TEHERAN — United States president George W Bush’s naming Iraq for a possible attack has spread unease in neighbouring Iran, which feels vulnerable, isolated and besieged.

“President Bush’s military campaign against Iraq will be very bad for our country which will be exposed,” says Mohammad Soltanifar, managing director of the English-language Iran News in Tehran. “We will be his next target.”

What if the Americans succeed in overthrowing Saddam without attacking his country? “That will still be bad for Iran,” says Soltanifar.

Having endured an eight-year war with Saddam in the 1980s, Tehran is under no illusion about the nature of the Iraqi president or his authoritarian regime. But the Iranian leaders would much rather deal with Saddam, the devil they know, who is – in the final analysis – his own man.

The alternative of having to do business with an American henchman in post-Saddam Iraq is far too depressing a thought for Tehran’s ruling clerics to contemplate.

Not that the scenario elsewhere brings any cheer.

As they survey the regional map they see fresh American military bases in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan – in addition to the old ones in all of the six Gulf monarchies and in Turkey. In the Caucasus they note the presence of US Special Forces in Georgia.

“The encircling around us is getting complete,” says Soltanifar.

They note that since including Iran in his “Axis of Evil” speech last February (along with Iraq and North Korea), Bush has been eager to find fault with its policy on Afghanistan. He alleged that Iran had provided refuge to al-Qaeda terrorist fugitives, a charge Tehran hotly denies.

“Some of the al-Qaeda members might have crossed into Iran over Pakistan’s Baluchistan border, which is a very difficult terrain to monitor,” says a senior Asian diplomat in Tehran. “But the Iranian authorities were not involved. They arrested some al-Qaeda members of diverse nationalities and informed the respective embassies of their detention.”

More specifically, Washington is suspicious of Iran’s special relationship with the western region of Afghanistan centred around Herat.

There are long-established cultural and economic ties between this Persian-speaking region and Iran. After his defeat by the Afghan Taliban regime, the local warlord Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik belonging to the Tehran-backed Northern Alliance, took refuge in the eastern Iranian city of Mashhad. It was from there that he co-ordinated his attack on the Taliban last October with the Pentagon’s anti-terror campaign.

In early December the Iranian delegation worked closely with its American counterpart in the peace talks in Bonn to install Hamid Karzai as leader of the interim government in Afghanistan. Since then Tehran has backed Karzai.

“It was the Iranians who put a reluctant Ismail Khan on their plane and flew him to Kabul to attend Karzai’s swearing in ceremony on 22 December,” reveals the diplomat. “He arrived in the middle of the ceremony. In return, Karzai appointed his son the labour minister.”

Since then Tehran has pledged $560 million aid to Afghanistan over the next five years, and Karzai has visited Tehran. “On the ideological-political front, [Iranian President Mohammed] Khatami and Karzai are on the same wavelength,” says Soltanifar. “Both are committed to Islamic democracy and the rule of law.”

Iran’s attitude is in sharp contrast to that of Washington, which appears to be intent on expelling Iranian influence in Afghanistan under the guise of promoting security for the war-ravaged country.

The Pentagon lost little time in setting up an observation post at Qala-e Qalat Fort near the Afghan-Iranian border. On his last visit to Afghanistan, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made it a point to visit Herat and lecture Ismail Khan on the vital importance of his region for the stability of Afghanistan.

“We have repeatedly voiced support for peace and calm in Afghanistan, but stationing American forces on our eastern borders is not a neighbourly act,” said an editorial in the pro-reform Iran News. “Afghan officials must be alert to the fact that the Americans are provoking Iran.”

The situation to the north of Iran too looks grim. Tehran received the news of the recent establishment of the Russian-NATO Council with unease. Though Moscow’s commitment to complete a nuclear power plant near Bushehr remains intact, any chance of a future Iranian-Russian strategic alliance has evaporated.

This comes on top of discord between the two on the division of the Caspian Sea. Tehran maintains that the 1921 and 1940 Soviet-Iranian agreements on the inland sea are valid until a new legal regime has been agreed by Iran and the four succeeding littoral states – Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

Meanwhile it regards any unilateral or bilateral deals for energy exploration of the Caspian as null and void.

At issue are the economic resources of the Caspian and the security of the littoral states. There are two options: division of the sea-bed and common sovereignty over sea water; or dividing up both the sea-bed and sea water.

Russia favours the first, providing for common sovereignty over the sea’s surface, because it will provide the best security. Regarding the sea-bed, much to Tehran’s chagrin, it has already divided the bed with Kazakhstan, accepting its share of 16.5 per cent.

Iran wants joint sovereignty over the watery surface of the Caspian, but wants an equal division of the sea-bed between the five nations, which would give it 20 per cent whereas its shoreline covers only 13 per cent.

This is the nub of the problem that Tehran has with Azerbaijan with which it shares its fluvial borders. Baku, Azerbaijan, is unwilling to cede its area of the sea-bed to the south to boost Iran’s share especially when that zone is reputed to have oil deposits. Last summer an Iranian warship threatened to fire on an Azeri oil research vessel conducting a seismic survey.

Azeri President Haidar Aliyev’s visit to Tehran in May did not resolve the dispute. And his son, Ilham, vice-president of State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic, has ruled out any prospect of joint exploration of the disputed field.

All of this contributes to the growing sense of isolation in Iran.

Washington, meanwhile, is keeping up its pressure on Kazakhstan to scuttle its plan to ship more of its crude oil to northern Iran for Tehran to export an equivalent amount to Kazakhstan’s customers from its oil terminals in the Gulf.

Iran’s rulers feel confident of tackling the regional problems diplomatically over time. But a military attack by the Pentagon will be an altogether different ball game. – GEMINI NEWS

About the Author: London-based journalist and writer DILIP HIRO was in Iran recently. His latest book is War Without End: The Rise Of Islamist Terrorism And Global Response.