The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  The Shah’s accusations of betrayal so appalled U.S. officials back in Washington that they decided to have their ally evaluated for evidence of emotional problems and possibly a mental disorder. Three years earlier the CIA had concluded that the Shah’s refusal to bend on oil prices was probably related to feelings of sexual inadequacy and an inferiority complex toward his father. Now they wondered if his reluctance to call out the army had similar psychosexual roots. Henry Precht informed Embassy Tehran that the CIA’s Dr. Jerrold Post, MD, planned to update the agency’s psychological profile of the Shah and begin a new study of Crown Prince Reza. Post’s task was to answer six key questions. First, were the Shah’s “depressive episodes ever so severe as to significantly interfere with his leadership? Did they seem disproportionate to the circumstances or were they rather appropriate discouragement or frustration in the face of severe political problems? What happens to his decision-making at these times—does he ever become paralyzed with indecision, tend to delegate to others decisions he might otherwise make himself?” Second, how did he “pull himself out of these downs”?

  Third, the CIA wanted to learn more about Queen Farah’s influence “and the degree to which he relies on her.” Fourth, the Shah had talked about eventually transferring power to his son. Did he believe he was slipping behind schedule for the handover? Fifth, did he expect external military support, presumably from the United States, “during this period of internal unrest”? Sixth, the Shah’s plans to liberalize Iran “have been well delineated for many years” yet he still complained about U.S. pressure to reform: “Please discuss your views of the imbalance between the Shah’s own concepts he hopes to implement and reluctant compliance to external pressure.”

  While the Americans dissected the Shah’s childhood and undermined each other, the situation in Iran took an ominous turn for the worse. In the lead-up to the forty-day Rex Cinema mourning observances a rash of strikes erupted in the southern oil fields.

  * * *

  THE SHAH HAD predicted that martial law would only push opposition to his regime underground, leading to terrorism, strikes, and civil disobedience. While Khomeini’s followers held back to avoid provoking the army, their putative allies in the Communist Tudeh Party took the lead in organizing strikes designed to force concessions and cripple the economy. On September 24, oil workers in Khuzestan Province walked off the job, demanding higher pay. Drilling operations were suspended, and the workshop at the main Abadan oil refinery was shut down. Strikes quickly spread to the banking and telecommunication sectors.

  The strikers were also reacting to reports that the Iraqi government, acting at the behest of Tehran, had placed Grand Ayatollah Khomeini under house arrest. Saddam Hussein had his own reasons for trying to neutralize the Marja, whose crusade to collapse the Pahlavi regime was spreading fear and hope throughout a region riven by religious, sectarian, and ethnic rivalries. Khomeini had emerged as the face of an Islamic resurgence, and young Shia and Sunni alike responded with fervor to his call for a single Islamic state to replace socialist republics, military dictatorships, and conservative monarchies. The Iraqis relented on September 25 in response to a plea from the Shah to lift house arrest but Khomeini refused to accept new rules that placed restrictions on his ability to engage in politics and issue public proclamations. He preferred to leave Iraq but stay in the region and tried to move across the border to Kuwait. Nervous Kuwait authorities blocked his entry and he remained in legal limbo. The drama at the Iraq-Kuwait border plunged his followers in Iran into a frenzy. He returned to Najaf while Abolhassan Banisadr and Sadegh Ghotzbadegh applied for temporary visas for entry into France, where they were based.

  Anxious to stop the Khuzestan strike before it led to a shutdown of the entire oil sector, Sharif-Emami’s government approved higher salaries and subsidies for workers in the oil, banking, and telecommunication sectors. These concessions inspired a wave of copycat strikes that shut down hospitals, high schools, the postal service, steel plants, and the civil service. “In the spirit of accommodation, the government has speedily given in to almost all economic demands with the result that wages have virtually doubled in many areas and more civil servants are going on strike to get similar benefits,” the U.S. embassy reported. “The wage increases to civil servants will likely be followed by increases to employees of private companies.” The strategy of the Sharif-Emami government “is to negotiate quietly with the bloc of moderate religious leaders and opposition politicians and meanwhile contain the disturbances in the hope that such a deal will isolate troublemakers who come from more extremist groups. By attempting to placate various segments of the nation with the quick fix—such as the large pay raises, the ill-considered pieces of legislation, etc.—the Government of Iran has unwittingly contributed to stirring up a number of other hornets’ nests.”

  Encouraged by the regime’s surrender to labor, and aware that public anger over Rex Cinema and Jaleh Square was still running high, on Sunday, October 1, Khomeini’s agents unleashed a new wave of attacks and riots in the cities of Kermanshah, Hamadan, and Daroud and six other towns not covered by the martial law ordinance. By now street marches in cities such as Dezful numbered in the tens of thousands. After months of sitting on the sidelines the Iranian public was stirring but not in the direction the government or the Shah hoped. The strikes had even brought middle-class professionals out onto the streets. This time, emboldened by the experience, their mobilization threatened to collapse another central pillar of support for the Pahlavi regime.

  If the Shah was to survive he would have to rally his supporters like President Charles de Gaulle of France, who had faced down a popular revolt in 1968. De Gaulle had appealed to French patriotism and against the odds managed to turn the tide. The Shah’s appearances in recent days at Tabas and Mashad, and the Queen’s forays into southern Tehran and the provinces, suggested the Pahlavis could still draw on a deep wellspring of support from key groups, including the military, moderate ulama, middle- and upper-middle-class conservatives, farmers, factory workers, and millions of poorer observant Iranians who did not subscribe to Khomeini’s fundamentalist view of Islam and Sharia law. Many liberals and leftists who otherwise opposed the monarchy now trembled at the prospect of rule under the mullahs. If the Shah intended to mobilize these disparate groups he would first have to give them a reason to stay and fight. The message he sent at the state opening of the new parliamentary session on Friday, October 6, was not what they wanted to hear. He continued to insist that more and not less liberalization was the answer to unrest. His own supporters interpreted the speech as a sign of surrender, while intellectuals, students, and the left sneered that the Shah was simply trying to placate the crowds before he launched a bloody crackdown to save his throne. “Whatever the regime said, people believed the opposite,” said Ali Hossein. “We saw liberalization as weakness.”

  The Shah’s speech failed to draw the sting. Clashes erupted the next day in the Caspian towns of Babol and Amol, where protesters set fires, attacked banks and public buildings, and battled police and the army. Shots were fired and several people were killed, among them a woman who tried to offer shelter to students fleeing the police. Thoroughly dejected by events, the Shah hinted to his advisers that he was thinking about leaving the country for a while to “recuperate.” They had heard the same talk before, in 1953. “I became aware in the second week of October,” said Reza Ghotbi. “I went to see [Minister of State for Executive Affairs] Manuchehr Azmun and he said somehow that the King is going to leave, or he suggested maybe if the King left we can bring calm to the country. That afternoon I went to the court to see if the King can receive me for a few minutes. And he did. I told him there was a rumor he was leaving, or a suggestion that if he did it would bring calm. ‘Sire, I just met [so-and-so] who told me Your Majesty has probably decided to leave the country. People like me are ready to take up arms to defend you. But if you are not here, I don’t know how many of us will defend this building. If you l
eave it will be the end of Iran. People will defend you but not the government.’”

  “It’s interesting you say that,” replied the Shah, “because just before you General Azhari was here and he said the same thing.”

  Ghotbi interpreted his response to mean that “he will not leave the country in chaos, but he will leave the country when the chaos has ended. Maybe he was trying to comfort me. I think he had given thought that he would leave if he couldn’t calm the country. I don’t think he had plans at that time to abdicate. He was disillusioned but still engaged.”

  Lebanon’s ambassador Khalil al-Khalil resigned his post. He had long since concluded that the Shah’s reluctance to use force meant the Pahlavi Dynasty was finished. Before leaving he paid one final visit to the Shah, at Saadabad. “The Shah hardly spoke,” he said. “When I said I hope things would get better he only smiled.”

  * * *

  ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 8, Ambassador William Sullivan sent an urgent classified telegram to Washington warning that Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his entourage were likely to apply for visas to enter the United States. Two days earlier the Marja had flown to Paris with his son Ahmad after a humiliating twenty-four hours spent in limbo on Iraq’s border with Kuwait, where they were denied entry. Thanks to the quick thinking of Abolhassan Banisadr, who lived in Paris, Khomeini secured a three-month visa to enter France. But Khomeini’s advisers apparently had their eyes on another destination. “Source with good access to religious circles tells us that a number of people around Ayatollah Khomeini have been urging him to go to U.S. as a way of publicizing opposition cause where it will do even more good than in Paris,” said Sullivan. “One reason Khomeini has gone to Paris (apart from presence of many Iranian opposition representatives) is said to be because French government has been ‘hard’ on Iranian students there. Khomeini is to try to influence parliamentarians and other prominent Frenchmen to go easier on students.”

  Khomeini spent his first few days in Paris living in Banisadr’s apartment before he moved to a more spacious rented home in the suburb of Neauphle-le-Château. Banisadr and two colleagues, the voluble Sadegh Ghotzbadegh, who maintained relations with Gadhafi, Arafat, and the armed groups, and Ibrahim Yazdi, the Houston-based fund-raiser and student organizer, assumed the role of campaign advisers. They screened Khomeini’s visitors, handled media requests for interviews, and made sure their “candidate” stayed “on message.” The talk of moving to New York was set aside as hundreds of news reporters from around the world and thousands of admirers converged on Khomeini’s château. On French soil the Marja, who had lingered in exile for fourteen years, became an international celebrity.

  Westerners were fascinated with the mysterious old man, who appeared like a mirage out of the Arabian desert with his flowing beard and black eyes to regale them with tales of the bestial Pahlavis. News reporters hung on Khomeini’s every word, though as Banisadr later freely admitted very few of them were actually his own. In his first press interview, Khomeini spoke at length about his idea to turn Iran into a Muslim theocracy and administer Sharia justice. The Frenchman interviewing Khomeini did not speak Persian, and Banisadr deliberately mistranslated to avoid a scandal. When the reporter left he advised Khomeini that “if you don’t want to become a permanent exile you have to forget about your book. He accepted that. The proof is what he said in Paris.” Khomeini was already an expert dissembler, and he agreed to avoid controversial subjects and follow the talking points provided by Banisadr’s committee of public relations experts, which emphasized democracy, elections, and women’s rights. When Banisadr asked him, “What is an Islamic republic?” Khomeini carefully replied, “It will be like the French republic.” Remarks like this delighted American and European intellectuals who acclaimed Khomeini as an enlightened revolutionary in the tradition of George Washington and Mahatma Gandhi.

  While Khomeini settled into his new surroundings in Paris, Banisadr was curious to learn more about Musa Sadr’s fate. He phoned Yasser Arafat, and the PLO chief provided him with a new twist on the mystery. According to Arafat, Gadhafi had told him that during their meeting in Tripoli Musa Sadr became so upset during their conversation that he threatened to leave. Gadhafi said he left the room and ordered his security guards to “calm him down” or “do whatever it takes to get him to stop doing whatever he is doing. His idea was that they either bribe him or scare him. But his intelligence people took this as an order to kill him.”

  When Gadhafi returned he asked after Musa Sadr. His men told him, “He’s gone.”

  “You mean he’s left?” asked Gadhafi. “He’s gone?”

  “No, we killed him,” they answered.

  According to the version of events propagated by Arafat, the murder of Musa Sadr had been Gadhafi’s fault, a terrible mistake, and the result of a simple miscommunication.

  22

  TEHRAN IS BURNING

  There is nothing I or anyone else can do about it.

  —THE SHAH

  I have the feeling there is no hope anymore.

  —QUEEN FARAH

  The tempo of unrest picked up again in mid-October with strikes closing schools, the Aryamehr steel mill in Isfahan, the Behshahr industrial complex, and the Sarcheshmeh copper works. Large crowds gathered to challenge martial law. Mujahedin gunmen attacked the Iraqi consulate in the port city of Khorramshahr, in apparent retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s decision to expel Khomeini. Tehran’s northern hills began emptying out and every day the classified pages in daily newspapers were filled with property listings and fire sales. By late October, capital worth $50 million was leaving Iran each day, a total of $3 billion since Jaleh Square, and the social season consisted of one maudlin farewell party after another as old friends and familiar faces took their leave. In a single week the ambassadors of Austria, Algeria, Japan, and Pakistan departed. Envoys from the Nordic countries stayed on, but sent out their wives and children. The departure of popular television host Richard Mayhew Smith, whose Thursday afternoon program Window on Iran had entertained and enlightened for many years, drew a big crowd that included the British and New Zealand ambassadors. Mayhew Smith put on a brave face, blaming his decision to leave on a contractual dispute with his employer and declaring before a skeptical audience that he wouldn’t “rule out returning one day.” There were emotional scenes at the farewell reception for Jean-Claude Andrieux, the well-liked general manager of the Hilton Hotel. “Thank heavens we’re leaving at four in the morning,” said his wife, Therese, “otherwise my husband just wouldn’t be able to face his colleagues without tears.” Longtime Austrian resident Carl Hohenegger was more forthright at his farewell: “Iran isn’t the Iran it used to be.”

  Fearing the collapse of martial law, a shadowy group of military officers and government officials considered scotching Operation Kach in favor of a full-scale coup that would send the Shah, Queen Farah, and their children out of the country and into permanent exile. Their provisional military government then would lead the nation into elections scheduled for 1979. Rather than tolerate an Islamist state, they also decided that if Khomeini’s bid for power was successful they would pull the army back to Abadan in the south and if need be let mobs burn Tehran to the ground. The generals would form a rebel military government, seize the southern oil fields to cut fuel supplies and revenues to the capital, and from there fight their way north and launch an assault against Tehran—they preferred civil war to an Islamic state. That these scenarios were under discussion in mid-October showed the level of fear and anxiety within the senior ranks of the armed forces. The panic extended to Qom, where moderate clerics predicted a bloodbath if Khomeini ever returned to Iran. They knew him, they knew his ambitions, and they knew what he was capable of if he ever gained power.

  Ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi began shuttling back and forth between Washington and Tehran in an attempt to rally the royalist cause. Late one night he drove down to Qom for a secret rendezvous with Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, arriving at ab
out two in the morning to evade Khomeini’s agents, who had placed the Marja under surveillance. Shariatmadari was beside himself with worry. “He was nervous and scared of his surroundings,” recalled Zahedi. Moderate clerics were subjected to physical assaults and threats from gangs of young Islamist storm troopers. Zahedi told Shariatmadari he needed his help—the Shah was talking about leaving Iran. “Please call the Shah and say, ‘Don’t leave,’” he pleaded. The next day Shariatmadari phoned the palace and begged the Shah not to leave. Zahedi also reached out to Grand Ayatollah Khoi in Najaf, who sent him a gold ring to give to the Shah with the message, “Have courage.”

  Shariatmadari urged rebellious oil workers to ignore Khomeini’s summons to strike and stay on the job. Unsure which marja to follow, the workers sent a delegation to Qom. Shariatmadari repeated his injunction for the men to remain at their posts. From there they went to the home of Ayatollah Kashani, where they were let in by Ali Hossein. “They asked about the strike and their duty and should they continue,” he said. “It was a very important strike. The Shah could not export [oil]. Khomeini had also ordered people not to pay their power and water bills. They wanted to know Khomeini’s opinion about the strike. Was it compulsory to strike or not? Shariatmadari had told the workers it was forbidden to continue and the strike must stop. Now they wanted to know Khomeini’s view.”

  Ayatollah Kashani opened his remarks by lauding Shariatmadari as a great marja. Then he asked the workers, “Who is the leader of the movement in Iran?”

  They responded, “Imam Khomeini.”

  Kashani asked them a second question. “If there is a movement and there is some effort related to that movement, should you ask the leader or the one who is not the leader? You made a mistake. Shariatmadari is not the leader. You should not refer to him. He has no role. Therefore, the real authority in this struggle is Ayatollah Khomeini and I am going to convey his message to the laborers and engineers: ‘It is your compulsory duty to continue the strike. And after a while you will become victorious.’” The delegation left and relayed Kashani’s message to the striking oil workers. Iranian oil production collapsed by two thirds in the last week of October to less than two million barrels per day, a daily loss of $60 million in oil revenues. “Iran’s oil supplies are the regime’s jugular vein,” observed a senior Western diplomat. “To cut these supplies is to cut the Shah’s throat.”