Iran's Confused Future

The turmoil in Iran continues. With the Shah and the Shah's man deposed the various factions that had combined for that objective are again taking divergent paths. Chances of civil war between the former anti-Shah factions is growing as each tries to impose its own vision of an Iran without the Shah. The collapse of Bakhtiar's "telephone" government had brought formerly hidden differences out into the open.

Predicting Iran's future is as dangerous as playing Russian roulette solo. Yet Iran's strategic position at the crossroads of three continents overlooking the Persian Gulf (shipping route for much of the Middle East's petroleum exports), as as a supplier of oil to the west and cheap natural gas to the Soviet Union, as the owner of the fifth largest armed force in the world, and as a new focus for an increasingly aggresive Soviet Union demands that an assessment of this complex situation be attempted. Just one consequence of recent events is that the cessation of Iran's oil exports has meant that current world oil consumption exceeds supply by some 2 billion barrels daily.