By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Oct 2 1995 (IPS)

Flush with its apparent recent success in easing the civil conflict in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and buoyed by the top-ranking defections from Saddam Hussein’s regime in August, the U.S. is stepping up pressure on the Islamic government in Teheran.

Last week in his annual address to the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher singled out Iran for a frontal attack.

Accusing Teheran of sponsoring international terrorism and seeking to manufacture nuclear weapons, Christopher called on the international community to isolate Iran.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati was so incensed that he rewrote his speech and issued a stiff rejoinder. Calling the United States an arrogant power, Velayati declared that his country would not be bullied. He admonished Washington to stay out of the regional politics of the Persian Gulf.

But Washington is unlikely to reverse its policy of pursuing an active, multi-track strategy — economic, military and political — aimed at isolating and weakening Iran.

In April, President Bill Clinton banned American investment in and trade with Iran and urged other western nations to follow suit.

But he received a poor response.

In July he announced the formation of a new permanent Fifth Fleet, consisting of two nuclear-powered submarines, 15 ships, one aircraft carrier with 70 warplanes, and 10,000 sailors and marines — all to patrol the Gulf, and chiefly to police Iran.

The United States then pressured Russia — unsuccessfully — to cancel its contract with Teheran to supply it with a water-cooled nuclear reactor.

Iran needs the equipment to complete the nuclear power plant at the port of Bushrhr. The work, begun in the mid-1970s by the then West Germans during the monarchical rule of the Pahlavis, was interrupted first by the Islamic revolution of 1979 and then the Iran-Iraq War, which ended in 1988.

Having failed in Moscow, Washington then turned its attention to China’s dealings with Teheran, denouncing China for selling Iran uranium processing equipment. Both countries denied that delivery of the materials had been made. More to the point, the Vienna- based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that there was no international ban as such on selling such machinery.

But there was no relenting on the part of Washington.

As a result, Beijing announced on Sep. 29 that it had decided to “postpone” delivery of the uranium processing equipment it had contracted to supply Teheran.

And there is yet another front on which the United States has opened battle against Iran.

In late August, its intelligence sources leaked a story to the London-based ‘Sunday Times’ that Iran’s secret ten-year-old biological weapons programme had been boosted by Teheran’s hiring of Russian experts over the past two years.

If the biological warfare programme had been in effect in Iran since 1985, how is it that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has — very conveniently — only discovered its existence now? And why has Washington not raised this issue officially?

Its escalating campaign against Teheran indicates that the White House has decided to overlook the geo-strategic and economic assets of Iran, and yield to the pressures emanating from the Republican-dominated U.S. Congress.

Prominent among those who have been campaigning hard for a vehemently anti-Iran policy in the portals of Congress are Israel and the pro-Israeli lobbies, particularly the influential American- Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991 deprived Israel of its ideological demon. Until then, it had worked actively to defeat leftist and radical nationalist regimes and movements in the Arab Middle East.

Following the defeat of Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, Israel has focussed on the sole remaining regional power with a potential to challenge its designs in the Middle East: Iran.

The recent trumpeting by Teheran that it had become self- sufficient in weapons production, and that it was already exporting arms and ammunition to 14 countries, will make the top Israeli leaders redouble their efforts to isolate the Islamic republic.

Faced with acts of terrorism by militant Islamic Palestinian groups, Israel has sharpened its denunciation of Muslim fundamentalism in general and the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular.

In this it has the receptive ear of Warren Christopher. As a senior official in the State Department during the presidency of Jimmy Carter (1977-80), Christopher nurtured a well-known grudge against Iran for taking American diplomats hostage, and making the United States appear helpless on the domestic front and abroad.

In fact, the only subject about which the phlegmatic 70-year- old Secretary of State is reported to show any passion is Iran.

And it won’t take a Republican win in the U.S. presidential elections next year to widen the diplomatic gap.

By now, an actively anti-Iran stance has become so entrenched in Clinton’s policy — as a result of pandering to a hard-line Republican Congress and Christopher’s influence — that, were he to be re-elected president next year, relations between Washington and Teheran could only get worse.

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