It must have seemed a good idea at the time. The United States was preoccupied with the elections. The Europeans were all intent on their Maastricht Treaty and the chaos in the financial markets. Only the professionals were watching, and the politicians were just too busy to notice, or to care, that the Russian arms salesmen were hawking their wares once more.


This time, it was three Kilo-class diesel submarines, worth around $250 million each, being sold to Iran. These are proving a popular export model, 12 of them having been sold already to India, Algeria and Romania.


The Pentagon has now set up a special task force to keep an eye on weapons sales from the ex-Soviet Union. On their list are the 24 Sukhoi-24 bombers that were also sold to Iran, shipments of spare parts forthose formerly Iraqi MiG fighters that took refuge in Iran during the Gulf war, and an entire assembly line for N-72 tanks.


And we are beginning to hear stirrings of something far more serious, which could lift the question of arms sales high up the agenda. The Republican Research Committee's Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, a small rightist investigation team based in Congress, claims that Iran has already purchased four nuclear warheads from former Soviet republics.


The weapons are said to be two 40-kiloton missile warheads which are now being fitted to Iranian versions of the Soviet-designed Scud missile. Iran is also said to have obtained one 50-kiloton aerial bomb designed to be carried by MiG-27 fighter bombers, and one small 0. 1 kiloton nuclear artillery shell.


According to the report, the weapons were delivered without the numerical safety codes that could release the warhead, and the Iranians had been able to recruit Russian technicians to bypass the safety locks. The intelligence for this has come mainly from Iranian opposition sources, and has not yet been confirmed, but Israel's Mossad and U. S. intelligence are both looking very hard. Arms sales are one thing; a new Middle East nuclear power would be quite another.