Impulses Abound for Triggers in the Gulf

Since last summer, when the United States reflagged 11 Kuwaiti tankers and dispatched a flotilla to the Persian Gulf, the risk of a U.S.-Iran military confrontation has been ever-present. Now the two countries have come to blows.

Until recently, the United States benefited from a high degree of Iranian caution. It has always been clear that, so long as Iran made a rational calculation of its interests and of the overwhelming disparity in American and Iranian firepower, it would avoid confronting the United States.

Less clear has been Iran’s ability to restrain the more radical and unruly elements of its Revolutionary Guards. Again, until now, Iran’s leadership has shown an impressive and surprising ability to maintain tight command and control over all elements of Iranian armed forces.

The United States had also shown caution in its approach toward Iran. Indeed, the first U.S. retaliation against an Iranian missile attack, which damaged the reflagged Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City last summer, was restrained and measured--as even Iranian authorities admitted.

In view of this record of mutual circumspection, the question about this week’s escalation is: Why now? Iranian mines have been sown in the gulf before, and the United States has retaliated, though not to the extent of destroying two high-value oil platforms. What, it is being asked, did Iran hope to achieve by heightening the tempo of the conflict?

The most common view is that the minelaying, plus Iran’s overreaction to the U.S. attacks on the oil platforms, reflected internal Iranian politics, especially a power struggle between radical and conservative elements. It also has been argued that the Revolutionary Guards have a personal and institutional stake in seeing the Iran-Iraq conflict continue: If the war ends, they risk losing their power and perquisites. They may have sought to provoke the United States to a level of antagonism that would foreclose the possibility of a negotiated end to the war.

Also, the radicals hope to gain advantage in next month’s second round of parliamentary elections by intensifying anti-American feelings and discrediting those Iranian leaders who are more willing to make compromises and reach an informal accommodation with the United States.

There are other, less obvious explanations. Iran’s behavior reflects more than anything else its bitterness, desperation and frustration at Western unwillingness to even consider Iranian grievances. This is particularly hard for the Iranians as they observe the tolerant reaction to Iraqi atrocities, most recently the massacre of Kurdish Iraqi civilians by poison gas.

It is a mistake to look only at Iran in explaining the current sharpening of the U.S.-Iran confrontation. U.S. attitudes and calculations toward Iran and the Iran-Iraq war also have been changing.

Since the Iran-Contra affair, U.S. policy toward the area has become Arab-focused, if not Arab-obsessed, with little consideration for the strategic and political implications for Iran and Southwest Asia. Unable to take any meaningful steps to palliate Arab concerns in the Arab-Israeli conflict, the United States has compensated by adopting a totally pro-Arab stance in the Persian Gulf.

Because of this shift, the U.S. approach toward the Iran-Iraq conflict has changed from one of containing Iran, a goal that has been achieved, to punishing Iran, an effort that has been only partially successful. Thus little credence was given in Washington to the possibility that the mines discovered last week had been in the water from some time, or that they had been placed there by Revolutionary Guards in defiance of the Iranian regime--or even by Iraq, which benefits more than anyone else from U.S.-Iranian hostility.

There is yet another possible explanation for the fierce U.S. response in the gulf this week: to demonstrate support for Kuwait for having stood firm against the hijackers of the Kuwait Airways plane, and to please Saudi Arabia, which has often complained that the United States has not hit Iran hard enough. Domestically, retaliation for the attack on the frigate Samuel Roberts diverted Americans’ attention from the impasse that U.S. policy has reached regarding the strife on the West Bank and in Gaza and also in Panama.

In short, explanations for escalation of military action in the Persian Gulf should be sought in Washington as well as in Tehran. The United States is justified in wanting to take revenge against Iran. But it should be aware that, by pursuing this course, it may jeopardize its own interests--especially if it does so in a haphazard way, without clearly assessing the broader impact on Iran and the region.

At the extreme, what happened this week could lead in the direction of Iran’s progressive disintegration, to its eventually being turned into another Lebanon. Certainly, the chances of any form of U.S.-Iranian rapprochement, the professed goal of President Reagan’s arms sales to Iran, are nil. The spread of Islamic fundamentalism has been aided. And the Soviet Union has been provided with new opportunities to increase its influence in Iran and potentially throughout the area. If any part of this dire scenario comes true, whatever emotional satisfaction the United States gained this week will swiftly disappear.