Is the Gulf war
ON JULY 18 this year, the Iranian regime announced that it would accept UN resolution 598 that called for an end to hostilities between Iran and Iraq. The resolution, passed unanimously by the UN Security Council almost a year to the day previously, was accepted by
Iran's decision was greeted with general astonishment, for good reason. It was only two weeks earlier, on July 3, that a US warship had shot down an
Iranian Airbus with 290 passengers on board, arousing a violent competition in warlike rhetoric in Iran. Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini called on Iranians to rush to the front for an all-out war", while the Islamic republic's parliament raised the slogan of "war on Iraq until final victory" to the level of a "strategic priority"!
over?
Iraq immediately. SALAH JABER
OF COURSE, it was easy after the event to enumerate the military and economic reasons explaining Iran's about turn. But in this case, the mullahs' regime was distinguished by behaviour reflecting a peculiar kind of "rationality". Scorning obvious material considerations, not to mention humanitarian ones, Khomeini had showed an unwavering determination, tinged with mysticism, for pursuing the war at any cost until the defeat of his sworn enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. It seemed that nothing would stop this relentless course excepting Khomeini's death, which never ceased being "imminent". So was ideology — or rather one individual's whim - in the driving seat in Iran?
In fact, the rationality of the mullahs' regime in the war against Iraq, for all its peculiarity, was nonetheless real. It was linked to the regime's very survival, to that of the dictatorship of a social stratum, an "estate" (in the sense that the clergy constitutes one) for which the war became the supreme raison d'être.
There were several reasons for this. The war maintained the cohesion of the regime, despite numerous social and political cleavages. It ensured the regime's hold over a regimented and fanaticized mass base, and its ability to cheaply re-absorb an enormous mass of unemployed, which had already been considerable under the Shah and was given a big boost by the decay of the economy under the mullahs' management. Finally, and less importantly, the war enhanced the role of traders, the principal ally of the fundamentalist dictatorship, insofar as war consumption and its offshoots (notably the creation of a mass of dependants — disabled veterans, widows, orphans and so on) combined with the disorganization of production to inflate massively the role of imports and distribution. Economic disaster behind
Iran's turnaround
From the standpoint of a moder bourgeoisie, concerned about economic growth, Khomeini's behaviour would appear absurd. It nevertheless suited the real interests of the "Islamic" regime. It is therefore exclusively there that the reasons for Iran's recent turnaround should be sought.
Khomeini could neglect the needs of capitalist development, close his eyes to the weight of accumulating destruction, lost earnings and unproductive spending! as long as Iran's oil income and monetary reserves could sustain the war effort and support dependants. But the point is precisely that this "sinew of war" was no longer able to match up to the effort required.
Despite draconian austerity measures, Tehran's imports are still around $10 billion a year. For the most part they have served the needs of the war, which, according to the calculations of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London,
MIDDLE EAST cost Iran more than $6 billion in 1987. However, the country's oil receipts will probably not exceed $7 billion this year, while its currency reserves are drying up! Admittedly, Iran has the advantage of having practically no debts in comparison to Iraq.2 Outside of a complete turnaround in foreign policy, Tehran cannot expect its war to be financed by credits from abroad, either from the East or from the West.
Aware that this is Iran's Achilles' heel, Baghdad adroitly chose to attack on this front intensively from 1984 on. Thus, the "tanker war" became a fundamental dimension of the Gulf war. By considerably obstructing Iran's maritime oil exports, Iraq forced Tehran to grant large discounts for its customers to compensate for increased transport and insurance costs, and this in a context of excess world oil supplies and falling prices. Baghdad thus contributed to Iran's oil income falling by a third (from $20 billion to $13 billion) between 1983 and 1985. Moreover, this is without counting the even greater fall of the real buying power of this income owing to the dollar's depreciation and inflation.3
In the first months of 1986, Iran's victories over Iraq — above all the taking of the Iraqi port of Fao in February — led to a combination of an upsurge in the "tanker war" and the "price war" unleashed by Sau1. The total is estimated at $216 billion for Iran and $193 billion for Iraq during eight years of war, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. 2. Iraq is up to its ears in foreign debts of $60 billion, of which nearly half is owed to creditors who are unlikely to be lenient in collecting their money. 3. This is without counting revenue given over to what could be called "imports substituting for production", due to damage inflicted by Iraqi air attacks. So, for example, Iran is presently obliged to import more than of damage rels per day of petroleum producis because 3 of damage to its refineries! October 3, 1988 • #148 International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint #148 • October 3, 1988
MIDDLE EAST di Arabia partly to put the brakes on Iran's progress. The official price of a barrel of crude was to fall from $28 to less than $8, bringing in its wake a drastic fall in income for most of the oil-exporting countries. Iran found itself forced to dip into its already very diminished financial reserves and take out $2.5 billion in one year, from mid-1986 to mid-1987. This represented a third of its available reserves, which in mid-1987 were at only $5.3 billion, compared to $20 billion in 1980! In spite of a partial firming up of prices from summer 1986, Iranian revenues for the year were less than in 1985.
The success of the secret deals between the Reagan administration and the powerful president of the Iranian parliament, Hashemi Rafsanjani, led Saudi leaders, who were also involved in these deals (as revealed by the Contra-Irangate scandal, among others), to interrupt the "price war". The Saudis were keen to conciliate with an Iran that was running before the wind, and judged that their other objectives up again by $2! The explication of this paradox is that the market estimated that, given Iran's decision, Riyad would agree to cooperate again with other members of OPEC to shore up and stabilize prices. Speculators were quickly disenchanted. The Saudi leaders held their course, distrustfully awaiting the outcome of the negotiations in progress between Iran and
So the real value of Iran's oil revenue this year - taking into account inflation and dollar parity — will probably be 20% lower than last year's, 16% lower than in the disastrous year 1986, and 66% lower than in 1985, to say nothing of previous years. This economic strangulation of Iran, which was the determining factor in turning Tehran, is in fact the product of an international convergence made possible by the US's decision in the summer of 1987 to end the so as to make possible a definitive ending of the Gulf war. Iraq's particular objective was to confront this eventuality in the best
The interaction between this strangulation of Iran and the ruinous internal state of its economy led to a vicious circle that increased the effectiveness of external pressure by amplifying its consequences. The lack of currency led the mullahs' regime to de-industrialize the country. The political choice to give absolute priority to the war effort and the social choice to favour trade at the expense of industry combined to deprive industry of spares and raw materials. Result: in 1985, 690 out of 7,628 industrial production units had to close their doors; and in 1986, 750,000 workers were partially laid off. One example of the priority given to traders was that 20 million metres of textiles were imported in 1987, while textile factories in the country were running far below capacity because of a lack of
By ISAAC in the Bulletin (Manila). C&W Syndicate. vis-à-vis OPEC could be at-
However, the Irangate revelations at the end of 1986, sparked off a revival of the bluff against Washington's protégés in the Gulf, allowing the "fanatics" in the mullahs' regime to go into action. Kuwait suffered the consequences
So, the circle is complete. The lack of currency leads to reduced production, thereby increasing imports, which in its turn means that more currency is need. ed... Iranian capitalism thus becomes more dependent than ever before.
The corollary of all this of this, from April 1987, IRAN IRAQ followed by Saudi Arabia, which bloodily suppressed the riots by Iranian pilgrims to Mecca on July 31 and August 1 that same year.
From then on, nothing went right anymore between Riyad and Tehran, and after this the Saudi leaders deliberately provoked a new drop in oil prices. The 1986 "price war" had been a devastating blitzkrieg. What followed from December 1987 was more like a war of attrition. In seven months, barrel prices fell by $4, from $18 for standard crude oil - a price that had been established in December 1986 and maintained for a year — to $14 in July. This new "price war" waged by the Saudis undoubtedly owed more to political considerations than to economic calculations. It was widely seen that way, as shown by the reaction of the market to Iran's announcement on July 18 of its acceptance of UN resolution 598.
Logically, the ending of the Gulf conflict can only mean a growth in the already existing oil glut, by allowing Iran to increase its exports as soon as the hostilities cease. So, just as the beginning of the conflict in 1980 sent oil prices up, the announcement of an imminent cease-fire should have depressed them. However, the opposite has happened. In just a few days, prices went
### Bridging the Gap
This combination of factors included firstly Iraq's aerial raids, aimed at obstructing Iran's oil exports. Secondly, there was the activity of the imperialist fleets deployed in the Gulf for over a year. By preventing Iran from carrying out reprisals on the maritime traffic of other countries bordering the Gulf, it deprived Tehran of its only means of counterattacking against the Iraqi raids. Thirdly, there was the "price war", waged since the end of 1987 by Saudi Arabia. And, finally, there were the French and US embargos on oil imports from Iran, which, combined with restrictions on Japanese imports, aggravated the problems Tehran was encountering in selling its oil (thereby leading the Iranians to offer discounts that correspondingly cut its
The sole common objective of all these converging actions was to force Iran to accept resolution 598 and to comply with it is that poverty and unemployment increase. With shortages and the black market helping things along - in a country where freedom of trade is sacred in the religious sense of the term - inflation gallops at between 60% and 70%, with exorbitant prices for some basic services? goods and This state of things has helped considerably to increase disaffec4. See "Imperialism and the Gulf war", IV 132, 5. Because Iraq has had no access to Gulf waters since the beginning of the conflict, Iran chose to reply to Iraqi attacks against its shipping by attacking the fleets of its neighbours who sponsored Iraq, mainly Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The intervention of the imperialist fleets was aimed at protecting these ships and access to their ports in the name of "freedom of navigation". This is in
By reacting violently to the mine-laying attributed to Iran last April, the American fleet wanted to dissuade Tehran from making up for the reversals that its army was beginning to suffer on the front with Iraq by escalating its operations in the Gulf. In fact, Tehran profited from the subsequent repeated confrontations between its weak naval forces and the American armada. This was a means to exonerate itself given its defeats at the hands of Iraq by attributing them to the US intervention in Iraq's favour. 6. "Iran's economy on its last legs", Le Monde, December 11, 1987; Tudeh News 94, July 20, 1988; Report (Iranian Communist Party bulletin) 46, August 1-15, 7. Le Monde, April 12, 1988.
October 3, 1988 • #148 International Viewpoint tion among the Iranian masses for the mullahs' regime and its "holy war". During the early years of the war, the fundamentalist regime was able to benefit from a nationalist reaction, tinged with chauvinism, from a population facing an invasion of its territory. Once the invader had been repelled and the war continued on Iraqi territory (that is, since 1982), the Persian nationalist consensus gave way to religious fanaticism for a war whose declared aim from the beginning was to place Iraq under the banner of Khomeinism. The regime was able to wage its war whilst final victory seemed within grasp — that is, until 1986 - benefitting from a vast ideological and social clientele (plebeian layers receiving benefits). In particular it exploited young teenagers, the favourite prey throughout history of all pied pipers of fanaticism.®
Iran suffered three times as many losses as Iraq
Religious-chauvinist fanaticism and the mobilization of volunteers undeniably played a key role in the Iranian war effort during this period. It could not be otherwise for a war with low "capital-intensity" and high "labour-intensity", as illustrated by the strategy of "human waves" and the important role of the Sepah-e-Pasdaran (guardians of the revolution) and other Bassiji (volunteers) in combat. This was the only possible choice for the mullahs' war, for a number of interconnected reasons. These included the limited amount of finances available; the break with the US, the main source of high-technology Iranian armaments, and the problems of access to alternative sources; a more than three-to-one numerical advantage over Iraq; and the ployment Problem of absorbing unem-
The consequence of this was, of course, three times higher human losses on the Iranian side: from 750,000 to one million deaths, against nearly 300,000 Iraqis. This death toll was accentuated by Baghdad's use of chemical weapons on a number of occasions in order to try to break the "human waves" assailing its territory.
Up until 1986, there was no shortage of candidates for suicide for the mullahs' war. The victories won seemed to justify the slaughter, even though the cost in human lives per square meter of occupied Iraqi territory was exorbitant. The last great Iranian victory, the taking of the Fao peninsular in February 1986, was achieved by an offensive lasting several weeks and involving more than half a million combatants. One year later, however, the morale of the Iranian troops was irredeemably broken.
Two elements contributed to this change. A political factor, first of all, with the Irangate scandal in November 1986 and the revelation that relations had been established between Iranian leaders and the US and the Israeli state. There for all to see, the duplicity of Tehran's leading lights had the effect of a cold shower on the most determined of their combatants - precisely those who had believed the rhetoric. A profound crisis of confidence set in between the regime and the ideologically motivated section of its troops, its spearhead.
The second factor - even more important than this, although linked to it to an extent that is hard to judge — was a military one. This was failure of the big offensive launched by Iran in January 1987 to seize the port of Basra, Iraq's second largest city and the capital of the Shi'ite south of the country. Iranian "human waves" hurled at Iraq's defences, unsuccessfully, for five weeks: 200,000 attackers were concentrated on a front just two miles long. The result was that 50,000-70,000 of them were killed or wounded. The elan of Tehran's troops, continuously renewed since
Mehdi Bazargan, the leading personality of the only opposition tolerated in Iran (Islamic liberals), undoubtedly expressed the majority view of his country's people in his open letter to the regime's strong man, Rafsanjani, on January 25, 1987. When the Iranian offensive against Basra was running out of steam, Bazargan, addressing the president of the parliament and Khomeini's representative to the Supreme Defence Council, in fact attacked the "Imam". His letter deserves to be quoted at length:
"Who has given you the right," he wrote, "to dispense with the lives of today's generations and the riches of the country in order to obtain, as you say it, the punishment of one man - even if this man is the big. gest criminal of all time? Is his head worth the lives of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of deaths and the destruction
"War, war until final destruction"
"Your slogan, •War, war until victory' is in the process of being changed into War, war until total destruction'. Who mandated you to lead the people towards total destruction under the pretext of bringing about Saddam Hussein's fall, when his disappearance would only succeed in his replacement by another dictator or by a government favourable to the United States, an eventuality that you have maintained that you would accept...?
"Israel is the biggest winner in this war. It is throwing oil on the fire, and its objective is the total destruction of Iraqi and Iranian military forces, in order to rid itself of both armies at the same time..."11
In spite of the tight control exercised by various bodies of the Khomeini regime on the Iranian masses, demonstrations and incidents indicating a growing anti-war sentiment multiplied in Iran from 1987 on, while the capacity of the regime to organize mass demonstrations dwindled. At the same time, the enrollment of volunteers was appreciably diminishing, while the
MIDDLE EAST number of deserters was growing. The new flare-up of the "war of the cities" increased the masses' resentment of the carnage that Khomeini's pig-headedness was inflicting
Last February, a new stage in the aforementioned "war of the towns" was crossed by Iraq, whose missiles Scud-B's - reached Tehran for the first time where more than a quarter of Iran's population was then concentrated. 12 The impact of Iraq's massacre of the Kurds
Finally, the dramatic images of the massacre by chemical weapons perpetrated by the Iraqi army in the Kurdish town of Halabja (in Iraqi Kurdistan) were shown widely in Iran. Taken in March by Iranian forces and their Iraqi Kurdish allies, they made an important contribution to the demoralization of Tehran's troops. They were a cruel demonstration that, in a corner, the Iraqi regime would stop at no atrocity to impede Iranian progress on its territory. The goal — the overthrowing of Saddam Hussein -appeared increasingly, even to a number of Khomeini supporters, to be out of all proportion to the hundreds of thousands of deaths that it has already cost and the even bigger number of lives that would have to be sacrificed trying to reach it.
From then on, it was a debacle for the Iranian troops. In April, Fao was retaken in less than two days of fighting. The Iranians abandoned the peninsular in disarray, leaving an impressive amount of material there. The same scenario was to be repeated, in rapid succession, in the Shalamsheh region, the Howeizah swamps, the Majnun islands and, finally, at the end of June, in Iraqi
In three months, it seemed as though the film of the six preceding years was running backwards at high speed. So much so that in July, Iraq not only recovered the whole of its territory, but it took the liberty of re occupying pieces of Iranian land to use as trading chips, with an eye towards negotiations resolving the conflict. Moreover, this new willingness of the Iranian combatants to surrender allowed Iraq to take thousands more prisoners, thereby redressing a balance that was previously tilted distinctly in 8. Certainly, a growing section of Iran's population were forcibly enlisted into Khomeini's troops. Many chose to flee the country to escape conscription, going to Turkey where the number of Iranians has reached one to two million. 9. The cult of "martyrdom" and the promise of direct access to paradise for those who die fighting in the "holy war are the fundamental ideological ingredients of the Iranian mobilization. 10. The problem for Iraq was the complete opposite: it had to take in more than a million immigrant Egyptian workers into production to replace Iraqis mobilized for the war, as well as using women to a far greater extent than in Iran. 11. Le Monde, February 8-9, 1987. 12. Because of its distance from the demarcation line, until this point Tehran was protected from missiles, as dad, seich was tange om 195 onwards as Bagh- 5 dad, which was a target from 1985 onwards.
International Viewpoint #148 • October 3, 1988
MIDDLE EAST Economic strangulation, social discontent in the population, a growing political disaffection with the regime and the war, military debacle and complete turnaround in the situation in favour of an Iraq once again encroaching on Iranian territory all of this led to the acceptance of the cease-fire being the only sensible option for Iran. However, the fundamentalists are not best known for their common sense, and inside the Iranian regime itself there were factions which, right up until today, challenge this option.
Khomeini himself, without whose green light the July 18 announcement would have been unthinkable, was to hesitate until the last moment. In the wake of the Airbus tragedy, at the beginning of July, the declarations of all-out war (such as those cited at the beginning of this article multiplied in Tehran. Only Rafsanjani tried to calm people down. Ayatollah Montazeri - the spokesperson of the militant fundamentalists and, until further notice, heir apparent to Khomeini, who, however, has been increasingly crossing him - asked the "Imam" to "give the order to all the resistance networks inside and outside the country to attack American interests worldwide". Rafsanjani replied by warning against any "heavy-handed reaction" that would only profit the United States by "relieving the international pressure currently
"I promised to fight until my last drop of blood"
Rafsanjani, who has long demonstrated his demagogic skill, even managed to make the Airbus tragedy the main pretext for the decision to accept a cease-fire, a solution to which he had long been inclined. He explained on July 18 that this tragedy was the decisive element that had convinced Khomeini to change positions (although just a few days earlier Khomeini had said the opposite). Describing the affair as a "turning point", he presented it as "an American declaration that it would perpetrate abominable crimes if Iran continued the war"
Khomeini himself was less hypocritical. Admitting that for him the decision to stop the war had been "more painful than taking poison", he acknowledged that "a few days before" he had still "been convinced that it was necessary to continue the war against Baghdad". But he refused to reveal what had led him to change his mind. "I had promised you to fight until my last drop of blood" (sic), but "I have renounced what I said and have entrusted my dignity to God's judgement" he added. To those who may have wondered "what has been the point of the blood spilt by our young people", Khomeini replied in kind, in his usual grotesque style, that these people had forgotten "the meaning of the philosophy of martyrdom" which gives "our martyrs eter-
In fact, it was Rafsanjani who preempted Khomeini's decision'3 forced his own power and assures his position as strong man of the Iranian regime. In a previous article!4, I stated that Rafsanjani had every reason to end the war, notably since the return of the regular army from the front would tilt the balance decisively in his favour in Tehran. This is even truer today. Since the flagging of the Iranian offensive (Kerbala-5) against Basra at the beginning of 1987, Rafsanjani (at the time representing the "Imam" at the Supreme Defence Council) — who was a strong partisan of this offensive in an attempt to get people to forget his role in Irangate - had cynically thrown the blame for the failure onto the irregular troops of the Pasdaran and Bassiji, the cannon-fodder for the "human waves". Thus at a stroke he dealt a blow to an essential bastion of the tendencies in the regime opposing him at the same time as launching himself into a highly hypocritical warlike demagogy. This put him in the good books of a Khomeini obsessed, above all, with his hate for Saddam Hussein and worried about maintaining the cohesion of the regime that he set up.
The conciliatory attitude that Khomeini adopted towards Rafsanjani will be a decisive factor of division in the fundamentalist movement.The line of cleavage runs between the most "radical" elements, opposed to the president of the parliament, Rafsanjani, and rallied around Ayatollah Montazeri; and the unconditional supporters of the "Imam", led by his son Ahmed Khomeini, as well as by the HodjatulesLams's Khoeyniha and Mohtashami. For example, although the latter faction won the majority of seats in the parliamentary elections last spring, it nonetheless reinstated Rafsanjani in his function as president of
Beforehand, Khomeini had intervened in favour of the government led by Hussein
Mossavi, an ally of Rafsanjani's, against another faction in the regime opposed to Rafsanjani and which has been predominant inside the Constitutional Supervisory Council (CSC). This faction, grouped in the Tehran Association of Fighting Clergy and linked to the Central Council of Traders in the capital, is the most conservative wing of the regime. It opposes all measures that could in the slightest way attack the sacred principles of private property and freedom of trade. Factional struggles among the fundamentalists
Nevertheless, as regards foreign policy this faction exploits anti-American and anti-Iragi extremism. On this ground it converges with Montazeri's followers, as it also does in the fight against Rafsanjani's faction. Last January, Khomeini decreed — to general astonishment - that governmental action had to take priority over the "secondary laws of religion" often invoked by the CSC. In so doing, he turned upside down a practice that had been in force since
In spring, the devastating series of defeats suffered by Iranian forces finally convinced the "Imam" to go over to Rafsanjani's point of view and shift onto him the responsibility of a war that was becoming a rout for Iran. On June 2, Khomeini named Rafsanjani temporary commander-in-chief of the armed forces, giving him "full powers" to "unify all the military forces" under his control. An unscrupulous and casehardened opportunist, Rafsanjani made the most demagogic sort of speech of thanks a day later, in which he committed himself to "pursuing the war against Iraq at any price... until all the objectives set by the Imam Khomeini have been achieved" What he actually did is common knowledge. Rafsanjani's first step using his new powers was to force the commander of the Pasdaran, Mohsen Rezai, to make a humiliating self-criticism in front of the TV cameras. He also tried to reinforce the regular
What does Rafsanjani want? The present strong man of the Iranian regime can be described as a supporter of normalization and stabilization of Iran as a developing capitalist country. He wants to strengthen the role of a consolidated and homogenized state in developing and managing the economy, as well as in the control of a society whose present inbalances he knows to be extremely explosive. Within this general perspective he wants to reestablish relations of confidence with world capital, including with US imperialism, and he tries less and less to hide the fact. Until July 18, Rafsan13. On this subject, see the information brought back from Tehran by Jean Gueyras in Le Monde, August 2122, 1988. 14. See /V, op. cit. 15. The rank just below that of Ayatollah in the hierarchy of Shi'ite theologians.
----- photo credits and running heads -----
6
October 3, 1988 • #148 International Viewpoint jani justified this choice because of the necessities of the war against Iraq. On July 2 he was still saying that "we have, by our revolutionary posturing, pushed those who would have stayed neutral into the camp of our enemies, and we have done nothing to win to our cause those who could have been our friends".
It is Rafsanjani's faction that is behind the striking improvement of Iran's relations with the imperialist countries. This was demonstrated in a spectacular way this year by the gradual liberation of the Western hostages held in Lebanon, beginning with the French hostages. Since July 18, Rafsanjani has been trying to put forward other justifications for the rapprochement with Washington than the question of the war against Iraq. Thus, in front of a group of American academics participating in a conference in Tehran in August he stressed the convergence between the two states in their anti-communism. 16 "An opportunity to improve
US-Iran relations"
The US administration, which knows Rafsanjani well from its dealings with him before the scandal came out into the open in November 1986, could only be pleased at the concentration of new powers in his hands since June 2. Some days later, the US magazine Newsweek quoted an "expert" from the State Department who saw this as an occasion not to be missed, "a fleeting opportunity to move toward ending the Iran-Iraq war and improving US-Iranian relations as well" 17 The "expert" was insightful. Three weeks later, in the same magazine another "expert" who is listened to in Washington, Henry Kissinger, said the following:
"Fundamentally, there are few nations in the world with less reason to quarrel and more compatible interests than Iran and the United States. Though the Shah came to symbolize the friendship between the two countries in the 1970s, those interests did not depend on him. They reflected political and strategic realities that continue
"Two radical threats exist in the Gulf: secular Iraq and fundamentalist Iran....So long as Iran seemed to be winning the war, it was necessary for the US to tilt toward Iraq. But in the end America can have no conceivable interest in the victory of either side." 18
The title of the Kissinger's article was "Time to talk with Iran". On July 25, Reagan declared: "If they want to talk and are ready to do it, now's the time". Rafsanjani's answer came on July 26: "If they want to talk, they must adopt an unhostile attitude by freeing our assets. In that event, we will use our influence in Lebanon to sort out the problem of the hostages".
The first gestures by Washington in Iran's direction were made in the days following Rafsanjani's new appointment in
June. America protested against the use of chemical weapons by Iraq (two months after the Halabja massacre!) On June 9, the State Department received Jalal Talabani, head of the Kurdish Patriotic Union (from Iraqi Kurdistan), allied to Iran and fighting alongside its troops. In reaction to this reception, Tarek Aziz, the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs, cancelled a meeting he was to have held with George Shultz. Then, on
Saddam Hussein accused the Americans of passing on to Iran intelligence obtained by means of their satellites. The tension between Baghdad and Washington has grown since then. On September 9, the US Senate went as far as adopting a motion demanding that heavy economic sanctions be inflicted on Iraq. Baghdad's reply was a demonstration of 10,000 people organized by the regime on December 11 in front of the US embassy, denouncing the collusion between the USA and Israel. The latter indeed did not hide its disappointment at Iraq's military successes, and has missed no opportunity to stir up Washington against Baghdad.
Rafsanjani's promotion at the beginning of June and the immediate positive reaction of Washington could only arouse a protound distrust on the part of the Iraqi re announced its acceptance of UN resolution 598 on July 18, Baghdad was extremely wary of agreean immediate cease-fire. The Ba'athist dictatorship demanded guarantees of good faith from Tehran and tried to consolidate its military advantage on the ground. Baghdad's demand for direct negotiations with Tehran was aimed at getting assurance that the mullahs' regime was well and truly prepared to accept the existence of the Ba'athist government, which it had sworn to destroy. Iraq won this objective and the cease-fire, supervised by the UN, was able to go into force in
MIDDLE EAST
Since then, negotiations between the two states hit a snag due to a new condition raised by Iraq for withdrawing its troops from parts of Iranian occupied territory: that was the cleaning up of the Shatt-AlArab, the confluence of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and Iraq's sole access to the waters of the Gulf.
In fact, Baghdad wants reassurance that Iran has definitively renounced the war, and to obtain the maximum possible concessions in exchange for the only card it holds in the negotiations, the withdrawal of its troops. The Ba'athist dictatorship is extremely worried by the idea that Iran only wants to gain a more or less prolonged tactical respite so that it can rebuild its forces and renew the assault on Iraq - this time with the complicity of the US. Moreover, the Iraqis know that even if Rafsanjani really wants peace, other factions in the mulregime are opposed to it. The announcement made by the new chief of Iran's armed forces on July 18 was described as "treason" by the newspaper Ressalat, mouthpiece of the ultra-conservative
For their part, the Pasdaran supporters of the Ayatollah Montazeri do not hide their ill feelings towards the same Rafsanjani.!9 The outcome of the fight between these various factions, above all after the imminent death of Khomeini, will determine the evolution of the relations between Iran and Iraq and the future of the peace.
Suffering will continue in other forms
This large margin of uncertainty explains the extreme savagery with which Baghdad has moved to reestablish its total control on the part of Kurdistan included in its national frontiers. Thus, as quickly as possible, Saddam Hussein wants to make the most of what can only be a short-lived truce so that he can dispose of a national rebellion that has caused him military problems by allying with Iran. On the other side of the frontier, since the cease-fire the mullahs' regime has begun a wave of executions of political prisoners.
So the halting of the carnage at the Iran-Iraq frontier — positive as it is without the least doubt, and supposing that it will last - by no means signifies an end to killings inside the two countries. In truth, the peoples of the region will only know real civil and external peace when they have got nd of all forms of social and national oppression, eliminating the warmongering and oppressor classes and layers. In the meantime, their suffering will continue in different 16. See the article by Jean Gueyras, op. cit. 17. Newsweek, June 27, 1988. 18. Newsweek, July 18, 1988. 19. "Even recently the Pasdaran put up posters in Tehran that had a flag of stars and stripes in the middle of which one could clearly see Rafsanjani's face." Jean Gueyras, op. cit.
SOUTH AFRICA Slums and shantytowns THE HOUSING shortage in South Africa has reached alarming proportions. Millions of South Africans presently live in slums and shantytowns.
To resolve this problem from now until the year 2,000, it is estimated that 78 billion rand would have to be invested and 3,572,000 new homes built.
tion; No to restrictions on freedom of infor-
ISRAELI STATE mation; Drop the charges against Wars-
Financial appeal chawsky and the AIC". They are calling for solidarity pickets to be held outside embas-
THE TRIAL of our comrade Michel Warssies and consulates on October 19 or earlier chawsky and the Alternative Information and for telegrams and petitions. These
Centre are due to begin on October 19.
should be sent to the Attorney General,
Warschawsky and the AIC are accused of with copies to embassies and the RCL.
services to an illegal organization and sup-
Because the costs of the trial are very port for a terrorist organization (see IV high, it is necessary to start collecting mon-
147). If found guilty, the accused could face up to 23 years in prison.
Financial contributions for the campaign
The Revolutionary Communist League, can be sent via bankers order to "Rouge"