RECENT actions by Tehran have led to questions about whether Iran was trying to play the Shiite card in Iraq's post-Saddam power game.

Tehran's state-controlled media have launched a campaign to incite Shiites in Bahrain against the kingdom's reform process. And Iran has ordered its clients, notably the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah, to step up disruptive activities to make the transition from occupation to Iraqi sovereignty as difficult as possible.

All this has led to suspicions against Shiites in several Arab countries. That is unfortunate.

The present Iranian regime is based on the ideology of Khomeinism - which is as far removed from Shiism as it is from other mainstream "ways" of Islam.

The first victims of that ideology have been Shiites. The Khomeinists have executed over 100,000 Iranians, mostly Shiites. They also caused the deaths of almost a million other Shiites in the eight-year long Iran-Iraq war. Over 3.5 million Iranians, most of them Shiites, have gone into exile.

That ideology has also divided Shiite communities everywhere.

When Khomeinism arrived in Lebanon for the first time in 1980, it immediately set out to destroy Amal, the united political movement of the Shiites. Having failed to do so, it created the Hezbollah as a rival to Amal.

By the 1990s, the Lebanese Hezbollah was showing some independence. Its religious leader, Sayyed Muhamad-Hussein Fadhlallah, refused to recognize the Iranian "Supreme Guide" Ali Khamenei as "the leader of all Muslims" as is claimed in the Khomeinist Constitution.

Tehran's response came in the form of support for splinter groups within Hezbollah. In a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Iran's Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said that Tehran did not "limit its alliances in Lebanon" to the Hezbollah.

In Iraq, Tehran's policy over the past decade has aimed at splitting the Shiite community. Now Tehran is working hard to prevent a unified Iraqi Shiite front backed by the seminary at Najaf. The three-way split in the Dawa party was partly due to Iranian intrigues. And right now Iranian elements are working hard to split the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

It's no mystery that the shenanigans of Muqtada al-Sadr have been largely financed and encouraged by Tehran.

The Khomeinists were also responsible for splitting the Shiite community in Afghanistan. They backed the Shoeleh-Javid (Eternal Flame) group, a Maoist outfit whose members were of Shiite birth, against the Hazara Shiite establishment. During the communist rule in Kabul, the Khomeinists prevented the Hazara from fighting the Soviet occupation.

And when the Taliban started massacring the Hazara Shiites, Tehran did nothing but issue empty threats.

Nowhere has the divergence between Shiism and Khomeinism been more clearly manifested than in Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan is a majority Shiite country that won its independence after the disintegration of the Soviet Empire a decade ago. Yet for the past 10 years Tehran has backed Christian Armenia against Shiite Azerbaijan in the conflict over the enclave of Karabach.

Iran provided logistical support for the Armenian force that invaded and conquered Karabach and has been holding it since 1992. The trucks that drove Karabach's 80,000 Shiite Azeris out of their homes, in a little reported instance of ethnic-cleansing, were provided by Iran.

Everywhere, the Khomeinist aim is that Shiites should not be able to unite and act in their interests without receiving orders from Tehran. They should always remain divided and dependent on Tehran.

Although Khomeinism uses part of the Shiite mythology, religious vocabulary and iconography, it must be treated as a distinct doctrine with specific characteristics.

The key slogans of Khomeinism make this clear.

Everywhere in Iran one sees giant slogans reading: God, Quran, Khomeini!

Or: Allah Akbar, Khomeini Rahbar (God is the Greatest, Khomeini is the Leader!)

Inspired by North Korean and Maoist models, images of Khomeini have been carved in mountains or grown as mini-forests, visible even from the skies - a cult of personality bordering on idolatry.

Under the new Iranian school curriculum, the study of Khomeini's life and thoughts receives as much time (two hours per week) as the study of the Koran. The official Iranian calendar includes 26 days that are associated with Khomeini while the Prophet Muhammad gets only two days. Khomeini's tomb has been turned into a shrine.

In Iranian Shiism, the title of Imam is exclusive to Ali Ibn Abi-Talib, the Prophet's cousin and son-in-law, and 11 of his male descendants. In Khomeinism, however, the late ayatollah bears the title of Imam.

The Islamic Republic Constitution gives the "Supreme Guide" the power to suspend even the basic rules of Islam if he so wishes. And that, of course, is as abhorrent to Shiites as to other Muslims.

There are more Shiite clerics and students of theology in prison in Iran than at any other time in history. Khomeinism has also driven thousands of Iranian Shiite theologians into exile.

In short, Khomeinism is a cocktail in which Shiism is an accidental ingredient. Similar ideologies have developed in non-Muslim cultures in the developing countries. Its basic ingredient is a hatred of the West, especially the United States. It is also influenced by Marxism, especially with such ideas as thought control, single-party rule and the command of the economy by the state.

Some Shiites have adopted Khomeinism as their ideology. Hundreds have moved to Iran and taken up Iranian nationality. But there is no evidence that Khomeinism is supported by the broader Shiite communities in the Arab countries or elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Here is what Sabah Zangeneh, Iran's former Ambassador to the Organization of Islamic Conference had to say in Kuwait last week: "As far as matters of religion are concerned, the ulema of Najaf, especially Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, may have more influence in Iran today than Iranian mara'je [religious leaders] may have in Iraq."

The Arab governments would be wrong to equate Khomeinism with Shiism.