Iran’s aims unclear

Press, 16 July 1982, Page 6

Iran’s aims unclear

NZPA-Reuter Beirut Iran's invasion of Iraq marks a radical new’ departure in Iranian policy which has concentrated on selfdefence. Hours after Iranian forces pushed into Iraq their military objectives and the distance they were hoping to go were still not clear. But the Iranian offensive was preceded and accompanied by calls in Teheran for the overthrow of the Iraqi President (Mr Saddam Hussein).

The toppling of Mr Hussein, usually styled "punishment of the aggressor" by Teheran, has long been one of Iran's conditions for ending the Gulf war.

Others are the total withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Iranian territory, the payment by Iraq of huge war repariations, the repatriation of 100,000 Iraqis expelled to Iran, and transit rights through Iraq for Iranians going to fight the Israelis in Lebanon. From the start, Iran has portrayed the Gulf war as a type of religious epic between its own “forces of Islam" and the “atheist" Iraqi Baathist regime.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiny also has a personal quarrel with Mr Hussein dating from his own expulsion from exile in Iraq in 1978. at the behest of the late Shah of Iran.

The Ayatollah and his followers have made no secret of their desire to see all Muslim countries — and especially Iraq with its large Shi'ite community, often assumed sympathetic to the Iranian Shi'ite clergy — swept by the Iranian-style Islamic revolutions.

But a cardinal point of Ayatollah Khomeiny's philosophy until now has been that Islamic revolutions should be launched by the people of the country concerned, without foreign intervention.

Antipathy to foreign interference underlies Iran's complaints about its own treatment over several centuries by the big Powers. Only a few months ago Iranian commanders at the war front were telling visiting correspondents that they planned to stop at the international border between Iran and Iraq — and the rest was up to the people of Iraq. Now, analysts say, this policy appears to have been reversed, although they said conflicting statements coming from Teheran in recent weeks probably indicated that not all Iranian leaders

were agreed about it. Some military and clerical leaders had pushed for weeks for an assault on Iraqi territory and these forces now seemed to have gained the upper hand, the analysts said.

Meanwhile Saudi Arabia's State radio said yesterday that Iran's motive in attacking Iraq had been to . “shift attention away from Israel's invasion and occupation of Lebanon.”

Riyadh radio, in a commentary, said that the deduction could be drawn because of “Israel’s aid to Iran which has been confirmed by the Israeli enemy's Defence’ Minister, Ariel Sharon.”

. This was a reference to reports last year that Israel had airlifted’ weapons and spare parts to refurbish Iran’s mainly United Statesmade arsenal. The radio said that Iran’s motives were “suspect,” especially since the “sudden Iranian escalation came amid international efforts to find a peaceful solution to the Iran-Iraq conflict.”

Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab States have been concerned that an Iranian victory over Iraq would prompt Iran to make good its promise to export its Islamic revolution to other Islamic countries that have supported Iraq in the Gulf war.