--it may want to replenish its stockpiles in advance.

Such pragmatic considerations, Western diplomats believe, are probably only temporary at best. When the summer temperatures over the gulf battlefields cool down and Iran senses a chance to further tighten its grip on Iraq, the chances are strong that it will risk alienating world opinion by launching a new offensive.

“The Iranians aren’t fools,” commented one diplomat. “They will do whatever is in their short-term best interests. Right now, that means observing the cease-fire.”