The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  Khomeini’s fiery words electrified his devotees, who acclaimed the speech as the “Second Ashura.” They swept into the streets calling for the overthrow of the Shah and smashing and burning symbols of the regime and modernity. Police and soldiers rushed to downtown Tehran to secure the parliament building and protect the palace from mobs who chanted, “Death to the dictator!” The speed with which the violence spread caught everyone by surprise. Members of the Imperial Family not already at Saadabad for the summer were evacuated to safety in the north. Queen Farah and her two young children, Crown Prince Reza and Princess Farahnaz, were driven in a convoy to Saadabad. The young mother had only recently given birth to her daughter. “The tension was evident even in our immediate environment: this year the king had us go earlier than usual to Saadabad Palace in Shemiran, far from the center of town,” the Queen recalled of those dark days. “I remember that as I tightened my arms around our little Farahnaz, then only three months old, I noticed that the guards had put on combat uniforms.”

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  ON THE EVENING of June 4, 1963, Prime Minister Alam summoned to his office the heads of the different branches of the security forces. With the country on the brink of a religious revolt he warned them he was about to order the seizure of Ayatollah Khomeini, an act that he assumed would lead to open clashes in the streets. “Tomorrow is going to be very crucial,” he advised the officers. “The fate of the country depends on us and how the generals behave.” Everyone in the room understood the implication—they should be prepared if necessary to use live rounds to prevent the overthrow of the monarchy.

  “Mr. Prime Minister, are you asking us to shoot people?” inquired Lieutenant General Mozaffer Malek, the head of the National Gendarmerie.

  Alam took this remark to mean that the general would refuse an order to open fire on the demonstrators. He angrily ordered Malek to leave the room and telephone his deputy to come and replace him. General Hassan Pakravan, the head of Savak, intervened on his colleague’s behalf. “Mr. Prime Minister, General Malek didn’t mean that,” he offered. The generals, he explained, were confused because only their commander in chief, the Shah, could give the order to shoot. When Alam said nothing it dawned on the men in the room that the Shah had removed himself from the line of command: everyone now understood that their own commander in chief was unwilling to issue an order that might lead to civilian casualties.

  Alam was understandably on edge. What the generals did not know was that he had just helped steer the Shah through a crisis with striking similarities to the showdown ten years earlier with Mossadeq. Fearful of issuing the order that might result in deaths and injuries, once again the Shah had procrastinated. But where the earlier crisis had been allowed to drag out for months, this time Alam took matters firmly in hand. His intervention steadied the Shah’s nerves even as rumors spread that he was on the verge of packing his suitcase and repeating his earlier flight into exile. “He was panicking,” confirmed Parviz Sabeti, who spent the crisis at the side of General Pakravan. “But he wasn’t ready to leave. He didn’t know what to do because he didn’t want to kill people. There was no talk of the Shah leaving. But he dreaded the prospect of bloodshed.” Ten years earlier, General Zahedi had stepped in to save the day; now Alam took charge and issued the order for the army to use force if necessary to prevent revolution. “I had to,” Alam confided years later to the British ambassador. “His Majesty is very soft-hearted and does not like bloodshed.” “I was determined to make a stand since the very survival of our country was at stake,” Alam told a courtier. In public the prime minister told a different story. “His Majesty was as a rock,” he later told the English writer Margaret Laing. “I could really feel that I could rely on that rock.… Therefore when I proposed to His Majesty ‘Do you allow me to shoot? To order shooting?’ he said ‘Yes, not only I allow, I back you.’”

  The great revolutionary drama unfolded in the early morning hours of June 5, 1963. As Alam predicted, news of the arrest of Ayatollah Khomeini unleashed a storm of protest. In Tehran, mobs surged through the center of town and besieged the national radio station, parliament, ministries, and the Marble Palace. “They had no plan [as such] to take over,” recalled Sabeti. “They targeted the radio station so they could make a broadcast to the nation and provoke a popular uprising.” Similar tactics had been tried in 1953. Rumors flew that as many as a hundred thousand people were in the streets, but the security forces estimated only one-fifth that number were in open revolt. Still, the authorities were shocked by the scale and ferocity of the unrest. Though Alam radiated outward confidence, he was painfully aware that the fate of the dynasty and the country rested in his hands. His usual routine was to take an afternoon nap after lunch. “My stomach was upset,” he later reminisced. “I thought I would throw up. I was scared. I thought, ‘If I don’t take my nap that bastard attendant will go out and tell people, “The Prime Minister is too upset to take his nap today.”’” So Alam stuck to his usual routine, pretending to nap though “too nervous to sleep.” When he dressed to return to his office he found his attendant in a state of near hysteria: “Mr. Prime Minister, how can you take a nap when the city is burning?!”

  By midday, Khomeini’s followers were on the rampage in the cities of Mashad, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Kashan. Plumes of smoke rose high over the Tehran skyline. Arsonists and rioters approached the center of town from four directions in a well-coordinated assault that suggested careful advance planning. “In the Ministry of Justice, files were burned, the Ministry of Interior was wrecked, [and the] office of News and Broadcasting was destroyed,” reported American diplomats from the stricken city. The building that housed the newspaper Ettelaat, which had criticized Khomeini, was saved from destruction only by troop reinforcements. “Police stations were destroyed, petrol stations fired, telephone lines ripped up, phone booths destroyed, buses and bus stations were destroyed … this had obviously been well planned and the targets were both strategic and places hated by many of the people … there was relatively little looting, although deliberate destruction of government property.” The municipal library, built with American money, was burned. Repeated attempts were made to storm the perimeter around the Marble Palace, but the palace guard stood their ground and prevented a massacre.

  With Iran’s cities put to the torch, Prime Minister Alam drove to National Police headquarters to issue the order to clear the streets. He erupted when he saw that his driver had concealed his license plate to prevent their car from being identified and possibly targeted by rioters. “Eat shit!” snapped the prime minister. “If there is one day I need to be seen driving into town it is today!” The convoy encountered no problems, and Alam was met at police headquarters by Police Chief Nematollah Nasiri and General Gholam Ali Oveissi. Alam made a few light quips but then turned deadly serious. “Who has the guns?” he asked his commanders. “I don’t know why you’re not using them. I want to save Tehran.” Martial law was declared, troops began moving through the streets, and the crackle of rifle fire was heard through that night and into the next day. When one squad of troops phoned General Nasiri asking for reinforcements, he responded that the only assistance they could expect from him were trucks to collect bodies. Wild rumors spread of thousands killed, but the actual death toll turned out to be much lower. Whereas the Shah and his advisers were told that about 120 people died, after the revolution the Islamic Republic’s Martyr’s Foundation surprised everyone by scaling down the final death toll to 32. Some of the casualties had been policemen and gendarmerie fired on by rioters.

  Prime Minister Alam’s decisive action had saved the day. But even he was left uneasy by the sight of troops firing on religious students. “It was not an easy decision for me,” he admitted. “I too was raised by a devout mother.”

  * * *

  WITH LAW AND order restored, the Shah faced the dilemma of what to do with his nemesis. The call for leniency came from a surprising direction. Two years earlier Hassan Pakravan had succeeded Ge
neral Teymour Bakhtiar as head of Savak after Bakhtiar fled the country amid charges of coup plotting. Pakravan had banned the use of torture and opened a dialogue with the regime’s critics, who included many leading clerics. Queen Farah admired Pakravan as “a man of great culture, intelligence, and humanity, who pleaded clemency to the king.” Though Pakravan was not personally religious he was wary of doing or saying anything that might provoke more unrest in the mosques. “He said he knew that, after all, the population of the country is not its elite,” recalled his wife, Fatemeh. “It’s the real people. They are not very literate. They are simple. They are full of superstition. And even though most of the Iranians have no respect for the mullahs, they still have [respect] for what they represent.”

  The Ayatollah’s courage in standing up to the regime marked him as a potent threat for the future. He was detained on an army base while the Shah and his advisers debated what to do with him. The list of available options ranged from execution, imprisonment, and exile to freeing him without conditions. Pakravan’s aide Parviz Sabeti, who closely followed the deliberations, dismissed speculation that execution was ever seriously considered. “If it was discussed I didn’t hear about it,” he said. The regime was not prepared for, nor could it afford to risk, a second explosion of religious violence and more martyrs. These concerns were shared by the marjas. Regardless of their feelings about the Shah’s reforms, the marjas loathed Khomeini for provoking bloodshed and stirring unrest. They regarded his interest in politics as heresy and his demagoguery as a threat to the entire religious establishment. Grand Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, the most influential marja living inside Iran, took the lead in brokering a settlement with the regime. Shariatmadari, who bore a striking resemblance to the British actor Alec Guinness, had taught Khomeini when they were in seminary school together in Qom and was well versed in his ambition and fanaticism. He came up with an ingenious plan that he hoped would placate the ulama, satisfy the palace, and tame the radicals.

  Shariatmadari led a procession of senior religious figures to Tehran to publicly petition the Shah to spare Khomeini’s life. Behind the scenes, the Marja worked with Alam to come up with a compromise formula that would allow both sides to back down without losing face. Shariatmadari’s subsequent decision to elevate Khomeini from the rank of ayatollah to the exalted status of grand ayatollah was made with the full knowledge that no king of Iran would dare execute a senior member of the ulama. “Khomeini is a grand ayatollah like us,” he declared. Alam and the Shah accepted the formula as the price of peace. Nor was Khomeini given a say in the matter: Shariatmadari wanted him to feel indebted to his colleagues and hoped the promotion would satisfy his drive for power. Now the whole of Qom would know that the moderates had “saved” Khomeini’s life. Better yet, his new title was tainted because he had not earned it on his own merits. This and his reputation for extremism made it highly unlikely he would ever be acclaimed as a marja. Prime Minister Alam noted that even while the marjas negotiated they discreetly signaled that “their appeals [on behalf of Khomeini’s life] should be disregarded.”

  General Pakravan went to great lengths to make sure the newly styled Grand Ayatollah Khomeini was treated with respect and held in comfortable surroundings. After a few weeks he was transferred to a spacious guesthouse and spared the indignity of a formal interrogation. Pakravan even made a point of lunching with his “guest” once a week. Khomeini was polite to his jailer, and the atmosphere between the two men was outwardly cordial. Together they discussed religion, history, and philosophy. “He is very handsome,” Pakravan told Fatemeh when his wife peppered him with questions about the man from Qom. Like others in the ruling class, she was fascinated by the clergyman who had come so close to toppling the King. “He has extraordinary presence, a power of seduction. He has great charisma.” He described Khomeini’s most striking trait as “ambition. You know, it made my hair stand on end. It was frightening.” Pakravan described Khomeini as immune to reason and logic. “I felt like a helpless wave, smashing my head against solid rock.”

  The Shah accepted the arrangement that spared Khomeini either execution or a lengthy prison sentence for treason. In response, Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari released a conciliatory statement declaring that the ulama were not “reactionaries opposed to liberty and progress” and that they would support “genuine reforms.” He did, however, call for “social justice and the implementation of the Constitution.”

  Grand Ayatollah Khomeini was released from detention in April 1964. He received a hero’s welcome back in Qom, where tens of thousands of people cheered and danced in the streets. He had the crowds with him. “Khomeini is now an important national figure that the regime must handle with extreme care,” the U.S. embassy cabled Washington. The Americans had anticipated an uprising from the Communist left but never considered the possibility of a threat from the religious right. Iran’s highly complex interplay of religion, politics, and intrigue was beyond their understanding. Hossein Mahdavy, a leading figure in the National Front, which had been sidelined by Khomeini’s revolt, warned diplomat William Green that the Shah and his government “greatly underestimated” the strength of religious feeling among the common people and the loyalty they felt to the marjas.

  One admirer who did not travel to Qom to welcome Khomeini home was Abolhassan Banisadr. “I had a phone call from [Khomeini’s eldest son] Mostafa to tell me that his father had been released,” he said. But Abolhassan’s father, Ayatollah Banisadr, said he would make the trip instead—he did not want his son to get picked up by Savak—and it would be another nine years before Banisadr and Khomeini met to plan the overthrow of the monarchy.

  * * *

  THE SHAH TOOK advantage of the 1963–1964 crackdown to make a crucial decision. After years of lurching from one political crisis to the next, impatient to put his reforms in place, he decided to seize the reins of executive power in his own hands and establish personal authoritarian rule. Since 1955 he had involved himself in politics but essentially shared power with his prime ministers while meddling in cabinet affairs. From now on, however, Iran’s prime minister, cabinet, and parliament could question and debate his decisions but otherwise not oppose them. The events of June 5, 1963, which became known as Fifteen Khordad, had proven the last straw. Never again would he allow a strong personality or demagogue to emerge as a threat from within the ranks of the clergy, the military, or the political class. There would never be another Mossadeq, Zahedi, or Khomeini to threaten the ruling dynasty or distract him from his mission to develop and modernize Iran on his own terms and at his own pace.

  The Shah was unapologetic: “Finally I became so exasperated that I decided we would have to dispense with democracy and operate by decree.” His decision to rule without cultivating the support of the political establishment carried risks and made him dependent on the army to stay in power. “Having successfully stripped his traditional supporters of power, the Shah has come as near to a monopoly of power as at any time in his reign,” the U.S. embassy informed Washington. The Americans concluded there would be no repeat event: “Whatever the ups and downs of the Shah’s future relations with the mullahs, it seems clear that the standard bearers of Shia Islam as it exists today in Iran are fighting a losing battle.” The Shah’s own advisers were less confident. They warned of the risks involved in shutting down legitimate political activity and involving the Crown in government. Five years earlier, former prime minister and court minister Hossein Ala had been instrumental in ending the Shah’s marriage to Queen Soraya. Now he convened a meeting of grandees to plead the case for restraint. They worried that Alam’s crackdown had gone far enough. The regime could not afford to alienate the clergy, students, intellectuals, and the urban middle class who recoiled at the prospect of dictatorship. The Shah was furious when he learned of their meeting. He suspected they were plotting and saw to it that all but one of the participants was sacked from office. Ardeshir Zahedi, now Iran’s ambassador to the Court of St. James�
�s in London, wrote his father-in-law a long letter urging him to reconsider and slow down. “I urged His Majesty to reign and not rule,” he explained, “because the risk was that he would be blamed when things went bad, like the economy. The White Revolution was not well thought through. I told him, ‘When you paint a new house, you have to clean it first, and then you paint it in layers. You have to get rid of the old paint first. I have to tell you, something is wrong. Khomeini is like a cancer.’”

  * * *

  RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI COULD not stay quiet—it was not in his nature.

  The next crisis arose in 1964, when under intense pressure from Washington the Iranian government quietly announced plans to approve legislation that would provide legal immunity to U.S. military personnel, their family members, and household staff stationed in Iran. President Lyndon Johnson’s administration placed a high priority on a Status of Forces Agreement between the two countries. Privately, the Shah and his advisers expressed deep concern. With their history of colonialism, Iranians were deeply sensitive to any suggestion that foreigners should receive special privileges or be exempted from the laws of the land. Washington’s insistence that the flow of military and economic aid to Iran was contingent on passage of the law showed staggering insensitivity toward their ally, who had just put the lid on revolt. As an incentive, Johnson offered a $200 million loan to purchase additional military hardware. Iranians predictably reacted with widespread outrage to what they regarded as a “capitulation bill” with bribes attached. The parliamentary debate over the proposed legislation reopened old wounds still unhealed from Operation Ajax and completely undermined the Shah’s efforts to calm passions and reassert his authority in the wake of Khomeini’s rebellion.