Of the global bad guys, Iran has the most potential - Column

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 20, 1993 | by Arnold Beichman

One of these days the world will wake up to discover that Iran has become a threat to world peace to a degree reminiscent of the beginning of the Hitler era 60 years ago or the arrival of Lenin at the Finland Station three-quarters of a century ago. Iran, today a regional power, seeks to create a world Islamic empire to be dominated by the Tehran mullahs.

Iran's ambitions are supported -- in what appears to be a quasi-alliance -- by communist China. Quite rightly, therefore, the United States is concerned about a Chinese freighter said to be carrying prohibited chemicals to Iran. Next time, of course, contraband cargo will be flown in one of Iran's 48 major transport aircraft or delivered in one of Iran's 134 ships, including four chemical tankers. However the quarrel ends over the Chinese cargo vessel, the big issue will remain: Iran's biological and chemical weapons program.

Never mind that Iran now owns a just-delivered second submarine, thanks to Russia, which delivered the first one last year. (Zbigniew Brzezinski has pointed out that Russia might become the third leg of a China-Iran alliance.) When Iran takes possession of the third 2,500-ton submarine early next year as part of a deal said to be worth $600 million to Russia, Iran will be the most powerful indigenous naval power in the Persian Gulf.

Iran, with a large stock of Chinese-supplied missiles and 1,700 Soviet tanks -- Iran's 1991 arms budget allocated $1.4 billion for tanks alone -- is already the most powerful land power in the area. Nearly 8 million young men out of a population of 61 million are available for military service (Iran's jobless rate is 30 percent). According to CIA estimates, Iran's defense spending in 1991 ran between 14 and 15 percent (or $13 billion) of its gross national product.

What makes Iran different from other potential threats to world peace, such as Iraq, North Korea or China, is that it is driven by a powerful faith or ideology that goes by the now familiar name of Islamic fundamentalism. Communism no longer threatens the democracies as it once did. As an ideology, Marxism-Leninism is on the way out, but Islamic fundamentalism is on the way in. From Salman Rushdie to the World Trade Center to assassinated Egyptian officials and Algerian unionists, Iran's theocracy, aided and abetted by Sudan (now on the State Department's terrorist list), has shown an ability to project without reprisal its terrorist power across any national boundary it chooses, most recently in southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

According to the People's Mujahideen Organization of Iran, an antigovernment organization of exiles, the elite Iranian Guards Corps is in charge of five biological and chemical weapons programs throughout Iran. There is no way to check these claims independently, since Iran does not permit outsiders to inspect its factories. However, in the past, mujahideen information about Iran has proved correct.

It must be kept in mind that without foreign assistance, Iran would be nowhere with its military modernization programs. Such assistance comes from China, North Korea, Russia and companies in Germany that operate, one must assume, with the full knowledge of the German government. The Guard Corps is producing chemical weapons, nerve gases and biological weapons that are being stockpiled. Iran now has the technology to mount chemical warheads on its long-range Scud missiles, all purchased from North Korea.

According to the mujahideen, the Guards Corps and government agencies are building a chemical weapons complex at a site nine miles west of Tehran, the country's capital, on the Tehran-Karaj highway. Chinese engineers and military experts supervise this project under the direction of an organization called the Center of the Construction Crusade.

In Karaj itself, on the Qazvin-Hessarak highway, is the Razi Serum and Vaccine Production Center, which is carrying out research on biological weapons. The Razi Chemical Corp.'s main production facility is in Bandar Khomeini, in southwest Iran. The Marvdasht Center in Fars Province produces mustard gas. An explosion in the chemical gas factory in 1987 cost at least 400 lives. One of the principal chemical gas producers is the Poly-Acryl Corp., 28 miles from Isfahan on the Isfahan-Mobarakeh highway. Ostensibly, it is an ordinary company administered by an entity known as the "Foundation for the Deprived," the central offices of which are on Tehran's Gandhi Street.

Optimists about Iran should be reminded of the hearty welcome given some noted terrorists by Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani in September 1989. The evidence is a study of boastful domestic Tehran Radio broadcasts describing the welcoming ceremonies.

Tehran Radio reported Sept. 22, 1989, the arrival the night before from Lebanon of a delegation of representatives of Hezbollah headed by Sheik Sobhi al-Tofaili (one of the most important terrorists under direct Iranian command); of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, headed by Ahmed Jibril; and of the Fatah Revolutionary Movement, headed by Col. Abu Musa. They were greeted by Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Sheikhol-Islam, whose career began 10 years ago as one of the leaders in the seizure of the U.S. Embassy. During the delegation's stay in Iran, it met under the chairmanship of Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, Rafsanjani's protege.