By Christopher Whalen

Sunday, October 17, 1993; Page A19

LIKE THE slow economy and NAFTA, U.S. military intervention in Somalia was not Bill Clinton's idea. He inherited the situation from the Bush administration, which itself was unsure whether troops should be sent into that war-torn shell of a country.

But even now, informed analysts say, the White House does not fully appreciate why it is in Somalia and the grave regional political consequences of a hasty withdrawal. What most Americans, including White House policymakers, may not fully understand is that the situation in Somalia is being exacerbated by America's old enemy in the Middle East -- Iran.

Many observers accept that U.S. intervention in Somalia was spurred by George Bush's avowed "humanitarian concerns" or even a cynical attempt to prepare the American public for eventual involvement in Bosnia's genocidal war. Last week, in a speech critical of the Clinton administration, Bush reiterated that view: "The mission was to go in and save lives," Bush said. "People were starving, and American troops went in there and they opened the supply lines and they took food in. They weren't fighting."

In fact, though, the United States is in Somalia for other reasons, too -- the same geopolitical reasons that persuaded Bush to go to war against Saddam Hussein: to protect the increasingly isolated Saudi Arabian monarchy from the combined threat of Iranian military and political power and Islamic fundamentalism. This time, "humanitarian assistance" became the sole label for the latest intervention, an intervention that follows a long tradition of American defense for European interests. As Charles Callan Tansill wrote in his classic 1952 book, "Back Door to War": "The main objective in American foreign policy since 1900 has been the preservation of the British empire."

One former Cabinet official in the Carter administration notes that the Bush administration wanted to be seen "doing something" about Somalia. This official, a longtime student of the region, says that continued instability in eastern Somalia was viewed as a long-term threat to Saudi Arabia and the major interest of America's principal allies -- namely Persian Gulf oil. Specialists in Gulf oil politics, such as veteran journalist Sol Sanders, also recognize that Iran's limited but growing role in East African states like Sudan and Somalia is part of a much larger strategy to gradually encircle the prime target in the region -- Saudi Arabia -- with a web of regional alliances and covert military operations.

Strategically, as Yossef Bodansky wrote recently in Global Affairs, "all of this effort was aimed at {a} Sudanese-Iranian presence in the Horn of Africa toward a transformation of the Red Sea into a 'Green {Muslim} Lake.' " Iran's ultimate objective is to put pressure on Saudi Arabia, in this instance by destabilizing Somalia and Yemen -- the latter located just across the narrow strait that divides the Arabian peninsula from the eastern tip of Somalia. Since the British withdrawal from its naval base at Aden in 1967, safeguarding against threats in the Horn of Africa has been left to the United States. Veteran Middle East-watchers say that Iran today is "firmly entrenched" in war-ravaged Sudan and has established guerrilla training bases there, directly across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia.

These bases in Sudan, according to State Department spokesman Michael McCurry, were used to train the supposedly "untrained militia" that badly wounded American Ranger forces. In actuality, warlord Mohammed Farah Aideed's men are a well-trained and motivated light infantry force that operates with support from Iran and elsewhere in the same way that previous Somali factions took arms and money from successive European, Arab, American and Soviet governments.

Given the resurgence of Iran's regional military and political influence, it should surprise few Washington observers that the financial and logistical support for Aideed, who was himself trained in Soviet and Warsaw Pact war colleges, is coming in part from Tehran. U.S. officials concede that several Somali factions receive support from Sudan, which in turn maintains links with Iran.

During the Reagan and later Bush administrations, Iranian expansion was held in check by its long war with Iraq and other less obvious means, including a de facto embargo on foreign loans and on arms shipments by most (but not all) major producers.

Today, analysts believe that Iran is fast rebuilding its military capability even as its covert ties throughout the region grow faster. One former U.S. intelligence operative in the region told me that Iran has purchased "several dozen" Russian-made nuclear artillery shells from former Soviet army units in Kazakhstan. "They don't yet have the capability to deliver these weapons," he told me, "but they have them and they will very quickly figure out a way to use them."

The rising coercive power of Tehran -- and the subordinate position of the OPEC cartel's largest oil producer -- could be observed at the latest OPEC meeting last month, at which Saudi Arabia agreed to limit production to 8 million barrels per day, while other members, including Iran and Kuwait, were effectively given increased quotas. Indeed, press reports say that the OPEC accord was finalized only after "consultation" among Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, elevating the second-tier Iranians to full-partner status with OPEC's two largest, long-term producers.

Iran and Saudi Arabia were described by many observers of that meeting as "cooperating" to push other producers to agree on new production ceilings. Yet even with demand for oil in non-industrialized nations rising, any Saudi accommodation with Tehran is driven more by fear than comity and trust. Without a strong U.S. military and political presence in the gulf to counter the obvious ambitions of Iran, Saudi Arabia's position at the OPEC bargaining table is weakened to the detriment of the interests of the industrialized nations and the long-term OPEC oil producers. From a domestic political perspective, Somalia presents Bill Clinton with the same political threat that Jimmy Carter faced in Iran unless he soon manages to extricate U.S. ground forces or -- less probably -- uses a more realistic justification for their presence. In this regard, it is notable that the Iranians and British, who have a long and painful colonial history in Somalia, are leaving the scene as U.S. military involvement grows. It is particularly ironic that there are currently no British troops in the U.N. operations zones in eastern Somalia.

Comparisons between America's role in Somalia in 1993 and the American "exchange" of responsibility with the French in Vietnam is more than coincidental, particularly given the ultimate lure exerted by oil. As in Vietnam, America is in the position of defending a weakling regime (Saudi Arabia) that cannot survive in its own increasingly dangerous neighborhood.

It has been said that an American military withdrawal from Somalia will have a negative impact on U.N. relief efforts. From a geopolitical perspective, particularly seen from Europe or Tokyo, an American withdrawal would have serious consequences in the Persian Gulf. The Saudis and other fearful Arab states would believe that Washington can no longer be trusted to serve as regional watchdog to protect a vulnerable oil superpower from intrigues and pressures by Iran, the traditional regional power in the gulf. Yet both fiscal realities and a shift in the American political mood point to a decline in U.S. willingness to send the children of Carolina farmers and Michigan factory workers to fight and die in places like Somalia for objectives that their leaders cannot even define.

As the United States withdraws militarily from Somalia, the Saudis may be forced to capitulate to further Iranian demands at the OPEC negotiating table and elsewhere, a development that can only exacerbate the kingdom's deteriorating financial and political situation. For Washington, the long-term results of an eventual disengagement from Somalia may suggest an unlikely irony closer to home. Ten years from now, we may all rue the fact that Bush and then Clinton failed to push for redevelopment of new, secure energy sources in this hemisphere -- particularly in Mexico through NAFTA -- at a time when America's ability and willingness to project military power in the Persian Gulf was gradually declining.

Christopher Whalen is a writer and consultant based in Washington.