Iran Extends Reach of Its Aid to Islamic Groups : Muslims: Funds now go to Bosnia and Algeria, experts say. Money also is flowing to many activities in other regions.

After years of trying to lower its profile as a financial sponsor of Islamic activities, Iran once again has begun paying out tens of millions of dollars to a wide array of Muslim groups, many outside its traditional sectarian and geographical reach in the Middle East, according to Clinton Administration experts and Western diplomats.

Over the last year, Iran has extended its reach to Europe and North Africa, allocating about $20 million each to Bosnia’s Muslims and Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front in conjunction with the growing crises facing Muslims in both nations, the officials said.

Money has also flowed to many groups in other regions, for uses that range from social services and humanitarian aid to military training and religious classes.

Although most of the recipient programs are religious rather than military, the trend is attracting attention among nations wary of the spread of the Islamic political movement around the globe and the threat it may pose to some secular governments.

Of particular concern is that the beneficiaries include some extreme elements that use violence, such as those in Lebanon.

In part because of the new pattern of Iranian funding, some officials in the United States have developed a “working hypothesis” about money from Tehran possibly playing a role in the World Trade Center bombing, perhaps indirectly. But no hard evidence has yet emerged to make that link.

The new accounting of Iran’s expenditures on Islamic support is based on a coordinated analysis by allied governments and is the most detailed since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the monarchy.

It supports the conclusion that Iran, by tapping into the growing political movement, hopes to claim a long-coveted leadership role among the 75 nations with large Muslim populations and increase its leverage with Western powers trying to come to grips with the trend.

Not all of the aid is secret. Iran’s Parliament openly appropriated $20 million in foreign currency and $28 million in credits for support of the Palestinian intifada in the last fiscal budget, which ran from March, 1992, to March, 1993, according to sources in Washington and Tehran.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah, or Party of God, and Sudan’s Islamic government receive equivalent or larger amounts, although the funds are not publicly revealed, according to U.S. specialists.

Iran also has offered less substantive assistance to a newer Muslim movement in the war-torn former Soviet republic of Tajikistan in Central Asia.

U.S. and European analysts have noticed that an increasing amount of funding is going to Sunni Muslims, a shift from earlier years when predominantly Shiite Iran gave preference to Shiite Muslims.

When the aid goes to military training programs, Iran prefers to have the training take place elsewhere, such as Sudan or Lebanon--both far enough from Tehran that the government can deny any connection to it. The training is done by Hezbollah or other surrogates at Iran’s expense, the sources said.

In each case, however, the world’s first modern theocracy plays only a support role.

“Iran does not or did not create any group from the ground up. It’s only tapped into groups already existing and active,” a Clinton Administration expert added.

“Don’t underestimate Iranian ambitions, but also don’t overestimate their capabilities. They have weaknesses, not just economic,” the expert said in a reference to Iran’s growing domestic problems.

Tehran is also not the mastermind of a single international network, despite its well-established links to movements in North Africa, the Arab bloc, Central and South Asia and even the Far East.

U.S. officials said one of the strengths of various Islamic groups is that their ties are amorphous and that overall organization is loose.

“Their strength is that there’s no one central director, no nerve center, no Comintern to make vulnerable or to come under attack. Each is sui generis. Each arose out of its own milieu. There were some who thought (the late Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini would play the nerve center, but he never did,” the Administration official added.

Although most of the aid comes from the government, additional sums are widely believed to come from assorted foundations, many of which have come under the control of hard-liners who are the strongest advocates of militant Islam.

Iran’s current links to Islamic groups differ from earlier Iranian efforts to export its revolution.

“Iran is not running wild as it was in the early 1980s,” a Western envoy in Tehran said. “The Iranians have learned not to dump on their own doorstep, like in the (Persian) Gulf. They’re learning it’s not worth it.”

The theocracy’s involvement in neighboring Central Asia has also been predominantly “within legitimate boundaries,” the Administration specialist said. Iran had opportunities to stir things up when former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev sent tanks to Azerbaijan, but Tehran instead waited.

“Only when it was clear that Humpty Dumpty couldn’t be put back together again, they made contact with the Central Asians, and it was slowly,” he said.

Since the 1991 Soviet breakup, most Iranian aid to the region has involved cultural and education help, except for more recent clandestine help to the Tajiks and Azerbaijanis. Aid to Turkmenistan has been limited to “legitimate missionary activity.”

After cutting back its financial involvement in groups like Hezbollah in the late 1980s, Tehran increased aid again just as the latest spurt of Islamic activism gained momentum and provided new opportunities, according to sources in Tehran and Washington.

“The discrediting of Arab nationalism as a result of the war with Iraq found a lot of these Islamic groups looking for a patron, and Iran was able to step in,” the Administration expert said.

Iran’s leadership also has been impressed by the ability of small Islamic groups and cells to defy government pressure or crackdowns and still demonstrate their populist appeal. At the top of that list is Algeria’s Islamic Salvation Front, which Iran did not help significantly until after a 1992 military coup nullified an Islamic electoral victory.