The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

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  IRAN WAS AT war on two fronts. The first, between the Shah and Khomeini, was over which leader would wield ultimate political power in Iran. The second, between Khomeini and Shariatmadari, would decide the future of the Shia faith. Since 1906, tension had always existed between the ulama’s majority “constitutionalists” and minority “rejectionists.” Over the past several years the “rejectionists” had won the hearts and minds of younger clerics, whose energy and enthusiasm began to overwhelm the “constitutionalists.” If Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari was to prevail in this contest he would have to show his supporters that moderation could yield results, which in turn meant the Shah would have to pledge to respect and enforce the Constitution.

  If the Shah was slow to act it was because just eight weeks earlier he had been feted in Mashad by senior clergy and acclaimed by vast crowds. Meanwhile, the dwindling of religious unrest in late May had restored the illusion of normalcy. Convinced that the worst had passed and that enough steam had been let out of the system, he saw no need to hurry along the dialogue with Shariatmadari or announce new reforms. He groaned when Hushang Nahavandi flew up to Nowshahr to deliver the Marja’s latest list of complaints and demands. “Oh, that old man!” the Shah said with a sigh. “Of course, you’ll have to keep on going to see him.” He was too insensitive to the pressures weighing on Shariatmadari. In early August Khomeini used Ramadan as a cover to step up his campaign to isolate, discredit, and smash Qom’s moderates. As a pretext he cited a recent interview Shariatmadari gave to a French publication in which he criticized the use of violence to achieve political goals and expressed support for the 1906 Constitution. “Within [the] past few days Ayatollah Khomeini sent Shariatmadari a message to stop talking about a constitution and parliament since Khomeini opposed them all,” reported the U.S. embassy. The contempt was mutual. “Source who has been involved in government/religious discussions tells us Shariatmadari sent Khomeini a ‘put up or shut up’ message to effect that if Khomeini was so strong, he should come to Tehran and speak face to face with the ayatollahs who live in Iran. Shariatmadari noted Khomeini lived far away in Iraq and had refused to criticize Iraqi government when it took severe action against demonstrators in Najaf about two years ago.”

  The Shah was not entirely to blame for inaction. For months he had held out for some form of acknowledgment from Shariatmadari that he was making a sincere effort to open up the political system and reform the government and the Imperial Court. The Marja’s defenders argued that to do so would violate Iran’s church-state divide, which the Shah had enforced with such enthusiasm. The role of the clergy, they reminded the palace, was to reflect and not shape public opinion, and so the marjas were duty-bound to keep their silence. “My father was not pro-monarchy or anti-monarchy,” explained Hassan Shariatmadari, who served as his father’s private secretary. “He saw the ulama as the voice of the people—we do not involve ourselves in politics.” Still, by late July the Marja’s preferred list of demands extended to sacking not only the prime minister but the entire cabinet, silencing Princess Ashraf, and firing the Shah’s personal physician—General Ayadi was a Baha’i whose faith singled him out in the eyes of the clergy as an apostate. Speaking to Nahavandi, Shariatmadari rapped the monarch’s casual attitude toward religion: “I can’t just ring him up and give him a moral lecture, although God knows he needs it; do you dare take this message?”

  Royalists cried foul. They recalled Shariatmadari’s decisive intervention in 1963 when he had orchestrated Khomeini’s elevation to grand ayatollah, and they pointed out that even now the Marja insisted that the Shah give away his powers without offering so much as a public blessing. “Shariatmadari was very weak,” said Ali Kani, one of many establishment figures who begged him to lend public support to the Shah. “One day I went to him and said, ‘Do something.’ The Marja protested to Kani that he was under intense pressure from the militants. “His own students wanted him to do something,” said Kani. “He was nothing.”

  The impasse weakened both leaders and the moderate cause. “The failure of the Shah was that he never agreed to make real reforms,” said Hassan Shariatmadari. “The moderates were losing ground in late 1977 and early ’78. My father urged the Shah to reform. The various middle men sent from the Court to Qom misinterpreted his words. The Shah was too distrustful and showed more interest in international politics than in domestic reform.” The senior marja was especially worried that with the onset of Ramadan the situation in Iran would deteriorate. When Hushang Nahavandi visited Qom at the Shah’s behest he received an earful from his host. “We have a constitution which ought to be honored and applied both in the spirit and the letter, and a Sovereign who ought to act as an impartial judge, completely detached from factional interests,” said Shariatmadari. “Indeed, he’s throwing himself away at the moment; he is terribly exposed.… I am convinced that the time has come for him to take a radical decision, in order to change the course of events. He is still in a position of strength, and the situation can be managed without any appearance of retreat; but, if the King fails to take this decision within the next few weeks, he will lose everything.”

  U.S. diplomats watched as the Shah’s attempt to strike a deal with Shariatmadari faltered. Charlie Naas concluded that the King’s efforts “to come to some sort of arrangement with religious forces have not been successful … the competition between Iranian mullahs for politically religious prominence can have the effect of forcing all mullahs to support their more extreme brethren, however lukewarmly, in any civilian confrontation with security forces.” Privately, Naas and his colleagues suspected sabotage from within the Shah’s inner circle. “The paradigm we were working under in the summer of ’78 was to reach an accommodation with the moderates,” explained John Stempel. “There was some suspicion that someone wasn’t getting the message out. We decided Hossein Fardust wrecked the chances of an accommodation. He felt he had been treated badly by the Shah, treated like a peasant—he wanted to do the Shah in.”

  Regardless of who was to blame, or whether sabotage and high treason were involved, there remained a striking gulf in perceptions between Niavaran and Qom. “Still one finds [Prime Minister Amuzegar] to be relaxed and conciliatory in his spacious office, not ready yet to call for the display of force that might have been expected in this monarchy not so long ago,” Wall Street Journal correspondent Ray Vicker informed his readers on August 2. “He is convinced that dissenters represent only a small minority of this country’s 35 million people.” Ever the loyal technocrat, Amuzegar took his cues from the Shah. “Our problems stem from the fact that we have been making rapid progress toward liberalization without having the institutions necessary for a democratic society,” he said. Amuzegar admitted that the government had been caught flat-footed by events. Remarkably, the Majles had still not passed legislation allowing for peaceful protests, and his prescription for future action was hardly reassuring: “We have convinced ourselves we are moving in the right direction. We must convince the people, and I think we are doing that.”

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  EARLIER IN THE summer, Isfahan consul David McGaffey had warned his colleagues that Isfahan was a tinderbox. The incident that pushed the city over the edge was the disappearance of Ayatollah Jalal Al-Din Taheri, a prominent Isfahan cleric and Khomeini supporter, from his home on the evening of Monday, July 31. His followers accused Savak of detaining their leader, but there was enough confusion initially that McGaffey wondered if the entire incident had been staged by Khomeini’s agents as another pretext to stage a riot. The next day, Ayatollah Taheri’s acolytes seized control of the streets around the main shrine, erected and set ablaze barricades, hurled explosives into banks, and attacked public buildings. The security forces lost control and fired live rounds into the crowd. One American caught up in the violence told diplomats that “one child was hit in the head and died. Others may have been injured and possibly killed as well. Same source saw small groups of police chase some r
ioters into small alleys and return after single shot had been fired.” Isfahan’s American Club was firebombed, an American was shot at on his way to work, and a pipe bomb was thrown over the wall of the U.S. consulate. Mob attacks were carried out against a cinema, restaurant, and businesses either popular with Americans or owned by Jews or Baha’i.

  The return of unrest cast a pall over the holiday atmosphere at Nowshahr, where guests and courtiers quietly passed on the latest grim reports of the unrest to the south. “Every day His Majesty heard on the phone the bad news,” recalled his valet Amir Pourshaja. Too late, the Shah accepted Shariatmadari’s advice that he needed to make a bold gesture if he was to convince Iranian public opinion that his commitment to constitutional rule was genuine.

  On Saturday, August 5, Reza Ghotbi flew to Nowshahr with a film crew from state television to film the Shah’s annual Constitution Day speech, which was broadcast to the nation. Ghotbi read the speech before the taping and was struck by the contrite, defensive tone. “He talked about when he and his father took leadership of the country, how we had more students and universities,” said Ghotbi. “It was a list of accomplishments, mostly material, but also how other countries now respected Iran and treated it as a partner. I said it was somehow apologetic.” Reporters invited to a pre-broadcast briefing were assured by Minister of Information Dariush Homayoun that the Shah “is serious about opening up the system, but plans to do it carefully. Local newsmen were told [the] Shah remains in full control, and plans to loosen up as [the] system shows it can take it. Press was told criticism was all right except of [the] Shah himself and [the] prime minister by name, pending new press law.”

  Millions of Iranians turned on their television sets and radios to hear the Shah promise the most sweeping political reforms in decades. He pledged to hold free and fair parliamentary elections in 1979 and challenged his opponents to test their strength at the ballot box instead of in the streets. He provided the assurance that “in terms of political liberties we will have as much liberty as democratic European nations, and, as in democratic countries, the limits of freedom will be specified.” Peaceful public gatherings would be allowed and freedom of the press and speech regulated by a press code that guaranteed criticism of every institution except the monarchy and the Shia faith. Yet if the Shah expected gratitude for this latest round of reforms he was very much mistaken. Conservatives despised them as concessions to mob rule that made the palace and government appear weak. Leftists, meanwhile, denounced the Shah’s “Father knows best” attitude and dismissed the promise of elections as a cynical gimmick. “They are glad the Shah has given them a weapon to beat him with—the promise of political freedom—but distrust his commitment to specific measures and remain deeply suspicious of his ultimate intentions,” Charlie Naas reported back to Washington. “His public commitment to free elections will keep [the] political pot boiling.” For Khomeini’s followers, the promise of democratic elections was like waving a red flag to a bull. In their eyes the national parliament, the Majles, a holdover from 1906, was the ultimate symbol of Western liberal decadence: only an Islamic legislature was truly capable of representing the people. Sensing that the Shah was on the defensive, Khomeini’s forces launched a wave of arson and sabotage attacks in Tehran and instigated a full-scale insurrection in Isfahan.

  On Thursday, August 10, hundreds of young men fanned out from Pahlavi Square in Isfahan chanting antiregime slogans. They invaded banks, forced out staff and customers, and “proceeded to pour benzine and set the banks on fire.” Police responded with tear gas, firing rounds into the air to disperse demonstrators, but the rioters regrouped, took back the avenues, and tossed bags full of benzine at passing army trucks. In the evening and through the next eighteen hours this most elegant and sophisticated of Iranian cities passed into the hands of the mob. Amid scenes of complete anarchy the barricades went up and cinemas, banks, department stores, and hundreds of private cars and rescue vehicles were set alight. For the first time, small bands of heavily armed men trained in Palestinian terror camps in Lebanon and Yemen engaged the security forces in running gun battles. Five police officers died of bullet wounds, and the streets were turned into deadly crossfire zones. Hospital emergency rooms were jammed with the dead and the dying. With Isfahan on the verge of becoming a second Beirut, the Shah had no choice but to send in the troops. Martial law was declared and a thirty-day curfew imposed. At 8:00 p.m. on Friday evening, with plumes of smoke billowing into the night sky, helicopter gunships clattered overhead and Chieftain tanks rumbled along Isfahan’s broad avenues trailed by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers. But even as calm returned to Isfahan, protesters in Shiraz demonstrated outside the New Mosque, scaling its high towers and hurling projectiles onto police lines below. Other rioters set fire to motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, and cars, turning them into explosives and ramming them through police lines. The security forces opened fire, causing “a number of deaths” and many injuries.

  Foreign tourists were caught up in the drama when several hundred rioters launched an assault on Isfahan’s luxurious Shah Abbas Hotel, running for cover as the mob threw bricks through windows and tossed an incendiary device into the hotel’s fabled Golden Hall, which quickly caught fire. Bruce and Pat Vernor, who eight months earlier had greeted the Pahlavis at Mehrebad Airport, were on a driving tour of the south when they stopped for the night in Shiraz. From the streets outside they heard the pop of firecrackers. The next morning the couple and their daughter Eileen were at the checkout desk and about to set off for Isfahan when they learned that the firecrackers had actually been shots. Bruce was handed a newspaper “that said someone had thrown a firebomb through the window of the Shah Abbas Hotel where we had reservations.” He called ahead and was told it was still safe to travel to Isfahan but to avoid the area around the bazaar, which was surrounded by tanks. A run-in with Iranian soldiers left the family sufficiently shaken up to end the trip early and head back to Tehran. “For us, August was when the trouble began,” said Bruce.

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  ISFAHAN WAS LIKE a distress flare that lit up the night sky. Over the next several days a wave of riots struck major urban centers, including Tehran, Abadan, Ardebil, Kermanshah, Khoramabad, Qazvin, Tabriz, Arsanjan, Arak, Ahwaz, and Qom. “In Babol on the Caspian Sea,” reported Time, “a mob tied to prevent the opening of a touring Italian circus, retreating only after its owner threatened to let loose his lions on the crowd.”

  As the pace of unrest escalated, so too did the level of violence directed at foreigners. On Sunday evening, August 13, a man carrying a black bag walked into the Khansalar Restaurant, a favorite Tehran nightspot for American and European diners. He surveyed the room and strode out back, where the kitchen and bathroom were located. Seconds later, a blast and fireball tore through the building, collapsing walls, hurling debris, and burying patrons beneath rubble. With the lights knocked out, survivors clawed their way to safety amid horrific scenes. “While I was going to help the injured I felt myself walking on something soft,” said one survivor. “I touched it to find that it was an injured woman’s body. You could see men, women, and children panicking and running here and there, trying to find the door out. The bodies of many whose limbs were nearly torn off could be seen lying on the ground with blood and destruction all around.” Another bloodied victim who staggered over twenty bodies to make his escape noticed that “the heads of two of them were split and blood could be seen oozing out.”

  With Ramadan under way, the anniversary of Operation Ajax fast approaching, and mosques gearing up for the birthday celebrations of Imam Ali on August 24–26, August was the month when Shariatmadari’s religious moderates were overwhelmed by Khomeini’s extremists. August was also the hottest month of the year, a time when the streets of northern Tehran’s wealthy enclaves emptied. That meant the men and women who ran the kingdom—the Shah and Shahbanou, the prime minister and his cabinet, senior generals and leading industrialists—were absent during the critical few weeks wh
en Khomeini’s men made their power play. Only too late, the few who remained behind became aware of the southern suburbs rising from the desert floor to start the inevitable advance toward the northern foothills. “August was the crucial time,” recalled an Iranian physician who ventured into southern Tehran during the hot season. “There was a very feverish atmosphere. Preachers were in the mosques giving fiery speeches. Thousands of people attended, some hanging from trees outside mosques and halls. People were excited at the prospect of ‘change.’ That was the cry, ‘We want change.’” “Rhetoric and crowd activity in Tehran” was on the increase as religious leaders prepared to commemorate the death of Imam Ali, the U.S. embassy reported on August 17. “Eyewitness Iranian source tells us there has been almost continual minor upheaval in south Tehran for past seven to ten days. Ayatollahs at major mosques have become more anti-government and in some cases anti-foreign and directly anti-American.” In one incident, demonstrators were chased to the corner of Takht-e Jamshid and Old Shemiran Road, just six blocks from the embassy grounds. The embassy obtained documents linking a prominent Khomeini follower, Ayatollah Yahya Nouri, to a virulent campaign of anti-Semitism. “Even before the inception of Zionism, Jews have never lived in peace and harmony with their neighbors,” Nouri preached. “Due to their transgression and hostility to others they were always rejected by society.” Without naming the Shah, Nouri condemned governments in the region that dealt with Israel, “the aggressive enemy,” and insisted Muslims boycott Coca-Cola, which was “a big Jewish company.” He urged the devout “to avenge Jewish bloodletting in Lebanon by an ‘eye for an eye.’”