From time to time there have been reports in Western newspapers to the effect that relations between the Soviet Union and Iraq had begun to cool off. More recently the same sources have said that the ruling Baathists in Baghdad had fallen out with the communists and had tried and executed some of them. On top of all this comes a report in The New York Times from its Paris correspondent which goes so far as to suggest that Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia are discussing security arrangements for the Gulf region. The report makes several points which deserve to be noted in New Delhi. It says that Iran wants to develop its navy but not with the help of the Soviet Union which has so far equipped its army and air force. It is making inquiries in France and Italy for vessels capable of patrolling the Gulf, particularly in the vicinity of the vital Strait of Hormuz through which oil tankers move to Europe and north and south America, but it is not thinking of competing with the more powerful navies Iran and Saudi Arabia are building. According to this report, the Iraqi Baathists believe that the communists are trying to infiltrate into the secessionist Kurdish movement on the one hand and the army on the other and that this along with the Soviet-Cuban support to Ethiopia in its bid to crush the rebellion in Eritrea accounts for their decision to reappraise their relations with Moscow. The Eritreans, unlike the Ethiopians proper, are predominantly Muslim and their land lies on the west bank of the Red Sea. Both these facts could be influencing the Iraqi desire to draw closer to Saudi Arabia and Iran. For, they would not like fellow-Muslims in Eritrea to be butchered and the Soviet Union to become the dominant power on the Red Sea. For, despite its revolutionary ardour, Iraq holds enormous reserves of oil which, at a modest estimate, are second only to Saudi Arabia’s in the non-communist world. It cannot, therefore, be particularly keen to see a superpower firmly lodged on the Red Sea.
It is difficult to assess the accuracy or otherwise of these Western reports. But a couple of points can be made. The ruling Iraqi Baathists are intense nationalists. Their relations with the local communists hays been uneasy at the bestof times. They have had no major grievance against Iran since the accord between the two countries over the Shatt-el-Arab estuary three years ago and the subsequent withdrawal by the Shah of military and financial support to the Kurds. As they have stepped up greatly their development effort, they have found it necessary and useful to turn to the West for plants, machinery and know-how. It is, therefore, not inconceivable that they may have decided to tilt somewhat in a direction different from the one they have leaned towards in recent years. But their intense nationalism is also a guarantee that they would not go too far in the other direction. Moreover, they are at odds with the West’s, especially America’s, favourite leader in the Arab world, President Sadat. The game is likely to be even more complicated than it is already.