Oil Barrels Fuel Baghdad’s Clout in Region

Old, rusted trucks barrel through the desert with a value far in excess of the price their cargo will fetch. Inside is cheap oil, produced in Iraq and bound for Jordan. The traffic is heavy at times, and the tankers look like a pipeline when they wait bumper to bumper at the border.

But these trucks are really a tether that binds Jordan, a strong U.S. ally, to its Persian Gulf neighbor. Jordan pays half-price for the oil, an exemption allowed the financially strapped kingdom under the international trade embargo imposed on Iraq nearly a dozen years ago.

Economic sanctions have failed to end the ironfisted rule of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and now the United States is trying to build a military alliance to topple a man who it says is a threat to the region.

Those coalition-building efforts have been frustrated by Iraq, which has used oil--and the wealth it generates--as one weapon in an arsenal to offset U.S. diplomatic power. Iraq wins support on the streets of Arab lands by supporting the Palestinian cause, but it earns the backing of the region’s leaders through its economic and political clout.

“Iraqi oil wealth, of course, has been tremendous muscle for us locally and internationally,” said Saadalla Fathi, who retired last month after many years as an advisor to Iraq’s Oil Ministry. “There is no doubt about this.”

U.S. officials have seemed perplexed, if not openly frustrated, by the world’s refusal to go along with its desire to depose Hussein, who over the last two decades has waged war with Iran, invaded Kuwait and has been accused of using chemical weapons against his own people and developing weapons of mass destruction. At the very least, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has said, “the people of Iraq and the people of the region would be better off with a different regime in Baghdad.”

U.S. officials assert that although Iraq’s neighbors publicly reject the military option, privately they assure the Bush administration that they would support a regime change.

At the United Nations, meanwhile, the five permanent members of the Security Council proposed a resolution Monday that they say will strengthen and streamline the import controls imposed on Iraq. The resolution should be adopted this week without substantive modification, according to diplomats from Singapore, which currently holds the rotating council presidency. Many people in and around the Middle East fear that a U.S. military operation would come at their expense; that a weak Iraq would be torn apart, damaging not only its neighbors’ economic health but possibly their internal stability as well. There is a general attitude that it is better to stick with Hussein than to risk something even worse.

“Unlike Afghanistan, which was in disarray, Iraq has never been in disarray,” said Tahseen Bashir, a retired Egyptian diplomat who lives in Cairo. “To kill Saddam Hussein is possible, but then what do you do next?”

By clever economic maneuvering, Iraq has nurtured the idea that the choice is either Hussein or chaos.

In addition to subsidizing Jordan’s economy with cheap oil, Baghdad has awarded lucrative contracts to Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; signed free-trade agreements with more than half a dozen of Iraq’s neighbors; and signed an oil development deal with Russia.

In the last year, Turkey’s contracts under the United Nations-administered “oil-for-food” program--which allows the sale of Iraqi oil to raise money for purchasing food and medicine for the Persian Gulf nation--have doubled to nearly $1billion. Those Turkish revenues might evaporate with the fall of Hussein’s regime.

The Hussein regime also has played on the ethnic and religious fears of its neighbors, in effect arguing that a stable Iraq, regardless of the government in power, is better than a country that is breaking apart. Many in the region have bought into the idea that a strong Iraq will rein in separatist Kurds, an ethnic group that spans several neighboring countries and populates the northern part of Iraq.

Iraq has also served as a Sunni Muslim bulwark against Islam’s other main branch, Shiite, which dominates the Iranian government.

Iraq’s neighbors also worry about the degree of U.S. commitment to the region. If American troops invade and crush what is left of the Iraqi military, or get it to support a coup against Hussein, what happens then? Does the U.S. military stick around and, if so, for how long? What is the endgame? These are the questions the Bush administration has been unable--or so far unwilling--to answer to the satisfaction of many of Iraq’s neighbors.

“No one supports Saddam,” said a diplomat based in Baghdad. “Syria. Egypt. Saudi Arabia. Kuwait. But this is a complex situation that is hard to solve by a military operation.”

One of the biggest uncertainties casting a pall over a U.S. military option involves Iraq’s 24 million people. No one knows whether they will rally to the defense of their leader.

Ambassadors and Iraqi analysts say U.S. intelligence agencies have so far failed to organize an opposition in Iraq. That is partly because of the nature of the regime, which uses fear as a device to rule. Phone lines are tapped. Neighbors are rewarded for spying on one another.

But it also is widely held in Iraq that most of its people have an aversion to the U.S. government. Even a few people willing to say privately that they would like a new Iraqi regime maintain that international sanctions dating to 1990 have only strengthened the current leadership.

There is another factor that local analysts say American policymakers should not discount: Arab pride.

“There is an element of dignity and pride. You have to understand that in discussing Iraq,” said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political scientist with Baghdad University. “Why should Iraq accept a puppet regime put in by tanks? I don’t consider myself an enemy of America, but I don’t see it is America’s right to impose a regime on me.”

This uncertainty has fed into fears about the future integrity of Iraq. Nations such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey are nervous that their neighbor will come apart at the seams.

All of this hand-wringing has many people here reading between the lines, trying to divine what the Bush administration has in store.

Bashir, the retired Egyptian diplomat, said he believes the U.S. is intentionally not talking about taking out the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party--a sign, he said, that Washington wants to leave that institution in place to control and unify the country if Hussein falls. But if that is being considered, few here give such a move much chance of succeeding. Hussein rules the party the way he has ruled Iraq since coming to power.

“If somebody is thinking of using the party against the leader, it is a big mistake,” said a European diplomat based here. “Those disloyal are severely punished, and those loyal are richly rewarded. Military guys get good plots of land near the water. Even lower officers are rewarded with a new cars.”

Times staff writer William Orme at the United Nations contributed to this report.