The Queen ignored the prime minister’s protests and flew to the disaster zone in the back of a C-130 transport plane. Arriving to scenes of utter devastation, she bore the brunt of angry survivors who demanded faster action from the government. Farah also had to contend with yet another false rumor spread by the mullahs, this one blaming her husband for causing the earthquake by reportedly allowing the American military to conduct a nuclear test in the desert. Once again, Khomeini’s men were spreading lies and conspiracy theories. “Dig out the dead!” voices in the crowd called out. “Dig out the dead!” She drove through the wrecked streets of Tabas in an open car to survey the damage and a young man hurled himself forward. “Don’t go sightseeing!” he accused her. “Go pull out the bodies of my family!” Onlookers reported that the Queen “sat motionless, looking as if she might burst into tears at any moment.” Later, she wept, stunned by the scale of human suffering and distraught at her treatment.
Two days later it was her husband’s turn, but as had happened at other critical times in his reign the Shah’s mere presence was enough to turn the crowds. “They gave him the sort of treatment that in the West is normally reserved for rock stars,” reported one thoroughly impressed British correspondent who accompanied him. Hundreds pressed around him cheering, “Shahanshah!” Survivors broke through the security cordon and threw themselves at his feet, kissing his shoes and hands and beseeching his help. “I do not want anything from you my dear father,” wept one woman who had lost her child. “I lost everything I had. But please enlarge the photograph of my eighteen-year-old son Khodabaksh.” The most touching scene involved a twelve-year-old boy who had lost his parents and family. He pushed his way through the crowd and begged the Shah to help him continue his studies. “I’ve always been the top student in my class,” he earnestly explained and pulled out his report cards to prove it. The Shah gravely shook his hand, quietly listened to his story, and turning to Khorassan governor-general Seraj Hejazi instructed that the boy be given a scholarship to complete his studies. He asked the authorities to compile a list of all children orphaned by the disaster so they could continue with their schooling. He turned to address the crowd, promising to do his utmost to rebuild their town and passing on the condolences of his son Reza, who was at pilot training school in Texas.
The Shah returned from Tabas to learn that Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari had publicly declared that he would not negotiate with the Imperial Court or the government over his demand that they move quickly to implement the 1906 Constitution, which guaranteed the ulama veto power over parliamentary legislation. “There is nothing to talk about,” he told a small assembly of foreign correspondents who made the trek to Qom. “The government knows our views and our demands. Our demands are simply stated. We want a national government for the nation.” He refused to either endorse or oppose the overthrow of the monarchy. “History and the Iranian people alone, not I, will decide. There is fire in the hearts of the people.”
Foreign observers interpreted Shariatmadari’s threat as a sign that the ulama were united in their opposition to the Shah. But Khomeini despised the 1906 Constitution as a form of liberal mongrelism and had already threatened Shariatmadari for defending it. By declaring that the Constitution was nonnegotiable, Shariatmadari was trying to stay ahead of the crowds while signaling the Shah that there was still time to reach a settlement.
* * *
SENIOR ARMY OFFICERS were distraught that their men were under orders to avoid the use of force even though they faced near-constant harassment in the streets. The troops also made a convenient target for professionally trained terrorists. In Tabriz on Friday morning, September 15, three men wearing military uniforms opened fire on an army unit in the Shams Tabrizi district. In the ensuing hour-long gun battle six soldiers, one civilian, and two gunmen were killed. Several civilians were wounded and rushed to area hospitals in the city. The attackers were remarkably confident and brazen. According to eyewitness reports, “after the initial ambush, the terrorists took up position on the corners of Shams Tabrizi and Seqatoleslam Avenues and continued to fire at the patrol.”
During this unsettled period, Imperial Court official Kambiz Atabai and his good friend General Manuchehr Khosrodad paid a visit to General Hossein Fardust. Khosrodad was worried about army morale and suggested to Kambiz that they “go and see Fardust for a talk.” Atabai did not want to join him. Like many others at court, he considered Fardust to be “not a pleasant man. He used to be invited to all the private parties at the palace. He would speak with very few people. People tended to avoid socializing with him. He had an aura of menace about him and no charisma. He kept to himself.” Fardust’s behavior over the past twelve months had already raised eyebrows. He no longer held regular audiences with the Shah and the two men corresponded only by briefcase though no one, not even the Queen, knew why. “They did not have face-to-face meetings,” Atabai recalled. “This was unusual.”
Atabai and Khosrodad arrived at Fardust’s office at about five in the afternoon. For the next four hours, Fardust subjected the two younger men to a lecture on the Shah’s faults. He said he had disrespected the Constitution and tolerated corruption for too many years. “I’ve given all the reports [on corruption] to the Shah,” he told them, “but it’s too late, too late. He cannot hide under the umbrella of the Constitution.” Fardust dismissed Sharif-Emami as “the boy.” “I have all these files on corruption and I have given them to [Minister of the Interior] General Gharabaghi and said, ‘Give them to the boy.’”
Atabai and Khosrodad were shocked by what they heard. “Because when Fardust spoke it was like the Shah spoke. He had a lot of influence with the other generals. We didn’t go to the Shah because we knew that if we told him he would call Fardust while we were in the room and say, ‘Is it true that you said these things…’ and he would have never believed them.”
* * *
ON A STILL warm night in September several men in plainclothes crept quietly through the back streets of Qom until they made their way to the home of Ayatollah Kashani. Their rapping at the door drew the attention of Ali Hossein, who served as the Ayatollah’s aide, courier, and organizer in the religious underground. One of the men introduced himself as a general and his friends as midranking officers in the Imperial Army. He asked if they could come inside and talk to Kashani in private. “I was allowed to stay,” said Hossein, who witnessed the remarkable exchange that followed.
The men told their story. Following Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s declaration of a fatwa in August calling on army officers to desert, the officers had formed their own revolutionary cell. “We have left [the army] but our friends are still there and they have access to guns and they are under our supervision. What should we do? Should we stay and provide weapons for the revolutionary people or leave?”
Kashani urged them to return to their base. “Leave,” he told them. “We have enough weapons now.”
“We are ready to join the armed groups,” they replied.
“We do not need you yet,” said Kashani.
The men explained, “The nation spent too much money on us to train. We want to fight for the nation.”
“You will still be martyrs, you are on the right path. We have members of the armed forces in our groups.”
The officers returned to the army and began carrying out a sabotage operation. They quietly disobeyed orders and caused the maximum disruption possible to martial law ordinances. They stockpiled weapons and gathered recruits to prepare for the final offensive against the monarchy. Hossein recalled that there were others in government and the military “who had relations with the revolutionary people. We had people inside the army and Savak before the revolution. They were against the Shah and they provided intelligence to the revolutionary cells.”
The Imperial Iranian Army was a central pillar of the Pahlavi state. The decision by the officers to commit treason against their commander in chief was the most tangible sign yet that the regime had started to i
mplode. They realized that Jaleh Square had sullied their reputation and compromised their integrity in the eyes of many Iranians, who now viewed them as an occupying force rather than as defenders of the realm.
* * *
ALI KANI LISTENED as Saudi Crown Prince Fahd told him what he thought had happened to Musa Sadr in Libya. “Gadhafi arrested him,” he explained. “For the sake of [PLO leader] Arafat.” The Saudis concluded that Arafat had appealed to Gadhafi to eliminate Musa Sadr because he was hurting the Palestinian cause in Lebanon.
From Riyadh, Kani flew to Jordan, where King Hussein told him the same thing. His final stop on his regional tour was to Egypt. President Anwar Sadat had wrapped up the Camp David peace talks with a historic peace deal with Israel’s prime minister, Menachem Begin. Sadat asked Kani to meet him in Alexandria instead of Cairo. Kani explained “what His Majesty the King of Iran would like to know” about the strange disappearance of Musa Sadr. Did His Excellency have any information?
“You know, Gadhafi is a madman, a criminal, a foolish man,” Sadat told his Iranian guest. “That is why we have intelligence in Libya. My agents sent me a secret telegram: ‘Gadhafi has killed Musa Sadr.’ Yesterday, the chief of [Great Britain’s] MI6 visited me for two hours and he told me the same thing.”
On hearing this, Kani grasped his head and lurched forward in his chair.
“What is the matter with you?” Sadat asked with sympathy.
“Since childhood I have loved Musa Sadr like a brother,” Kani exclaimed.
“I am awfully sorry to give you such bad news,” said Sadat. “And you tell my brother in Tehran that unfortunately Musa Sadr no longer exists.” The president added the horrific detail that Gadhafi had placed Musa Sadr’s body in a box, sealed it in concrete, and dropped it from a helicopter into the Mediterranean.
Ali Kani now had the grim task of returning to Tehran to convey the news of Musa Sadr’s death to the Shah, who was anxiously awaiting his report.
When Kani arrived at Niavaran he was ushered straight into the Shah’s presence. “When I returned and relayed the news to His Majesty he was very touched,” Kani remembered. “He was very, very upset. He sat in his chair for ten minutes.”
The Shah was bereft. He had looked to the Imam as his last and best hope for mobilizing the moderate ulama and their followers against the extremist minority who espoused Khomeini’s velayat-e faqih and a religious takeover of the state. Grand Ayatollahs Shariatmadari and Khoi had also counted on Musa Sadr to return to Iran, enter the fray, and address public concerns about the need to reconcile faith with modernity. Now Musa Sadr was dead, and the Shah’s hope for a moderate religious bloc against Khomeini’s power grab collapsed. He faced the deluge alone.
The Shah always operated at two levels, the public and the private, and his next move was characteristic of a ruler whose life had been spent in a veil of intrigue, suspicion, and mistrust. Though in private he accepted that Musa Sadr was dead, to the Iranian media he expressed concern for the cleric’s whereabouts and announced he was sending an envoy, Fereydoun Movassaghi, to the region to meet with the king of Jordan and the president of Syria. The Custodian of the Shia Faith explained that he had “every right to interfere in this question as the Imam is an Iranian citizen and the spiritual leader of a million Lebanese Muslims Shiites.” The Shah was well aware that Khomeini’s agents were behind the smear that he was responsible for Musa Sadr’s disappearance. By sending Movassaghi to the region he hoped to reassure the ulama in Qom that he was doing everything possible to find Musa Sadr. He also hoped to flush out from the woodwork anyone who might know something about the exact circumstances of Musa Sadr’s kidnap and murder.
Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari refused to accept that Musa Sadr was dead. “We are convinced Gadhafi is holding Imam Sadr,” an unnamed “clergy source” presumed to be Iran’s senior marja told reporters on September 22. He said he believed Musa Sadr was being held captive in a prison outside Tripoli and added that the behavior of Yasser Arafat was suspect. Investigators from Qom were sent to Libya and Italy to join the hunt.
* * *
IN THE AFTERMATH of Jaleh Square, Carter administration officials scrambled to assess the Shah’s prospects for survival and build relations with the men trying to depose him. Remarkably, White House officials were still in the dark about Ambassador Sullivan’s aggressive yearlong effort to cultivate Mehdi Bazargan and other senior figures in the National Front and Liberation Movement of Iran. The Shah, who was aware of the ambassador’s overtures, became convinced that the White House was involved in a conspiracy to oust him. Bureaucratic dysfunction extended to intelligence sharing and analysis. Carter’s National Security Council was unaware of CIA intelligence that documented the flow of Palestinian and Libyan money and arms to Khomeini. Though Khomeini’s anti-American and anti-Jewish tirades were a matter of public record, Sullivan’s embassy made no effort to obtain copies of the audiocassettes that were for sale on street corners and in the main bazaar. U.S. officials had still not initiated a study of the role of religion in the unrest or how the mosques and marjas had historically acted as vehicles for protest and change in Iran.
Carter, Secretary of State Vance, and National Security Adviser Brzezinski still remained focused on the Camp David peace accords. They were presumably assured by the latest State Department intelligence estimate that concluded the Pahlavi regime “has a better than even chance of surviving the present difficulties, and the Shah will probably be able to maintain his position through the early 1980s.”
Into the decision-making vacuum stepped lower-tier officials such as Henry Precht, the State Department’s Iran desk officer who harbored a visceral dislike for the Shah and the Pahlavi regime. Precht made contact with Ibrahim Yazdi, a Khomeini loyalist, who raised funds, organized anti-Shah student protests, and published human rights propaganda from his medical practice in Texas. Precht’s contempt for the Shah influenced the way he drafted reports and even the talking points Carter relied on during his September 8 telephone conversation with the Shah. Though Precht later explained that his actions were motivated by the hope for a “peaceful accommodation between the Shah and his opponents,” he conceded that at the time he “did not have a real sense of Khomeini. We knew who Khomeini was. We knew he’d been strongly anti-Shah, but knew nothing about his views.” He knew even less about Yazdi. “We didn’t really know anything about him. I don’t think we knew Yazdi was a US citizen. We had no idea what would happen or who would replace the Shah. We didn’t know the Shah was desperately ill. We did no analysis of how the older National Front and Liberation Movement leaders would fill the vacuum. My impression at that time was that Ayatollah Khomeini wanted to set up a secular government, so the front group would be Bazargan, Yazdi, Ghotzbadegh and the clerics would be in the background.” Precht believed the successor regime to the Pahlavis would be leftist and nationalist but not overtly Islamic.
U.S. officials were developing policy based on little more than hunches, imperfect intelligence, and their own personal prejudices and grudges. There was especially acute distrust between the State Department and Sullivan’s embassy. Officials in Washington complained that diplomats in Tehran were not providing them with accurate reports. Meanwhile, Sullivan’s political counselors suspected Henry Precht’s intentions. George Lambrakis complained that Precht “may have taken my reporting and embroidered it,” and he wondered why key information was not passed from the Iran desk to Gary Sick at the White House. Precht, for his part, considered Lambrakis “astute” but said he “wasn’t impressed” with the quality of John Stempel’s political reporting. John Stempel recalled that Secretary Vance “was really pissed off with my reporting” but he saved his biggest criticism for Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, whom he described as a “little creepy son of a bitch.” Still, everyone could agree with Lambrakis’s assessment of the CIA: “They were of no help at all.”
The Shah and his officials were puzzled and alarmed by American behavi
or. At the opening of the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, October 3, Foreign Minister Amir Khosrow Afshar complained to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance that rumors were circulating in Tehran “of U.S. support for the Iranian opposition. He noted that since the U.S. embassy maintained contacts with the National Front and [former Prime Minister Ali] Amini, there were those who believed the embassy was supporting the opposition.”
Vance and his aides finally admitted that U.S. diplomats “did have occasional low-level conversations with certain individuals associated with the opposition, but this did not imply support and it was conducted very discreetly. They were unaware of any contact with Amini.”
Afshar warned of “the danger that such meetings might be misinterpreted.”
Vance assured the minister that “it was clearly not US policy to support the Shah’s opposition and asked if there was anything further we could do to demonstrate support for Iran or to be helpful in these difficult circumstances.” The secretary conceded to Afshar that based on his “limited information … the degree of organization in recent Iranian demonstrations indicated to us some organizing hand, possibly the Soviets, had played a part.”
The Fall of Heaven Page 54
