The proud monarch who only two years earlier had led a parade of kings, queens, and presidents at Persepolis struggled to contain the worries that kept him up at night. Even the 5- and 10-milligram capsules of Valium he took each night to combat anxiety failed to keep the insomnia at bay. Iranian students reserved a special loathing for the man who thought of himself as their father. Nothing he did for them was ever good enough. They cynically dismissed land reform, women’s emancipation, free education, free health care, and economic growth as a giant fraud perpetrated to please his American and Zionist “puppet masters.” “I believe that the peasantry are with me,” the Shah lamented, “but it is not so true of the younger intelligentsia. The younger people—they are in the National Front—have no ties to the ordinary people. They are a problem for me. Everything they have advocated I have done. We have made more reforms than they have asked for. I do not understand why they are not with me.”
The Shah was too slow to understand that his people’s spiritual malaise could not be solved with more charts, studies, projections, and forecasts. Their ailment was one of the heart and not the head. Court Minister Alam gingerly suggested that His Majesty might wish to change the way he spoke to his people. Ten years had passed since he had imposed reforms from the top down. Security was too tight. The people needed to breathe. Perhaps, recommended Alam, the time had come to “reform popular attitudes. But by subtlety; it cannot be achieved merely by issuing commands.” The real culprit, in Alam’s view, was not the Shah, whom he regarded as the visionary Iran needed, but Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda, whom he caustically referred to as “old Quasimodo” and regarded as a corrosive and cynical influence in public life. Since taking office in 1965 after the assassination of his friend Ali Mansur, Hoveyda had defied the odds and retained the monarch’s confidence through several terms in office. The scion of an aristocratic family, like so many of Iran’s ruling elite, Hoveyda was also related to senior religious figures, in his case the marja Grand Ayatollah Khoi, who resided in Najaf. Hoveyda was intelligent, charming, and erudite, but also servile, obsequious, and well versed in the Persian art of court flattery.
The Shah enjoyed Hoveyda’s company and relaxed visibly in his presence. A palace aide recalled that he was once taken aback when His Majesty broke protocol and requested a whiskey for his prime minister. “They shared a love of French culture and the French language,” wrote Hoveyda’s biographer. “In Hoveyda, the Shah also found an intellectual of sound credentials, with a voracious appetite for books and ideas, who could banter about the history, culture, and politics of the West with the best of his Western counterparts. More important, Hoveyda was also accommodating toward the King’s growing appetite to concentrate more and more of the government’s daily functions in his own hands.” Smart enough not to debate the Shah in his presence, the prime minister fed the perception that he existed only to carry his master’s water. “The Shah is the Chairman of the Board and I am the Managing Director,” was how he described his role to Britain’s ambassador Antony Parsons. “Well Tony,” he said on another occasion, “you know His Majesty’s definition of a dialogue. It is—I speak, you listen. He will not change.” “Hoveyda was a very good friend,” said Mahnaz Afkhami, who served as Iran’s minister of women’s affairs. “He was charming, cultured and good with people. But he established the situation where he got technocrats to run the country. We had complete freedom to do what we loved. We had resources. We didn’t have to deal with constituencies. Just as long as we didn’t meddle in politics. The security was taken care of. But no one was taking care of the political system. Hoveyda kept saying, ‘The Shah is making all the decisions,’ which wasn’t true. He made it appear as though it was the Shah doing everything. But in three years I only had three meetings with the Shah and no direction from him.”
No one doubted Hoveyda’s competence as a manager. He had a knack for spotting talent and his cabinet was staffed with highly capable administrators and technocrats. The prime minister was smart, charming, and cultivated friendships with members of the Imperial Family, ambassadors, intellectuals, and the clergy. They tolerated his alcoholism and rumored homosexuality, though not everyone was patient or forgiving. “Amir, are you drunk already?” Ardeshir Zahedi once barked at him during a daytime reception. His door was open to all comers—even the young student revolutionary Abolhassan Banisadr had enjoyed access to Hoveyda. As early as 1959, when Banisadr was already in open revolt against the regime, he had found a sympathetic ear in Hoveyda who at the time was serving on the board of directors of the National Iranian Oil Company. “I was usually frank and ruthless in my criticism of him and the regime he served,” Banisadr later said of his encounters with Hoveyda. “He bore it all with a grin. On more than one occasion, I asked him to help free friends who had fallen into the hands of the secret police, and he usually did what he could. I grew to like him; his problem was that he had no religious faith at all.” Hoveyda was the only government official Banisadr bothered to call on before he left for exile in Paris. Hoveyda’s willingness to entertain the very agent who sought the Shah’s overthrow hinted at not only his bald cynicism—he liked to keep all his options open—but also his need to be liked even by his enemies. Perhaps the most persistent criticism of Hoveyda, the technocrat par excellence, was that no one really knew what he stood for except the maintenance of his high office with its perks and privileges.
Hoveyda encouraged the popular perception that the Shah refused to heed advice or listen to reason, and that he exhibited the tendencies of a megalomaniac. The Shah was stubborn and proud, it was true, and already far too isolated. He could be petulant and thin-skinned in the face of criticism. Far from having a closed mind, however, he enjoyed discussing and debating ideas and policies with his ministers as long as they did not oppose his wishes in public, and he showed himself open to consider any and all new concepts and proposals as long as they could strengthen Iran and improve the lives of as many Iranians as possible in the shortest possible time. His mind was like a sponge. The Shah’s main problem was that with an education no higher than that of a high school student, like so many self-taught experts he had a dangerous habit of embracing fashionable theories and accepting them as fundamental truths rather than broad-stroke policy guidelines. What he needed was a prime minister with a confident personality matched by an understated demeanor. By finessing the royal ego, lauding each of His Majesty’s new initiatives, dismissing legitimate criticisms, and offering assurances that all was well despite his own reservations to the contrary, Hoveyda did the Shah and the monarchy a grave disservice. He withheld disagreeable information that he feared might cause disfavor, agreed to carry out imperial edicts even as he consigned them to the graveyard of committees of experts, and quietly manipulated the monarch’s paperwork and instructions to his benefit. Right to the end, when not even his young friend Banisadr could save him from the executioner’s bullets, Hoveyda insisted he had just been following orders.
Alam was puzzled as to why the Shah still retained confidence in a politician whose government “should be so negligent … its indifference and, on occasion, its brute aggression toward the people remind me of the way an army of occupation might treat a nation defeated in war.” Criticizing Hoveyda, of course, allowed Alam to avoid the real elephant in the room, namely his master’s obsession with control, his chronic distrust of subordinates, and the personal insecurities that meant he preferred to surround himself with yes-men who told him what he wanted to hear. He observed on more than one occasion to the Shah that the security forces went overboard in roughing up the regime’s opponents. He worried that too many young Iranians were alienated to the point they favored the overthrow of the monarchy. Nor did the Shah object in December 1973 when Alam admitted that he feared “a growing sense of alienation between the regime and people.” “I’m afraid you’re right,” he finally conceded. “I’ve sensed the same thing myself.” They discussed the matter, and Alam felt that a turning point had been
reached, that the Shah understood that materialism on its own was not a panacea. Hoveyda’s government should be replaced and a caretaker cabinet appointed to lead the country into free elections.
The U.S. intelligence community watched with interest the Shah’s repeated efforts and persistent failure to broaden his regime’s base of support among the people. “There is considerable anxiety,” reported the CIA, “that the Shah, in his impatience to move [Iran] ahead now, is failing to prepare institutions and leaders that could make [the] transition to post-Shah Iran without serious political turmoil and without serious damage to social and economic progress.” The intelligence agency took note of the “essentially negative role” played by the “educated professional class—some even from establishment families—who refuse to cooperate with the ruling elite, and the clergy, whose strength lies in the emotions of the Iranian masses and whose opposition to the Shah’s government is nearly total.” But the CIA was hampered in its ability to conduct more in-depth assessments of the domestic mood. As part of the hosting rights for two CIA listening posts that monitored Soviet missile tests in Central Asia, the Shah had extracted a concession from Washington to forgo intelligence gathering inside Iran. “Iran was in the category of states that we agreed not to conduct intense political intelligence activities,” recalled Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Carter’s national security adviser in the late seventies. “That left us at a disadvantage because we relied on independent observers and we had no backup of our own [to assess conditions inside Iran].”
Iran’s domestic discontents were overshadowed by the earth-shaking events of late 1973 and early 1974 in the Middle East. Simmering tensions between Israel and Egypt erupted into open warfare in October 1973. Furious that the United States airlifted military supplies to Israel, Arab states in the Middle East imposed an oil embargo that triggered panic buying in the West and sent crude prices soaring. The Shah’s decision to remain neutral in the conflict earned him Nixon’s gratitude. But he also saw an opportunity to exploit the crisis to Iran’s benefit. On December 23, 1973, he hosted a meeting of Persian Gulf oil producers who followed his suggestion that they double the price of oil for the second time in a year. The Shah’s oil coup stunned his admirers back in Washington. The “oil shock” devastated the economies of Western oil consumers even as Iran’s income from oil doubled to $4.6 billion in 1973–1974, then rocketed to $17.8 billion a year later to a total of $98.2 billion for the next five years. In just a few months the Shah had seized control of the oil markets and established himself as the dominant figure within OPEC, the oil producers’ cartel that set prices and determined levels of oil production. Rather than invest Iran’s new billions offshore in bonds, treasury notes, and real estate, the Shah decided to pump it straight back into the domestic economy to give it the push he felt was needed to break the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment. Finally, after decades of struggle and turmoil, the Shah felt himself to be untouchable and indispensable. He had broken free from the Russians, the British, and now the Americans. “Iran is not a volcano now,” he assured a visitor to Niavaran. “I want the standard of living in Iran in ten years’ time to be exactly on a level with that in Europe today. In twenty years’ time we shall be ahead of the United States.”
The Shah stood at the apex of a new world economic order. “Once dismissed by Western diplomats as an insecure, ineffective playboy-King, this emperor of oil commands new respect these days, as much for his ambitions as for his wealth,” declared Time magazine. “In the 33rd year of an often uncertain reign, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi has brought Iran to a threshold of grandeur that is at least analogous to what Cyrus the Great achieved for ancient Persia.” Bankers joked that when the Shah sneezed, Wall Street caught cold. Iran’s astonishing 33 percent economic growth rate for 1973 was outpaced by 40 percent the following year, and gross national product was set to expand at the rate of 50 percent in twelve months. The economy took off like an Apollo rocket to the moon. “We have no real limit on money,” boasted the government’s senior economist. “None.” The Shah interpreted this remark in the most literal sense. He ordered billions in new military equipment and made all elementary school education free and compulsory. Iran was not a major dairy producer, but he decreed that every schoolchild was entitled to a free glass of milk each day. He purchased a 25 percent stake in the West German steel company Krupp and spent $16 billion in the fiscal year 1974–1975 “on projects ranging from schools to hospitals.” Eager to buy international prestige and influence, the Shah contributed $700 million to the International Monetary Fund and another $1 million to the University of Southern California to endow a professorial chair in engineering. U.S. intelligence analysts were confounded by the Shah’s oil coup against his former patrons.“He was our baby, but now he has grown up,” complained a CIA official whose admission signaled that the United States had finally lost the ability to influence Iranian foreign and economic policy.
* * *
ALI KANI, A prominent member of the Iranian political establishment, stopped off in Beirut in 1973 to see his old friend Imam Musa Sadr. The two men met at the St. George Hotel, and from there drove to Musa Sadr’s residence in the capital. Although this was a social visit between two friends who had known each other since childhood, Musa Sadr also had serious business to discuss. He had a secret message he wanted Kani to pass on to the Shah that concerned the behavior of his old teacher Grand Ayatollah Khomeini.
As the sons of two of Iran’s most revered grand ayatollahs, Ali Kani and Musa Sadr had more than friendship in common. Theirs was the insular, tightly knit world of the highborn families who dominated the Iranian religious and political elites. In the early 1960s, while Musa Sadr was busy establishing himself in Lebanon, Ali Kani had served in the cabinet of his friend Asadollah Alam, whose premiership coincided with the uprising of June 1963. Kani was at Alam’s side during the showdown with Khomeini. He always believed that had Alam remained in power as prime minister he would never have allowed Khomeini to leave Iran for the relative safety and comfort of exile. “They crushed the uprising. But Alam wanted Khomeini to stay in Iran under watch. But [Alam’s successor as prime minister] Mansur asked the King to send him to Turkey.” Kani regarded the Status of Forces Agreement, which provided immunity for U.S. military personnel based in Iran, as nothing short of “a disaster” for the regime.
Through the years, Ali Kani and Musa Sadr stayed in touch. They exchanged letters and whenever Kani traveled back and forth to Paris he made sure to stop off in Beirut to see his old friend so they could compare notes on politics and religion. “Musa Sadr was a very intelligent man,” remembered Kani. “Very charismatic and attractive. He was too intelligent to be influenced by others.”
At the end of his short stay in Beirut, Musa Sadr took his friend aside and handed him a twenty-page booklet written in Arabic that contained “the concise thoughts of Khomeini.” This was the bound version of the Grand Ayatollah’s lectures calling for the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of an Islamic government.
“This is the juice of a sick mind,” warned the Imam. “However you wish, by any means, let the King know about this,” he urged Kani. “Give it to your friend [the King]. Tell him to publish 200,000 copies and distribute them to the universities so the intellectuals can read Khomeini and learn who he really is.”
Ali Kani read Khomeini’s treatise on the plane trip back to Tehran. What he read shocked him to the core and he instinctively understood why the Imam wanted the Shah to read the tract. It was imperative that he understand the nature of the threat he faced in Najaf. Once back home, Kani wrote an executive summary of the text in Persian and took it to the palace.
“The Shah read it and he loved it,” Kani recalled. The Shah understood that if handled the right way, Khomeini’s thesis calling for a clerical dictatorship could expose the idol of Iranian youth as a religious fanatic and dangerous heretic. He instructed Prime Minister Hoveyda to publish half a million
copies of the booklet and spread them around the universities, bazaars, and mosques—anywhere the people could learn for themselves the truth about the elderly cleric who presented himself as a benign champion of social justice and liberty.
“The next thing I learned, it was with the prime minister,” said Kani, who fell into a state of despair when he learned the news. The two men had a long-standing rivalry that had recently ended with a final bitter falling-out and Kani’s decision to leave political life. “And Hoveyda sent the plan to a committee to ‘study.’” Hoveyda had a standing habit of agreeing with the Shah to his face and then taking the opposite action in private. He regularly sabotaged proposals and plans that he felt undermined his authority, advanced the ambitions of his rivals, or threatened his own agenda. The prime minister’s three-man committee was composed of reformed Communists who had been turned by Savak and now worked for the regime. But they were still atheists who cared little for Iran’s religious traditions. Months passed while they dithered over what to do. Eventually they chose what they thought was the safest option and decided to recommend suppressing the report altogether. “They maintained that the text would only promote Khomeini, give him a platform, and they opposed publication,” said Kani, who personally blamed Hoveyda for what happened next.
The Fall of Heaven Page 27
