The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  This period coincided with the rise of two men to the pinnacles of power, both of whom remained in their crucial posts for almost fourteen years. The first was Amir Abbas Hoveyda, appointed by the Shah to the post of prime minister when Islamist terrorists assassinated Ali Mansur in 1965. Hoveyda was a newcomer to the center stage of Iranian politics, and it was commonly assumed that his would be a caretaker appointment and that he would be replaced with a more seasoned politician as soon as the crisis of the Prime Minister’s assassination had passed. But Hoveyda proved everyone wrong. With a deft combination of efficiency, sycophancy, and hardball politics against his adversaries and his competitors, as well as a strong strategic alliance with Parviz Sabeti, the rising star of SAVAK, Hoveyda stayed in power for more than thirteen years. His dismissal in 1977 was seen as a sea change by the opposition, while his arrest, on November 7, 1978, was for many the beginning of the end for the Shah.9

  The second person whose career experienced a meteoric rise in that decade was General Nematollah Nasiri, who had replaced the educated, soft-spoken General Hassan Pakravan as the head of SAVAK in 1965. In the weeks after the June 1963 uprising, the Shah had confided to an American official that he meant to remove Pakravan. Had he done his job, the Shah believed, the June uprising could have been avoided.

  During his brief tenure, Pakravan had revamped SAVAK: torture was forbidden and a group of scholars acted as a de facto think tank. Pakravan himself started negotiating with some of the regime’s most stalwart enemies. In 1964 he unsuccessfully tried to convince Khomeini to give up “the dirty world” of politics. He also met with the political dissident Bijan Jazani when the latter was in prison. Returning to his cell after one of these meetings, Jazani told one of his trusted comrades, “this guy is different and really wants to create a dialogue.”10 Before this foray into reconciliation could bear any fruit, however, the Shah dismissed Pakravan and replaced him with Nasiri, whose only recommendation for the job was his absolute fealty to the Shah. Under his command, SAVAK became increasingly known for its brutality and use of torture and for its controversial influence on every facet of Iranian political life.

  In his Answer to History, the Shah surprisingly claims that it was in fact the Prime Minister who was “directly responsible for the day-to-day operation of SAVAK” and that, as head of state, he only intervened to “exercise the right of pardon.” The fact that the head of SAVAK was nominally a vice premier gave the Shah’s claim its bureaucratic veneer. In reality, there is overwhelming evidence that from its inception, SAVAK was controlled directly by the Shah and that the Prime Minister had little to do with the actual running of the agency. Moreover, in spite of overwhelming evidence of torture by SAVAK—far less than the opposition claimed in those years, but a reality nevertheless—the Shah always insisted that there was no torture or execution of political prisoners during his reign: “[As for] those who were arrested for political reasons—I cannot include arsonists and saboteurs in this category—I affirm that they were properly treated and that they were never molested in any way. No one can tell me the name of a single politician who has been liquidated by SAVAK.”11 While his caveat about “arsonists and saboteurs” seemed to imply that they were tortured, even the claim that no one was liquidated by SAVAK was not true. The famous case that belies the Shah’s claim involved Jazani, the political prisoner with whom Pakravan had engaged in a dialogue.

  In the course of its ongoing and bloody war with Marxist urban guerrillas, SAVAK was surprised to learn that Jazani had been one of the founding leaders of the group. When the group assassinated a high-ranking member of SAVAK, Jazani, along with eight other leading political dissidents, all serving time on earlier charges, were taken outside Tehran’s Evin Prison by a group of SAVAK interrogators and summarily executed. The official story was that the group had been shot “while attempting to escape.” This turned out to be the only case of known extrajudicial murder of its kind committed during the Shah’s thirty-seven-year rule. There is no evidence that the Shah knew about or ordered the killing, but in thinking about Jazani’s tragic life trajectory, one can’t help but wonder what might have happened to him, and to Iran, had Pakravan’s attempt at reconciliation with opposition figures like Jazani borne some fruit. If ever such a reconciliation might have been possible, it was in 1965, when the Shah was at the height of his power and when his personality was undergoing a “steady metamorphosis.” He was increasingly self-sufficient and making “remarkable strides” toward bringing Iran into the modern world.12

  By then, a brilliant group of economists and technocrats—from Mehdi Samii and Alinaghi Alikhani to Nasser Moghadam and Khodadad Farmanfarmaian—had taken over the crucial ministries and banks in charge of the country’s economic policy. They were, in the words of a report prepared for Senator Robert Kennedy, representatives of Iran’s “new men.” They were fierce nationalists but no longer enamored of Mossadeq and the National Front.13

  Many of these “new men” had trained in universities in the West and had left secure positions at top Western institutions to come back to Iran and change the society they loved. A kind of “reverse brain drain” had begun. This new technocratic elite began to map out for Iran an impressive plan of industrial development. The Khayami brothers of Iran National embodied the new spirit of entrepreneurship propagated by the Shah and the elite. What had begun as a small garage in the city of Meshed was by 1978 the Iran National industrial conglomerate and was considered one of the most successful automotive industries in all of the Middle East. The company was by then employing more than 12,000 workers and producing 136,000 cars annually. In the beginning, about 80 percent of each car produced by Iran National was imported from England and simply assembled in Iran; by 1978, the figure of imported parts had been reduced to about 20 percent. More than 120 different companies were by then producing components for Iran National. Had the revolution not happened, one of the Khayami brothers said wistfully, “Iran National would be where [the] South Korean car industry is today.”14

  In spite of the Shah’s vigorous support for the private sector and entrepreneurship, he also had a “statist” tendency. This was rooted in his belief that he was actually a Socialist, “more socialist and revolutionary than anyone,” he once said. Not only was the private university he helped to establish forcefully nationalized, but the first private television station, also created with his help, was bought by the government in less than a decade. While the Shah tolerated no independent labor unions, he supported labor laws that were surprisingly fair to the workers. Moreover, he forced all big industries to give half of their stock to their workers—yet another gesture of “socialism” that was incongruent with his support for the private sector.

  In a sense then, for the Shah the decade between 1965 and 1975 was a pivotal period. In retrospect, a more tragic rise and fall, a more remarkable example of the economic accomplishments of a modernizing authoritarian monarch and the inevitable result of the hubris of such absolute power is hard to imagine. Just as Iran was entering what the American sociologist Walt Rostow has called its “take-off period”—a necessary time of concentrated change in preparing for a leap out of the vicious cycle of feudalism and poverty—and just as the Shah felt he was on top of the world, dark clouds appeared on the horizon. In his mind, the assassin’s bullets he had dodged in 1965 were no more dangerous than what he had firmly believed in 1963 were the Kennedy administration’s plans to turn Iran into a republic.15 Interlaced through the many reports from the American and British Embassies praising the glories of the Shah’s accomplishments were early warnings of a storm on the horizon. What in retrospect is remarkable is how many such warnings there were and how not just the Shah but the big powers and their intelligence ministries and bureaucracies failed to notice or take action.

  These warnings were invariably overshadowed by the Shah’s increasingly euphoric and assertive confidence and by the impressive improvements in Iran’s economy. Even the American Embassy was reluctan
t to send Washington reports that might be critical of the Shah. One diplomat posted in Tehran in the early 1970s says he was told that reports critical of the Shah were not welcome in the White House or the State Department.16 He had, for example, heard stories of the Shah’s dalliance with a young woman and that he might indeed be planning to marry her.

  The rumor, Alam makes clear in his Daily Journals, was true. On June 12, 1973, Alam told the Shah of a “girl named G. [Gilda was her name] who had been spreading strange rumors in the city, claiming His Majesty had fallen madly in love with her.” Alam ventures to add, “But of course the king never falls in love with anyone.” Two weeks later, Alam again reported that there was a rumor that “Your Majesty has taken a second wife.”17 The Shah’s response was no less incredible than Alam’s flippant comments. “I have been with this bitch [pedar sukhteh]. I too have heard the rumors. They have even reached the ears of Shahbanu. Call the woman to your office and tell her that she will be arrested if she continues with these shenanigans.”18

  The rumors continued. In those years, as Alam’s journals make amply clear, the Shah’s “only recreation,” his only “respite “ from what he called the burdens of his office and “the constant grumblings at home,” was the company of increasingly larger numbers of women, “guests” in Alam’s parlance, who were flown in, often from Europe, for an “outing” with the Shah. “If I don’t have this recreation a couple of times a week,” the Shah told Alam once, “there is no way I could bear the burden of my office.”19 Occasionally, “local material” was used. A special house was furnished by an Alam aide to facilitate these “outings.” So numerous were the men eager to act as royal procurers that the Shah eventually ordered them all to stop and entrusted only a handful of aides with the infamous job. The Queen, though obviously distraught at these infidelities, never felt threatened by them. But this time, the rumors about “G.” were different. Even the Queen’s mother grew concerned and told Alam, “fortunately my daughter is not attached to this luxury” (meaning she could easily ask for divorce). When Alam reported the conversation to the Shah, he flippantly dismissed the implied threat (“zeki” [contextually Persian for “bullshit”] he reportedly said!) but after some discussion with Alam, the two decided “we should find a husband for the girl (G.).”20 Nevertheless, during the very same meeting, Alam gave the Shah “a letter from a very nice girl,” and reported that “His Majesty was happy.”

  As always, Alam’s instinct was to blame Hoveyda for spreading rumors about the Shah’s indiscretions. He told the Shah that Hoveyda “wants to turn the Queen into an angel and create a negative image of His Majesty.”21 The Shah’s instinct, on the other hand, was to blame the KGB for the rumors. Neither man blamed the rumor on the Shah’s crass infidelities. Moreover, the Shah’s suspicion of KGB complicity and many pages in Alam’s journals are stark reminders of the political and economic costs and consequences of these “outings.” The same pages show that on the rare occasions when the Shah questioned the wisdom of his own sexual indiscretions, Alam, in his most destructive moments of sycophancy, reassured the Shah—or his “master” as he calls him—that the country was prosperous, and no one begrudged the King a bit of fun.22

  By 1975, these rumors spread to Western papers and American officials. Even Henry Kissinger had an opinion on the subject, telling Ardeshir Zahedi that a divorce would be detrimental to the image of the Shah in the United States. Eventually, the plan of action devised by the Shah and Alam was put in place. G. was married off, and magazines in Tehran published images of the wedding. The Shah asked Alam to ensure that the Queen saw the article.

  But this was not the end of the story. After being parted from the Shah, G. started a heated affair with General Mohammad Khatam—the commander of Iran’s air force and the husband of the Shah’s sister Fateme. By the time this affair began, Khatam had developed the reputation of being one of the most corrupt officers in the country. Even the Shah suspected him of financial malfeasance. On June 7, 1975, for example, the New York Times wrote about close ties between Khatam and the “swashbuckling Central Intelligence Agency operative” Kermit Roosevelt. As a result of this friendship, the Times wrote, U.S. manufacturer Northrop (Roosevelt’s alleged client) had become a major contractor for Iran’s air force. In yet another article, the Times claimed that Khatam and a partner had received a $28 million kickback for a $2.2 billion contract with Grumman.23 The U.S. Senate held hearings about these allegations, and the U.S. Embassy called Khatam the head of the “Iranian Air Mafia,” claiming that he and his accomplices received a percentage on every contract relating to air travel and the air force in Iran.24 At the same time, earlier reports by the same embassy had praised Khatam for his favorable disposition toward American military hardware and for his ability “to curb some of the Shah’s extreme decisions.”25 A report prepared by the U.S. government even concluded that should something happen to the Shah, Khatam was the only officer who had the charisma, gravitas, and popularity to seize and maintain power.26

  When, on September 12, 1975, Khatam died in a hang-gliding accident, rumors of foul play pointed to the Shah as a likely culprit. Some royalists insisted that Khatam was killed by Western powers in preparation for the 1979 revolution. “All capable officers, capable of saving the Shah, had to be eliminated,” they claim.27 Extensive investigations into the accident by experts from the Iranian army and by Bob Moise, the American engineer who had built the kite, discovered no indication of foul play. The Shah had told Alam a month before the accident that the General was no longer of “sound mind” and that he had asked for his resignation as commander of the air force. He had been told that he would be sent as an ambassador to a capital of his choice. During the period leading up to his death, Khatam’s friends also reported that he was depressed.

  In his journal, Alam is unusually coy about the events surrounding the death of the General and the Shah’s comments about it. The Shah speculated that Khatam “might have planned to kill himself and thus intentionally did not open his hang glider.” Alam goes on to say that the Shah shared with him certain facts about Khatam “so sensitive” that he “must take them to [his] grave.”28

  Khatam was not the only general who was a source of concern to the Shah in those years. In the 1960s, Teymour Bakhtiyar was also often on the Shah’s mind. After the Shah had ordered him to leave Iran in 1962, Bakhtiyar settled in Europe, “a very hated but extremely rich man.” There, the old anti-Communist warrior suddenly “changed color and became ‘non-aligned.’ ” All his attempts to ingratiate himself with either the United States or Britain had failed. He was now desperate to find allies amongst the countries of the Third World and even in the ranks of the Iranian opposition, and he began to repackage himself as a revolutionary. The Shah, on the other hand, ordered SAVAK to closely monitor Bakhtiyar’s every move. A maid in one hotel and eavesdropping equipment in another allowed SAVAK to know much of what the General did.29

  But the Shah’s relationship with Bakhtiyar changed after his tumultuous 1967 state visit to Germany. The Shah was informed that he needed extra security this time. German police had arrested some men from a team of terrorists who had been hired by Bakhtiyar to assassinate the Shah.30 In the course of the Shah’s visit to West Berlin, an Iranian student failed in his effort to have a car filled with bombs and, “directed by remote control,” hit and destroy the Shah’s limousine.31 At the same time, in Berlin, the Shah faced one of the largest demonstrations ever organized against him; one student was killed in clashes with the police. The whole trip was a public relations fiasco for the Shah, and he was informed that Bakhtiyar had been at least partially responsible for the massive demonstrations and the failed assassination attempt.

  Even before returning to Tehran, the Shah ordered the Majlis to pass a law confiscating all of Bakhtiyar’s properties in Iran. A court tried him in absentia and condemned him to death. Moreover, the Shah was led to believe that Bakhtiyar still had a network of allies within SAVAK, so a purge of
his purported supporters took place.

  The Shah’s “Bakhtiyar problem” became even more serious when the Ba’ath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968. In the new party, Bakhtiyar finally found his most reliable ally. He was invited to settle in Baghdad and eventually given an Iraqi diplomatic passport, allowing him to travel freely around the world. Moreover, the Ba’ath Party pressured different members of the Iranian opposition to meet with Bakhtiyar. Leaders of the Tudeh Party, activists from the ranks of the Confederation of Iranian Students, and “a large number of Iranians domiciled in Iraq” met with Bakhtiyar and listened to his proposal for a united front against the Shah. The Iraqi government made it clear to these Iranians that unless they cooperated with Bakhtiyar, they would be expelled and their properties confiscated. Some sources have even claimed that Ayatollah Khomeini was amongst those who not only met with but agreed to cooperate with Bakhtiyar.32

  The most controversial contact was between Bakhtiyar and the Tudeh Party. A man named Abbas Shahriyari, eventually nicknamed “a man of a thousand faces,” who was the head of the reactivated Tudeh Party cells in Tehran, had initiated the contacts between the General and the party. About the time that the first secretary of the Tudeh, Reza Radmanesh, was scheduled to meet with Bakhtiyar, the KGB informed the Tudeh Party central committee that Shahriyari was in fact an agent of SAVAK. But Radmanesh refused to believe the charge,33 and the meeting took place. Thanks to Shahriyari, Bakhtiyar’s contacts in Iran were all put under surveillance.

  In April 1968, on his way to Baghdad from his home in Switzerland, Bakhtiyar stopped in Beirut, where he was arrested and convicted on a charge of “illegal [arms] smuggling.” The Iranian government used all of its power and connections in Lebanon to have Bakhtiyar extradited to Iran, where a court had already passed a death sentence against him.