MENA i WORLD Reagan ade himself the issue — The ultra-right pulled out its big guns in the final S preceding the Nov. 4 U.S. election cam- gn. President Reagan was supposed to blast Mocratic challengers out of contention in key hate races. But instead of steamrolling the Position, the election turned into a punishing *tback for the administration and the ultra-right es. Thstead, the trade union and people’s move- “ents successfully positioned themselves to Sunt a legislative and political action counter “€nsive in the next Congress to reverse adminis- On foreign and domestic policy. €agan, the so-called Great Communicator, lit- ly worked full-time on behalf of endangered blicans. He campaigned in a total of 22 states Visiting several more than once — raising in ess of $34 million to ensure that GOP candi- s would be able to flood the airwaves and jam lions of telephones with ‘‘win one more for the per, y his own choice the President turned many ‘torial contests into a referendum on his poli- On Star Wars, the U.S. farms crisis, judicial Sintments and his personal political leadership. San even went so far in some states as to open @ vicious and insidious broadside specifically St Democratic nominees with outstanding lib- Or progressive credentials. €publical strategists had boldly contended that n would help carry the day and thus save Senate control. Some said his presence alone id account for a shift of two or three percentage Nts in\ the final tally. But in the end, in many €S, Reagan’s presence seems to have hurt licans more than it helped. Republicans lost in 13 of the last 16 states € the President campaigned. he huge 5-1 Republican money advantage — of it from the military monopolies, the big S and corporations — was unable to buy the tion for Reagan. he vast, technologically up-to-date, get-out- Vote apparatus of the Republicans was less tive than the people-to-people contact of the mobilization conducted by trade unions, Organizations, peace forces, the women’s ments, retirees, etc., which communicated to °ns of voters the stakes in the Nov. 4 vote. he Democrats gained 7 seats in the House “asing their majority to 260-175 over the licans. hairmanship of key Senate committees on ", the judiciary and foreign relations, now ¢ by the Republican ultra right, will pass to cratic control. the end the Democrats achieved a 55-45 con- ‘8 majority of the senate. But the content of Sults exceeds partisan politics. Nearly a year the labor movement set out to end the right Control of the Senate. A coalition built around '*de unions, Blacks, peace, farmers and wom- OVvements succeeded by a margin greater ad had predicted. ‘ Sutcome opens possibilities for future vic- “There's a tremendous momentum for arms °l that developed. It helped decide the results 10n day and, combined with those results, it P us to win future arms control victories, 8 Chip Reynolds, director of Freeze Voter v0 ates on Star Wars, nuclear testing, chemical 'S and compliance with previous arms con- ements are just some of the issues eX- for debate when the new Congress begins. adians a new Senate may mean more €gotiation on such joint issues as acid rain ELECTION 1986: Party Control of the Congress 260 Democrats BB Republicans HOUSE’ Total seats’ 435 (218 needed to control) SENATE Total seats: 100 (51 needed to control) 55 Democrats (Gained 8 seats) 45 Republicans (Lost 8 seats) 260 Democrats (Gained 7 seats) 175 Republicans (Lost 7 seats) 4 House elections suil pending UPI and Great Lakes pollution. It could also sound a death knell for Prime Minister Mulroney’s free trade agreement. Dick Fontana, of the United Steelworkers of America, said his union has ‘‘a lot of reasons to believe things will get better’’. However noting that nothing is guaranteed; Fontana said the USWA will continue to lobby Congress on issues of concern to the union, ‘‘first of all a trade bill. We'll be pushing for that.”’ Pennsylvania Congressperson William Gray, a member of the newly expanded Congressional Black Congress, which now has 23 members elect- ed, said the election has resulted in senators who will be more responsive to the demands of the people. A Democratic-controlled Senate ‘‘means we will have a lame-duck president’’, he empha- sized. The extent of voter mobilization with the result- ing outcome challenges media contention that America has experienced a shift to the right. Sucha shift never existed. This is why candidates willing to wage their campaigns on an anti-Reagan basis prevailed in most cases. Those who to any extent took anti-Reagan positions on key issues became the medium for voters to express their dissatisfac- tion with Reagan policy. The defeat of so many Reaganite senators pre- sents the victors with a mandate and the forces that brought about the victory a challenge. Reagan asked the voters to judge Republican stewardship of the federal government. They did. Now the mandate that was given must be heeded, by Republicans and Democrats alike. If the voters are to be heeded, the Senate must make basic changes in administration policies on Star Wars, cuts in social programs and right wing stacking of the judicial system. The voters have acted. Now it’s the Senate’s turn. —Peoples Daily World Reagan: The speech did not exactly ‘persuade’. ae News Analysis Arms sales to Iran reveal U.S. intent Will the real looney please stand up. Looney was the term Washington used to dismiss allegations by Iran’s Parliamentary Speaker Hoshemi Rafsanjani that the U.S. had been supplying his country with arms over the past 18 months. After ten days of hot denials Reagan was forced to go on national TV on a “‘damage control"’ mission. He wasn’t very convincing. However a between the lines reading of the president’s address reveals that the release of U.S. hostages held in Lebanon in return for arms for Iran is just the tip of Washington’s foreign policy iceberg. The U.S. broke its own embargo to establish contacts with Iranian leaders. The price of the contacts is Iraq’s defeat in the bloody six year war which has embroiled the two nations. Such actions betray Washington’s stubborn desire to restore the posi- tion it lost in Iran after the disposal of their friend the Shah. For the U.S. the secret sales are an attempt to find a key to open the doors of this Middle East giant after the Ayatollah | Khomeini leaves the political scene. Iran always has been and remains a strategic counterpin in the Mideast. The U.S. urgently needs one more bridgehead in Iran to step up its operations against Afghanistan. A settlement here will create a host of problems for Washington. It would deprive the U.S. of an important pretext for stepping up its military presence in Pakistan. Just as importantly a political settlement in Afghanis- tan would lose for Reagan one of his greatest propaganda tools against the Soviet Union. Neither does Washington want a peaceful settlement to serve as a precedent for conflict resolution in other hot spots. Iran is the last piece in the longstanding U.S. plan to restore the Iran-Gulf-Israeli Axis which gave it a free hand in the Medi- terranean and Mideast. Israel’s active involvement in the arms deal should facilitate its rapprochement with Tehran, and help curb Iran’s ties with Syria and Libya, reducing the scope of anti-American actions. In effect the U.S. *‘struggle”’ against ‘‘international terrorism”’ is not worth the rhetoric. As Iran's president Ali Khamenei put it, the U.S. administration ‘tare the real terrorists who attacked Libya, not those youth who take a few American hostages to gain their rights’’. However it is a useful club to attack regimes unfavorable to Washington. We saw it with Libya as a lead up to the attack and a similar campaign is being repeated now against Syria in preparing public opinion for a potential strike against Damascus. The U.S. also did its best to dirty the hands of its regional NATO allies in the operations. The weapons bound for Iran were sent via the Italian port of Talamone. In its usual style, by involving its partners, Washington succeeds in discrediting them in front of their neighbors. A weakened Italian presence in for- mulating policy for the Mediterranean can only hamper efforts to stabilize the region. If the independent role of its allies in the world arena grows weaker, if they don’t take part in settling different seats of ten- sion, the U.S. is left dominating the whole show, Will the “teflon man’’ manage to sneak through with his latest show? The revelation of Reagan’s arms sales to Iran is the latest in a string of faux pas committed by the White House in recent months. The U.S. public still has the uneasy feeling they didn’t get all the goods on the Daniloff deal. The shooting down of an Ameri- can plane carrying weapons to contra bandits in Nicaragua indi- cates the president violated the pledge he made Congress that his administration would not engage in such things. And he has yet to entire placate the mainstream press about his policy making capabilities at the Reykjavik Summit. However there is sufficient grounds to assume that in its re- maining two years the U.S. administration will be trying to pre- vent settlements in Central America, the Middle East, South Africa and South-East Asia. Its backstage deals with Iran confirm its interest in preserving seats of tension giving it the opportunity to flex its military muscle and pursue its power politics against the independent and non-aligned countries. _ Nacealt Nesok a Ronald Reagan: will the real Hoshem Rafsanjani broke the — looney please stand up? Iran’s arms sale news. PACIFIC TRIBUNE, NOVEMBER 26, 1986 e 7