To celebrate Farah’s birthday the Pahlavis invited their good friends former U.S. vice president Nelson Rockefeller and his wife, Happy, to attend the gala opening of Tehran’s new Museum of Contemporary Art. “A huge filmy sky sculpture floated above Farah Park Thursday evening, a symbol of the heady new status of Tehran in the artistic world,” wrote one observer. Farah had conceived the project ten years earlier and kept a close eye on all aspects of design and construction, to the point of inviting her cousin Kamran Diba to assume the job of principal architect. They both shared a vision of making art accessible to the people. “A lot of Iranians still think of museums and art galleries as religious places, only for scholars and artists,” Diba told reporters. “But we have the ideal setting in the park, and we hope people will just wander in.” Rather than cater to a specialized clientele, the museum’s board approved an admission fee of only twenty rials and made opening hours six days a week until eight in the evening. There were live musical and theatrical performances, workshops and film theaters for children, and specially funded programs to encourage young artists. Children’s books and audiovisual presentations were commissioned and taken to local schools so schoolchildren could be exposed to art from an early age.
Farah’s hectic work schedule never let up. On a single day in October 1977 she flew to Isfahan to open the first Festival of Popular Traditions, a weeklong affair intended to highlight tribal arts and culture; inaugurated an exhibition of Iranian handicrafts; awarded prizes to the winners of the Third and Fourth Festival of Theater; visited the historic Naqsh-e Jahan building; received the board of directors of the Reza Pahlavi Cultural Foundation’s local branch; and watched a play put on by students of the Isfahan International School. Two days later she flew to Kerman to open one of her personal projects, a new museum dedicated to Iranian folk art. Back in Tehran, the leading advocate for Iran’s disabled communities called on the government to devote more resources to helping the blind and the deaf. In the autumn of 1977 the Queen seemed to be everywhere. Her husband, by contrast, appeared to be quietly receding from the spotlight.
* * *
QUESTIONS OF MORTALITY were on the mind of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini following the sudden death of his eldest son on the twenty-third of October. Mostafa Khomeini had been his father’s most trusted aide and the last voice of moderation in his inner circle. Though Mostafa suffered from health problems related to obesity, his father made no attempt to correct conspiracy theories that claimed he had been poisoned by Parviz Sabeti’s agents. Eleven of the twelve imams of Shiism had been assassinated by poison, and Mostafa Khomeini’s death conveniently played into the Shia narrative of martyrdom at the hands of an unjust ruler. Later, Khomeini ascribed the death of his son to “God’s hidden providence.”
The Shia tradition called for forty days of mourning followed by a memorial service. The release of pent-up grief after more than a month usually accounted for very public displays of emotion. Though Khomeini was forbidden from returning home, his representatives in Iran petitioned the government to permit mourning vigils in the mosques. Parviz Sabeti suspected they wanted to use the services as an excuse to organize, and he warned General Nasiri of his misgivings. The Shah was hesitant to deny the Marja’s relatives the right to grieve and assented to their request, never doubting that the security forces would maintain order if trouble started. “Stop it when it gets into the streets,” he instructed Nasiri.
With permission in hand, Khomeini’s relatives and admirers published a notice of mourning in the newspaper Kayhan referring to Mostafa as “the offspring of the Exalted Leader of All Shiites of the World.” This public letter provided an excuse for several hundred sympathetic clergymen to sign their own notice of condolence. At Mostafa Khomeini’s memorial service at the Jam’e Mosque in Tehran, presiding cleric Ayatollah Taheri Esfahani prayed for “our one and only leader, the defender of the faith and the great combatant of Islam, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini.” In an instant the fourteen-year taboo against mentioning Khomeini’s name inside Iran was broken and “thunderous cries of ‘Allah Akbar’” or “God is Great” echoed through the mosque. “And it spread,” recalled Parviz Sabeti. “The forty-day mourning period was the time when the Khomeini people really got organized.” Groups on the left took their cue and also published open letters praising Mostafa Khomeini. Heartened by the expressions of support, Khomeini decided that Iran was on the brink of upheaval. He had been closely following the bad news on the economy, the corruption scandals, and the Shah’s attempts to reform his regime. He spoiled for a final showdown with the man he ridiculed as “that unfit element.”
The Coalition of Islamic Societies ordered its revolutionary cells to step up provocations. In the first incident of its kind, on November 5 an anonymous caller telephoned the Paramount Cinema on Takht-e Jamshid Avenue in Tehran, just down the road from the U.S. embassy, and accused the owners of screening Western “pornography.” A bomb was discovered hidden in a lavatory, and the complex was hastily evacuated while it was defused. The extremists were also galvanized by the behavior and attitudes of President Carter and his representatives in Iran. Convinced that the Shah’s liberalization program was the result of U.S. pressure, Khomeini’s men rejoiced on November 15 when the Pahlavi state visit to Washington, DC, was disrupted by violent protests outside the White House. Televised images of the Iranian and American First Couples tear-gassed and harried by demonstrators gripped the imagination of the Iranian public, whose culture and historical awareness did not allow for accident or incompetence. They concluded that the American president had staged the unrest to embarrass his guests, whom he now apparently regarded as liabilities. This leap of logic, so alien to American sensibilities, made complete sense from an Iranian perspective.
The Islamic Coalition’s revolutionary cells were fully activated, and saboteurs like Ali Hossein fanned out around the country to stoke unrest and cause mayhem. Isolated acts of violence were reported in several towns where banks, travel agencies, cinemas, and facilities identified with modernization and the White Revolution were attacked. On November 24 in Shiraz pro-Khomeini militants rioted outside a mosque smashing windows, setting fire to two cinemas, and storming the main synagogue, whose carpets were doused with gasoline and set ablaze. Bomb threats were phoned in to more than a hundred family welfare centers established to cater to mothers living in poor neighborhoods such as the Tehran slum districts of Darvazeh Gar and Naziabaz. Women came to the centers, run by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, to learn to read and write and receive instruction in postnatal care, hygiene, health, and nutrition. Trained staff provided them with family planning information and employment and legal counseling services. Ninety of the centers also offered child-care facilities for mothers with infants and toddlers. Starting in November, male callers threatened to blow up welfare centers in Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Kerman. “There was a lot of panic and disruption,” recalled Minister of Women’s Affairs Mahnaz Afkhami. “We would have to evacuate the children to safety. Then we would bring them back and another threat would be phoned in and it would start all over again.” Unrest erupted on major university campuses, where leftists broke windows and assaulted administrators. The first targeting of American citizens was reported on December 7, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, when a touring American college wrestling team was attacked in the cafeteria at Aryamehr University by Iranian students chanting anti-U.S. slogans. The Iranians desecrated the Stars and Stripes and declared their support for the opposing Russian team.
One of the Shah’s proudest achievements was the infusion of Western technology to develop Iran’s economy. But just as the security forces could not possibly stop every tape cassette of Khomeini’s speeches from entering the country, so too were they powerless to prevent the Xerox machines then coming into fashion in offices in the capital from being used as weapons to fight the regime. “Tens of thousands of copies of protest petitions have found their way into circulation because nearly every office in Tehran has
a copying machine,” reported one American who visited the capital in the autumn of 1977. “Thank God for the Xerox machine,” chortled an opposition activist. “I don’t think the man who invented the copying machine was aware of what he was doing for freedom of expression.”
Even the Shah’s efforts to tackle corruption and waste in government had a boomerang effect. When Jamshid Amuzegar became prime minister he had sought the advice of Parviz Sabeti. “I never had any political experience before now,” he admitted. “What can I do to succeed?” Sabeti told him that opposition parties such as the National Front, Liberation Movement of Iran, and Tudeh already had well-crafted political programs that told the people what they stood for. “You have to set your agenda,” he advised. “I told him [Rastakhiz] should be moderate, pragmatic, and nationalist. He needed a short-term program.” He also recommended the new government start airing grievances in a public forum such as a stadium. Amuzegar liked the idea and took it to the Shah, who rejected it as “ridiculous. If you do it, bring it to the royal court.” This was the origin of the notorious Imperial Commission, tasked with rooting out evidence of corruption and waste in government agencies and in the business community. The Shah appointed Hossein Fardust, his oldest friend and Nasiri’s deputy at Savak, to head the commission, whose proceedings were televised live rather like the Nixon-era Watergate investigation in the United States. He expected to be applauded for making government more transparent and accountable—isn’t that what the liberals had been clamoring for all these years? But Sabeti was aghast that his original idea had evolved into a public witch hunt of the civil service: “I thought party members would talk about lifestyle problems but when it was on TV it reached a mass audience.”
Month after month, Iranians watched in dismay as public officials were hauled in front of a panel and grilled under klieg lights about project overruns, missing millions, and kickbacks. In the second week of November 1977 the commission released reports on delays in road, rail, and port construction; problems affecting the electrical grid; and shortages of skilled labor to keep power generators running. Nosratollah Moinian, head of the Shah’s Special Bureau, took the lead in denouncing “incompetence and negligence among certain government executives,” and the Shah personally ordered the arrest of a former energy minister and two associates for their role in the summer power outages that had left the capital blacked out during a heat wave. But the Shah’s decision to involve himself in matters best left to prosecutors and the court system sent the signal that he was putting his own regime on trial. The depressing catalog of failures and lost public funds only served to reinforce the widespread popular belief that the White Revolution had run aground. The commission reinforced the idea that the government was corrupt and inept, and it helped collapse the confidence of the civil service, which was staffed by the white-collar middle class. These professionals regarded the Shah’s personal involvement in the investigations as a singular act of disloyalty. Businessmen also began to lose confidence in the regime, regarding the commission as an attempt to find scapegoats for the government’s own failures. Far from helping to restore public confidence in the system, the Imperial Commission played an instrumental role in discrediting state institutions and undermining public morale.
* * *
AMBASSADOR WILLIAM SULLIVAN closely followed the sudden surge in unrest around the country, though from the start he misunderstood its origins. Sullivan and his political counselors, section head George Lambrakis and his deputy John Stempel, appeared more concerned with the behavior of the Shah’s security forces than the shadowy men behind the unrest. In recent weeks, anxious to build relations with the anti-Shah opposition, they had made contact with moderate leftists and republicans who assured them Parviz Sabeti’s Third Directorate was staging provocations to prove to the Shah that the “open space” had gone too far and that tough measures were required to restore law and order. The Americans accepted this explanation. They were certainly aware of who Khomeini was but made no real attempt to learn about his philosophy of Islamic governance; translate his writings; or track the flow of money, men, and arms from radical Arab leaders such as Arafat and Gadhafi.
On December 7, the same day the American wrestlers were set upon at Aryamehr University, and while the Shah was outside the country on a state visit to Oman, Sullivan met privately with Prime Minister Amuzegar to receive his assurance that the Iranian government would not use force to put down peaceful protests, nor would it resort to the sort of crackdowns that had led to human rights abuses in the past. He told Amuzegar that he was particularly upset over a recent incident where Savak agents had stormed a Tehran home where opposition leaders were holding a political meeting. Sullivan sent a cable to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance explaining that Amuzegar had agreed to a “hands off” strategy and that he was determined to avoid at all costs repressive measures that would invite condemnation from foreign governments and human rights groups. “Amuzegar said GOI [Government of Iran] had decided to eschew police measures in handling dissent,” explained Sullivan. “Prime Minister went on to say that government particularly sought to avoid making arrests, because ‘these people want to be arrested.’ He said their tactic was to have some of their members arrested, convey the information directly to [the foreign news media], and have exaggerated reports of the arrests circulated in the United States. Then, he said, I would get a letter from a Congressman and in effect become an advocate for the person arrested.” Amuzegar told Sullivan that his government “would permit dissenting groups to continue having public meetings, signing letters, and otherwise remaining active.”
Amuzegar’s remarks reflected the Shah’s view that the Rastakhiz Party should take the lead in channeling popular unrest and directing political passions toward constructive measures rather than into the streets. That, after all, had been the basis for its establishment three years earlier. Amuzegar told Sullivan that Rastakhiz had recently organized an impressive turnout of parents to protest the violence at the University of Tehran. But Sullivan wasn’t satisfied. He wanted a promise from Amuzegar that there would be no more “head bashing” by Savak or pro-regime vigilante groups: it was important that peaceful protesters felt there were legitimate venues in which they could “vent their views. Otherwise they would become convinced there was no way within the system to advocate opposition. This in turn could convince them that violence and terrorism were the only alternatives to the current system.” Amuzegar said he “emphatically agreed” with Sullivan and that there could be no retreat from liberalization—the “open space” must remain open.
To reinforce the Shah’s message of tolerance and moderation in the face of extremism, violence, and threats, one of Iran’s most respected politicians delivered a speech that summed up government strategy. “Patience is the imperative of the current situation,” declared Abdol Majid Majidi, the leader of the more liberal of the Rastakhiz Party’s two ideological wings. The agitators, he insisted, wanted the authorities to crack down hard, to discredit liberalization. But the government would not take the bait. He repeated a recent statement by the Shah to the effect that young people often did things to “prove and test their presence before entering society.” What was going on was not so unusual. Young people were “letting off steam,” and there was no reason to be alarmed: incidents of unrest occurring around the country were harmless and to be expected.
* * *
MANY WEALTHIER Iranians did not see it that way. The Shah had launched liberalization in the hope it would strengthen middle-class support for the monarchy and show that he too was on the side of political reform. But many of the same liberals who had spent the past few years calling for democracy became alarmed at the sudden spike in unrest: Iran’s propertied class was already holding an election of sorts, and the ballots they cast were with their feet.
The 1973–1974 oil boom had been accompanied by the lifting of restrictions on the amount of capital Iranians could take out of the country. With real estate prices an
d inflation soaring at home, many middle- and upper-middle-class Iranians purchased properties in Europe and North America as a nest egg. The pace of capital flight began to accelerate over the summer of 1977. “I was aware of it,” recalled Hassan Ali Mehran, governor of Iran’s Central Bank. “What was a good investment policy in 1975 was a good insurance policy in 1977.” Mehran’s analysts watched as private capital worth an estimated $100 million began leaving Iran each month, bound for foreign safe havens. At the same time, consular officials at the U.S. embassy on Takht-e Jamshid Avenue noticed a sharp increase in the number of Iranians seeking visas to enter the United States. Thousands of miles away, real-estate agents in California’s San Francisco Bay Area were startled by an influx of Iranians “buying up the place,” with properties going for between $250,000 and $400,000. Farther south, Iranians were “pouring” into Los Angeles to the extent that they had “rejuvenated the place.”
Foreign residents who knew Iran well or had close ties to the government and military also began to take the Shah’s measure. They were aware of the rumors that he was ill, and they, too, doubted that liberalization could work. Businessman James Saghi “saw the writing on the wall,” remembered a colleague, “and sold his house at the top of the market for something approaching two and a half million dollars cash, which he took out of the country immediately.” American Lloyd Bertman, who ran the Jupiter Trading Company and who had lived in Iran for twenty-eight years, told associates “there are things that are happening that make me uncomfortable, so I’m going to leave.” Others were struck by the sour public mood. Chris Westberg, the twenty-one-year-old daughter of an American lawyer, had lived with her family in Iran since the midsixties. On returning after several years away at college, she was disturbed by the sour public mood and tension on the streets of Tehran. “The men seemed even more hostile than I remembered them,” she recalled. “Instead of the comments about my blue-eyes-like-the-sky or more brazen appraisals of my anatomy, there were vicious murmurs of ‘foreign whore!’” She spotted anti-American graffiti daubed on walls around town proclaiming, “Death to Jimmy Carter” and “Yonkee Go to Home.” Then there were the austere uniforms worn by young women of university age. They were decked out in “grey or khaki-colored tunics over long pants or ankle-length skirts, with matching scarves tied tightly under their chins, absolutely no make-up.” One day the young American chanced to talk to one of these stern young creatures when they shared a cab ride together. Her fellow passenger explained that she was a devout Muslim “who hoped to serve Allah and her country by obtaining a science degree from Tehran University.” Westberg suggested that the student’s education might conflict with the teachings of the Quran. Her fellow traveler retorted, “It is necessary for the changes to come.”
The Fall of Heaven Page 35
