Leaders of Syria, Iran Discuss a ‘Powder Keg’ : Diplomacy: Rafsanjani presides over a military parade in Tehran marking Iraqi aggression against his country.

Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pivotal player in the Persian Gulf crisis, presided Saturday over a military parade marking Iraqi aggression against his country and welcomed Syrian President Hafez Assad, an Arab ally of Iran in that country’s 1980-88 war with Baghdad.

Assad has committed Syrian troops to the Arab forces facing Iraq, and his three-day visit to Tehran is expected to center on the explosive confrontation in the gulf, where Iran and Iraq remain rivals for power. Syrian officials in Damascus have suggested that they will also discuss the situation of Western hostages in Lebanon.

After greeting Assad at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport, the Iranian president led ceremonies at the nearby Azadi (Freedom) Square on the 10th anniversary of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s invasion of southwestern Iran. Tens of thousands had gathered in the square as flights of U.S.-made F-14, F-5 and F-4 fighters flew in formation, low over the Iranian capital.

At precisely the hour of Iraq’s 1980 invasion, air raid sirens sounded to mark the moment, the beginning of a grueling war that ended two years ago in a hostile truce and was formally concluded one week after Iraqi tanks rolled into Kuwait with Hussein’s acceptance of a final peace on Iranian terms.

Now, Rafsanjani noted, the United States and Iraq, “two diabolical forces that lined up against us, are facing each other” across the gulf.

“We are next to a powder keg and therefore should be alert and vigilant,” he told the crowd.

Rafsanjani and Assad have condemned the invasion of Kuwait, but both have expressed sharp concerns about the resultant deployment of Western troops, planes and warships in the gulf region in support of U.N. resolutions demanding an Iraqi withdrawal.

Said Assad in a Sept. 13 speech in Damascus: “We are not with (in favor of) the presence of foreign troops; Syria is not with the presence of foreign troops anywhere in the Arab world. But the issue is not that of foreign troops because the problem started before foreign troops came to the area, and it was the problem that brought to us foreign troops.”

He went on to demand an “Arab solution” to the confrontation and said deployment of Syrian soldiers in Saudi Arabia is designed to put the crisis in Arab hands.