Personal Power, Personal Hate

The decision to attack Iraq last week was taken personally by Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Despite his advanced age (82) and frail health, the religious leader has relinquished none of the levers of power that he grasped upon his triumphal return to Tehran 3 1/2 years ago. Under Iran's Islamic Republican constitution, Khomeini's role as Velayat-e-Faqih, or religious guardian, gives him more power than either President Seyed Ali Khamene'i or Prime Minister

Mir-Hossein Moussavi, and he uses it to shape all major strategies, domestic as well as foreign. He also remains the final arbiter of all policy and personality disputes.

Almost every day, government officials, military officers, clerics and foreign representatives travel to Khomeini's modest home in Jamaran, a village north of Tehran. Some have been summoned to brief the Ayatullah on everything from logistic problems on the Iraqi front to statistics on mosque attendance. Others who wish to see Khomeini must submit a request through a cleric who acts as an appointments secretary; Khomeini receives only a small proportion of those seeking an audience. Sometimes he will make an appearance at the mosque adjacent to his house. There he

receives petitions from the faithful and obeisance from his followers. Khomeini uses these occasions to speak out on religious and political subjects. Though his precarious health has been complicated lately by kidney problems, which have necessitated an even stricter diet than the one he favors, and by difficulties in breathing, he remains psychologically firm and mentally alert.

Khomeini's approach to decision making is to keep his counsel at first, allowing the advocates of different options to debate issues openly. But once Khomeini has announced his choice, all contending factions rally to his view, regardless of where they stood before. So it was with the invasion of Iraq.

Personal motives played an important part in Khomeini's decision to send his forces into Iraq. The Ayatullah, who was exiled to Iraq's Holy City of An Najaf after several arrests for anti-Shah activities, has never forgiven Saddam Hussein for trying to use him as a pawn in Iraqi-Iranian relations. To placate the Shah during a short-lived period of rapprochement betweeen the two countries, Saddam Hussein placed Khomeini under virtual house arrest in 1975. Three years later, as the Shah came under increasing pressure from Islamic fundamentalists operating with Khomeini's backing, Saddam agreed to expel the Ayatullah. It was then that Khomeini moved to France. Today Khomeini refers to Saddam as "the epitome of atheist filth."

In addition, Saddam's aggressively secular, socialist regime has long been anathema to Khomeini's philosophy of government, which insists on the clergy's God-given right to rule. With its 55% Shi'ite majority and Shi'ite shrines at An Najaf and Karbala, Iraq should, in Khomeini's view, be the natural home of a sister Islamic republic.

Four years ago, when Khomeini was still an exile in France, he was asked who his enemies were. "First the Shah," Khomeini replied, "then the American Satan, then Saddam Hussein and his infidel Baath Party." Today the Shah is dead. The U.S. was humiliated by the 444-day capture of its embassy staff in Tehran. That leaves Saddam Hussein on the front line of Khomeini's hatred.

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