BRIEF ON IRAN No. 570 Friday, January 10, 1997 Representative Office of The National Council of Resistance of Iran Washington, DC Iran's Mortar Attack on the Opposition, French Daily Liberation, January 9 Three mortars were targeted at the headquarters of People's Mojahedin of Iran in Baghdad.... Yesterday, Mohammad Mohaddessin, head of foreign affairs of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said in a news conference: "We were expecting an attack by the mullahs' regime but not this heavy. This indicates that the regime is frustrated." The attack is the forty third aimed at the Mojahedin in Iraqi soil since 1993. So far, 12 Mojahedin have been killed. But, usually the attacks are limited to machine-guns or mini-Katyousha missiles. In a controlled visit, the security official of the organization showed the sites from which the mortar launches took place. Hassan Nezamolmolki explained: "These mortars are specifically manufactured by Iran's Al-Hadid factory for terrorist operations. The Ministry of Intelligence has ordered them. Each mortar can launch 110 kilogram of TNT and 15 kilogram of plastic explosives. Five [fifteen] of such mortars are being relocated around the globe."... Warming of Relations Between Iraq and Iran Seen as Unlikely, Agence France Presse, January 9 BAGHDAD - Iraq and Iran, which were at war for most of the 1980s, Thursday faced increasingly bleak prospects for reconciliation following a second attack in Baghdad that was blamed on Tehran. "The mood is not optimistic and there is nothing to encourage the two countries to make progress toward normalizing ties this year," an Arab diplomat in Baghdad told Agence-France Presse. Iraq accused Iran of masterminding a mortar attack late Tuesday against the Baghdad offices of the Iranian armed opposition People's Mujahedeen movement, in which one Iraqi died.... An Iraqi official who asked not to be named also ruled out any progress in normalizing ties between the two countries, even though both sides have professed a desire to mend fences. "The Iranians say one thing, but do something else," the official said, deploring that Tehran "continues to use the humanitarian file of prisoners of war for political ends."... Informed Iraqi sources said normalization is also running up against Iran's reported involvement in Kurdish-held northern Iraq.... The People's Mujahedeen, which described Tuesday's attack as the largest against its Baghdad offices since they were set up in 1986, said the truck that launched the mortars traveled from Iran through Iraqi Kurdistan.... Iran Threatens to Jeopardize Gulf Oil Supplies, Reuters, January 9 KUWAIT - Iran does not expect the United States to seek a military confrontation with the Islamic republic because such a move would jeopardize oil exports from the region, an Iranian official was quoted on Thursday as saying. "I do not think America would have, for the time being, any intention to start any confrontation, because it would not be in its interest to jeopardize the oil (shipping) route," Kuwait's al-Anba newspaper quoted visiting Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Sheikholeslam as saying.... The United States and its Gulf Arab allies have repeatedly said Iran's arms program poses a threat to the region which sits on around 70 percent of the world's known oil reserves.... Asked if Iran would block the strait in case of a military clash, Sheikholeslam said: "I do not foresee confrontation...if it happens I cannot envisage what we would do. Had we had such plans I do not believe we would disclose them."... Mullahs Do Not Tolerate Disagreement, Not Even from Allies, Reuters, January 9 A Moslem militant group claimed responsibility on Thursday for a recent bus bombing in Syria, saying it was in retaliation for Syria's "execution" of one of its militants who took part in an attack on U.S. servicemen in Saudi Arabia last year. Syria said 11 people were killed and 42 wounded when a bomb exploded aboard a bus in central Damascus on December 31.... The Washington Post last year quoted Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef as saying that al-Shwaikhat, said to be a Saudi Shi'ite member of the outlawed Islamist Saudi Hizbollah group, had been arrested by the Syrians at the request of Saudi authorities in connection with the Dhahran bombing but had died a few days later in a Syrian jail.... Nayef was said to have expressed the suspicion that a foreign government, believed to be Iran, had ordered his death to prevent him from disclosing any information about the bombing, it added.... "We have remained silent for a long time on the attacks of the apostate Baath regime (in Syria) which has betrayed the Islamic republic of Iran one time after the other and joined the kings and petrol sheikhs in the Arab summit meetings...to condemn Iran, the guardian of Islam in the region and the world, and to oppose the installation of ground-to-ground Islamic Iranian missiles to protect the Arab Gulf from American and Zionist ambitions," the group said....