IT would be illogical, and surprising as well, if the USSR did not try to exploit the present explosive situation in the Middle East to inflame still further the difficulties of the United States and the weakness of Europe. What a marvelous game it would be for the Soviets if the places from which the West derives its major supplies of life-giving oil were to fall into chaos and under Soviet control! Particularly when they are simultaneously using considerable persuasion and pressure to prevent Europe from remedying its state of strategic inferiority, a state into which it has been sliding little by little.
It would be going too far to deny the authenticity of the Iranian Islamic revolution and to attribute it exclusively to Soviet Machiavellianism. But it would be just as foolish to disregard the advantage the Soviets have begun to take of it, not only in Iran, but in Saudi Arabia and in the Persian Gulf states. What Vadim Zagladin, deputy chief of the international section of the Soviet Central Committee, told the world last month, and what the secretary general of the Iranian Communist Party said as well, make the support given by the USSR and various Communist parties to the Khomeini regime absolutely official. This is also true of their activities in favor of the propagation of a Khomeini-style revolution throughout Islam. After all, if the Soviets did not have precise plans for the Middle East, why would they have. installed satellite regimes in South Yemen and Afghanistan, where they are suffering greater and greater losses in attempts to repress the local populations? Turkey itself has been bitten by the Ayatollah’s fever, and one doesn’t need to explain what kind of mortal blow would be struck at NATO by the complete destabilization of that country, already in the grip of anarchy. There are thus two complementary sectors in Soviet policy, the Asiatic sector and the European sector. First of all, Iran.
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