The history of the U.S. response to the Khomeini regime in Iran is a history spotted with mistakes, stubbornness, and near-disaster. Clearly, no American strategy has yet been devised to battle fundamentalist Islam on ideological grounds.
The Iran-Iraq war is more than a personal struggle between two charismatic leaders, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and President Saddam Hussein. It is war by Shi'ite fundamentalists trying to rally other Islamic Arabs around their cause. They are fighting not only Sunnis but also the forces of secularism, modernity, Westernization and Christianity, not to mention Zionism.
In that sense, the ayatollah and his mullahs are conducting a surrogate war against the West, a continuation of a war that began with the Iranian revolution and the administration of Jimmy Carter. Obviously, Khomeini cannot declare a direct war against the United States, but he can battle the West and modernity in a surrogate manner by continuing the bloody battle against Iraq no matter what the cost, as well as by supporting, encouraging, and instigating Shi'ite terrorism against the West.
Carter and his advisers chose the worst possible approach to Khomeini and his regime. First, they failed to adequately support the Shah; then, they tried to support the heirs of Mossadegh, whom the United States itself helped out in 1953.
During the tortuous hostage crisis, Carter attempted to deal with the secular and Marxist opposition rather than negotiate directly with Khomeini. The president remained chained to his rose garden, clinging stubbornly to an unworkable human rights policy and becoming increasingly inflexible, a pattern that only helped to strengthen the rule of Khomeini. Carter's intransigent stance helped to ruin the opposition and legitimize Khomeini's rule.
The Reagan administration's approach has been only marginally better. Reagan's continued policy of non-recognition of Iran, which is not really a policy at all, and of tilting at least verbally in support of Iraq, may not be as extreme as Carter's stance, but it is equally ineffective. The Reagan administration's hope that U.S. support of Iraq might somehow tilt the tides of war against Iran is unrealistic and futile, as six years of war have shown.
What then should an American policy toward the war and toward Iran entail?
The policy should not be limited to emphasis on such strategic matters as access to the oil of the Persian Gulf and the protection of Sunni Arab regimes, though these are significant and in fact are part of the reason why a U.S.-Iranian rapprochement is imperative.
Although the Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia are almost paranoid about Iran and the possible effects of its exported, rabid fundamentalism on their regimes, it is also true that the only way the United States can realistically protect them is to come up with some kind of rapprochement with Iran.
Rapprochement would potentially do more than merely protect U.S. strategic interests. It could in the long run end the bloody Iran-Iraq war, temporize and perhaps end the Iranian pursuit of political
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