Don’t Underrate Tehran’s Cynicism : It has to know it’s playing a dangerous game

Iran, which condemned Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, now hints at a degree of sympathy for the aggressor. Do these unexpected noises signal a basic shift in Tehran’s policy, just two years after its brutal eight year conflict with Iraq finally ended? That seems unlikely. Seizing the moment, Iran appears instead to be acting with cold opportunism to further its own tactical goals, not the least of which is keeping Saddam Hussein securely tied down someplace else while Iran struggles to rebuild its war-weakened economy.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” runs the old Middle East adage. Iran’s leaders, for all the hopeful talk that their harsh attitudes may be mellowing and their dogmatic policies moderating, continue to regard the United States as the foremost of their ideological foes, the embodiment of all they most despise in the modern world. Iraq is now confronting that enemy. Iraq therefore deserves to be regarded if not exactly as a friend, and surely not as an ally, then at least as something of a kindred spirit.

Certainly Saddam Hussein has done all within his power to win Tehran’s political support. Confronted with a formidable American buildup in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, he moved quickly to pacify Iran, humiliatingly yielding to all of its demands for ending the state of war between the two countries. Beyond this he has solemnly taken to echoing the fire-breathing slogans that the leaders of Iran’s Islamic revolution themselves so dearly love to utter.

His fight, he proclaims, is on behalf of Islam and against the West, in defense of national rights and against the shame and horror of neo-colonialism. The Iranians are undoubtedly too smart to swallow this hypocrisy. Hussein, after all, has always prided himself on running one of the region’s more aggressively secular regimes, and if his attempted grab of Kuwait doesn’t qualify as naked colonialism then nothing does. But no matter. It’s not the honesty of the thought that counts but how it comes out sounding. What the Iranians are hearing, even if they doubt its sincerity, is ideological music to their ears.

The big question, of course, is what practical effect all this might have. The early hint from Tehran that it could mean Iraq will now begin to get some material help from Iran, in exchange for Iraqi oil, was quickly denied. That doesn’t rule out some cross-border movement of goods. But Iran must be careful. It can’t afford to be seen openly violating the U.N. Security Council embargo on Iraq, since that could subject Iran in turn to U.N.-approved sanctions.

Iran’s main aim is probably just to keep the Iraq-U.S. confrontation boiling away for as long as possible, without itself risking any direct involvement. Certainly the last thing it wants to see is an Iraq made politically stronger and grown even more arrogant for having successfully defied the United States. Iran is risking very little by tacitly siding with the most visible current enemy of the Great Satan. Saddam Hussein, on his part, can only be grateful for any little bit of encouragement he can get.