
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 20, 1990                   TAG: 9003202769
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PRAGMATISM

THE TELEPHONE call that President Bush took the other day, purportedly from his counterpart in Iran, turned out to be a hoax. But substantial things are stirring on the hostages front. Articles in Iranian publications, known to mirror government views, have called for release of the hostages or indicated this would soon happen. Iran's first deputy foreign minister said last week the prospects have never been better.

This doesn't mean that, on command from Tehran, the terrorists in Lebanon will hop to, salute and unlock the chains. All along, they have made a show of independence and maintained that they take orders from nobody.

More to the point, now that the Ayatollah Khomeini is dead, groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad operating in Lebanon are more steadfastly ideological than the Iranian government. That entity has come to see religious fanaticism as no longer very useful either at home or abroad.

By its railing against Satanists and other foreign devils, by its fomenting of terror and its efforts to undermine neighboring governments, Iran has made itself an international pariah. Khomeini may have savored the feeling that his faithful nation was pitted against an infidel West and a backsliding Islamic East; but that has had its inevitable costs. Aside from the drain of the seven-year war with Iraq, Iran has suffered domestically from theocratic rule that favors ideology over reality. The country's isolation has cut it off from trade and aid, as well as loans from abroad that are seen as contrary to the ideals of Iran's revolution.

President Ali Akbar Rafsanjani is more pragmatic. He is also concerned that the country's blinkered course will bring about another revolution that will throw his government out. Inflation's annual pace ranges between 60 and 100 percent. Unemployment is 20 percent. Food supplies are short and the black market threatens to make the rationing system useless. According to one Iranian newspaper's report, since the overthrow of the shah in 1979, gross national product has fallen by 50 percent per capita, investment by 33 percent. There have been anti-government demonstrations recently.

Like leaders in some other countries not far from his own, Rafsanjani seeks to free up the economy. He also wants to sell half of the state-owned industries and to draw in $27 billion in foreign investment, credit and loans.

It is an ambitious agenda, and if he hopes to succeed with it, he will need outside help. One obvious source is the United States, whose president has said that good will begets good will. One way of engendering that good will is to get the Western hostages freed.

That last will require some pressure on the terrorists. Not always malleable in the past, they seem to have listened most willingly to those considered blood brothers. They may no longer heed an Iran seen to be edging away from doctrinal purity for secular motives. The hostages' chances for freedom have improved, but it is no sure thing.

by CNB