NEWS ANALYSIS : Hussein’s Moves Seen as Steps in Calculated Plan

The latest standoff between the United States and Iraq is the climax of a calculated military and political strategy by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, according to several senior diplomats and Iraqi military planners in Baghdad.

The Iraqi plan is to use a recently rebuilt antiaircraft missile system and a rejuvenated air force to confront Washington and its allies over the “no-fly zone” in southern Iraq. Baghdad contends that both that zone and one in the north are bold violations of international law.

The strategy, which was months in the planning, appears timed to confront President Bush and allied air patrols in the final days of Bush’s term to focus the global debate on a series of conflicts between the West and the Arab and Islamic world.

Hussein’s trusted aide, Deputy Prime Minister Tarik Aziz, indicated during a Saturday evening press conference that it was Iraq that took the initiative in the latest crisis.

Saying that “the main issue for Iraq now is challenging the illegal no-fly zone that was imposed unilaterally by the allied nations,” Aziz reminded reporters that Iraq warned the allies when they launched their air patrols over the southern zone last August that “we would resist it and we would choose the time and means of our resistance.”

There was other evidence of the Iraqi regime’s strategy.

A day before last week’s allied air strike in southern Iraq, one of Hussein’s top military strategists, a key figure in Iraq’s once-massive arms-acquisition program, sat at a large wooden table with two other key regime insiders and explained in detail the regime’s military and political strategy in its latest standoff with America and the West.

The strategy includes a redeployment of missiles around the capital that Gen. Amir Rasheed asserted “has the ability to harm the enemy severely” if the allies attack Baghdad.

The military strategy session, broadcast to the nation on state-run television, was seen at first by some Baghdad analysts and diplomats as little more than bluster.

But a transcript of the forum and interviews with diplomats confirmed that the discussion afforded a rare glimpse of Baghdad’s motives in the showdown with America.

Rasheed, director of Iraq’s military industrialization committee, told his audience that Baghdad had “managed to revitalize” missiles already located inside the allied-patrolled southern zone to “increase their efficiency.”

“The missiles were there south of the 32nd Parallel long before that time, but our leadership decision at that time was to avoid any confrontation” with the allies until Baghdad chose the appropriate time, he said.

“When we felt it was the appropriate opportunity to restart the activities of the Iraqi flights in that area . . . Iraq redeployed its missiles in a . . . manner which ensures (their effectiveness) against the American warplanes.”

Rasheed asserted that “there were many clashes which were not mentioned before the (Dec. 27) incident of shooting down of the Iraqi plane,” which most Americans viewed as the start of the latest crisis with Iraq but which the Pentagon has confirmed came at least a day after Iraq had launched a missile at another U.S. warplane in a separate incident.

The Iraqi strategist said Iraq then redeployed the missile batteries in the south. ‘The real issue, frankly, is the missiles were deployed there by an Iraqi decision to curb the American warplanes,” he said.

Rasheed confirmed that Iraq now has 350 combat-ready planes--a number that coincided with estimates by the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London--which he said Iraq intends to use against allied aircraft in the no-fly zones in the coming days.

Gen. Safa Ahmed Khalil, a retired Iraqi air force pilot, estimated the number of allied warplanes now enforcing the northern and southern air-exclusion zones at 250, a figure he said was based on Iraqi radar surveillance. Khalil concluded that Iraq’s antiaircraft systems are “more efficient and more condensed now than . . . during the Gulf War.”

The generals offered no explanation for why Iraq so far has failed to shoot down an allied warplane, aside from indicating that the ultimate goal of the operation is political rather than military. And there was no independent confirmation of the generals’ unusually candid military assessments.

Diplomats here agreed that Iraq has initiated the latest crisis to bring international attention to its anger over the air-exclusion zones and win sympathy in the Arab and Islamic world for its cause.

And Iraqi political analyst Hameed Saeed, who joined the generals at the forum the day before Wednesday’s allied attack, forecast the reaction of Arab and Islamic nations to such a strike.

“There is a great difference in the political environment between then and now, and there will be a real reaction against such a move,” he said.

The Iraqi regime exploited that reaction Saturday in Baghdad’s National Theater, where the regime’s second most powerful official, Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of Hussein’s ruling Revolutionary Command Council, inaugurated a three-day International Islamic Conference that included representatives from fundamentalist Islamic movements from Indonesia to Morocco.

“Every man here has a task to do--to go against the American state, which is dealing with Third World countries as a colonialist,” Ibrahim told the 1,000 delegates who paid their own way to Baghdad to attend the conference. “They are colonizing Lebanon, they are colonizing Somalia, where they are killing Muslims, and they are responsible for the killing of Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“Our stand now can lead us to the final victory, and this stand by the Iraqi people is as welcomed by our friends as it is feared by our enemies.”

Diplomats in Baghdad concluded that, in implementing his strategy, Hussein baited President Bush with a series of irritants, in case the missile deployment failed to draw allied fire.

“Saddam was pushing,” one diplomat said. “The cause was a just one to many. Many governments have criticized the no-fly zones as illegal, and they’re trying to divert the dimension of the conflict from U.S. versus Iraq to Islam versus the West. But what happened in the last few days and weeks was fairly well calibrated. Saddam tried very hard to provoke, and Bush bought it.”

“Saddam set the trap, and Bush stepped into it,” said another diplomat, who noted that Iraq, preparing for the air strike, shut down one of its two national television channels and stored the equipment against a repetition of the 1991 allied bombing of Baghdad’s broadcasting station.

“In any case, they were inviting this bombing,” the diplomat said.

“For Saddam, the whole purpose of this crisis is political--not military--to bring the siege of Iraq to the forefront of world attention,” another diplomat said.

One diplomat concluded that the confrontation has escalated to the point that the leaders of both Iraq and the United States are alternating in taking the initiative.

“Certainly both sides (the U.S. and Iraq) are setting the pace. It’s a game with two gamblers--Saddam and President Bush,” he said, adding that he fully expects more armed confrontations between the allies and Iraq in the days leading up to Inauguration Day, which will bring a new Administration to power in Washington.

“Saddam Hussein has come to the conclusion that he has won some points, and he can continue this process of brinkmanship. . . . For Saddam, another strike, two strikes, so what? For him, one, two, three, four more strikes is nothing.”

The diplomat also predicted, however, that the Iraqi government will change its tone almost from the day President Clinton is sworn into office.

“It’s the Iraqis’ deep conviction that with Bush it was personal,” he said. “They don’t expect a lot from Clinton, but, at least, they think he will be better.”