Iran Searching Globe for Weapons to Buy, U.S. Says : Mideast: Tehran aims to rebuild arsenal devastated by war with Iraq. It has recently hit up South Africa.

In defiance of the escalating U.S. campaign to tighten the squeeze on Iran, the Islamic republic is expanding its $5-billion global quest for arms to rebuild its arsenal, according to senior U.S. officials.

The latest contact occurred in South Africa, where Iranian representatives in recent weeks have unsuccessfully explored the possibility of buying long-range artillery.

In recent months, Iran also has explored the possibility of buying tanks from Poland and Slovakia and of buying war materiel from other non-Western countries such as China in an attempt to diversify its arms dealings, long dominated by Russia and North Korea.

“Iran has now sent purchasing agents with wish lists to virtually every country that makes arms and isn’t Western to see if it can do deals,” a U.S. arms specialist said. “A consensus is developing (around the world) that it’s not a good idea to sell arms to Iran, but unfortunately not everyone has signed on.”

Iran’s initiatives have led the Clinton Administration to warn a growing number of governments “at the highest levels” that trading in arms with pariah states such as Iran endangers U.S. aid and political support, a U.S. official said.

Iran’s quest comes at a sensitive time. President Clinton is now deliberating tougher new sanctions, including banning all U.S. exports to Iran and barring U.S. subsidiaries from selling Iranian oil to foreign countries. And two bills before Congress would cut off all financial transactions and bar any foreign business that deals with Tehran from trade in the United States.

But the Iran-South Africa link underscores the broader problem for the United States in establishing a unilateral policy that will force Iran to change its extremist policies and behavior.

“As long as Iran has oil and the revenues from oil, it’s going to have a lot of leverage, a lot of room to maneuver,” said an Administration source.

Although Iran is increasingly isolated from U.S. markets, it has strong trade ties with a host of governments. The growing ties between Tehran and Pretoria reflect the kind of economic relationships shaping the post-Cold War world.

“They may seem strange bedfellows, but they’re actually a good fit. South Africa gets the bulk of its oil from Iran,” a U.S. official said.

“And because of a trade imbalance in Tehran’s favor, South Africa has a vested interest in finding something it can sell to Iran.”

Iran supplies roughly 300,000 of the 400,000 barrels consumed daily in South Africa, according to South Africa’s Central Energy Fund. Iran’s exports to South Africa were almost three times its imports from the country in 1993, the latest South African figures show.

In addition, Pretoria and Tehran began talks last year on an expanded arrangement whereby South Africa would lease storage space to Iran for up to 15 million barrels of light and heavy oil at the Saldanha Bay complex near Cape Town. The oil then could be sold and shipped to growing markets in East Africa and southern Africa.

These commercial ties provided the context for the initial investigation of arms sales, U.S. officials said. Pretoria has been encouraging Tehran to buy South African goods.

After U.S. intelligence monitored the contact, Clinton Administration sources said, the Administration was sufficiently alarmed that it communicated its concern to the government of President Nelson Mandela.

South African officials vehemently deny negotiating any arms deals with Iran. “It’s nonsense,” said Don Henning, spokesman for Pretoria-based Armscor, the government-run arms exporting agency.

But a wide range of U.S. officials insisted that contacts between Iranian and South African representatives have taken place recently and have focused particularly on long-range artillery. The talks got as far as discussing prices.

South Africa’s G-5 and G-6 artillery are “world class” and even better than their American equivalents, according to U.S. arms specialists. Last year, South Africa sold Oman the same systems as part of a $120-million deal. Both are 155-millimeter howitzers with a range of at least 25 miles.

Iran is now halfway through a 10-year program to replenish an arsenal devastated during the 1980-88 war with Iraq--an effort that Washington is campaigning hard to slow.

U.S. analysts say that between 40% and 60% of Tehran’s military equipment was captured, destroyed or damaged during the war. Iran is also increasingly having to replace aging systems bought from the United States before its 1979 revolution.

The timing of talks on the arms sales is tied partly to South Africa’s change in government a year ago, U.S. officials said. Since its revolution, Iran has supported the African National Congress, so Tehran and Pretoria are on close terms. Mandela visited Tehran in 1992 as the guest of President Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Mandela has also led an aggressive campaign to market South Africa’s sophisticated arms--developed, ironically, during 17 years of a U.N. arms embargo against its former white-minority regimes.

Mandela, co-winner of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize, gave the opening address at an international arms fair in Johannesburg last year and has lobbied for arms sales during recent travels. He is just concluding a trip to four Persian Gulf nations, in part to boost South Africa’s arms trade.

South African arms sales this fiscal year are expected to reach about $500 million, nearly double last year’s total.

Pretoria asserts that its policy conforms with U.S. and international standards barring arms sales to repressive regimes. But Henning said that the arms trading agency’s international guidelines are under review, and he declined to say whether any law or regulation would prevent Armscor from selling weapons to Iran.

The problem of balancing arms sales and morality is not new.

Largely because of its economic problems, Russia has defied U.S. pressure to curb its open-ended arms deal with Iran worth hundreds of millions of dollars--despite a U.S.-Russian agreement last fall not to sell new arms to Iran. Russia also expects to make up to $1 billion for building at least two and possibly four light-water nuclear reactors for Iran.

Poland and Slovakia also have been “really tempted” by Iran’s overtures to buy T-72 and T-55 tanks, a U.S. source said. Both could use either oil or petrodollars from Iran to help their economies make the transition to capitalism.

Iran is also discussing a whole range of weapons and munitions with China. Although most of its weapons systems are upgrades or copies of Russian designs, China, where Washington has little financial and political leverage, could provide a solid fallback for Iran if Moscow should begin to distance itself from Tehran.

U.S. officials conceded that the results of the American campaign have been mixed. “With black markets and smuggling, Iran will always be able to get some of the things it wants,” the specialist said. “What we’re trying to do is keep making it harder and harder.”

Wright reported from Washington and Drogin from Johannesburg.