The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  American fears of instability in Iran came to a head in the spring of 1961, when labor strikes erupted in violence. “Four thousand schoolteachers paraded to Parliament to demand a pay increase,” reported Newsweek. “A policeman opened fire and one teacher was shot dead. Next day, 30,000 teachers and students mobbed the streets, shouting ‘butchers’ and ‘savages.’ In the slums of South Tehran, the hungry brickyard workers caught their echo and began to talk of strikes of their own … for a precarious few days revolution seemed on the way.” Kennedy made it clear that no further aid to Iran would be forthcoming unless the Shah appointed a new, reform-minded prime minister. The White House candidate, Ali Amini, a descendant of the former Qajar Dynasty and former National Front cabinet minister and ambassador to Washington, was despised by the Shah, who noted the irony that eight years earlier Eisenhower had intervened in Iran to depose Mohammad Mossadeq, while his successor, Kennedy, was now prepared to impose one of Mossadeq’s loyalists as prime minister. Royalists and the Imperial court thought the U.S. intrigue smacked of a silent coup. The Shah was determined not to return to the bad old days when he had played second fiddle to strong-willed executives such as Generals Razmara and Zahedi. “I must either rule or leave,” he told Amini, to which his new prime minister tartly called his bluff: “Whenever you rule, you will leave.”

  Encouraged by Kennedy’s ambivalence toward the Shah, Mossadeq’s National Front reemerged on the Iranian political scene for the first time since the early fifties. Demonstrators called for a return to the 1906 Constitution and an end to all restrictions on political activity. Asked what the National Front would do if it took power, one of its leaders admitted he would like to “hang Amini and make the Shah a limited monarch like Queen Elizabeth.” Tensions escalated and the National Front’s more religious-minded members split off to form the Liberation Movement of Iran, a new political grouping that declared loyalty to former Prime Minister Mossadeq but also emphasized Islam. “We do not consider religion and politics separate, and regard serving the people … an act of worship,” declared Mehdi Bazargan, a cofounder of the new party and leader of the religious nationalists. His objective was to bridge the gap that until now had prevented the formation of an enduring political alliance between the secular nationalist left and politically minded clergy on the right.

  * * *

  THE FUTURE REVOLUTIONARY Mehdi Bazargan was born in 1907 to a prominent Tehran merchant family with close ties to the ulama. “His father’s personal integrity and religiosity is often mentioned by Mehdi Bazargan as one of the chief influences in his life,” observed Bazargan’s biographer. As a youth he was one of a select group of elite students who won scholarships to study in France. Before the students left for Paris in 1928, Reza Shah received them to congratulate them on their achievement. “You must be wondering why we are sending you to a country whose regime differs from ours,” he said. “There, you have freedom and a republic, but they are also patriots. What you will bring back when you return is not only arts and sciences, but also patriotism.” Bazargan interpreted the remarks to mean that an Iranian could be a republican and still be considered patriotic. It was a lesson he never forgot.

  The seven years Bazargan spent in France left a deep impression. He studied in Nantes and Paris and was rewarded with entry to the country’s most prestigious schools. Bazargan was struck by the ease with which the French embraced modernity without sacrificing their religious convictions. This was in marked contrast to Iran, where development and progress were seen as incompatible with organized religion. Bazargan was also inspired by France’s lively civil society and the proliferation of voluntary associations with a religious focus. Reza Shah’s Iran did not allow citizens to organize groups that operated independently of the state. “The French had voluntary associations for everything,” wrote Bazargan. “In Iran, by contrast, one had to become a member of whatever state-sponsored associations there were.”

  Pious and austere, Bazargan returned to Iran in 1935, completed his military service, and taught engineering at the University of Tehran, where he eventually rose to the post of dean of faculty. To supplement his income he founded a successful construction company. Throughout the 1940s he sympathized with the aspirations of Mossadeq’s National Front but showed more interest in the activities of the Islamic Society, a group that wanted to include Islam in the national debate about economic and social development. “What the Iranian nation wants is just one word … ‘Freedom,’” stated the Liberation Movement. “The Iranian people say that one person does not have the right to govern a nation in an arbitrary and tyrannical way.… We say that the Shah does not have the right to establish law, to install [or] dismiss a government, and everything, minor or major, be done according to his views and will, and yet he be [considered] sinless, unaccountable, with a sacred, even everlasting, position. This is reactionary, this is despotism, this is dictatorship.” Bazargan and other critics of the Pahlavis were inspired by Kennedy’s idealism and rhetoric. They expected the White House to pressure the Shah to liberalize his regime and return the country to constitutional rule.

  * * *

  THE KING AND Queen of Iran jetted into New York on April 11, 1962, and the next day flew down to the rainswept American capital. “This is one of our wonderful spring days, for which we are justly celebrated,” President Kennedy joked at their official reception in Washington. Nonetheless, the same president who exuded glamour and mastered the stagecraft of the presidency was too slow to appreciate the allure of foreign royalty. Lavish photo spreads and feature articles in the pages of American photo magazines had preceded the arrival of the Iranian couple, whose courtship and glittering wedding ceremony were still fresh in the minds of the American public. For years the Shah’s soap opera private life, and especially his heartbreaking divorce from Soraya, had filled pages in women’s magazines that cast him in the role of romantic hero. Increasingly, the American public talked about “our Shah,” not because they regarded Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet—the U.S. government’s role in Operation Ajax remained a state secret—but because they viewed him as a friend and familiar face, the plucky young King determined to keep his people free from the scourge of communism.

  Americans were used to seeing First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy outshine the wives of visiting heads of state. But on the evening of April 12 the gasps were audible when the Shah, wearing an elaborate cape, his uniform festooned in orders and decorations, exited his limousine beneath the White House North Portico in the company of Queen Farah, who dazzled in a jewel-encrusted gown spun of gold thread, a diamond and emerald necklace, and a diamond-encrusted tiara that resembled a bird’s nest holding seven giant emeralds the size of robins’ eggs. This was the Shah’s way of reminding the Kennedys that real titles were inherited and not earned at the ballot box. Wheeled into place, Farah’s soft power was illuminated with all the subtlety of a Krupp cannon facing a French cavalry charge. “After that, it was a matter of groping frantically for adjectives superlative enough to describe her gown and her jewels—the most blindingly impressive ever beheld in Washington on any visiting crowned head,” noted one society columnist. “Her gold dress was encrusted almost entirely in beading that looked like fair-sized rubies.” The only person in disagreement was, ironically, the lady herself. “Actually, I preferred Mrs. Kennedy’s gown,” recalled Farah. “The simplicity of it. I really liked her style very much.” “The Shah and I both have something in common,” President Kennedy told ninety guests who dined on cold trout, guinea hen, wild rice with asparagus, and bombe glacée rustique for dessert. “We both went to Paris with our wives and ended up wondering why we bothered. We thought we might as well have stayed home.”

  The Shah was in New York when he admitted to reporters that “this king business has personally given me nothing but headaches. During the whole of these twenty years of my reign, I have lived under the strain and stress of my duties.” He further complained that he had “suffered vilification and attempts on h
is life” even though he had “presided over the liquidation of the entire royal fortune.” The Shah’s outburst was maudlin and self-pitying. His was not the behavior of a leader who exuded confidence and inspired respect. His ambivalence left the impression that he might be happier doing something else, like running a corner drugstore.

  An intrepid reporter asked him what his wife thought of “the Queen business.”

  “In addition to giving children to her husband, I think the Queen business is also as serious as the King business,” he answered in his usual sober, soft-spoken manner. Alluding to the endless round of public duties, he added, “She must take it to heart.”

  Farah had eagerly looked forward to seeing America for the first time. But the memories she took away were not of warm crowds and grand receptions but the hostile abuse from Iranian students studying at American universities who picketed the Imperial couple at every stop along the way. The protesters, a mix of Communists, socialists, and liberals, demanded more democracy and called the Shah a puppet for his role in ousting Mossadeq. Many of the students were Farah’s contemporaries, young Iranians who had received scholarships to study abroad. She was embarrassed to be the target of their complaints and harassment, and appalled at the lax security that allowed demonstrators to come within a few feet of them. Five years later, when her husband visited Lyndon Johnson’s White House, she chose to stay home. “If I go there to be insulted again, I would be of much more use here in Tehran.”

  Her husband had his own problems to contend with. During their talks in the Oval Office, the Shah and the president parried over whether political or economic reform should take precedence. Kennedy wanted both to proceed in tandem. The Shah’s view was that opening up the political system while trying to restructure the economy could trigger a social explosion. He was supported by experts who argued that it would be suicidal for any Iranian leader to shed power while attempting to tackle the privileges of the ulama and rural gentry, who were bound to resist reforms. The Shah also knew that the president was distracted by more serious crises in Cuba, West Berlin, and South Vietnam. The unrest of recent months had convinced some in Washington that perhaps Iranians weren’t ready for democracy after all. The White House had lost the appetite to push for more substantive reform, and with Amini in place Kennedy was prepared to declare victory and move on to other, more pressing concerns. The Shah badgered him to accept that political conditions inside Iran were “obviously improving.” He pointed out to his host that “he is not by nature a dictator. But if Iran is to succeed its government would have to act firmly for a time, and he knew that the United States would not insist that Iran do everything in an absolutely legal way.” In what must have been for Kennedy a moment of supreme discomfort, the president swallowed whole the Shah’s argument that prosperity could be established only in conditions of absolute security and that democracy would have to wait. “There are always special factors that have to be taken into account in different countries,” Kennedy glumly conceded. “We are aware that you are the keystone to the arch in Iran.”

  The Shah left Washington confident that he had inoculated himself from further American pressure and that he could finally embark on a wide-ranging reform program that would burnish the farr. Iranian opposition leaders such as Mehdi Bazargan reacted with suitable outrage when they learned of Kennedy’s retreat on political liberty. They vowed to never again be taken in by American pledges of support for democracy and human rights.

  5

  THE AYATOLLAH

  I am going to go faster than the left.

  —THE SHAH

  I can summon a million martyrs to any cause.

  —AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI

  The chief beneficiary of unrest in the early 1960s was born in the village of Khomein in central Iran on September 24, 1902. Ruhollah Khomeini was raised in a walled compound in comfortable surroundings and attended by servants and guards. His family claimed descent from the seventh of Mohammad’s twelve imams or disciples and were entitled to style themselves as seyyeds or direct descendants of the Prophet. Seyyeds wore black turbans and enjoyed considerable prestige in society. The Khomeini family had emigrated from Persia to British-ruled India in the early seventeenth century and lived among Shia Muslims in a small town near Lucknow. Their descendant Ahmad Khomeini returned to Persia in 1834 and established himself as a prosperous landowner. His son Mostafa trained as a religious scholar, and the third of his six children, Ruhollah, was only four months old when his father was slain in an ambush by a local warlord. The boy’s childhood coincided with the upheavals of the Constitutional Revolution, civil war, and British-Russian colonial intervention. The Persian countryside was a dangerous, lawless place, and from an early age young Ruhollah showed signs of the remarkable fortitude that defined him as a man. “He was a particularly striking boy of above average build,” wrote his biographer Baqer Moin. “Even as a youngster,” one of Khomeini’s sons later recalled, “my father always wanted to be the Shah in the games he played.”

  He studied religion in Qom, earned his credentials as a religious scholar or mutjahid, and worked as a teacher. His ambition showed in his choice of bride—fifteen-year-old Qodsi was the daughter of a respected Tehran clergyman. “The qualities of autocracy, decisiveness and self-righteousness that were to stand him in such good stead in his later political career were already well ingrained in Khomeini the young teacher,” wrote Moin. Khomeini showed no tolerance for classroom debate, still less for compromise in his personal and professional relationships. By age forty he had established a reputation as a critic of Reza Shah’s secular state, though he still favored the monarchy over a republic. But Khomeini’s impatience revealed itself in publications he authored that called for more religion in public life and the return of the clergy to politics. He became a follower of Ayatollah Kashani, the Shiite firebrand who inspired the Fedayeen-e Islam terror group and later betrayed Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq. Though few knew it at the time, Khomeini also opposed Mossadeq for “pledging allegiance to the Shah and serving as his prime minister when he was strong enough to oust him.” He similarly distrusted the National Front for entering into a political alliance with the Tudeh Party, which preached atheist values. Many years later, after Khomeini emerged as the most vociferous of the Shah’s critics, Ardeshir Zahedi, who had played a vital role during Operation Ajax as courier between the coup plotters and sympathetic ulama, said he thought the older man’s face looked familiar. “I can’t be completely sure but I remember seeing that person at Kashani’s house.”

  In the late 1950s Khomeini drew overflowing crowds to a hall where he staked out a position to the right of Shiism’s theological divide between constitutionalists and rejectionists. Where other clerics conveyed their thoughts in flowery, arcane seminary language, Khomeini’s sermons and speeches had all the subtlety of a sledgehammer striking plate glass; he instinctively understood that in Iran the path to power lay in the gutter. His talents attracted the attention of the security forces, who infiltrated his household with informers, but Khomeini’s restlessness also drew the scrutiny of Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Borujerdi, the paramount figure within Shiism, who resided in Najaf in Iraq. The city of Najaf was home to some of the holiest sites in Islam and competed with Qom as a major center of theological training for young Iranian seminarians. Borujerdi represented the “quietist” majority of clergy who considered themselves monarchists in the spirit of the 1906 Constitution. Despite their reservations about the Pahlavis, who championed pre-Islamic traditions and supported Western-style modernity, the ulama followed Borujerdi’s lead and refused to soil themselves in political life. Borujerdi was so adamant on this issue that he once employed club-wielding mobs to forcibly expel the Fedayeen-e from Qom. Khomeini’s reputation as a firebrand and his close association with Fedayeen-e Islam were well known, but so long as Borujerdi was alive he felt duty-bound to respect the old man’s wishes and stay out of the political fray.

  Yet time was on
Khomeini’s side. The advent of modern communications and transport links meant religious edicts sent from Qom could be wired or telephoned to different parts of the country on the same day. More than his older colleagues, the Ayatollah understood the potential this allowed for closer coordination between like-minded groups and clergy even though they might live hundreds of miles apart.

  * * *

  THE CITY OF Qom was saving itself for the next world. The clocks were set back ninety minutes behind Iran standard time. The preferred spoken language was not Persian but classical Arabic, the language of the Quran. Females over age four wore chadors. “There are, of course, no bars or liquor shops,” wrote one British visitor to Qom. “There are no cinemas (one was built but was almost immediately burned by an angry mob). Television is discouraged as are swimming pools, music, and musical instruments. The bookshops have little but religious literature, including numerous anti-Semitic tracts.… When the wind whips down the narrow streets and alleys, catching the black cloth of the chadors, the women resemble giant crows.” Shops in Qom displayed stylized images of the Twelfth or “Missing Imam” rather than photographs of the Shah. Most Tehranis preferred to drive around rather than through the forbidding little town, where foreigners were shushed away and uncovered women were pelted with stones. Tehranis retaliated by spreading gossip that behind closed doors in Qom “everything goes on. Vodka, poker, opium smoking.… There is a secret cinema, there are prostitutes.”

  The death of Grand Ayatollah Borujerdi in March 1961 created an opportunity for the Shah to ensure that the next generation of clerical leadership in Qom stayed in loyalist hands. Though outwardly hierarchical, Shiism was a remarkably fluid and democratic faith. Mullahs, the equivalent of parish priests, occupied the lowest rung on the clerical ladder. Above them were the mutjahids, or scholars of religious law. If a mutjahid showed enough talent he might one day graduate to become an ayatollah, or bishop of the church. Ayatollahs taught and interpreted religious law for the faithful. Very few ayatollahs ever reached the elevated status of a grand ayatollah or cardinal of the faith, and fewer still reached the apex of the clerical pyramid to become a marja. It was often said that marjas were accepted and not elected by the people. Although a marja had to first become a grand ayatollah, not every grand ayatollah embodied the qualities to become a marja, and the process by which a grand ayatollah became a marja was solely determined by the number of people who decided to follow or emulate his personal interpretation of religious law and apply it in daily life. As a declaration of loyalty the people paid a religious tax or khoms, which entitled their marja to 20 percent of their income or wealth. Their local mullah took his own cut. “Of the money and goods donated by the faithful,” reported an observer, “the mullah is allowed to keep a third to support himself, his family, and his own particular projects, but he must distribute the rest to religious institutions and charities. He makes extra money through gratuities when he performs such religious ceremonies as memorial services for the dead. He is also paid for lectures on religious subjects.” Though brilliant scholarship was essential to make the leap to marja status, other factors such as personality, politics, and chance played their parts in determining the outcome of Shiism’s equivalent of a popularity contest, with prize winnings of millions of fans and hundreds of millions of dollars.