The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  Lebanon was in the third year of the brutal civil war that devastated Musa Sadr’s kingdom in the south. In March 1978 Israel’s invasion to uproot Palestinian bases forced 250,000 Shia villagers from their homes and collapsed the local economy. The Shah condemned the Israeli action and rushed food, clothing, and medical supplies to the region in C-130 transport planes, earning praise from local Shia and presenting Musa Sadr with an opportunity for rapprochement. “By responding quickly to the material needs of the Shia refugees,” said the Christian Science Monitor, “the Shah’s intervention had exposed Musa Sadr as powerless: the Shah, many observers believe, has struck a decisive blow at Imam Sadr’s already declining prestige since the Imam’s self-styled ‘Movement of the Impoverished,’ aimed at self-help for the impoverished Shia farmers in south Lebanon, lacks funds or other means to help.” The Shah’s intervention in Lebanon served a dual purpose: the UN peacekeepers he sent to Lebanon included Savak agents who operated under cover to hunt down PLO-trained Iranian dissidents. By now the regime fully understood that the Khomeini movement was using Lebanon as the springboard to launch insurrection inside Iran. The Shah’s action made it clear that he “plans to end if he can the role of south Lebanon as a sanctuary for what he has termed ‘outlaws, terrorists, and Islamic Marxists’ trying to escape pursuit by Savak.”

  Musa Sadr was also under intense pressure from Iran’s revolutionary movement and its Palestinian and Libyan allies to overcome his resistance to clerical involvement in politics and finally throw the full force of his moral weight against the Shah and behind Khomeini. They were already furious with the Imam’s support for Syria’s invasion of Lebanon. “Musa Sadr was not considered as someone who was particularly anti-Shah,” confirmed Abolhassan Banisadr. Banisadr harbored a visceral dislike for his old childhood playmate and suspected him of playing a double game. Over the summer of 1978 he and other senior figures in the anti-Shah revolutionary movement “were in disagreement with Musa Sadr’s position in regards to the Syrian involvement in Lebanon.”

  Colonel Muammar Gadhafi of Libya had his own set of grievances with Musa Sadr, this time to do with millions of dollars in donations he had given to the Imam’s Amal militia to buy weapons to use against the Israelis. “[Musa Sadr] promised Gadhafi to take action in the south of Lebanon against Israel and he never did,” said Ambassador al-Khalil. “Gadhafi wanted him to motivate the Shia to work against the Israelis and work with the Palestinians. He gave him a lot of money and he did nothing. He did not live up to his promise.” Gadhafi offered to broker a meeting at his residence in Tripoli between Musa Sadr and Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Khomeini’s most trusted aide and a key architect of the Islamic underground’s assault against the Pahlavi state. Gadhafi believed it was time the clergy patched up their differences and joined forces for a final push to topple the Shah’s regime. Beheshti was no stranger to Musa Sadr. During the Ayatollah’s years living in exile in Hamburg he had also cultivated a reputation among Western diplomats and foreign correspondents as a cosmopolitan and a moderate. But Beheshti’s erudite personality and admiration for German culture masked a fanatical side—he had after all played the key role in the assassination of Prime Minister Mansur of Iran thirteen years before.

  Imam Musa Sadr still harbored the dream of returning to Iran to play a role in public life. There were those who believed he wanted to enter politics. “He actually had a great ambition to become something great in Iran,” said Ambassador al-Khalil. “He used Lebanon as a stepping-stone to move politically into Iran. He involved himself in Lebanese and Iranian political life.” But Musa Sadr’s ambitions were confined to the religious sphere. By temperament and training he was staunchly opposed to Khomeini’s idea that the ulama should rule Iran. Among moderates in Qom he was seen as the hope of the “quietists,” the natural successor to the great marjas Khoi and Shariatmadari, and the only senior cleric with the skill and charisma to reconcile Shiism with the modernist thrust of the Pahlavi state. They also saw him as their best means of blocking Khomeini’s power grab. By the summer of 1978 he and the Shah were two men in search of a lifeline. From the Shah’s vantage point, the humbling of Musa Sadr in Lebanon made him a more acceptable candidate for negotiation.

  At his farewell luncheon, General Nasiri explained to Ambassador al-Khalil that Musa Sadr had extended an extraordinary offer of assistance to help the Shah reach an accommodation with moderate ulama. “He wants to improve relations,” said Nasiri. “What do you think? What do you think is behind this letter? What is he thinking?” The ambassador asked if he could see the letter for himself. The next day, Nasiri sent one of his aides to al-Khalil’s residence with the letter. Its contents were explosive. “I am ready to help you if you bring Mehdi Bazargan and the people from the Liberation Movement into government, and if you dissolve parliament and allow free elections,” read the missive. “If you do these things I am going to help you as much as possible.” Musa Sadr’s offer of help came with unpalatable conditions—the Shah associated Bazargan with his old nemesis Mossadeq—but it also provided the palace with an opportunity to break the impasse with Qom.

  Ambassador Khalil listened as the letter was translated from Persian to Arabic, and then telephoned Nasiri to say that he was impressed with what he had heard. “And why not?” he said. “What do you have to lose by meeting with him? You have every reason to hear him out and no reason to close the door to him.”

  The next day Nasiri’s aide told al-Khalil that the Shah, who was apparently informed of Musa Sadr’s message but not the detailed conditions, had agreed to send a personal representative to confer secretly with Musa Sadr in West Germany from September 5 to 7.

  * * *

  VISITORS TO NOWSHAHR found the Shah engaged in his work and active in his leisure pursuits. “The holidays of the summer of 1978 began relatively peacefully for the Shah, who believed he had defused the crisis, and for the Imperial family,” wrote Hushang Nahavandi. “There was almost no change to the usual routine. The Shah had more visitors than previously, and the Shahbanou, who had taken a complete break in preceding years, also began to give audiences in order to keep pace with events.” “He would work until one o’clock,” recalled Elli Antoniades, who spent part of the summer at Nowshahr with the Pahlavis. “He received guests, ambassadors, ministers, then had lunch and then recreation.” After dinner, “the elder folk would play cards, without stakes, while the younger ones danced on the terrace.”

  Back in the capital, however, and as far away as Isfahan, the streets were “awash with rumors of the Shah’s health.” “At every social occasion embassy officers and I have received anxious inquiries from Americans, Iranians and other diplomats,” Charlie Naas cabled the State Department. “By now most of the home offices of US firms have probably received the story of ill health. The rumors range from terminal malignancy, leukemia, simple anemia to having been wounded in the arm or shoulder by General Khatami’s son or Princess Ashraf’s son. The latter rumor has the assassination attempt taking palace at Kish Island earlier this year or recently at the Caspian and has on occasion included the death or wounding of security guards.” In his telegram, Naas noted that the rumors had been spurred by the cancellation of official events in late June and early July and the Shah’s absence from the front pages of the newspapers. He also recounted his most recent visits to see the monarch, the first on July 1, when he had escorted Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon Johnson, to Niavaran for tea with the Imperial couple.

  Gossip about the Shah’s health reached Nowshahr. Prime Minister Amuzegar sent officials to the Caspian “to see if the rumor was true,” remembered the Shah’s valet. “There was a rumor that the son of Princess Fatemeh killed him,” said Amir Pourshaja. “His Majesty was water-skiing and the officials cried, ‘Look, look! Thank God, Thank God!’” Another rumor had it that the Shah couldn’t walk by himself and so he and the Queen staged a photo opportunity for the press where they walked “hand in hand” up and down the beach together. Cynics
back in Tehran decided the photos had been doctored to fool the public.

  Charlie Naas and Under Secretary of State David Newsom flew to the Caspian on July 9 to break the news that the Carter administration had decided not to sell Iran a ground-to-air missile system. The official reason given was that the United States had decided to cancel development of its own project. But even Naas “wondered whether there was growing concern [back in Washington] about selling such a sensitive program at that stage to Iran. The Shah’s disappointment was seen in his face.” Not surprisingly, he interpreted the decision as a loss of confidence in his leadership. Naas’s trip to the Caspian masked an ulterior motive. Embassy staff were worried enough about the rumors of ill health that they asked Naas to make a studied inspection of his appearance. “We sent Charlie up to see the Shah,” admitted John Stempel. During his conference with the Shah, Naas looked for any sign of obvious distress or illness. “He looked a little tired but was otherwise fine,” Naas reported back. At one point the American watched as the Shah took a small medicinal bottle out of his pocket and swallowed some pills—he was so close he could see their different colors. “He did take some medication with his tea,” Naas wrote. But an Iranian palace source had assured him that “that the Shah is fine and enjoying his rest.… [He] blames the Russians for starting the rumors. Our own sources indicate that there is no doubt the Russians in fact are spreading the stories, but at this point everybody is in on the act. At this time I tend to discount well over 90 percent of the nonsense but we shall continue to try to keep ourselves informed. We are taking the line, when comment is unavoidable, that ‘to the best of our knowledge the Shah is fine.’”

  Back at the embassy, meanwhile, Naas’s consular officers were issuing on average six hundred to seven hundred nonimmigrant visas every day to Iranians impatient to gain entry into the United States.

  * * *

  THE START OF the summer vacation season, coinciding with the closure of high schools and university campuses, reinforced the illusion of normalcy. The government’s tough austerity measures were finally starting to pay off. Inflation had fallen to 12 percent, and in the past fiscal year the gross national product had registered a modest 2.4 percent increase. Each weekend in July more than a million people flocked to beaches along the Caspian Sea. The European Community expressed optimism that Iran would be granted favorable trade status by the end of the year to sell its manufactured goods within the Common Market. West Germany signed an accord to work with Iran on joint projects related to science, engineering, and “advanced technologies.” Hungary agreed to build a $12 million date processing plant at Banpur. Work resumed on local infrastructure projects, including Tehran’s underground metro and international airport. Construction began on the Trans-Iranian Gas Pipeline, one of the Shah’s more visionary projects to increase European reliance on Iran as an energy provider. By 1981 the pipeline would bisect Europe’s east–west divide transiting Czechoslovakia, Austria, West Germany, and France; the Czechs alone were expected to earn transit rights of $100 million each year. In the same week, Paris agreed to sell to Iran four nuclear power plants at a cost of $4 billion. The nuclear deal bailed out France’s nuclear industry, which “has been running into increasing financial difficulties of late because of the slowdown of nuclear power plant construction programs in France and abroad.”

  The old anxieties lurked just beneath the surface. In a year when everything fell apart, and when Iranians looked skyward for answers to their terrestrial troubles, it made sense that so many people found inspiration in Steven Spielberg’s science fiction epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which opened at the Goldis Cinema over the summer, with its hopeful depiction of what might happen if the heavens did actually open. On July 16, at two o’clock in the afternoon, two young men in southern Tehran were taking pictures with their new 150-rial camera when they saw overhead what they claimed was a spaceship. “Suddenly, we spotted something flashing an orangish color over our heads,” said Ali Farboudi, who with his best friend, Amir Barjan, enjoyed national celebrity status in the days that followed. The boys contacted Mehrebad Airport to report the sighting, and their infamous photograph was splashed across the newspapers. The skeptics had a field day. “We think Ali and Amir are having us on,” chided the editors at Kayhan International. “Everyone we have shown the picture to says the same thing—clever, but it’s not a UFO.”

  Twenty-four hours later, however, duty officers in the control tower at Mehrebad Airport watched in disbelief as an unidentified aircraft with flashing lights moved at high speed through the night sky. The strange vessel was also spotted by the flight crew and passengers aboard a Lufthansa airliner as it prepared to make its final descent into Tehran. On the ground below, eyewitnesses contacted a radio station to report a UFO sighting. No one was joking this time.

  * * *

  JOHN STEMPEL AND his Russian counterpart Guennady Kazankin sat down for lunch, this time at a Chinese restaurant on Pahlavi Avenue. The talk around town was of the UFO sighting the night before, but their discussion focused on more mundane events, specifically what they thought was happening in the palace. The Russian pressed Stempel for his views on the Shah’s decision to democratize Iranian life. The American, “pleading a return from vacation, merely said he had heard the political system was opening up,” and noted that elections were planned for next year.

  Kazankin snorted in derision. “If the Shah is still around next year,” he acidly remarked, “everything will be rigged by the government.”

  Stempel “picked up on the ‘if’” and asked whether Kazankin “has any news that would suggest differently. Were the Soviets planning something in Iran?”

  The Russian “cleared his throat and treated Stempel to the rumor that the Shah was reportedly sick with cancer or some other blood disease.”

  Stempel rolled his eyes. As he explained in his account of their conversation, rumors of a possible illness affecting the Shah “abounded in many quarters and may be of Soviet inspiration.” Later, he defended his decision to ignore Kazankin’s tip. “The Russians always believe conspiracy rumors,” he protested. “And when it came right down to the revolution, Kazankin knew nothing.”

  18

  RAMADAN RISING

  What do you think is going on in my country?

  —THE SHAH

  Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a “pre-revolutionary” situation.

  —CIA

  In a year when the fortunes of the old Persian kingdom hinged on a cancer diagnosis, funeral processions, and visions of spaceships hurtling through the night skies, perhaps it was fitting that a fatal car crash on a lonely stretch of highway outside Mashad proved enough to tip Iran back into a state of siege. It was the Shah’s bad luck that Haj Sheikh Ahmad Kafi was no ordinary traffic fatality but one of Tehran’s most popular preachers. At age eleven the former child prodigy had dazzled crowds in his hometown of Mashad by leading prayers at the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, and in his early forties Sheikh Kafi presided over a network of religious institutes and enjoyed a sizable following among the people. The traffic pileup that claimed his life on Friday, July 21, and injured his wife and five children was an accident, but Khomeini’s agents were quick to spread the legend that Parviz Sabeti’s men had rammed their car off the road. The death in London of a second respected cleric, Ayatollah Molla Ali Hamadani, only added to the Shah’s woes. The passing of these two mullahs ensured that Shia mosques would be packed with memorial services through the holy month of Ramadan, set to begin on Saturday, August 5. Two other calendar events loomed as major tests for the security forces. This year the first day of Ramadan also happened to fall on Constitution Day, the national holiday that served as a reminder of how far Iran had strayed from the democratic ideals of the 1906 revolution. The twenty-fifth anniversary of Mossadeq’s ouster, National Uprising Day, fell on August 19 and promised to be another flash point for royalists and republicans.

  Among the thousands of mourners who thron
ged the streets around Mashad’s main shrine for Sheikh Kafi’s funeral procession on Saturday, July 22, were young knife-brandishing provocateurs loyal to Khomeini who began chanting antiregime slogans. They leaped from the crowd and slashed police officers, butchering one on the spot and wounding seven others, and triggered street brawls with the security forces that lasted through the day. One week after the Sheikh’s death, mourners in southern Tehran blocked traffic, smashed bank windows with bricks and rocks, and attacked the headquarters of the Boy Scouts. Buses ferrying American workers in Isfahan were stoned. Even as King Hussein of Jordan presented his new bride, Lisa Halaby, to the King and Queen, who were in residence at Nowshahr, riot police in the capital teargassed demonstrators who converged along Amireh Avenue. In Qom, a police officer was blown up when he caught a device thrown from a passing car that turned out to be a live grenade. Rioters in Shiraz assaulted banks, cinemas, and the Iran-America Society building. Mobs ran wild in Kashan, Hamadan, Rafsanjan, Behbehan, and Jahrom, setting fires and attacking public buildings and businesses owned by religious minorities. By the end of the weekend the authorities counted at least six deaths and had made three hundred arrests.

  Khomeini’s agents staged the latest provocations to reinvigorate a protest movement that had petered out eight weeks earlier. “The relative calm evidently did not sit too well with the monarch’s more extreme opponents,” reported the U.S. Department of Defense. “Followers of the exiled-Khomeini appeared to have been behind much of the violence, or at least exploited the genuine commemorations of the religious majority. Other cities also reported some incidents, which apparently were perpetrated by religious extremists.”

  The tempo of religious dissent sharply accelerated on the eve of Ramadan. From sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan observant Muslims deprived themselves of food, liquids, and sexual relations to cleanse their minds and bodies. The mosques were more packed than usual, and evening meals were a time for families and neighbors to come together. In their elevated spiritual state the devout were more likely to listen to and act on the urgings of Khomeini’s agents. “The preachers took advantage of Ramadan,” explained the young revolutionary Ali Hossein. Since staging the attack on the cafeteria at the University of Tehran he had risen to become a close aide to Ayatollah Rasti Kashani, Khomeini’s representative in Qom. “The people were high. There was fasting. The companions of Khomeini and the preachers held gatherings throughout the country, and intellectuals and young people propagated in favor of an Islamic government.” From the pulpit, the Shah was indirectly compared to Yazid, the treacherous villain who had assassinated Imam Husayn at Karbala. “Khomeini made use of this point to the maximum extent,” said Ali Hossein. “He used the mourning ceremonies to ask preachers to talk about this interpretation of the uprising and provoke people. The preachers told their congregations but in a way that did not mention the Shah by name but made it obvious he was Yazid in their eyes.”