Iran: Winning on the Sidelines? : Tehran sees itself in a no-lose situation in the Gulf War

Iran, according to one report, is said to have been so surprised by the flight of Iraqi warplanes into its airspace last weekend that it shot two of them down before it understood that their pilots were seeking asylum, not confrontation. Now Iran says it will intern all the planes it holds, along with their pilots, until the Persian Gulf War ends. At this point there’s no way to know whether the story about the shoot-downs is true. Neither, unfortunately, is there any way to know whether Tehran’s assurances about keeping the Iraqi planes neutralized can be believed.

Commanders of the coalition forces gathered in Saudi Arabia hope so, as do Israeli military planners. Among the 100 or so planes in Iran are Soviet-supplied Sukhoi bombers, capable of the long-range delivery of chemical bombs. If these and other of Iraq’s best planes remain out of action, the anti-Iraq forces will have one less thing to worry about.

That if may well turn on Tehran’s cold calculation of how it can most benefit from the conflict. The final product of that calculation is anyone’s guess. The inherent murkiness of Iran’s internal politics, combined with a tradition of cultivated secretiveness, frustrates insight. That there is steady tension between radical and--for lack of a more precise word--pragmatic factions seems clear enough. But what decisions and actions flow from that tension can only be known when they are seen to occur, if then.

Of course, neither faction harbors any affection for Iraq, whose eight-year war of aggression came close to bleeding Iran dry. But both also despise the United States as the exemplar of a Western culture decried as immoral, decadent and corrupt, the “Great Satan” whose support for the secular rule of the late Shah has been neither forgotten nor forgiven. Some believe that the radicals may be ready to help Iraq--perhaps even with sales of Scud missiles or other weapons--out of a sense of Islamic and anti-Western solidarity.

Certainly no one in Iran’s hierarchy wants to see a long-term American military presence in the Gulf. Certainly, too, no one is eager to see this conflict end with Iraq’s military power or Saddam Hussein’s prestige intact. That would not advance Iran’s need for a calmer future in which it can rebuild its devastated economy. President Bush, echoing U.N. resolutions, has talked about the need to foster stability in the Gulf, a concept that implicitly depends on no one country exercising military or political dominance. That was meant to reduce the fears of a number of the area’s states, not least Iran.

It could be that the most plausible analysis right now is that Iran sees itself in a no-lose situation. Its two great adversaries are slugging away at each other at no small cost. Tehran can hope that the war will go on for some time, in the expectation that when it does end, Iraq will have been left too exhausted to become a threat any time soon, and the United States too scarred or disillusioned to want to stay in the region to help underwrite its stability.

Meanwhile, Iran is gathering political IOUs--in Baghdad for protecting some of its air force from destruction, in Washington for remaining neutral. Iran may just come out of this conflict politically stronger than it has been for years.