Iran: Empire of the Mind

by Michael Axworthy

  By that time the demonstrations, which had largely been an affair for middle-class students and for members of the traditional bazaari middle class up to then, were being augmented by strikes and other actions by factory workers and others, prompted by the government’s deflationary policies.57 In August there were many large demonstrations in the month of Ramadan, and more in early September. The Shah’s government banned the demonstrations and imposed martial law, but on 8 September there were huge protests in Tehran (and in other cities). Barricades were set up in the working-class areas of south Tehran. The government sent in tanks and helicopter gunships; the people on the barricades responded with Molotov cocktails. In Jaleh Square an unarmed crowd refused to disperse, and were gunned down where they stood.

  September 8 was thereafter called Black Friday and the deaths increased the bitterness of the people toward the Shah to such a pitch that compromise became impossible. All that was left was the implacable demand that the Shah should go: the demand upon which Khomeini had insisted since 1970. By the autumn most other opposition groups had allied themselves to Khomeini and his programme. Karim Sanjabi and Mehdi Bazargan flew to Paris, met Khomeini and declared their support for him in the name of the National Front and the Freedom Movement. Demonstrations and riots continued; the Shah (by now increasingly ill with cancer, though this remained unknown to the public) veered between more repression, and concessions (including the release of political prisoners and the dissolution of the Rastakhiz Party). He appeared on television to say that he understood the message of the people, would hold free elections, and would atone for past mistakes.58 But it was all too late. As autumn went into winter more and more workers spent more and more time on strike and the violence intensified again at the beginning of Moharram in December. In Qazvin 135 demonstrators died when tanks drove over them. On the day of Ashura itself (11 December) more than one million people demonstrated on the streets of Tehran. After Ashura street gangs roamed the capital at will, there were more and more signs that the army was no longer reliable (there were mass desertions especially in Qom and Mashhad), and by this time President Carter’s support for the Shah was on the wane. Many Americans were leaving the country after attacks on US-owned offices and even the US embassy. The Shah had lost control, and on 16 January 1979 left the country. On 1 February Khomeini flew back to Tehran.

  8

  IRAN SINCE THE REVOLUTION: ISLAMIC

  REVIVAL, WAR AND CONFRONTATION

  When the existence of the Church is threatened, she is released from the commandments of morality. With unity as the end, the use of every means is sanctified, even cunning, treachery, violence, simony, prison, death. For all order is for the sake of the community, and the individual must be sacrificed to the common good

  Dietrich of Nieheim, Bishop of Verden, 1411

  (Quoted by Arthur Koestler in Darkness at Noon)

  In the Air France passenger jet that Ayatollah Khomeini took from Paris to Tehran (before it was even clear that the aircraft would be allowed to land) a western journalist asked him what his feelings were about returning to Iran. He replied Hichi—‘nothing’.1 This was more than just a grumpy response to unimaginative journalism, but it did not demonstrate a deep indifference to Iran or the well-being of the Iranian people, as has sometimes been claimed. Khomeini’s reply has a gnomic quality that challenges interpretation.

  Whether one approves of Khomeini or not, it is indisputable that when he arrived in Tehran on 1 February 1979, he was the focal point of the hopes of a whole nation. In some sense they reflected him, and he reflected them, at that moment at least. It may be that the euphoric crowds welcoming him numbered as many as three million. This was in accordance with Khomeini’s sense of himself. His idea of spiritual development was that of Ibn Arabi’s Perfect Man.2 Through contemplation, religious observance and discipline, his aim was to approach the point at which his inner world reflected the world beyond himself, and in turn, reflected and became a channel for the mind of God. As he left the aircraft and drove (with difficulty) through the crowds from the airport to the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery to honour the martyrs killed in the demonstrations of the last few months, the people chanted not just ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is Great) but also ‘Khomeini, O Emam’. In Shi‘a mysticism (erfan), the Emam and the Perfect Man were one and the same. No human being since the disappearance of the Twelfth Emam had been acclaimed with the title Emam3 (many senior ulema never accepted the title for Khomeini). The followers and the crowds were not saying directly that Khomeini was the Hidden Emam returned to earth, but it was very close to it. Centuries before, the Arab poet Farazdaq saw the fourth Emam at Mecca, and afterwards wrote:

  He lowers his gaze out of modesty. Others lower their gaze for awe of him. He is not spoken to except when he smiles.4

  This is why Khomeini answered the pushy journalist on the aircraft as he did. The mojtahed on the path to becoming the Perfect Man had no place for feelings or the manifestation of feelings. He was at one with the crowds, and they with him, and both with God. Or so they believed.

  The revolution of 1979 was not solely and perhaps not even primarily a religious revolution. Economic slump and middle-class disillusionment with the corruption and oppression of a regime many had previously supported, were important factors, as was a nationalistic dislike of the unequal relationship with the US. But the revolution drew great strength from its Shi‘a form, which lent cohesion and a sense of common purpose to disparate elements, even those that were not overtly religious at all; and from the clarity and charisma of Khomeini, which (albeit temporarily for some) gave an otherwise disunited collection of groups and motivations a centre and a unity. Unlike other revolutions in history (notably the Bolshevik revolution of 1917), the Iranian revolution was genuinely a people’s revolution, in which the actions of a large mass of people were crucial to the outcome, and the immediate outcome (if not the longer-term result) was a genuine expression of the people’s will.

  In his last weeks the Shah had appointed the National Front leader Shapur Bakhtiar as Prime Minister, who had announced a programme of measures in an attempt to restore constitutional government and some stability, including free elections (Bakhtiar had been imprisoned by the Shah for several years at different times since 1953). But the National Front had disowned him and Khomeini denounced this move, pronouncing Bakhtiar’s government illegal. On Khomeini’s arrival he maintained this line and appointed his own prime minister, from the Freedom Movement, Mehdi Bazargan (on 5 February). Revolutionary committees (Komiteh) were set up and cooperated with deserters from the military, Tudeh, the Feda’i and the MKO to take arms and attack buildings associated with the regime, including police stations and the SAVAK’s notorious Evin prison. After a last stand by some members of the Imperial guard, on 11 February the military gave in and announced that they would remain neutral.5 Bakhtiar resigned and went into hiding; he left the country two months later. From that point the revolutionaries were in control. The Komitehs rounded up senior figures of the Pahlavi regime and a revolutionary tribunal operating out of a school classroom had them executed (including, on 15 February, the former head of SAVAK, General Nassiri). Khomeini himself headed up a Revolutionary Council that, through the connections between mullahs, could maintain contact with the Komitehs, and began inexorably to remove all rivals to his vision for the future of the country.

  Komitehs were set up all over the country, but not all of them were so susceptible to Khomeini’s central control. In the north-west in particular, with its own regional and leftist tradition, revolutionary enthusiasm turned toward a drive for greater regional autonomy, and in Kurdistan, to outright rebellion and separatism. In the ’70s the Shah had supported the Kurds in Iraq in armed resistance against the Iraqi government. But his support was intended only as leverage to pressure the Iraqis into concessions elsewhere; he dropped the Kurds as soon as it was convenient for him, and the Kurds in Iraq suffered terribly as their revolt was crushed. The episode again stim
ulated Kurdish nationalism, which had motivated previous separatist movements within Iran in the ’20s (under the charismatic leader Simko/Simitqu) and again in the ’40s. Of the many ethnic and religious minorities of Iran, the Kurds are the group with the most developed sense of a separate national identity, with strong links with the Kurds of Iraq, Turkey and Syria. The Kurdish insurrection in Iran that followed the revolution was eventually crushed, but not without more bitter suffering, prefiguring the even worse treatment that was visited on the Kurds of Iraq later in the ’80s.

  Even before he returned to Iran Khomeini had been making speeches critical of the Shah’s leftist opponents. At the end of March 1979 he set the seal on the removal of the Shah and the establishment of a state based on Islamic principles with a referendum that returned 97 per cent support for the establishment of an Islamic Republic. In May he set up the Revolutionary Guard Corps (Sepah-e Pasdaran) to have a reliable military force to balance the army (supplementing the gangs of street fighters that became known as Hezbollah—the party of God). The extensive property of the Pahlavi Foundation set up by the Shah was transferred to a new Bonyad-e Mostazefin (Foundation for the Oppressed), which became a vehicle both for the projection of the regime’s social policies and for political patronage.

  The executions of old regime members shocked moderates and liberals (including Bazargan), and many of those around the world who had initially welcomed the fall of the Shah. They stopped for a time in mid-March, but continued again in April, when Hoveyda was shot. Khomeini had initially called for moderation, but acquiesced to the pressure from young radicals for revenge for the deaths of the previous year. The young Islamic radicals were his weapon against the rival groups that had participated in the revolution.6 Khomeini was given a sharp reminder of the seriousness of the struggle and the consequences of failure in April and May, when several of his close supporters, including notably Morteza Motahhari, were assassinated.

  The Shi‘a ulema had probably never been so powerful as at the moment Khomeini returned from exile. But Khomeini was something of a parvenu among the senior ulema, and the Islamic regime he created reflected his highly individual personality at least as much as the nature of traditional Shi‘ism. At the time of the revolution there were other senior figures that commanded great respect, but were pushed aside by the enormous popularity of Khomeini immediately after his return from exile. The most prominent of these was Ayatollah Seyyed Kazem Shari‘atmadari, who argued for a more moderate line in 1979 and was quickly silenced. Some of his supporters were executed. Khomeini later rescinded Shari‘atmadari status as marja-e taqlid—a wholly unprecedented step. The principle of velayat-e faqih was still a dubious novelty for many senior Shi‘a figures, several of whom spoke out against it in 1980-81. But they too were intimidated into silence. Khomeini and his supporters successfully consolidated their control, based on the principle of velayat-e faqih, but it never commanded universal support among the Iranian ulema.7 A reassertion of Islamic values followed, including a reappearance of ulema as judges, and a reapplication of shari‘a law. Although this has been moderated in some respects by laws passed centrally, some extreme practices like stoning for adultery have continued and have attracted international criticism.

  By the autumn of 1979 the liberals and moderates were looking increasingly marginalised. Over the summer Khomeini had formed the Islamic Republic Party (IRP), and the first draft of the constitution, put together by Bazargan (close to the constitution of 1906, minus the monarch) had been radically rewritten by an Assembly of Experts dominated by ulema loyal to Khomeini. The Assembly of Experts had come together after an election marred by boycotts by liberals and leftists, and allegations of rigging. In its final form the constitution set up the system that still runs Iran today, and which still reflects Khomeini’s idea of velayat-e faqih: that day-to-day government should be secular, but with ultimate power in the hands of a religious leader committed to Islamic government. The constitution set up an elected presidency, an elected Majles and elected municipal councils, but also established a Council of Guardians (twelve clerics and jurists) to vet and approve candidates before they could run for election, and to approve or veto legislation passed by the Majles. Above all, it confirmed Khomeini himself, and his successors, in the supreme position in the constitution, with the right to appoint half the members of the Guardian Council, to approve the appointment of the President, and to appoint the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps (and the other heads of the armed forces). Khomeini used the constitution to consolidate his gains, but was prepared throughout to use violent extra-legal means to secure his ends; to take and keep the political initiative, and leave his opponents to debate over the rights and wrongs of what had happened—a principle he claimed to have taken from the clerical politician of the 1920s, Modarres: ‘You hit first and let others complain. Don’t be the victim and don’t complain.’8

  Press freedom was also curtailed over the summer, in a concerted campaign. Hezbollah attacked newspaper offices (also the offices of political parties), forty newspapers closed down and two of the biggest (Ettela’at and Kayhan) were taken over by the Bonyad-e Mostazafin. At the same time SAVAK, after the removal of its chiefs and officers by one means or another (the internal section was purged more thoroughly than the section responsible for external security), was slowly being turned into an agency of the Islamic state (along with Evin prison). In 1984 it was renamed the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

  In November 1979, prompted by the news that the Shah had been allowed into the United States for treatment of his cancer (which finally killed him in July 1980) students broke into the US embassy and took hostage the diplomats there. Initially people thought this was just another student demonstration (something similar had happened in February) but when Khomeini backed the students and a continuation of the hostage crisis, Bazargan and his fellow Freedom Movement politicians resigned. Early in 1980 a new President, Abol-Hasan Bani Sadr, was elected, under the new constitutional arrangements. He had general support, including from middle class liberals. He strove for the next year and a half to resolve the hostage crisis, and to uphold principles of conventional legality and secular government, but like Bazargan ultimately failed and was impeached by Khomeini in 1981. Khomeini meanwhile exploited the hostage crisis to cement the unity of the country behind him, and to preserve a revolutionary fluidity and sense of crisis that enabled him to wrong-foot his opponents. Over the same period he ordered purges to remove civil servants who were suspected of secularist or anti-revolutionary attitudes, closed the universities to eject leftists and impose Islamic principles (they reopened, initially on a much reduced basis, in 1982), and used the Komitehs and Hezbollah to force women to wear the veil. The sense of continuing crisis was only enhanced by President Carter’s attempt to send helicopters to rescue the hostages in April 1980. The humiliation of the hostage crisis, the failed rescue and the subsequent failure of Carter’s re-election campaign entrenched a hostile attitude to Iran among ordinary Americans that still hampers attempts at rapprochement between the two countries. The hostages were eventually released just after Carter left office in January 1981.

  In the early years of the revolution Khomeini and the IRP had to fight off some formidable enemies, internal and external. But in each case, true to his guiding principles, it tended to be Khomeini that took the initiative, hitting his opponents with preemptive strikes—at least with his internal adversaries. As with the French and Russian revolutions (in the former case, there may be something to it), it has been argued that terror and repression were forced on the Iranian revolutionaries, who otherwise would have been humane and tolerant, by the turn of events, the pressure of war, and the viciousness of their enemies. But this does not stand up to scrutiny. Although he was reacting to events in a supple way, from the beginning Khomeini was fully aware that if he allowed his enemies to take the initiative, he might not get a second chance. He ruthlessly eliminated his opponents.

 
The two most serious challenges were from the MKO and Saddam Hossein, but there were others too. The MKO, having initially supported the revolution, were attacked by Khomeini in November 1980 (he labelled them monafeqin—the hypocrites—a term that recalled those who had apostatised after declaring loyalty to the Prophet Mohammad). He had their leader imprisoned for ten years on a charge of spying for the Soviet Union,9 and hezbollahis attacked the group’s headquarters. The MKO fought back with demonstrations and street violence, and then with bombs, managing to kill many of Khomeini’s supporters before their leadership was driven into exile. Two bombs at the headquarters of the IRP in June 1981 killed over seventy of Khomeini’s closest companions and advisers, including his right-hand man, Ayatollah Beheshti. Large numbers of MKO supporters were killed (as many as several thousand, some of them executed publicly10) or imprisoned. From exile, at first in Paris and later in Iraq, the MKO kept up its opposition and its violent attacks, but dwindled over time to take on the character of a paramilitary cult, largely subordinated to the interests of the Baathist regime in Iraq.

  In addition Khomeini and his supporters had been fighting moves for autonomy in Azerbaijan, and an armed rebellion by the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) in Iranian Kurdistan, which was not finally crushed until 1984. The last major political group not aligned to Khomeini and his followers were Tudeh (with whom most of the Feda’i had allied themselves, after a split). They had supported Khomeini, on the wooden-headed Marxist basis that the revolution of 1979 was a petty-bourgeois revolution that would be a prelude to a socialist one. In 1983 Khomeini turned on Tudeh, accusing them of spying for the Soviets and plotting to overthrow the Islamic regime. Seventy leading members were arrested; there were some executions, and televised confessions. Tudeh and the Feda’i were banned, leaving the IRP and the small Freedom Party as the only ones still permitted to operate (the Freedom Party still continues in very restricted circumstances, under its leader Ebrahim Yazdi).