The Issue Is Radical Islam, Not Shipping

Gen. Omar Bradley once called Korea “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.” That is surely true of the looming U.S. military confrontation with Iran. The “wrong war” comes from believing that the United States and Iran have a strategic squabble in the Persian Gulf. In fact, they have complementary interests regarding the Soviet Union--as President Reagan recognized in his abortive dealings with Iran. And Iran’s interest in the free flow of oil is greater even than that of the United States.

The “right war” in the gulf is of concern to many countries: to contain the spread of the Islamic revolution.

Current U.S. tactics won’t win either “war.”

As U.S. Navy vessels move up and down the gulf escorting Kuwaiti oil and gas tankers, every day the possibility grows that the United States will be provoked into attacking Iran. If so, the United States will lose, for it is neither willing nor able to finish the job of uprooting the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his supporters. That would entail eliminating Iran’s military capability, overthrowing Khomeini, dealing for years with a fractious and vengeful population, and achieving all these despite certain Soviet opposition. Nor, at least while Khomeini survives, could America expect to intimidate Iran into going to the bargaining table. Yet half-measures, like destroying Silkworm missiles at the Strait of Hormuz, would give the revolution a shot in the arm, further discredit any Iranians who are interested in a future opening to the United States, and provide the Soviets with more influence in Iran than they dare to hope for.

Rhetoric aside, the ayatollah cannot welcome picking a fight with the world’s most powerful nation. Even with last week’s tragedy in Mecca, and the attempt to pin it on “the Great Satan,” Iran’s response to U.S. naval activity has been more smoke than fire, and it may never be more than that before good judgment prevails on both sides and the crisis abates.

But the story does not end here. Khomeini has already gained ground in the other “war” by the nature of American activity. It is true that U.S. motives for reflagging Kuwaiti tankers did not derive from specific Iranian actions against American interests. The military show of force began as the byproduct of an effort that was designed to support Iraqi morale, counter the Soviets in Kuwait and offset the effects of the Iran arms deal. Yet for years Khomeini has pursued his Islamic political ambitions by baiting the United States with both rhetoric and action. Now, in our show of readiness for a military confrontation, we have responded to this baiting, but in terms that favor Khomeini in the deeper goal of spreading his revolution.

From the perspective of American attitudes, a show of military force can deter, it can intimidate and it can reassure other states and domestic public opinion. That can be true even if the use of force would impose severe penalties. Yet this particular show of force also risks casting the United States in the role of Goliath against one of the world’s most improbable Davids. That, at least, is how the current military minuet is viewed by millions of people throughout the Islamic world. More than anything else, this explains why gulf Arab leaders are fearful of providing the United States with military support.

Thus Khomeini was not just puffing propaganda when he accused Washington of provoking the Mecca riot. He was trying to sustain an image of the United States as the enemy of Islam and to characterize the Saudis, along with other leaders in Arab countries friendly to us, as America’s lickspittles.

There is no need for the United States to lose this war of ideology and nerves. But holding firm to the current policy and backing it with military power will have positive effects only with countries that respond to traditional means of statecraft. If the United States wants to counter the longer-term appeal of Khomeini and his ilk in the Islamic world, it will have to employ different tools.

In brief, ground in which the seeds of fundamentalism’s political aspect are being sown must be made as infertile as possible. Lessening the risks of a U.S. psychological defeat is one imperative. The situation in the gulf brings to mind the defeat of the mighty Russian navy by supposedly backward Japan at the Battle of Tsushima Strait in 1905; the political shock waves had profound effect. A minor bloodying of the U.S. Navy by Iran, even if promptly avenged, would also reverberate widely among peoples whose sympathies Khomeini is trying to cultivate at U.S. expense.

With this latest U.S. encounter with militant Islam, a force likely to have some staying power, it has become inescapably necessary for America to begin understanding the phenomenon and learning to cope with it. Ironically, President Reagan was groping in that direction with his ill-designed opening to Iran.

The United States must also relearn the lesson that failure to attend to developments in the Middle East does not mean that we get off scot-free. This is most important in relation to the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict, which provides the fundamentalists with their most potent argument for cudgeling the West--particularly the United States. Abdicating the responsibility for peacemaking thus leads the United States to be doubly damned in much of the Islamic world.

Many Islamic fundamentalists would still object to what the United States is and does even if it pursued more sensitive and far-sighted policies throughout the Middle East. But undertaking that effort, rather than playing into the hands of Khomeini through military confrontation, is the beginning of sensible policy.