NEWS ANALYSIS : Clinton Inherits Policy Dilemma : Foreign crisis: Like Reagan, an inexperienced leader faces Inauguration Day under a shadow from the Middle East.

Once again, as happened 12 years ago, a new President comes to power with his inaugural festivities shadowed by a continuing crisis in the Middle East.

Just as Ronald Reagan inherited from Jimmy Carter the problem of a violence-prone Iran determined to export its Islamic revolution, so Bill Clinton must take over the confrontation with Iraq begun by George Bush.

And like Reagan, Clinton will find that what Americans ultimately think about the way he responds to this intrusive turn of events will influence their judgment on his presidency throughout his term.

For the President-elect and his aides, the immediate consequence of the latest military attack on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is to dash their hopes that inaugural week would give them an uninterrupted opportunity to bask in a kindly spotlight and focus the attention of Americans on their domestic agenda. Sunday’s television pictures of antiaircraft shells bursting over Baghdad--ironic counterpoint to the fireworks that heralded Clinton’s arrival here--demonstrated that his cherished inaugural imagery will be at least partly eclipsed by the harsh realities of foreign crisis.

Over the longer term, although clear differences exist between the long-running crisis with Iran that began under Carter and Bush’s continuing military confrontation with Iraq, the parallels point up ominous problems for Clinton and for U.S. policy.

In 1981, Reagan, a President with little foreign policy background, inherited from his predecessor the complex issue of how to deal with Iran after the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s Islamic revolution transformed Tehran from trusted ally to bitter foe. The challenge began on a deceptively positive note: the release on Inauguration Day of U.S. hostages seized 444 days earlier at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. But almost immediately, Khomeini’s support for violent Islamic fundamentalists in Lebanon and elsewhere led to new hostage-taking and a challenge to the United States.

Reagan’s efforts to respond contributed to the biggest foreign policy disaster of his presidency: the arms-for-hostages deal.

Now Clinton, who also lacks foreign policy experience, is about to inherit an equally dangerous Iraqi problem--one that has defied Bush’s every effort at solution. “I don’t expect any great change in (Hussein’s) behavior, and I think we’ll have a problem with him starting next Thursday just as the Republicans have,” Warren Christopher, Clinton’s nominee for secretary of state, said in a television interview.

Clinton will confront that problem handicapped by political weaknesses in foreign policy, a staff that still has many holes in it and few good policy options to pursue.

What gives the issue its enduring bite is that Clinton--as he was during the campaign--remains suspect in the eyes of both voters and foreign leaders on foreign policy issues. Partly it is his lack of experience. Partly it is the widespread sense that Democrats have been laggard in using force in foreign crises in recent decades. As a result, any moves by Clinton that seem to depart from the course Bush has set almost certainly will be questioned.

One recent poll, for example, showed that Americans, by large majorities, believe Clinton is better able than congressional Republican leaders to handle virtually any domestic policy problem. But majorities rated the GOP in Congress as better able than Clinton to deal with both foreign policy and national defense, despite the long tradition of presidential domination of those areas.

Clinton has tried to assuage those worries by emphasizing that he will stick close to Bush’s policy, an effort his aides continued Sunday. “Saddam Hussein refuses to comply with the U.N. resolutions, and he’s not going to get away with it--not with President Bush, not with President-elect Clinton and not with President Clinton,” Clinton spokesman George Stephanopoulos said on the CBS program “Face the Nation.”

Yet Bush’s policy clearly has not succeeded in changing Iraqi conduct. About the best that Bush’s top aides can offer about the prospects for their policies is the hope--voiced by Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in a television interview Sunday--that the economic sanctions against Iraq eventually will succeed in “denying him (Hussein) the ability to rebuild his military force.”

If Clinton does choose to continue Bush’s policy of steady but limited confrontation with Iraq, he may find, as Bush found at the end of the Persian Gulf War, that Hussein’s ability to stay in power far outstrips what U.S. officials have believed possible.

In addition, the Iraqi challenge is all the more unwelcome for Clinton and his advisers because it is so untimely. They had very much counted on being able to use this week to erase the negative images fostered by recent days of news focused on broken campaign pledges and ethical lapses on the part of Cabinet nominees.

Even Republican leaders said that they believe the goodwill traditionally generated by an inauguration will go a long way toward easing Clinton past those comparatively minor recent difficulties. “Let’s face it. All these problems that have been sort of the transition problems the last couple of weeks, I think, will be wiped out by the inaugural,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said in an interview on CNN.

And Bush has taken steps to reduce the distraction factor. The Pentagon, for example, chose to attack Iraq with Tomahawk missiles rather than aircraft, in part to guarantee that Iraq could not capture U.S. fliers, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

But once Clinton takes the oath of office Wednesday, Hussein becomes his problem and no amount of image-managing or finessing are likely to make it go away.

Clinton’s ability to respond may also be handicapped by the slow pace of his appointments.

Top Clinton aides said that a large number of appointments will be made in the next several days. But even after his team is named, its members will face delays in winning Senate confirmation, obtaining security clearances and familiarizing themselves with the issues they confront.

“The danger is that they’ll become so preoccupied with putting their fingers in dikes that they won’t get time to launch the studies that are the basis of long-term policy,” said Robert C. McFarlane, who watched the earlier transition as a member of Reagan’s national security team.

Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this story.