BACKGROUND
Challenging Of Israel Militarily
Will Be Acid Test For Iraq Leader
HELEN DAVIS
Foreign Correspondent
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30
FRIDAY, AUGUST 10, 1990
I
sraeli Foreign Minister
David Levy may have
thought that Iraq's blit-
zkrieg conquest of Kuwait
last week constituted a dip-
lomatic ace-in-the-hole for
his visit to Washington this
week. Had not the Israeli
leaders repeatedly warned
the United States about the
malevolent intentions and
ambitions of Iraq's Saddam
Hussein?
Indeed they had, and while
the new Israeli foreign min-
ister received a warmer
welcome in Washington
than he might dared to have
hoped for just one week
earlier, he would do well to
savor the moment.
In the current inflamed
atmosphere, Secretary of
State James Baker un-
doubtedly found himself
more sympathetic to Israel's
predicament than he might
otherwise have been, but if
Levy, on the most momen-
tous mission of his political
life, believes that Iraq's act
of blatant aggression will
win diplomatic points for
Israel over the Palestinian
issue he is wrong.
Israel might have been on
target in its assessment of
the dangerous ambitions of
the Iraqi leader, but in the
long term, the Palestinian
question will remain unaf-
fected by developments in
the Gulf. It will continue to
be a source of regional ten-
sion and international con-
cern; it will continue to
dominate foreign policy
agendas, and it will continue
to cloud relations between
the United States and Israel.
Nor has Israel -won a
respite by having the in-
tifada, and the Middle East
peace process, dispatched —
albeit temporarily — to the
back burner, for Jerusalem
must now turn its attention
to the more daunting task of
coping with the considerable
implications of events in the
Gulf for its own security.
It is now generally ac-
cepted that Mr. Hussein's
conquest of Kuwait was but
one small piece in a com-
plicated jigsaw puzzle
designed to achieve other
far-reaching objectives for
the Iraqi dictator.
The immediate aims, real-
ized in under six hours last
Thursday morning, were to
secure control of the
emirate's vast oil reserves.
A wall mural in Baghdad.
That, however, is not the
limit of his ambitions. The
Iraqi leader's ultimate objec-
tive is no less than the un-
contested, unrivalled, un-
qualified domination of the
Arab world. And the acid
test of that ambition will be
his ability to confront Israel
on the battlefield.
It is a prospect that is as
chilling as it is inexorable,
and one that could plunge
the region, perhaps the
world, into an un-
precedented cataclysm.
Mr. Hussein's devastating
miscalculation in taking on
Iran shortly after Ayatollah
Khomeini's Islamic Revo-
lution — a moment when he
considered that his larger,
non-Arab neighbor would be
most vulnerable — cost him
an estimated half-million
casualties and a foreign debt
of some $80 billion.
For the Iraqi leader,
however, that was a small
price to pay for fighting Iran
to a standstill during the
eight-year-long Gulf War
and being hailed at its end in
1988 as the savior of the
Gulf.
Iraq emerged from the war
with the fifth-largest
military force in the world:
One million combat-tested
troops, a sophisticated
military arsenal, including
an array of ballistic missiles,
that is unequalled in the
Arab world, and, most im-
portant, the only war
machine in the region with
the potential for providing a
credible challenge to the
Jewish state.
Over the past two years,
the Iraqi leader has labored
assiduously to maintain the
sophistication of his conven-
tional arsenal and, at the
same time, to develop a
range of non- conventional
weapons, including
chemical, biological and, not
least, nuclear weapons.
According to some Israeli
estimates, he is two to three
years away from acquiring
nuclear capability; accor-
ding to others, he might al-
ready have the basic ingre-
dients for putting together a
nuclear device.
It is now considered
unlikely that Israel's pilots
can repeat their perfor-
mance of June 1981 when
they destroyed Iraq's
nuclear reactor at Osirak
just weeks before it was
scheduled to "go critical"
and start producing