Iraqi Revolt Starting to Worry White House : Policy: The unrest could leave a weakened Hussein in power or install a radical Islamic regime, they fear.

WASHINGTON —  The Bush Administration viewed the Iraqi insurrection against Saddam Hussein with growing unease Tuesday as it faced the prospects of two unattractive results: A postwar Iraq led by a weakened Hussein, or, even less desirable in the White House assessment, a country led by an Islamic fundamentalist regime allied with Iran.

If they seize control of part of Iraq, Shiite Muslim rebels battling loyalist elements in Hussein’s army in Basra and other cities could form a natural bond with Iran, which is ruled by Shiite Muslims. Such an alliance, Middle East analysts said, would dangerously destabilize the region and cast the shadow of Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini across the unsettled Persian Gulf neighborhood.

At the same time, rebels from the Kurdistan section of Iraq, representing the third-largest ethnic group in the embattled nation, could move to carve out their own independent niche in the north. That, in turn, could lead to the disintegration of the Iraqi nation, creating another set of problems for the United States and its allies.

The immediate prospects remain uncertain. Without large-scale support from Iran, experts said, the Shiites are unlikely to be able to topple Hussein. The rebellions in southern and northern Iraq, they said, appear too spontaneous and disorganized to pose a credible threat to Hussein’s regime at this point.

Although Shiite Muslims constitute a slim majority in Iraq, they are clustered in the southern third of the country and do not command the military units or the ruling Arab Baath Socialist Party cells from which a successful coup almost certainly would be staged, said Augustus Richard Norton, a Middle East expert and senior research fellow at the International Peace Academy in New York.

But the experts also cautioned that it is still too early to predict the outcome because Hussein’s defeat in the Gulf War has greatly weakened his grip on power and created a dangerous power vacuum. They believe the widespread unrest may very well be “the beginning of the end” for the dictator.

In their view, elements within the military and the Baath Party may decide they must sacrifice Hussein to prevent the “Lebanonization” of Iraq, a term used to describe a possible division of the country between Shiites in the south, Kurds in the north, and Sunni Muslims between them.

Thus, a military leader would be most likely to step in to try to unify the nation before Syria, Turkey or Iran, all of which harbor territorial claims against Iraq, could make a grab for the spoils.

The prospect of others jumping into the already muddy pool led State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler to issue a blunt message directed at Iran and others:

“The United States respects and believes in the territorial integrity of Iraq, and we do not believe that other states should involve themselves in the internal matters of Iraq.”

As for any active U.S. involvement in the unrest, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told an audience of petroleum industry executives: “I’m not sure whose side you’d want to be on.”

Besides, Cheney said, the support that the United States has received from the international coalition opposing Hussein would crumble if Washington chose sides.

“I don’t think, at this point, that our writ extends to trying to move inside Iraq and deal with their internal problems,” he said.

As viewed by the White House, the unrest in Iraq is being fed by the war-related dislocation of both civilian and military society and, in particular, by the return of a defeated military that does not know its leadership’s political agenda or military goals.

“Some of these people are feeling very disgruntled,” said White House Deputy Press Secretary Roman Popadiuk.

Asked if the Administration welcomed the unrest, Popadiuk replied: “Unrest in any country is not helpful, especially in a situation where you’re trying to get the country back on its feet after a military conflict.

“It’s not helpful to anyone, but it’s for the Iraqi people to determine what future course they want to take politically,” he added.

Later, another White House official said that although the Administration is not unhappy to see Hussein’s rule challenged, it does not want to appear to be “welcoming violence and saying chaos and rioting are good.”

“On the other hand, the disfavor with which we hold the Saddam Hussein regime hasn’t changed. We’d be delighted if he’d depart the scene,” the official said.

But that leaves the Administration facing a central question it is having trouble answering: Who would it want to step in to fill Hussein’s shoes?

“We certainly don’t like the devil we know,” said one senior Administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Even so, he added, “we don’t have a chosen candidate” to replace Hussein.

In the end, the various scenarios being debated within the government and private think tanks raise an ironic but alarming possibility: Hussein’s downfall ultimately could be more destabilizing to the Middle East than Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

A breakaway Shiite Muslim state in southern Iraq could be especially destabilizing for Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis’ Eastern Province is predominately Shiite Muslim. Indeed, it was partly the prospect of wide-scale Shiite unrest that compelled the Saudis to support the Iraqis against the fundamentalist Shiite mullahs of Tehran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.

“We began the 1980s in the Middle East fearing this Shiite bogyman, then realized toward the end of the decade that we had exaggerated that threat,” Norton said. “It would be quite ironic to find we have now helped to create the very thing that we feared a decade earlier. It would be ironic, and it would also be quite a mess.”

A Shiite victory “would lead to grave consequences for the United States,” said former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, a moderate now in exile in France.

“The Iraqis,” he said, “would in turn activate Iranian dissident networks, and the region would erupt in conflict.”

Times staff writer David Lauter contributed to this report.