by Kim Ghattas
Allah, Allah, Allah, La Ilaha Illa Allah,
Iran, Iran, Iran, bullets cast from guns
Iran, Iran, Iran, tight fists everywhere
Iran, Iran, Iran, blood, death and uprising.
When 1978 rolled in, it was almost time for the action to move to Paris. Far from Lebanon, in late August 1978, a unique moment sealed the fates of Khomeini and Sadr, and with them perhaps the fate and spirit of the unfolding Iranian Revolution. On August 29, the shah was in the middle of a banquet with visiting dignitaries when he received a phone call from Saddam Hussein, the vice president and de facto ruler of Iraq. The shah broke protocol by leaving the dinner table and listening to the stunning suggestion from the Iraqi leader: Ayatollah Khomeini was becoming a nuisance for everyone; it was best to get rid of him. Saddam wanted the shah to agree first. After discussing the proposal with close aides, the shah decided against it.
A few days earlier, Sadr had traveled to Tripoli in Libya with two companions to meet with Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, a close political and theological ally of Khomeini. Beheshti believed in a theocratic state. Sadr was resolutely opposed to the concept. The meeting, organized by the anti-Western Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, was supposed to help them settle their differences. Sadr had just published an article in the French newspaper Le Monde entitled “The Call of the Prophets,” describing the protests in Iran as an authentic revolution against injustice that brought together students, workers, intellectuals, and men of religion—a revolution of ideas, not one of politics or violence. This was a movement with much promise for the rest of the world, Sadr insisted, and while faith was at its core, it was motivated by humanism and revolutionary ethics. Sadr praised the guiding role of Khomeini but said nothing about the ayatollah’s wilayat al-faqih. Nor did he call for the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty. In fact, Sadr was planning to travel onward from Tripoli to a secret meeting with an envoy from the shah in West Germany.
Beheshti never showed up. Sadr and his traveling companions grew impatient. They were also hoping for a meeting with Gaddafi. In the afternoon of August 31, they bumped into fellow Lebanese in the lobby of their hotel. One of Sadr’s traveling companions mentioned they were headed to meet Gaddafi. A Jordanian journalist, who happened to be standing outside the hotel, wished them good luck and waved goodbye as Sadr and his companions got into a black Peugeot 405. They were never seen again.
Days passed before the news of Sadr’s disappearance reached Beirut, making headlines in all the newspapers. WHERE IS IMAM MUSA SADR? asked the local Arabic daily Al-Nahar on September 12; QUESTIONS ABOUT THE DISAPPEARANCE OF IMAM SADR AND IS THE MYSTERY OF HIS DISAPPEARANCE CONNECTED TO THE EVENTS IN IRAN? asked the leftist daily As-Safir on the same day. The Libyan authorities insisted that the imam had left Tripoli on August 31 on the 8:15 p.m. Alitalia flight AZ 881 to Rome. His checked luggage had indeed arrived, but the imam had vanished. More time passed with no news. In Lebanon, Muslims of all persuasions—Sunni, Shia, and the minority Druze community—held protests in their mosques. Lebanon sent investigators to Rome. No one knew about the secret meeting in Germany. Rumors flew: he had been kidnapped by the SAVAK and taken to Iran; he was in a prison in Libya. No one actually knew. In Beirut, Husseini didn’t know what to make of his friend’s disappearance. Sadr had asked him to come along to Libya, but Husseini had refused and advised Sadr against the trip. The young Shia politician didn’t trust Gaddafi or his intentions and resented the dictator’s reactionary brand of Islam, one that denigrated Christians and paid people to convert. Where was Sadr? How could someone like him just vanish? He was needed more than ever. Events in Iran were unraveling fast. Khomeini’s Iraqi sojourn was drawing to an end.
* * *
There had been more blood on the streets of Iran. The shah sent tanks onto the streets. Riots spread across the country. The turning point in the heat of a summer of unrest had been an arson attack on the Rex Cinema in the city of Abadan, killing 420 people on August 19. The date of the attack seemed highly symbolic: the twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1953 coup against Mossadegh. The doors of the theater were locked; there was nowhere to run from the flames. The government blamed religious reactionaries for the fire. Khomeini angrily denied it, accusing the SAVAK of being behind it. Khomeini’s zealots had already burned down twenty-nine movie theaters and hundreds of private businesses in the previous months; they’d even targeted the Rex before. In Tehran, the Baccara Super Night Club at the Hilton Hotel, a regular stage for international stars, had also been gutted. It was all part of a concerted plan to sow panic in Iran and assert new rules of religious conservatism. But the Rex Cinema arson stood out in its enormity, described as “a holocaust” by one newspaper. In the fervor of anti-shah sentiment, a twisted logic set in: the ruling regime would burn down a cinema to damn the opposition. Thousands of Iranians had stayed on the sidelines for various reasons: they had not suffered in jails or been exiled, they were apolitical, they disliked the clergy. But in that instant of rumormongering, many came to believe that the shah could, and would, dispose of them—even kill them—to score against the fundamentalists.
A few weeks later, in Tehran, the ranks of protesters swelled to almost half a million. September 8, 1978, Black Friday, was another dramatic turning point. Thousands converged on Jaleh Square, chanting Marg bar shah, Death to the shah. The crowd of mostly men was a mix of Khomeini supporters, students, and leftists. Among them, behind the first lines of women and young people, there were guerrilla fighters, many trained in Lebanon by the Palestinians. By 9:21 a.m. the first shots rang out. The result was a gun battle, a stampede, and—according to the official toll—eighty-six civilian deaths. But the revolutionaries claimed at least three thousand had died, purposely exaggerating the number to fan the flames. It worked, and headlines about three thousand deaths made it all the way into the Western papers. The shah was shocked by the violence. Even before this tragedy, he had decided to go into exile, at least temporarily. He had done it in 1953, returning after only a few days. This time, martial law was imposed. Gloom descended onto Iran as autumn arrived with an evening curfew and fear of more attacks by religious fundamentalists. Cultural festivals were canceled from Shiraz to Isfahan, as was the renowned Tehran International Film Festival. Nightlife came to a halt. The end of an empire was near. The shah was still hoping against all odds that Imam Sadr would resurface. Ties between the two men had never completely broken down, and the shah saw the cleric who had warned him about Khomeini as a possible lifeline, a popular, progressive leader who could still help him counter the radical, reactionary ayatollah.
In Iraq, Saddam had had enough of Khomeini. The Iranian cleric was beginning to stir hope in the hearts of people across the region, Sunni and Shia alike, who resented their kings or their dictators and wished for a more just rule. Some wanted more religion, more Islam, more spirituality. The ruling Baath Party in Iraq was building a secular, progressive state with abundant repression: Sunni and Shia clerics were united in sporadic protests against what they saw as the forced secularization of society, which (as in Iran) was eating away at their privileges and giving rights to women. Clerics of both denominations faced harsh repercussion, torture in jail, and execution. Shias, long discriminated against, bore the brunt of the repression. A leftover of Ottoman and Persian competition and wars, the policy of discrimination against Shias in Iraq continued. Worryingly for Saddam, some Shia clerics were now beginning to use more sectarian language, and Khomeini’s Iraqi adepts were agitating against the state. Saddam put enough restrictions on Khomeini that the Iranian cleric finally opted to leave. He tried to go to Kuwait but was refused entry. Traveling with Khomeini were his son Ahmad, the LMI operative Yazdi, and two other aides. In France, Ghotbzadeh, the flamboyant revolutionary, and Banisadr, the Parisian intellectual, quickly arranged for three-month visas after convincing Khomeini that Paris would afford two key advantages: freedom to speak and access to the world media.
The ayatollah arrived in France on Oct
ober 6. Within a few days, still reluctant to be in a country of heathens, he settled into the small village of Neauphle-le-Château, outside Paris and just half an hour from Versailles and its château, the seat of power of French kings. The French president asked the shah whether he had any objections to the cleric’s presence in France. The shah did not. What could “a frail and crazy old man” really achieve from a perch all the way over in Europe in a small French village?
In Najaf, Khomeini had been a tired exile with no clear path home. Before his French sojourn, Khomeini’s name had barely appeared in the international media. In Neauphle-le-Château, over the course of a four-month stay, he would give 132 interviews and become the face of the revolution, recognized throughout the world. The seventy-six-year-old cleric was invigorated.
The LMI got to work. It was joined by more cadres flying in from everywhere. Mohsen Sazegara was one of the youngest of the Paris group. Devout from a young age, though raised in a mostly secular family, Mohsen had left Iran in 1975 to study in Chicago, where he befriended Yazdi and joined the LMI. He managed to make trips to Iran until 1978, bringing in pamphlets about the revolution and secret documents for fellow LMI activists. Mohsen had helped organize strikes and demonstrations and came up with some of the slogans for the revolution. Some of those became more radical as they traveled through the excited crowds. The chant Marg barg shah, Death to the shah, had started out as Shah beyad beravad, The shah must go. Yazdi had called Mohsen from Paris to ask him to join them. Within hours, he was on a transatlantic flight with $8 in his pocket. In Neauphle-le-Château, Mohsen would help manage media interviews for the ayatollah.
For years, the savvy LMI revolutionaries had cultivated relationships with a number of American and European journalists who covered Iran, loading their coverage with details of the abuses of the regime and the excesses of the shah while feeding their sympathy for the movement. Their efforts had been mostly clandestine. In Neauphle-le-Château, they now had a central headquarters in the house’s redbrick garage, with four telephones, two telex lines, and duplicating equipment to make hundreds of cassettes to spread the ayatollah’s message. The strategy was twofold: radical, reactionary messages for inside Iran, carefully curated words for Western ears.
Every day around noon, Khomeini would emerge from the house with blue shutters to give a speech and lead prayers in the garden across the street. He sat on a mat under an apple tree and held court. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of journalists descended on the tiny village every day. In their blazers and neckties, in perfect English and French, Yazdi, Ghotbzadeh, and Banisadr translated (and sometimes purposely mistranslated), adding context and rounding the edges for sensitive Western reporters. In doing so they constantly molded the ayatollah’s words and his image to reflect their own vision of the future of Iran. The resulting impression was that of an ascetic sage who had no interest in politics and would “spend the rest of his days in a seminary in Qom” once his goals of removing the shah and returning to Iran had been achieved. He was quoted in the Guardian as saying, “I don’t want to have the power or the government in my hand. I am not interested in personal power.” Even those who spoke Persian and had more knowledge were misled by Khomeini’s statements. Khomeini had been admonished by Banisadr after his first press interview, during which he had talked at length in Persian to a French reporter about his plans to turn Iran into a Muslim theocracy. Banisadr took liberties with the translation to polish the message, and Khomeini never again discussed the wilayat al-faqih in public. Instead, he talked of an Iran where even a woman could become president.
There was a third crucial element: France’s leftist intellectuals. Hugely influential in shaping public opinion, they were antiestablishment, antipower, and anti-imperial. They saw in the Iranian revolutionaries the embodiment of the values they had fought for themselves in the revolution of May 1968 on the streets of Paris. They wanted to believe in Khomeini, the sage under the apple tree. As early as 1964, Banisadr had enlisted Sartre to preside on a committee to raise awareness about Iranians in the shah’s jails. Sartre had once declared: “I have no religion, but if I had to pick one it would be Shariati.”
Though the opposition had indeed inflated the numbers of those in jail and those killed by the regime, for those who had been imprisoned by the shah the experience was very real. Reza Baraheni, one of Iran’s greatest poets of that era, was tortured brutally while in prison for 102 days. His release was the result of pressure from American and European writers. His verses were irreverent and unforgiving:
The Shah is holding the oil in his hand like a glass of wine drinking to the health of the West
And the Queen with her thick lips milks the tits of Motherland’s doe
At night under the stars
In the day in the passage of sun
Every month every year
And a glove the color of blood remains on the snows of St. Moritz.
In October 1978, while Khomeini was in Neauphle-le-Château, the philosopher Michel Foucault traveled to Iran and wrote long dispatches in which he described the calls for an Islamic government as a utopian, romantic ideal, while chiding the Christian West for having abandoned what he described as political spirituality. Meanwhile, the CIA was apparently unaware of Khomeini’s thesis about Islamic government and was more obsessed with a possible communist takeover of Iran. The Americans hoped that “Khomeini was a moderating influence over the leftists and radicals in his entourage.” The Saudis also seemed to know little about Khomeini and were worried about a “Soviet onslaught,” as some Saudi newspapers had described it. Saudi Arabia and Iran were allies and twin pillars in the US policy to counter the spread of communism and Soviet influence in the region. Iran was more powerful, and the shah had a formidable army and naval force, posing as the regional policeman. The Saudis were wary of his regional ambitions but saw him as a friendly adversary. There had been decades of mutual royal visits, and the two countries had a good working relationship. As the revolution rumbled on, Crown Prince Fahd expressed Saudi support for the shah as the legitimate ruler of the country.
In Neauphle-le-Château, hundreds of Iranian supporters came to visit Khomeini, chanting Allahu Akbar when he appeared, or, in French, Longue vie, Khomeini, long live Khomeini. Arafat came too, keeping the flames of the new relationship with Khomeini alive. No one noticed, or perhaps understood, the significance of visitors who were neither Western journalists, nor Iranian followers, nor Shia well-wishers, neither aides in neckties nor turbaned clerics. Arab visitors were making the pilgrimage to Neauphle-le-Château from Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries. Members of Sunni Islamist movements, like the Muslim Brotherhood, traveled from as far as Sudan to see for themselves the man they’d so far heard about only through his exiled aides. The Brotherhood had been banned in Egypt for over two decades, and alongside Khomeini’s other visitors, the Brothers were anxious to hear his message. They went home inspired by new ideas, new tactics, even new words to confront the despots in their own countries. They learned how to deploy Islamic terminology to bring down tyranny. They rooted for Khomeini’s success and promised to visit again soon. Victory felt near.
Meanwhile, Iran was in chaos. Basic services were collapsing, and people close to the regime were running for the exits, while hundreds of Iranian dissidents were returning to participate in the revolution: communists, leftists, religious extremists. In January, the shah decided it was time to leave. He had appointed a new prime minister, Shahpour Bakhtiar, and was ready to hand over the reins. He was also ailing, sick with lymphoma. Ostensibly he and his wife would be leaving for a rest, a short break. The children were already out of the country. On January 16, 1979, the shah and the queen left their residence at the Niavaran palace complex in northern Tehran and flew west on two helicopters to the nearby Mehrabad airport. Outside the Imperial Pavilion, a blue and silver plane was waiting on the tarmac to take them out of the country. Servants at the palace cried, beating their chests, petrified by fear of what wo
uld happen to them now. At the airport, two guards flung themselves at the shah’s feet. With tears in his eyes, he stooped to lift them up. The empress, Farah Diba, in a fox fur coat and hat and wearing diamond earrings, had taken tranquilizers to keep her composure.
At 1:24 p.m., the wheels of the Boeing 707 lifted off. The shah himself was piloting the aircraft. They flew to a small military airport in Aswan by the Nile where their friend President Sadat gave them a royal welcome. There was a long and personal history between the two countries. In 1939, the shah had married a first time, taking for his wife Fawzieh, daughter of Fouad I, king of Egypt—a Shia monarch and a Sunni princess. The marriage did not produce an heir and did not last. But the shah was now in the land of his former in-laws.
On the streets of Tehran, there were wild scenes of joy. Jubilant Iranians danced, tooted their horns, and hung out of their car windows. Statues of the shah were toppled. SHAH RAFT, the shah is gone, was printed in huge letters across the front page of the afternoon newspaper Ettela’at. The time had come for a new rallying cry: Marg bar Bakhtiar, Death to Bakhtiar—the French literature–loving prime minister to whom the shah had entrusted the country.
* * *
In Lebanon, Chamran and Husseini followed the news with both disbelief and a sense of accomplishment—but the victory was incomplete without their missing friend. The older and wiser Imam Sadr would have known what was about to unfold and perhaps would have tried to stop it. Chamran’s time by the Mediterranean was coming to an end. Next stop Tehran, where his comrades were gearing up for guerrilla warfare to bring down every last vestige of the shah’s reign. They worried about a possible counterrevolution, a CIA coup. They expected a long battle: it was essential to lay the groundwork for Iran’s new beginning ahead of Khomeini’s return. But the ayatollah was in a hurry.
