Iran Mobilizes Recruits for New Gulf Offensive

Thousands of Iranian recruits left for the war front Sunday as Tehran’s new military commander prepared for a land offensive against Iraq, officials and diplomats said.

Tehran Radio said in a Sunday broadcast that the Iranian volunteers left for the front from 18 Iranian cities amid colorful celebrations that included the ritual slaughter of sheep and the chanting of anti-American slogans.

Iran began its mobilization to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a bloody 1963 uprising in Tehran unleashed by the supporters of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini to topple the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and crush the monarch’s secular “White Revolution.”

Destination Unclear

It was not immediately clear which part of the 750-mile front the Iranian recruits were reinforcing. Iranian troops still hold strategic strips of border territory in Iraq’s northernmost province of Kurdistan and could launch an offensive there with the aid of Kurdish rebels.

But on the southern front, Tehran has fared less well. Iraq launched successive lightning offensives in April and May to recapture the Faw Peninsula and the Shalamcheh border region east of Basra from Iran.

Persian Gulf-based diplomats said Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani, appointed Thursday as Iran’s acting military commander to reverse the recent battlefield setbacks, needs a victory to boost lagging Iranian morale.

They said that should Iranian troops be defeated on land for the third time in a row, it could cost Rafsanjani his job and Iran the 7 1/2-year war.

“Rafsanjani has to launch an offensive to prove to himself, to the Iranian army and to Ayatollah Khomeini, that he can win,” one envoy said. “If he fails, morale in Iran could drop so low it could well affect the outcome of the war.”

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency on Sunday quoted Rafsanjani as ruling out the merger of the regular armed forces and the elite Revolutionary Guards, which come under separate commands and have had different pay scales and privileges.

Under the change in command that Khomeini ordered, Rafsanjani now controls all Iran’s military forces and will make adjustments to bring more of the privileges of the volunteer Revolutionary Guards to the conscripted armed forces, the news agency said.

“Some necessary changes will certainly take place,” Rafsanjani said.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, Iraq reported that its warplanes attacked a bridge in western Iran used by Tehran’s military to supply the war front, the Iraqi news agency INA said.

The agency said the target was the Taleh Zang bridge, north of the western Iranian city of Dezful, and that all planes returned safely to base. The railway line from the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz to Tehran runs through Taleh Zang, but it was not clear if targeted bridge carried rail or road traffic.