Iran after the mullahs

Press, 14 September 1981, Page 16

Iran after the mullahs

From “The Economist,” London

Iran's danse macabre spares nobody, least of all those hand-in-hand with its leader, Ayatollah Khomeiny. The bomb that went off in the Prime Minister's office in Teheran on August 30 killed the Ayatollah's latest partners, Mohammed Ragai and.Hojatolestam Bahonar, Iran’s President and Prime Minister. They joined a long pageant of revolutionary martyrs. In June more than 70 members of the ruling Islamic Republican Party were blown up. The party’s chief theoretician. Hassan Ayat. was shot dead last month? The frail 81-year-old at the top survives. As ever more obscure mullahs shuffle into the firing line, clerical control of Iran had come to hang on the thread of his life. The mullahs have little else going for them. They have a private army of about 50,000 revolutionary guards who are more adept at executing their enemies (nearly 800 in the past couple of months) than at guarding their masters. The mullahs have some support in the countryside and among the ex-peasants who scrape by on a shoestring in. the big cities, but they are losing popularity among almost everybody else as Iran experiences unemployment. inflation and industrial paralysis. Their ranks are riddled with enemies who can smuggle bombs into the very bunkers of their power. Their remaining acceptance by their own subordinates derives largely from the Ayatollah's mystical ■ personal authority. The armed forces owe him. and him alone, their personal

allegiance. When he dies, Iran's theocracy seems likely to dissolve.

The revolution in Iran would then have come full circle. The Shah was overthrown by a coalition of forces ranging from the religious far Right to the communist far Left. An almost equally wide coalition has now regrouped against the present regime, but it is unlikely to stick together. Post - mullah Iran will probably be ruled by the Mujahedeen or the Communists or the Army. Which should the West want?

The Mujahedeen - e - Khalq is a grouping of young Islamic socialists who did most of the legwork during the hard underground struggle against the Shah. The movement’s methods are crude enough; but its leader-in-exile, Mr Massud Rajavi believes that Islam “must not be opposed to civilisation or to science,” which puts its thinking a few centuries ahead of that of Ayatollah Khomeiny. It believes in rule by pious politicians, rather than by illiterate priests. Its woolly Marxism has been knitted in Western universities, not in Russia. Does this give the party a real chance?

If they ever get into power, the Mujahedeen will need more than a benevolent smile and a dab hand with detonators to stay there. Sensibly they have cultivated the Kurds and the other Iranian minority groups now enjoying virtual independence from the centre. They have a following among some industrial workers, especially in the oil industry. They have the sympathy of some of the

younger officers in the Army and Air Force. But this is probably still not enough to resist the forces—the vengeful mullahs, the pro-Soviet Left, Iran's middle class and its Right - Wing Army—likely to dash themselves upon a Mujahedeen - led Government.

A second tunnel could lead Iran to Soviet-style communism. Iran’s pro-Russian Tudeh Party is well-organised, but has practically no popular support. In the worst of all Western nightmares, that deficiency w’ould be made up for with money arms and men from Russia. Yet the risks to Mr Brezhnev of direct involvement in Iran dwarf those he incurred in invading Afghanistan. For Russia to try to swallow the head of a resisting nation of 35M people might inspire a grab for the legs —the oilfields in southern Iran — by America. Russia is more likely to wait for Iran’s revolution to look northwards than to march southwards itself

The third route Iran could take leads back to the beginning of the labyrinth. Iran’s Army reorganised and trained in battle against Iraq, had been watching the struggle from the sidelines. The Army did not intervene on behalf of its old commander, ex-President Bani-Sadr. During the recent murders it has not intervened on the side of the mullahs. There is still a possibility that it might do so — and then, once in effective control of the centres of power, hijack the revolution. But at present it is holding its hand