The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  The actual meeting between Kennedy and Bakhtiyar took place on March 1, 1961. The issue of aid, according to the memorandum of that conversation, was the central issue of the discussion. Kennedy promised to consider the Shah’s request for more aid and, as further “evidence of [America’s] continuing deep interest in Iran, he was,” he said, sending Ambassador-at-Large Averell Harriman to visit the Shah. Kennedy later said that he would send his reply to the Shah’s letter through the American Embassy and then ended the meeting by asking the General whether he had already met with Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA.65 The apparently innocuous question turned out to refer to an event that changed Bakhtiyar’s life.

  Upon his return home, Bakhtiyar complained to the Shah about the way he had been treated in Washington. “I was kept waiting for almost three weeks,” he told the Shah, “before I was given an appointment with Kennedy.” In fact, Bakhtiyar had arrived on February 16, and on the same day, Ardeshir Zahedi, the Iranian ambassador, informed the State Department of the General’s arrival and of his desire to personally deliver the Shah’s confidential letter to the President.66 Almost exactly two weeks later, at ten in the morning of March 1, Bakhtiyar, accompanied by a translator, walked in the Oval Office.

  But even before Bakhtiyar arrived back in Tehran the Shah had learned that he had secretly met with Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, and Kermit Roosevelt, the head of the Middle East section of the CIA. The Shah also knew that, in the course of that meeting, Bakhtiyar had attacked the Shah and had solicited America’s help or approval for his plan to overthrow him. As soon as the meeting ended, Roosevelt, who had developed a close relationship with the Shah since August 1953, called to tell him about Bakhtiyar’s betrayal. Roosevelt himself admitted to not only meeting with Bakhtiyar but also reporting its content to the Shah.67 In the next decade, the Shah rewarded Roosevelt generously for his services. As for Bakhtiyar, the Shah decided to wait for the right opportunity to get rid of him.

  By then Bakhtiyar had built for himself a conspicuously majestic mansion near the Shah’s palace and had made a habit of giving infamously loud and lavish parties there. In spite of his marriage, he cavorted around town with his lover in one of his many expensive cars. He had also developed a reputation for brazen financial corruption and for the exorbitant gifts that he gave and received; amongst the diplomatic corps he was increasingly referred to as the second-most powerful man in Iran. These facts all worked to make Bakhtiyar the Shah’s most dangerous and despised enemy.

  As the Shah pondered his Bakhtiyar problem, the Kennedy administration was finishing the arduous task of transition, and the question of Iran loomed large on the horizon. Philips Talbot, a seasoned diplomat with considerable experience in the Middle East, was named to head the interagency task force on Iran. The urgency of the issue was made more apparent in early May with the start of the teachers’ strike in Tehran. In later years, the Shah became convinced, particularly after repeated suggestions by Alam and by Sharif-Emami, that the United States had instigated even the teachers’ strike. Sharif-Emami, for example, claims that a sudden big infusion of cash was added to the bank account set aside to support striking teachers. He also claims that on the day of the big strike, “a foreign officer” was seen riding a motorcycle and guiding the demonstrators.68

  The teachers’ strike left an indelible mark on the Shah’s political psyche, as well as on the Kennedy administration’s perception of the internal situation in Iran. Sharif-Emami too was undone by the strike. On May 2, 1961, up to 50,000 people, mostly teachers and students, demonstrated for higher pay. The government had brought out the army to face the demonstrators. One person—Dr. Khan’ali—was killed, and the death only radicalized the movement and helped swell its ranks. The Shah was particularly distraught because, according to reliable sources, it was estimated that “there is slightly better than fifty percent chance” that in the next few days, the army, if called up, would fire on demonstrating teachers. The American Embassy concluded that if another major disturbance should take place on May 4 or 5, “and should security forces refuse to fire in the event of need,” the Shah’s regime “may be gravely threatened.”69

  The telegram reporting the May 3 disturbance, and the possibility of the army’s refusal to fire on the next day’s planned demonstrators, was deemed urgent enough that when it arrived at the White House at five in the morning, there was some discussion among the President’s staff about whether he should be awakened and informed about its content. Ultimately, they decided to wait and Kennedy saw the report at nine o’clock that morning. The report only confirmed his belief in the necessity of rethinking U.S. policy in Iran. Kennedy gave the Talbot Task Force a far-reaching mandate. He told them to consider all options and assume that nothing in U.S. policy in Iran was sacrosanct. In other words, the idea of removing the Shah from the throne was very much on the table, and minutes of the Task Force deliberations showed clearly that the option was indeed discussed at some length.

  Before long, in a memorandum prepared for the President, the Task Force informed Kennedy that “despite its much lower visibility, the continued slide toward chaos in Iran could result in as grave a set-back as in South Vietnam.”70 Iran’s “half-Westernized and strategically placed forces in Iranian politics,” the Task Force informed the President, were hostile to the Shah and anything connected to him. At the same time, the Task Force was consistently tempered in its thinking by the reality of the Cold War, by Iran’s long borders with the Soviet Union and by the Soviet Union’s constant machinations in Iran. There was a possibility that disturbing the status quo in Iran would invariably pave the way for increased influence by the Soviet Union. Eventually, the Kennedy administration was advised that it would have to help create a bridge between the Shah and the middle classes and more importantly, that it would have to help foster a “controlled revolution.”71

  Meanwhile, in Tehran, demonstrations planned for May 4 and 5 promised to be even larger and looked every bit like the beginning of the “uncontrolled” revolution the Shah had feared. “Workers, and National Front groups were scheduled to join the demonstrations on the fifth.” On the night of May 3, around midnight, a distraught Shah called Prime Minister Sharif-Emami to the Court. General Nasiri, the head of the National Police, and General Alavi-Kia, deputy director of SAVAK, were also summoned. The government, the Shah told the gathered officials, had received intelligence that on the following day, the striking teachers planned to use the body of Dr. Khan’ali to incite the demonstrators to a frenzied pitch and to violence. The Shah wanted the security forces to move in the dark of the night and use their assets and connections to make sure the next day’s demonstrators did not have access to Khan’ali’s body. General Nasiri reassured the Shah that his police forces had everything under control and that arrangements had already been made to make the body unavailable for use by demonstrators.72

  But Nasiri failed to deliver. Early the next morning, long before the police arrived on the scene, the demonstrators were already in possession of the body. Sharif-Emami was by then convinced that there was “a conspiracy afoot” and that secret hands were at work to depose him and his government. He had apparently concluded that the Shah himself might have been one of those working behind the scenes to topple the Sharif-Emami cabinet. There is, in fact, in Sharif-Emami’s Harvard Oral History interview an unmistakable pattern of serious criticism of the Shah. The irony is the fact that Sharif-Emami was considered to be one of the Shah’s most trusted advisors and allies. The Shah even chose him to head the Pahlavi Foundation—a post he kept for nearly the entire period of the foundation’s existence.

  Early on that night of May 4, when the Shah heard about the situation, he grew anxious and agitated and was “reportedly extremely upset and ready to flee the country.”73 The gradual grind of disturbing news had by then clearly taken its toll on him. Late on the night of May 4, he finally accepted the resignation of an angry, even belligerent Sharif-Emami. Earlier that morn
ing, in an appearance before the parliament, Sharif-Emami had been berated and attacked by members of the parliament and asked to account for the death of Dr. Khan’ali. Sharif-Emami felt, not unreasonably, that such attacks could not have taken place without at least the Shah’s tacit consent. He felt betrayed, but at the same time, he felt beleaguered and bereft of options.74 In submitting his resignation that night, he shouted at the Shah, asking why he had allowed him to be publicly humiliated in the parliament. “Why couldn’t you simply ask for my resignation?” he asked angrily.75 Sharif-Emami also believed firmly that his opposition to the American stabilization program was the real reason for the demonstrations against his cabinet. He now had no choice but to resign. When he met the Shah to tender his resignation, the Shah looked tired and listless, anxious and angry. Faced with Sharif-Emami’s angry outburst, the Shah made a perfunctory attempt to convince him to stay on for a few more days, but Sharif-Emami obviously knew that his turn at the helm had ended, and the Shah accepted his resignation. Before long, he reluctantly offered the job to Ali Amini.

  Amini had been anticipating the call from the Court. He consulted with some of his trusted friends, amongst them Abolhassan Ebtehaj, about what he should do when the formal call came. They all counseled that he should stand firm and demand concessions from the clearly weakened Shah. At the Court, Amini told an exhausted Shah that he would accept the job “on the condition he be given broad powers.”76 The Shah agreed but insisted on keeping for himself the right to appoint the three crucial ministries of Interior (in charge of the police), Foreign Affairs, and War (in charge of the military). With SAVAK, the police, and the military at his disposal, and with these three ministries under his control, the Shah still had more power than the constitution allowed and far less than he himself desired. While he planned his strategy in coping with a new ambitious and assertive prime minister, the Shah was still anxiously awaiting a chance to meet the new American president.

  Chapter 14

  GARRULOUS PREMIER

  My Lord, wise men ne’er wail their present woes,

  But presently prevent the ways to wail.

  Shakespeare, King Richard II, 3.2.173–174

  Ali Amini had something of Polonius in him. Beginning with his first acceptance speech as the prime minister, through his many, many, many subsequent radio chats and public lectures, he came to be known for his long, sometimes meandering speeches. His garrulous nature came to be a favorite subject for satirists who made fun of his volubility and of his attempt to use words and verbiage as a balm and a substitute for jobs and real change. For the Shah, a phrase in one of Amini’s talks where he declared the Iranian economy bankrupt was a convincing sign of either his unsavory intentions or his dangerously irresponsible discourse. It mattered little to the Shah that the Iranian economy had indeed been practically bankrupt for years and had survived only thanks to the infusion of millions of dollars of aid from the United States or that, at the time Amini made the announcement, the Iranian government did not have enough money to pay its most rudimentary expenses.1 The Shah did have a point, however, in arguing that even if the economic realities were dire, the Amini announcement made them worse and frightened away millions of dollars of potential investments. In reality, the Shah’s dislike of Amini was rooted as much in blood as in politics.

  Amini had “Qajar blood” in him. He was a grandson of a Qajar king. His mother, Fakhr al-Dowleh, was considered by Reza Shah to be one of the most powerful and assertive members of the Qajar dynasty. She is “the only man the Qajar family has produced,” Reza Shah reportedly said. In politics and in business, she was assertive, ambitious, and willing to go where few other women of her generation and class dared to tread. In business, for example, she launched the first modern taxi service in the country, something aristocratic women deemed “beneath their dignity.” In politics, she was widely connected to different centers of power and unabashedly used her network of friends and family to promote her favorite son’s career. She considered the premier’s office something of a family heirloom and wanted her Ali to return the family to its days of glory.

  If a dangerous and despised bloodline was not enough to poison the Shah’s relations with Amini, there was also the question of politics. The Shah never trusted Ali Amini, considering him dangerously ambitious, incorrigibly opportunistic, and shamelessly “America’s boy.” From 1950 to 1955, when the Shah was in the fight of his life with the three most powerful politicians of his tenure—Qavam, Mossadeq, and General Zahedi—Amini was a member of all three men’s cabinets. He was a protégé of Qavam and a blood relative of Mossadeq; General Zahedi too was a distant relative, but with him Amini had more a marriage of convenience than of shared political passions. It was a measure of Amini’s character—his opportunism or knack for survival—that he eventually turned against all three prime ministers. The pinnacle of power was what Amini coveted, and neither he nor his mother would be satisfied with anything less.

  No sooner had General Zahedi established his headquarters at the Officer’s Club on the afternoon of August 19, 1953, than Fakhr al-Dowleh called, asking the General “not to forget my Ali.”2 There was at that time still no ministerial portfolio designated for Amini, but luck intervened. The first two candidates for the post of finance minister could not be located in the chaos of that bloody day. By late on August 18, many of the royalists had gone into hiding, fearing the end of the monarchy. Some were late in returning to their homes. Desperate to form a full cabinet before the end of the day, General Zahedi, according to his son Ardeshir Zahedi, named Amini to the vacant post of finance minister.3

  A few months later, while Amini was still the finance minister, the Shah asked him “whether he did not look forward to being a Prime Minister.” Amini’s cautiously affirmative response only begot a more ominous question from the Shah. Was he not looking forward “to something more than Prime Minister”?4 the Shah asked. The implication of the question was hard to miss. Just like his father, the Shah believed that the politically ambitious members of the Qajar family had designs on the Pahlavi throne. And Amini was nothing if not ambitious.

  Even in exile, after having witnessed Amini’s willingness to help save the Pahlavi throne in 1979, the Shah still disparaged him as America’s “own man.” At the same time, in the early days of the Kennedy administration, Amini was for the Shah the lesser of two evils. The Shah was under pressure from the United States to reconcile with the National Front and bring them into a coalition government. Even after the Amini appointment, U.S. pressure for such a reconciliation continued. The majority of the National Front leadership ultimately decided against making peace with the Shah. The memory of August 19, 1953, and the fall of Dr. Mossadeq were fresh on their minds. Mossadeq was still under virtual house arrest and barred from taking part in politics. Though they were ostensibly representative of Iran’s moderate middle class, the leaders of the National Front preferred puritan but quixotic militancy over pragmatic realism. In the famous words of Khalil Maleki—himself a supporter of Mossadeq, a onetime leader of the National Front, and the lone voice advocating the wisdom of a pragmatic reconciliation with the Shah, particularly against what he considered the patently more reactionary clergy—“these [National Front] leaders are not even demagogues but merely followers of the demos.”5

  But the Shah, too, was adamantly against the idea of reconciliation. He used thinly disguised language to attack the National Front leaders for making peace with separatists in Azerbaijan in 1946. He chastised them for using the cover of night to meet with representatives of foreign governments and to “benefit financially from these contacts, and then poison the atmosphere.”6 A National Front government, he told the American Ambassador in a private luncheon at Asadollah Alam’s home, “would be a precursor of communist takeover.” The leaders of the National Front, the Shah went on to say, have “no purpose except to come to power.” Moreover, their organization has been “badly infiltrated by communists.”7

  Aside fr
om the age-old argument that the National Front would pave the way for Communism—the argument used by the British in 1952 when they were trying to convince the Truman administration to join in the effort to topple Mossadeq—the Shah in 1961 also offered a different argument against the idea of such a coalition. On numerous occasions he told American and British officials that in Iran, the Shah has “always been the center of power.” Without a powerful king, the center could not hold. This time, cognizant of the Kennedy administration’s keen interest in introducing reforms in Iran, the Shah told the American Ambassador that if there were to be any meaningful reform in Iran, it had to come under the aegis of the Shah and no one else. He also made it clear on numerous occasions that “he would abdicate rather than accept [the] position of a figurehead.”8 That was why appointing Amini was, compared to sharing power with the National Front, for the Shah the lesser of two evils—but an evil nevertheless.

  That might also explain why the Amini appointment in May 1961 was a surprise to nearly everyone, including Amini himself. Though he had coveted this post all his adult life, when he was summoned to the Court and asked by the Shah to form a government, he was, according to the U.S. Embassy, surprisingly “unprepared for the job both in regard [to] having a program and a nucleus of capable individuals to help him discharge the heavy task he assumed.”9

  Before accepting the job, Amini insisted on having more power and independence than had previous prime ministers, but he still did not have complete freedom to form his cabinet. The Shah insisted on keeping his “right” to name the ministers to the three key ministries of War, Foreign Affairs, and Interior. The rest of the cabinet, hastily put together, was a coalition of new technocrats, old-time politicians, and lapsed Communists, Socialists, and independent critics and opponents of the Shah. There was also one leader of the National Front—Gholam Ali Farivar—who had joined the cabinet as an individual and not as a member of the organization; even so, he resigned before long under pressure from his comrades.