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The U.S., by contrast, has the look and the moves if not of a loser, then at least of a player on the defensive. U.S. policy in the region has not recovered from the back-to-back traumas of American helplessness during the fall of the Shah, then the humiliation of the hostages' captivity. What Carter himself has called his "obsession" with releasing the hostages is understandable in human as well as political terms, and it partly explains why there are so few bold, long-range plans coming out of his Administration at the moment. Last week's spate of rumors about possibly trading spare parts for hostages only deepened the widespread impression that policymakers were reacting to the Iraq-Iran war as though it were essentially a new wrinkle in the old and maddening problem of how to deal with Khomeini.
Even though the U.S. has diversified its political and military stake in the region by virtue of its close ties with Egypt, Israel and Oman, it is at an overall disadvantage vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. For one thing, the U.S. has virtually no influence of its own on the immediate combatants, Iran and Iraq. It has practically none on Iran's principal allies, Libya and Syria, and little on one of Iraq's allies, Jordan. The third major member of the new grouping centered on Iraq is Saudi Arabia. There the U.S. still has considerable influence. But it also has a huge investment that is none too secure, given the internal opposition that shook the House of Saud during the siege of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca last year.
In the short term, Administration officials see the Iraq-Iran war producing one possible benefit: greater Saudi willingness to accept an American military presence in the area, perhaps on Saudi soil. But in the longer term such a presence could tie the U.S. to a regime that some area experts believe could eventually go the way of the Peacock Throne in Iran.
Even if that event dreaded by American policymakers never comes to pass, the U.S. may find its room to maneuver in the gulf greatly limited by the traditional pro-Israel basis of its Middle East
policy. Says William Quandt of
the Brookings Institution, a Middle East expert who was formerly on the staff of the National Security Council: "The Saudis have got to have something to show for drawing closer to us, something that reduces the embarrassment of cooperating with Israel's greatest backer. Besides, even the most sympathetic Arabs are beginning to ask themselves, 'What kind of superpower can't even prevent a lousy settlement [on the West Bank] that's against American policy and paid for with American dollars? Can we trust such a superpower to deliver when it tells us it's going to protect the Persian Gulf?' "