WHAT MOTIVATES IRAN

There are other reasons which explain Iran's attitude towards the United States:

1) Iran is worried that the United States will use nuclear weapons, or a version thereof, referred to as "bunker-busters," to blast the Iraqi underground bunkers and, as a result, pollute the region.  Just like us, Iran feels it is more responsible than the rest of the world.

2) As mentioned in earlier issues, Iran is aware that it is now the leader of the Arab world, by default, since Egypt has become a beggar for scraps of food from the United States, and Iraq has been exhausted by years of war and sanctions.  This leadership gives it breathing space and access to the Mediterranean through Syria and Lebanon.  Iran has spread its power into these two nations.  It has turned Hezballah into a sophisticated fighting entity at the service of Syria.  This party recently has shown an ability to infiltrate the Israeli defense establishment.  (Note the arrest of an upper rank Israeli officer of bedouin descent  who is said to have passed security information to Hezballah.)  Iran is concerned that American control of Iraq will be a thorn in its waist, and block it from access to the Mediterranean.  As things stand now, Iran would benefit economically from the evolution of an Iranian-Iraqi-Syrian-Lebanese economic bloc.   In contrast,  U.S. control of Iraq would weaken Syria, and suffocate the Islamic Republic.

3)  Iran is aware that the United States and Israel are trying hard to ignite a civil war in Iran, to have the armed forces rein in the Revolutionary Guard and the fundamental Islamists who run the security and religious establishments.  Hence the suspected shipment of Israeli spare parts for tanks for the Iranian army.  (See the last SPC issue). Iran would rather keep things as they are: the moderates give it access to Europe and the United States, and the Islamists to the Arab masses, Syria and Lebanon.  Together, they give Iran the world status to which it feels it is entitled.

4)  Iran is trying to mobilize all countries into a yet undefined pact to cooperate as a way of keeping Israel's ally, the United States, out of the region.  For instance, Iran re-established diplomatic relations with Egypt, which it had severed in 1979, in the aftermath of Sadat's signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel.  This opening should fit well into Iran's policy of supporting a political (for now) campaign against the U.S. bases in the Gulf.  It will provide Iran with diplomatic access to Arab countries, and place its people closer to groups which are forming to oppose the American bases.

5) Iran will continue on with its suspected secret nuclear weapons program.  While at first that program was intended to balance the Iraqi program, it now has as goal the balancing of Israel's known nuclear weapons capability.  The United States will try to de-couple the various intertwined issues: e.g., on the one hand, the continued Israeli colonization of Palestinian land, the continued Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, Israel's not-so-secret huge hydrogen/nuclear bomb capability from,  on the other, America's wish to deter Iran from developing its own bombs, from supporting the Palestinian war of national liberation, and from supporting Syria in its efforts to regain the Golan.  In short, Iran perceives the United States as the obstacle to the achievement of Iran's national aspirations.