NEWS ANALYSIS : Iran Playing a Strong Hand in Gulf Game

Iran, hard-pressed to beat a pair of deuces just a few months back, now holds some aces in the Persian Gulf game.

Iraq is pressing peace on Iran like a smitten suitor, trying to brush away the animosity of a decade of grinding war and hostile truce. At the same time, the oil-rich gulf sheikdoms that once bankrolled Iraq have recently entertained Iranian emissaries.

The winning hand, a breakout from diplomatic isolation in the West and even-handed treatment from the Arab world, may be in the cards.

“I’d say they’re playing it well,” said Don Kerr, an analyst with London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies. “We’re talking about the Middle East, and the Iranians will keep all options open as long as they can.”

Describing the Iranians, along with the Syrians, as among the subtlest players in the region, Kerr explained that the ruling clerics in Tehran, the Iranian capital, have seen “an opportunity to improve their position--and they’re going after it.”

The approach seems contradictory, however: In succession, Iran has condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and demanded a withdrawal; accepted President Saddam Hussein’s offer of peace and restoration of diplomatic relations, and voiced alarm over the buildup of Western military forces in the gulf.

Now official hints and unconfirmed news reports indicate that Iran is prepared to crack the U.N.-mandated sanctions against Iraq.

“But that should not mean the Iranians are prepared to get into bed with Saddam,” Kerr observed. “They’re natural rivals, even without hostility. This goes back thousands of years. There are people out there who talk in current terms about the destruction of Nineveh.”

(The ancient city of Nineveh, on the Tigris River in what is now northern Iraq, was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Its capture in 612 BC by a coalition of peoples, including Medes from what is now western Iran, marked the end of the empire.)

Tehran, of course, is looking out for its own interests. Peace with Iraq, on Iranian terms, was an offer that could not be refused. And unease with Western naval, ground and air forces in the gulf region is instinctively political, because Tehran, like Baghdad, opposes outside domination of the waterway.

The probability that Iran will ship some food and medicines to its old enemy is based on Islamic and humanitarian principles, and it is a position with growing acceptance in many Arab countries.

“They are trying to balance a delicate situation,” observed Shireen T. Hunter, a Middle East specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “They have to be very careful. But by and large, I think they’ll abide by the embargo.”

So far, Iran has given nothing except the implied assurance that it will not pose a threat to the Iraqi flank while Hussein deals with the dangerous confrontation over his occupation of Kuwait. And Iraq has hedged against that assurance, reportedly keeping seven army corps of up to four divisions each along the 800-mile border.

Iraq, meanwhile, has withdrawn its troops from 100 square miles of Iranian territory held since the August, 1988, cease-fire and has agreed to share control of the strategic Shatt al Arab waterway that forms the southern frontier of the two countries.

Iranian action in the crisis has ruffled few feathers. American and British naval officers in the Persian Gulf say the Iranians are active, but not aggressive. Iranian pilots are flying American-made P-3 Orion reconnaissance planes along their shores, watching the foreign warships, but Tehran’s patrol-boat navy has made no threatening move.

But while Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani maintains a strong centrist grip on his country’s politics, some radical voices are still being raised. In Parliament on Monday, opposition Deputy Sadegh Khalkhali, a former judge and longtime Washington-baiter, said the weekend visit of Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, the first by a top Baghdad official since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, “flung wide open the door of solidarity and unity between the peoples of Iran and Iraq.”

He added: “The United States must leave this region in humiliation and disgrace. This region belongs to Muslims.”

And on Wednesday, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s spiritual leader, called for a “holy war” against the American military forces in the gulf. A Tehran Radio broadcast, monitored by the British Broadcasting Corp., said the religious primate of Iran’s Muslims promised martyrdom for anyone killed opposing the U.S. presence.

Meanwhile, Rafsanjani also opposes the presence of the Western fleet, but he reminded Aziz that the invasion of Kuwait brought on this situation. He accepted the benefits of peace in their own war and called again on Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait.

For now, the potential promise of food and medical supplies has yet to materialize. The Tehran Times said Wednesday that the Rafsanjani regime, whose policies the Tehran Times reflects, is “studying the issue,” and it added: “Iranian officials are convinced that the Muslim Iraqi people should not pay for the mistakes of their government. Iraqi women and children had no role in the occupation of Kuwait by Baghdad troops.’

The Associated Press, quoting what it termed a well-informed source in Tehran, reported that in return for food and medical supplies, Iraq will ship refined oil to Iran, whose refinery capacity at Abadan and other cities was damaged severely by Iraqi shelling during the 1980-88 war.

Hunter, the Washington analyst, called the situation in Iran after the 1988 truce “very emotional.” The military had collapsed, the economy was devastated and, she said, the attitude in Europe and the United States was that Iran would abandon its independent policies “and come crawling back.”

With the end of the Cold War, the strategically placed country of 50 million people no longer had a high profile in world affairs.

The economic situation has gotten little better, with inflation and unemployment detracting from efforts to rebuild the ruined industrial sector. Oil remains the only important source of revenue, and it has provided Tehran with an unexpected windfall, with Iraqi and Kuwaiti exports embargoed and world prices rising.

Iran has continued to hold to its OPEC pricing policy on oil, similar to Iraq’s, of controlled production to reach and maintain a target price. The Saudi Arabian decision to pump more oil to compensate for blocked Iraqi and Kuwaiti shipments was opposed by Iran.

The Tehran Times said in an editorial: “It is in fact a service to the U.S. and its Western allies and an effort to protect the Saud ruling family and their reign in Saudi Arabia. . . . There is a lot of oil in the international markets and in tankers floating on the high seas.”

The paper noted that Iraqi Oil Minister Issam Abdul-Rahim Chalabi was in Aziz’s delegation in Tehran over the weekend and suggested that his presence signaled continued agreement on oil policy between Baghdad and Tehran. Chalabi also could have been on hand to arrange the reported shipments of Iraqi refined oil to Iran.

Other news reports have suggested that Iran might help Iraq break the oil embargo by transferring Iraqi crude to Iranian pipelines for delivery beyond the blockade zone. Kerr, the London analyst, said he doubts that Iran would want to make that commitment, which could potentially risk a blockade of Iran’s shipping points.

“The Iranians don’t want to side with Saddam,” Hunter said. “If he’s victorious, what’s to stop him from turning against them again? He’s the same guy who signed the Algiers Agreement (which divided the Shatt al Arab between Iran and Iraq), and then he tore it up and went to war.”