The Shah

by Abbas Milani

  Like a traditional Oriental potentate, the Shah felt the society owed him a debt of gratitude for the progress and the freedoms he had “given them.” And in fact, in the last fifteen years of his rule, there had been not only unprecedented economic growth, but unparalleled cultural and religious freedom in Iran. Double-digit growth of the GNP was not the exception but the rule. Iran ranked with Turkey, South Korea, and Taiwan as the countries that were industrializing most rapidly and were most likely to join the ranks of developed economies. But for most in Iran’s opposition, these cultural and economic freedoms and accomplishments were either a form of “decadent libertinism,” or a mere cosmetic to cover the more fundamental lack of democracy. On the eve of the revolution, it was political freedom that was the focus of the opposition’s demands. And in one of the great ironies of modern history, this movement chose as its leader the man most likely to severely curtail the cultural and political freedom people were demanding.

  Moreover, most Iranians touched by modernity—and its notions about the natural rights of citizens—considered the freedoms the Shah thought he was “giving” them their inalienable rights.71 They held him responsible for having deprived them of these rights and resented the fact that he expected them to show gratitude for their newly bestowed freedoms. The Shah felt, in the words of a confidante, “like a man who had lavished everything on a beautiful woman for years, only to find that she had been unfaithful all along.”72 The authoritarian system he had established made him the sole “decider” for nearly every major economic, political, and military decision in the country. Whether it was the decision to allow visas for an American university marching band or the precise timing of the arrest of a known Soviet spy, he expected to have the final say. When his deteriorating health and his anxious mood and, more importantly, his failing grip on power, rendered him incapable or unwilling to make any decisions, as happened in late 1978, the weaknesses and vacillations that had been the hallmark of his character in his battle with Mossadeq reemerged, and the entire machinery of the state came to a grinding halt. The Mossadeq mystique also affected both the Shah and his supporters, who mistakenly believed that the United States must have some master plan to keep the Shah, or at least the monarchy, in power. But unbeknownst to the Shah, by early November 1978, both the British and American Embassies had concluded that doing another August 1953 to save the Shah was not in their interest. Moreover, in 1953, the Shah had had the support of the army, much of the entrepreneurial class, and the top echelon of the clergy as well as the full trust and relentless effort of a capable Minister of Court who spared no effort to save the throne. In 1978, however, everything was different. The clergy were either against him or, cowed by Khomeini’s radicalism, unwilling to publicly support him. The entrepreneurial class was in utter disarray and had long ago been forced to abandon any political ambition. Even the ranks of the military had been showing, from early September 1978, signs of discontent, if not outright rebellion. By December 1978, the British and American Embassies were both detecting “signs of dissention and disarray at the top of the armed forces.” Commanders complained that the Shah was bereft of purpose, suggesting that his father had been made of sterner metal and that such a crisis “would have never happened under Reza Shah.”73

  In the weeks before the collapse of the regime, American officials, cognizant of these facts, tried to establish new ties to the opposition. They wanted to avoid a civil war, which would have benefited the Soviets. They also wanted to ensure that the Communists would not use chaos as a pretext to seize power. British and U.S. policy began to shift. On October 30, 1978, British Prime Minister James Callaghan’s office decided that the Shah did not have any chance of surviving and informed the Foreign Office that they should “start thinking about reinsuring.”74 Around the same time, the Carter administration also concluded that the Shah was not likely to survive.

  General Robert Huyser (sent by Carter on a special mission to Iran) and “General Gast (the MAAG [Military Assistance and Advisory Group] chief in Tehran) were in close touch with the military . . . [and] were working to facilitate contact between them and Khomeini’s forces.”75 The decision to work with Khomeini and his forces came after contacts were established between him and American officials in Paris. After some initial trepidation, the United States decided to learn more about Khomeini’s plans. He (in Paris) and his supporters (in Tehran) were asked to answer a series of questions. The responses were, according to U.S. officials, of the “standard Third World type”—there was clearly no hint of clerical despotism. In the meantime, even the American Embassy in Tehran arrived at a new “reading” of Shiism. Sullivan not only wrote about “thinking the unthinkable” and planning for an Iran without the Shah, but also concluded that Khomeini was keen on establishing a democracy in Iran. The United States began facilitating Khomeini’s rise to power.

  The movement that overthrew the Shah was democratic in nature and aspirations. Some 11 percent of the 38 million people of Iran participated in the movement, compared to 7 percent in the French Revolution and 9 percent in the Russian Revolution. The slogans of the day were unmistakably democratic as well: 38 to 50 percent were directed against the Shah himself, 16 to 30 percent favored Khomeini personally. At most, 38 percent asked for an Islamic Republic—none asked for a clerical regime.76 The most common slogan was “Independence, Freedom and an Islamic Republic.”

  In the months leading up to the Western decision to “reinsure,” Khomeini hid his ultimate goal and true ideology and took on the guise of a democratic leader. Not only did he dissimulate when responding to the U.S. questionnaire, but in his more than one hundred interviews in Paris, there was no mention of velayat-e faqih. But in fact, from his first book in Persian, written in the aftermath of the fall of Reza Shah, to the collection of his sermons on an Islamic government, compiled by his students in Najaf in the late 1960s, Khomeini consistently advocated the absolute rule of jurists, enforcing sharia law.77 Even in the annals of Shiite theology, Khomeini’s view was deemed radical and was espoused by only a handful of ayatollahs.78 Ironically, he was aided in his deception by the fact that the Shah had banned Khomeini’s books for decades, making them unavailable to Iranian readers or critics.

  To add further credibility to this democratic pose, Khomeini allowed a few ambitious, Western-trained aides such as Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, Sadeq Gotbzadeh, and Ebrahim Yazdi† to become the public face of his movement in Paris. The three were his de facto spokesmen and helped consolidate the democratic façade. At the same time, unbeknownst to the world, Khomeini had already organized a few trusted clerics in Tehran—nearly all had been his students in earlier years—into a covert “Revolutionary Committee.” Some members of this committee, particularly those from the Freedom Movement, were in close contact with American Embassy officials in Tehran, and they eventually convinced the Ambassador that the “Islamic movement dominated by Ayatollah Khomeini is far better organized [and] enlightened and able to resist communism than its detractors would lead us to believe,” and that it might be able to “produce something more closely approaching Westernized democratic processes than might at first be apparent.”79 A more misguided reading of what Khomeini stood for is hard to imagine.

  For the Shah, the end seemed near when late in 1978 workers in the critical oil industry went on strike. In a remarkable lapse of planning, it turned out that Iran’s much-vaunted military lacked the technological or organizational know-how to take over the oil industry and keep the government afloat. By then, no country was deemed as central to deciding Iran’s future as the United States. A U.S. Embassy memorandum, written in 1978 on the eve of the revolution, noted “the ‘secret hand’ theory . . . deep in the Iranian grain . . . blames the US (among others) for Iran’s many problems.”80 George Ball, head of Carter’s special task force on Iran, wrote a report that captured these dynamics deftly: “All parties are looking to the United States for signals,”81 he wrote. “We made the Shah what he has become. We nurtu
red his love for grandiose geopolitical schemes and supplied him the hardware to indulge his fantasies.” Ball went on to say, “Now that his regime is coming apart under the pressures of imported modernization,” the United States should pressure the Shah to give up much of his power and “bring about a responsible government that not only meets the needs of the Iranian people but the requirements of our own policy.”82

  After the “Black Friday” incident in September 1978, it was clear that Sharif-Emami’s experiment in shaming or appeasing the opposition into accord by offering them a surfeit of concessions had failed utterly. His decision to arrest prominent past leaders backfired, becoming a source of ridicule to the opposition and of wavering support in the rapidly dwindling ranks of royalist stalwarts.

  The Shah, after several meetings with British and American officials, and after accepting that his experiment with Sharif-Emami had failed, on November 5, said there was now no choice but to impose a military government. It was time to flex the military’s muscle in order to intimidate the opposition. Earlier, SAVAK had submitted a list of about 1,500 people it wanted arrested. The plan was put forward to the Shah by Parviz Sabeti, with Hoveyda—still Court minister—acting as intermediary. With some trepidation, the Shah agreed to the arrest of 150 “mostly less-known characters.” After a couple of weeks, even those arrested were released on the order of the Prime Minister. By November, instead of implementing SAVAK’s hard-knuckle plans, the Shah agreed to a massive purge of SAVAK itself. Sabeti was amongst those “relieved of duty,” and it became clear to the political cognoscenti that the Shah was ready to concede defeat.

  When rumors of the Shah’s plan to install a military government spread, the opposition feared that General Oveisi—nicknamed the “Butcher of Tehran”—would be the head of the new military government. According to Aslan Afshar, his chief of protocol, the Shah went so far as to tell orderlies at the Court to summon Oveisi to his office. Then, according to Afshar, the British and American ambassadors asked for an emergency meeting with the Shah. After the meeting, a dour and dejected Shah told Afshar to cancel the summons to Oveisi. Instead, he appointed General Azhari, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was altogether bereft of charisma and the aura of intimidation needed in a military governor.

  Azhari had a hard time finding people willing to serve in his cabinet. On more than one occasion, it was left to the Shah to call and demand that someone accept the task for the love of the country. Hussein Najafi, one of the most respected jurists of his generation, was one such candidate. He had already served in the Sharif-Emami cabinet, but was now unwilling to continue in the post, rightly arguing that he had a reputation as a jurist who followed the letter of the law. In a military cabinet, he said, “you want someone to bring fear to the hearts of the people, not someone who will reassure them of the law’s full implementation.” But the Shah would not relent, and at his insistence, a reluctant Najafi was named minister of justice.

  Even if General Azhari’s own timid behavior, and the incongruent mix of his cabinet ministers, was not enough to deprive it of its aura of authority or military menace, the Shah’s notorious speech the day before his appointment was the last nail in the coffin of the “military option.” The controversial speech was by all accounts prepared by two of the Queen’s closest advisors, Seyyed Hussein Nasr and Reza Qotbi. By then, the Shah’s speechwriter of many years, Shojaedeen Shafa, had already left Iran, and contrary to rumor, had no role in preparing the speech. “Had I been in Iran,” he said, “I would have never allowed his Majesty to make such an ill-advised speech.”83

  On the morning of this infamous speech on November 5, 1978, when the Shah arrived at his office and noticed the television crew setting up, he asked his Chief of Staff what they were preparing for. He was told that a speech was on its way from the Queen’s office. When the Shah finally saw a draft, he was reluctant to deliver it. Ultimately, after consultation with the Queen and her advisors, he was convinced. Dressed in civilian cloths, bereft of any mark of majesty or authority, looking tired and wan, the Shah for the first time referred to the opposition movement as a revolution. “I have heard the voice of your revolution,” he said, adding that he fully realized that many errors had been committed in the past. Given a chance, he would now reign according to the letter of the constitution. Delivered only a day before the installation of the supposed military government, the repentant speech was yet another sign of the Shah’s loosening grip on the reins of power. The speech also indicated the rift that existed at the Court between the Queen and her advisors, who consistently advocated reconciliation with the opposition, and those who advised the Shah to use his military to re-establish law and order. The vacillations between these two extremes only fed the opposition’s appetite for power.84

  If the repentant speech was intended to convince the opposition to join a government of national reconciliation, it was a complete failure. Most of the secular National Front leadership had decided by late 1978 against either forming a coalition with the Shah or forming a government of its own while the Shah was still in power. The National Front cannot be entirely blamed for the failure of a secular democratic coalition. The Shah had long been adamantly against reconciliation with the National Front, making “vitriolic denunciations” against them as late as June 1978 during a private meeting with British officials. He declared at the time that the National Front leaders were beyond “the lines of political acceptability.”85

  Aside from these old political wounds what made a compromise with the Shah more difficult was the tragic fire in the Rex Cinema, in the city of Abadan. On August 19, 1978, doors to the theater were locked from outside and the place was set ablaze. More than four hundred people burned to death. The regime tried to accuse the Islamists of instigating the murderous act, while the opposition claimed that it was in fact the regime that had burned the theater to tarnish the opposition’s reputation. In subsequent years, it has become increasingly more evident that it was in fact radical Islamists who put the Rex Cinema ablaze.

  As the tempo of anti-Shah demonstrations increased, some American businessmen working in Iran decided to “level a public relations campaign in support of the Shah.”86 More importantly, some members of the Iranian bourgeois class, finally cognizant of the imminent danger to their investments and way of life, belatedly tried to organize pro-Shah groups and demonstrations. The effort was led primarily by Ali Rezai, the head of a major industrial conglomerate. He had been in close contact with Princess Ashraf, who encouraged the group to act. In a meeting attended by some of the country’s top industrialists, almost 20 million tooman ($3 million) was raised. But like most of what the Shah’s supporters did, it was too little, too late.

  In retrospect, it seems likely that the Shah’s last chance for survival was the appointment of Gholam Hussein Sadighi as prime minister. He had been an interior minister during Mossadeq’s time and remained unwavering in his support for the man he called “the Ultimate Leader.” The Shah had been instrumental in arranging for his early release from prison in the aftermath of August 1953. He is a patriot, the Shah reportedly declared at the time. A revered professor at Tehran University, Sadighi was considered the father of modern sociology in Iran. He was renowned for his mastery of Aristotelian text and was also one of the leaders of the National Front, having played a pivotal role in revitalizing the Front in the early 1960s. He remained unbending in his opposition to the Shah—whom he considered a coup-installed illegitimate claimant to the throne. In what will go down in history as a remarkable show of courage, Sadighi decided to forgo his personal animosities when he felt the country was in danger.

  In early October, as it became clear that only a genuine government of national reconciliation might save the country from Khomeini, Sadighi finally agreed to meet with the Shah. He had only two conditions: the first meeting would take place with at least two other trusted elder statesmen present, and there should be no discussion of an appointment as prime minister in tha
t meeting. The Shah agreed, and the first meeting was spent on general discussion of both the past and the current crises. When the Shah claimed that he had the full support of President Carter in his decision to leave the country for a while, Sadighi stopped him. It was, he said, unbecoming to a king to worry about the support of an American president. Moreover, he insisted that, in his view, the idea of the Shah’s leaving Iran at the time was ill-advised.87 This surprised the Shah; all the other National Front leaders he had met wanted him to leave the country.

  All in all, there were five meetings between the Shah and Sadighi. In the second meeting, on December 10, only the Shah and Sadighi were present, and it was then that the job of prime minister was offered to the prudent old Aristotelian. His most critical demand was that the Shah remain in Iran. He also demanded that the bloodshed stop. He then promised to work on forming a cabinet.

  A few days earlier, the Shah had also met with Karim Sanjabi, the leader of the National Front. Sanjabi predicated his acceptance of any role in a government on Khomeini’s prior approval. He had just returned from meeting with Khomeini in Paris, where he had made a statement—a statement the Ayatollah had refused to sign, lest the presumptive leader of the secular forces develop any delusions that he was on a par with Khomeini—in which he not only accepted Khomeini’s leadership, but also the increasing role of Islam in shaping the ideology of the movement. Upon his return to Tehran, Sanjabi told the Shah that “no solution would work without a green light from Khomeini.” He added that at present “this was impossible to obtain except on the basis of the Shah’s total abdication.” More incredibly still, he “suggested that the present military government should remain in office for another couple of months to see if Khomeini’s influence might be on the decline and if a situation might then obtain where some kind of national government could be formed.”88 A more dangerous combination of cowardice and mendacity is hard to imagine.