How Iran is planning to deal with Americans

Confrontation or accommodation? As the latest ultimatum set for Iran by the US Security Council draws closer, that perennial question of Iranian politics is back at the centre of debate in Tehran.

The confrontationists, led by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believe that the Bush administration, in its sunset phase, will not dare launch any major military operation against Iran.

According to this view, the most that Bush can do is to order air and missile attacks on the country's nuclear installations. That would damage the project, perhaps setting it back by a year or two.

But it would enable the revolutionary faction within the Khomeinist regime to marginalise its conservative rivals and consolidate its hold on power.

Once the American attack is over, Ahmadinejad would produce TV footage of babies burned by American napalm, and old widows weeping over the ruins of their mud huts. The radical president, who seeks the leadership of a global anti-American front, would claim victory simply by pointing out that he is still around.

Last summer, the tactic worked for the Lebanese branch of Hezbollah that went on to claim an "unprecedented victory in the history of Islam" over the "Infidel".

So confident is Ahmadinejad that the US has become a toothless tiger that he has ordered a series of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to test the Americans.

In Afghanistan, the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, whose forces are based in Iran, has moved onto the offensive against British forces in several places. But it is in Iraq that the Khomeinist leaders have decided to test the Americans.

The latest attacks in which US and British soldiers were killed in Karbala and Basra, two Shiite cities that had been calm for the past two years, is a message to Washington that the Islamic Republic's clients in Iraq could open dozens of new fronts against the US-led multinational force.

Tehran has also ordered the Mehdi Army militia led by Moqtada Al Sadr to disperse its forces throughout central and southern provinces.

Hundreds of Iranian-controlled gunmen are moving out of Baghdad, heading for Diwaniyah Karbala and Najaf, partly to escape the expected American attack on their stronghold, the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, but also to prepare new positions for anti-US operations.

Ahmadinejad has often threatened to "raise a thousand fires" against the US when, and if, Washington attacks Iran.

Tehran has also speeded up arms deliveries to its clients in Lebanon with an eye on using any confusion created by an American attack on the Islamic Republic as a cover for seizing power in Beirut.

The plan is to set up a Committee of Public Safety, headed by the Maronite former general and politician General Michel Aoun, but effectively controlled by Hezbollah.

Ahmadinejad's strategy is inspired by the Shiite doctrine of "relaxation after hardship" (faraj baad al-shiddah).

Hardships

Applied to the present situation, the theory envisages a series of air and missile attacks by the Americans that would cause hardship but would end by giving the Khomeinist revolution a new lease of life as a force that defied the "Great Satan" and survived.

If Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah was able to become an all-time hero of Islam simply by staying alive after triggering a mini-war with Israel, imagine the status that Ahmadinejad could claim once he has "defeated and humiliated" the only remaining "superpower".

Wounded but alive, Ahmadinejad would claim the leadership of the Muslim world in a global struggle to change the destiny of humanity.

As always, however, the Khomeinist leadership is also trying to dangle the carrot of accommodation in front of its enemies. This is why several emissaries have been dispatched to spread the message that the Islamic republic seeks a dialogue with Washington to resolve all mutual problems.

Tehran's next move was to circulate a story about a so-called "Grand Bargain" offer it had made to the Bush administration in 2002.

A one-page document, bearing no official insignia or signature, was circulated in various European capitals, often with the help of the French, showing that Iran had made an offer to the United States that someone like president Bill Clinton would have embraced with passion.

Tehran has also succeeded in tempting France into seeking a role in "a grand strategy for peace".

In a recent meetings with his French counterpart Philippe Douste-Blazy, Manuchehr Mutakki, the Islamic Republic's foreign minister, urged Paris to stop any further moves in the Security Council in exchange for "a determined and sustained diplomatic initiative to end all areas of conflict".

According to Quai d'Orsay sources, Douste-Blazy listened with interest but was not impressed. President Jacques Chirac, however, has seized the Iranian offer with both hands and is sending a special emissary to Tehran to " work things out".

Chirac believes that he should spend the last four months of his presidency preventing the US from taking military action against Iran, repeating his campaign in 2003 to prevent the fall of Saddam Hussain in Iraq.

The Khomeinists have also knocked on the doors of Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and his Iraqi counterpart Jalal Talabani. Karzai has expressed interest but remained noncommittal. Talabani, however, has promised to do all he can to persuade Washington that Tehran's offer was genuine.

Confrontation or accommodation? Three decades after the mullahs seized power in Tehran, the question remains at the heart of the Islamic Republic's strife-ridden political life.

Amir Taheri is an Iranian author and journalist based in Europe.