Effective Gulf Cease-Fire Would Serve U.S. Interests

For the first time in eight years, Iran and Iraq may soon stop fighting and start making peace, thus ending one of the most horrific conflicts of modern times. This event will also have a major impact on the U.S. strategic perspective toward the Middle East. Most developments, though not all, will be positive. The balance of advantage mandates vigorous, flexible and committed American efforts to press for the cease-fire and make it effective.

Of most obvious benefit, a cease-fire will stop the threat of Iranian attacks against U.S. ships in response to Iraqi provocation. The flow of oil, never much at risk, will be even more secure. And, as the Pentagon has already hinted, if the war winds down, the 27-ship U.S. fleet can be thinned out and reflagging of Kuwaiti tankers can be halted. That doesn’t mean our sailing away, however. As it has done for four decades, the United States will have a continuing interest in maintaining some naval presence in the gulf.

Ending the U.S.-Iranian confrontation will also have an impact on Iran’s succession struggle in a way favorable to the West. Rapid U.S.-Iranian rapprochement is unlikely, but that is not critical to the United States. What is critical is that those Iranian leaders who lean toward the Soviet Union will be less able to play an anti-American card. The Soviets will have less chance to gain influence in Iran--the country that, in recent months, has been the most intense point of East-West competition.

With a halt to conflict, it will also be less likely that Iran will be dominated by the moujahedeen, an Iraqi-based and -financed group of exiles who solicit support on street corners in major U.S. cities but are no friends of the United States. Even more important, if the danger of U.S.-Iranian clashes ends and the U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf can be reduced, the Islamic fundamentalists will be deprived of a potent psychological weapon that they have used throughout the Muslim world. And it will become less likely that Iran will either disintegrate or become another Lebanon, with untold consequences throughout the region and for the West’s position there.

Beyond these direct benefits, winding down the Iran-Iraq conflict will permit the United States and other outside powers to begin concentrating on a newer threat to long-range regional stability that has been both spurred on and partially obscured by the war. This is the influx of high-performance weaponry, especially ballistic missiles--a development made more ominous by Iraq’s massive use of chemical weapons, which, regrettably, the West tolerated.

China has shipped missiles to both Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran and Iraq have fired Soviet-made missiles at one another’s cities. Syria has acquired accurate Soviet rockets, and Israel has developed its own Jericho medium-range missile. These weapons threaten to revolutionize the problem of maintaining stability and preventing war in the Middle East. Because of their accuracy, speed and potential for destruction, they risk overwhelming the region’s geography and politics and its capacity to prevent conflict through accident or miscalculation.

Once the Iran-Iraq war stops, the United States can try getting the world’s sellers and the region’s buyers to limit the excesses of this arms supply. The United States will also find at least a partial answer to one dilemma posed by its having interests at both ends of the region. Because of the war, the Arab states of the gulf pressed the United States to sell them arms for defense against Iran. If Washington accedes to these demands, it risks increasing the threat to Israel, which must then be provided with more weapons. This dilemma has been underscored by Kuwait’s recent bidding for major arms purchases and by Saudi Arabia’s $18-billion to $30-billion weapons contract with Britain.

Ending the war does not mean an end to U.S. strategic concerns in the region, however. It will continue to be volatile, and East-West competition for influence will proceed. A heavily armed Iraq will again become a major contestant for power within the Persian Gulf. Along with the gulf Arab states, it will begin turning its attention back to the Arab-Israeli conflict. The Arabs’ perception of an Iranian threat will provide less of a distraction, and the next U.S. Administration will be under increased pressure to be actively engaged in Arab-Israeli peacemaking.

Oil prices, meanwhile, are likely to become far less stable than they have been in recent months. In the short term, the Saudis and other gulf Arab producers will have less interest in increased production in order to lower the price and deprive Iran of revenues. In the medium term, both Iran and Iraq will flood the oil market in order to earn money to repair their devastated economies, thus driving the price down. And in the long term, if hostility ebbs between Iran and Iraq, they will see their mutual interest in working with other OPEC countries to try returning to the days when they set the world price, and it is likely to increase. Such gyrations are a cost of peace.

Yet there can be no doubt that the human, political and strategic benefits of a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq war are strongly in the U.S. interest. Right now, nothing else in U.S. foreign policy rivals the need to pursue, relentlessly, last week’s opening toward a truce and its promise of peace.