The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

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  HE WAS NOT physically present, but as dawn broke over Persepolis on the morning of October 13, 1971, the chilling echoes of a familiar voice made itself heard.

  Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini could not resist the opportunity to shade the Pahlavis’ big day. From his place of exile in Najaf, Khomeini issued a statement that for the first time called for the abolition of the Iranian monarchy, an institution that he deemed incompatible with Islam. Even as dozens of world leaders jetted into Shiraz, Khomeini furiously denounced “a regime founded on oppression and thievery whose only aim is to satisfy its own lustful desires—only when it is overthrown can the people celebrate and rejoice.” Khomeini referred back to the events of June 1963, when he sensationally claimed that fifteen thousand innocents had been mowed down in the two days of unrest. His Iran was a country where the flower of Iranian youth were tortured and murdered and where virgin girls had “boiling water poured on their heads.… Nobody’s life is safe.” The story of the Persian monarchy was a black tale of oppression. “The crimes of the kings of Iran have blackened the pages of history. It is the kings of Iran that have constantly ordered massacres of their own people and had pyramids built with their skulls.… Monarchy is one of the most shameful and disgraceful reactionary manifestations.” The Persepolis celebrations were “abominable” and he advised Muslims “to refrain from participation in this illegitimate festival, to engage in passive struggle against it, to remain indoors during the days of the festival, and to express by any means possible their disgust and aversion for anyone who contributes to the organization or celebration of the festival.”

  The Grand Ayatollah said he would rather die than live through the shame of Iran’s rape at the hands of the Pahlavis. He called on 150,000 Iranian religious students and scholars to launch a revolt against injustice. “The crimes committed by this tyrannical regime and the acts of treachery against Islam and the Muslims have robbed me of all peace,” he lamented. The reigning monarch was like a “beast … who pays no attention to the condition of the people or to the ordinances of the law—such a man lives like an animal. A ruler who fits this description and wishes to rule over the people and the nation in accordance with his carnal and bestial desires will produce nothing but disaster.”

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  BACK AT THE Persepolis campsite, Princess Grace of Monaco was explaining the daily whirl to William McWhirter of Life magazine: “And then, of course, everyone meets informally at the club for lunch.” “Calling cards and small gifts were sent around the neighborhood on small silver trays,” said McWhirter, “and who called upon whom didn’t seem to present a problem of protocol. King Constantine of Greece, for example, ‘just popped in’ to see Princess Grace and her husband, Prince Rainier.” The Grimaldis had flown into Shiraz and were enjoying the royal roundabout in the Tent City with their friends. The Monegasque royals were among more than sixty heads of state in attendance at the “party of parties,” the biggest gathering of world leaders in recent history. Others who made the trip included the Emperor of Ethiopia, the kings and queens of Denmark, Greece, Norway, Jordan, and Nepal, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg, and the presidents of Romania, Russia, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and Pakistan.

  The Shah was delighted with the turnout but miffed that the heads of state of the major Western powers decided to stay away. President Richard Nixon accepted the advice of his ambassador, who warned that logistics and security were problematic. France had reaped millions in business from the affair, but President Georges Pompidou turned down his invitation when he learned that mere presidents would be seated well below the salt. “If I did go, they would probably make me the headwaiter,” he huffed. Emperor Hirohito of Japan sent his regrets. “The Queen does not go on international jamborees,” sniffed Britain’s ambassador, though his predecessor, Denis Wright, later admitted that Downing Street had been furious with the Shah for drumming up anti-British sentiment in Iranian newspapers during protracted negotiations over the Royal Navy’s impending withdrawal from the Persian Gulf. “Why should we, having all this abuse hurled at us in the press, bring our queen out just to please the Shah?” To add insult to injury, heir to the British throne Prince Charles had refused to interrupt his naval training to fly in. The Shah had to settle for Prince Philip and Princess Anne, who arrived in predictably foul temper. “What’s the panic?” they barked at photographers who mobbed them at the airport.

  The Camp of Gold Cloth consisted of three large tents and fifty-nine lesser tents surrounded by fifteen hundred imported Cyprus trees, fifty thousand carnations, and “acres of other floodlit flora including great carpets of petunias and marigolds.” The tents were laid out in a star formation, not unlike a pleasant retirement community in the Florida panhandle, with five avenues branching off and each named after a different continent. This snowbirds’ nest, however, was surrounded by barbed wire and an electronic monitoring system and patrolled by hundreds of soldiers bearing submachine guns. “The entire area looks like the Berlin Wall,” noted one visitor. The planning committee had considered every worst-case scenario. The tent windows were bulletproof and the canvas had been treated to withstand fire and desert gales up to seventy miles per hour. For the past several months workers had carefully swept the encampment site clear of thousands of poisonous snakes, scorpions, and lizards. The foreign press gawped over the details. “The entire tented city was brought from France on 120 planes, including four planes just for Maxim’s Restaurant alone,” reported the Washington Post’s Jonathan Randal in a feature article that he later conceded was his way of “pissing on the Shah’s party.” “All the butter, cream, eggs, pheasants, veal, etc., will be flown in each day,” said Time. “The planes used for all this shuttling are Iranian Air Force planes (originally American C-130s). Peasants in nearby villages may have been impressed—but not exactly pleased—that the government spent $50,000 on fifty Lanvin-designed uniforms for the royal court, each requiring one mile of gold thread.” The fifty tents constructed to house the Imperial Family and their guests “were completely air-conditioned and furnished with Baccarat crystal, Ceralene Limoges china and Porthault linens. Providing the trappings kept Paris merchants—who supplied everything—busy for a whole year. Bimonthly flights of aircraft and convoys of trucks that made the overland trips from Paris with relays of drivers transported the wares to the desert.”

  After settling into their desert quarters, the Shah’s illustrious guests went door knocking to greet their neighbors or headed over to the club tent for lunch and a martini. In one instance they literally bumped heads when King Constantine II of Greece collided with his father-in-law, King Frederik IX of Denmark, as they both knelt down to pick up a dropped bouquet. Frederik’s run of bad luck continued when he was mistaken for an impostor and assaulted by an overzealous Savak agent. The guard’s suspicions had been aroused when he saw “a rather dowdy man” try to enter the club tent; when challenged to produce identification “the man went through his pockets, shrugged and started to walk into the club tent.” The guard grabbed the intruder and yanked him away from the door, “only to be told by a horrified bystander than the man was the king of Denmark.” Out in the ruins of Darius’s old palace, eighty-year-old Emperor Haile Selassie shuffled around in his suspenders calling out for his pet chihuahua, Cheecheebee, who had escaped her leash and run off in a diamond-studded collar. One guest who kept a low profile was Nixon’s representative: U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew stayed indoors battling a nasty case of what his Iranian hosts politely termed “the Shah’s revenge.”

  On the evening of October 14, the Shah hosted a grand banquet in the dining tent, entry to which was gained through a scarlet reception room hung with twenty plastic chandeliers. First in the receiving line was King Frederik who after greeting the Shah and Shahbanou turned around and bellowed, “Does anyone know where the hell I have to go?!” “The reception room for the arrivals was totally silent except for the loud howling of the sand storm which suddenly blew
up in the desert and was rocking the tent back and forth and rattling the plastic chandeliers,” remarked one guest. “There was no music at all and the effect was deadly.” Then as the wind picked up outside the tent “the monarchs and heads of state [started] pushing and shoving each other to get inside,” so quickly indeed that the official greeter lost his head and announced Spiro Agnew as the representative for Afghanistan. The uncomfortable silence was broken by a familiar warble heard floating over the receiving line. “At last, a woman in a decent dress,” cried television personality Barbara Walters when Christina Ford, the statuesque wife of Detroit auto mogul Henry Ford II, entered wearing a suntan and diamonds and little else, her barely there modesty covered by a “kind of swimsuit halter top and low dipping back.”

  The blue damask dining hall was arranged with a two-hundred-foot- long serpentine-shaped head table designed to create the illusion that each monarch and president was on equal footing when Court protocol dictated that they most certainly were not. Branching off from the head table were another thirty-six tables that seated thirteen apiece. The Shah entered to the strains of Mozart with Queen Ingrid of Denmark, consort of King Frederik, on his arm while Farah towered over her companion, the diminutive Emperor Haile Selassie. “Most [guests] had remarkably little to say to one another, at least before the wines were served,” reported the Los Angeles Times. “Most remained wooden faced.” As the high desert winds picked up outside, more than a few anxious eyes peered up at the chandeliers swaying overhead. “When Marie Antoinette said, ‘Let them eat cake’, she could never have dreamed of this performance,” sniffed one of Maxim’s catering staff. “The conspicuous consumption of this thing,” rapped a Western diplomat, “is simply shocking in a country such as this.”

  The banquet of the century lasted five and a half hours and was followed by a spectacular son et lumière light and fireworks show that lasted into the early morning hours. At its conclusion the grounds were unexpectedly pitched into darkness when the light operator forgot to turn on a switch. For a minute or two everyone sat in embarrassed silence. The Queen, her nerves frayed by fear of a terrorist attack, turned over her shoulder and rounded on Court Minister Alam, who was relishing his role as grand master of ceremonies. “Whose foolish idea was it to have these fireworks?” she remarked. “There is nothing wrong,” he briskly retorted in a voice loud enough for everyone around them to hear. “Everything has gone exactly according to plan.” If the Shah was offended by his servant’s tone of lèse-majesté he did not let on, nor did he bother to defend his wife’s honor. As usual, he sat in silence.

  The following day, after a restful afternoon, the Pahlavis and their guests trooped over to view a grand pageant representing eras in Iran’s history since 500 BC. They sat on a dais in a single row that extended along the perimeter of the Persepolis archaeological ruins and for ninety minutes under a blazing sun watched as twenty water buffalo, seven hundred horses, and two thousand costumed men marched past the Shah, who took the salute accompanied by martial music. “The setting was spectacular,” reported the New York Times. “Men in Achaemenian gold and scarlet uniforms stood high on the ruins. Trumpets sounded in the hills. Cavalry troops on matching black horses were followed by foot soldiers in link armor. Oxen pulled copies of mobile battlements. The men on 26 camels wore plumes. At least two sailing vessels motored by.” The Russian president in particular could have hardly missed the parade’s militarist theme. “After 25 centuries Iranian soldiers once again march past the upright pillars on this vast plain, this monument to the age-old grandeur and glory of Persia,” the Shah declared. He wanted all the leaders assembled to understand that the honor of Iran had been restored and that after centuries of slumber the Iranian people were back on the world stage and ready to assume a leadership role.

  From Persepolis and Shiraz the party moved on to Tehran, where on Saturday the Shah inaugurated the Shahyad Monument, whose intricate latticed archways were intended to firmly anchor the Pahlavi Dynasty to the Sasanian Empire, whose achievements he admired so much. The next day the Imperial Family opened Tehran’s new one-hundred-thousand-seat Olympic stadium, which had already been selected to host the 1974 Asian Games.

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  THE PERSEPOLIS FESTIVAL scandalized the ulama, who interpreted it as a deliberate attempt to whitewash Iran’s Islamic heritage. Iranian student leaders chimed in from exile, sardonically congratulating the Shah for making their job much easier by bringing to light his “crimes, Iran’s poverty, the wide chasm separating the economic classes, and the regime’s militarism.”

  The Shah paid them no mind. On Monday, October 18, he hosted a press conference at Saadabad Palace attended by 136 reporters from more than 20 countries, with many of the journalists sitting at his feet like four-year-olds at reading time in kindergarten. He defended the cost of the event by pointing out that “the many buildings, hotels, roads, communication systems, schools and other infrastructure projects [were all] included in the current development plan,” and that the economy had already surpassed its growth targets for the year. The cost of the Shahyad Monument had been met through public donations. “The only expense which perhaps did not have investment value” were the entertainments provided in the Tent City but they were budgeted for anyway. He conceded that the security crackdown had been excessive but “we had to take precautions after all that you wrote about dangers. So we did it.”

  The most important thing was that the Iranian people felt pride in their nation and history. “We stand on our own feet,” he declared. By turns proud and combative, he lectured a West German reporter that “we are not affected in the slightest way by what is said about us by biased people.… We shall regain our prestige. I say this without vanity. I am, in fact, full of humility. But I have full faith in my people.” For the first time he publicly announced his intention to eventually abdicate the throne. “This is not a new idea,” he said. “My father thought of doing so. That is to say, in 1941, a few months before those events happened in our country [the Allied invasion of Iran], he wanted to give me the crown and see how I would run the country, how I would take my first steps.… It is natural that I, too, should have the same idea because succession will take place smoothly in this way. I think it is a good idea that we should do that.” The Queen was thinking about the succession, too, when Court Minister Alam inquired whether she and Crown Prince Reza would like to attend the screening of a documentary film about the party of the century. “For goodness sake, leave me alone,” she retorted. “I want our names to be utterly disassociated from those ghastly celebrations.”

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  THE ORANGE AND lemon groves that graced the far eastern shores of the Mediterranean were a world away from Niavaran, but the Shah had every reason to keep a close eye on developments in Lebanon, where Imam Musa Sadr, a young Iranian-born cleric, had emerged as the conscience of the Shia peoples of the Levant, an important regional power broker, and a future candidate for the post of Shiism’s paramount marja. The Persepolis celebrations had barely concluded when Musa Sadr arrived in Tehran in November 1971 to pay his respects and seek an important favor from the Custodian of the Shia Faith.

  Seyyed Musa Sadr, born on June 4, 1928, was the scion of two of Shiism’s most revered clerical dynasties. His father, Grand Ayatollah Sadreddin Sadr, was a marja whose own father had helped lead the revolt against the Qajars. From an early age Musa Sadr’s boundless energy, charisma, and intellect left an indelible impression on everyone who met him. Blessed with a sunny disposition, gentle demeanor, and breathtaking good looks, the young man was as comfortable in the secular world of the Pahlavis as he was in the hawza, where his teachers took note of his erudite scholarship and marked him out as a major future talent. On the day in 1943 when he was formally welcomed into the ranks of the ulama, Musa Sadr was feted by family and friends, and also by his teachers, who included the firebrand cleric Ruhollah Khomeini. After entering the ranks of the clergy, the young mutjahid broke a major barrier by becoming
the first “black turban” to graduate with a law degree from the secular University of Tehran. From there he set out for Najaf to study under Grand Ayatollah Abol Qasem Khoi, the marja who became his spiritual and theological mentor. Restless, ambitious, and impatient to make his mark, in 1959 Khoi and his fellow marjas agreed that Musa Sadr should be dispatched to the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre and take up the post of spiritual guide to that country’s poverty-stricken Shia community, which at the time numbered more than three hundred thousand.

  Lebanon held a special place in Iranian hearts and minds. For the past four centuries the former French colony had played an outsize role in Iranian affairs because of the steady flow of young seminarians who traveled from Tyre to Qom to study and replenish the town’s seminaries and mosques. In the late fifties and through the sixties Lebanon was threatened by Egypt’s General Gamal Abdel Nasser, who made no secret of his ambition to replace moderate, pro-Western Middle East regimes with his own brand of radical Arab socialism. Nasser was a sworn enemy of the Pahlavis—the Shah suspected that Nasser had played a role in stoking unrest in Iran in June 1963—and Lebanon’s large Shia population created opportunities and challenges for both leaders. The Iranians feared the spread of radicalism from Lebanon into Qom’s seminaries. Young Musa Sadr opposed clerical involvement in politics and adhered to Grand Ayatollah Khoi’s acceptance of the monarchy. Accordingly, he went to Lebanon with the blessing of the Shah, whose title as Custodian of the Faith meant he took a close interest in the promotions of senior clergy, and also of General Nasiri, whose agents conducted the requisite background check to assess Musa Sadr’s loyalty to the throne.

  Once installed in Tyre, Musa Sadr established himself as a passionate advocate for the poor in a country with a long history of discrimination against Shia Muslims. He built an orphanage, founded a trade school, and established social programs that eradicated beggary. The first of his groundbreaking efforts to forge coalitions and partnerships with the leaders of Lebanon’s non-Muslim faiths got under way. His followers acclaimed him as “Imam” Musa Sadr, an accolade that struck his elders back home as premature but that cemented his reputation among the poor of Lebanon as a champion for social justice in the tradition of the martyred Imam Husayn. He dazzled his contemporaries. “[He was] tall, very tall to the point of seeming to soar above the often frenzied crowds that his presence drew together,” recalled a prominent member of the Greek Orthodox community. “His black turban tilted back with a slight negligence. His enemies seemed charmed by his enigmatic and benevolent smile, whereas to his friends, his bearded face always reflected a profound melancholy.… His personal contacts were a ritual of seduction.” Musa Sadr, wrote another Lebanese, had “an exquisite slightly self-disparaging sense of humor, head bowed as if in some private act of reverence, a shy, boyish smile, but luminous and perceptive eyes. His speech was slow, deliberate, well-stressed, the accent derived from purest Farsi interspersed with Shia slang and lilt.” Musa Sadr had his detractors. They feared his popularity, accusing the cleric of wanting to have it both ways and engaging in demagoguery while cutting deals with the establishment. Even they found him irresistible. “He was different, he was open,” said Khalil al-Khalil, the scion of one of the established families of Lebanese Shiism whose influence was eclipsed by Musa Sadr’s arrival in Tyre. “If a woman was not veiled, he would not make a scene of it. He used to come and visit us at home. He would smoke the hookah pipe.”