The Fall of Heaven

by Andrew Scott Cooper

  Downstairs, courtiers and generals drank tea to celebrate what they assumed was Oveissi’s pending appointment to the premiership. Their fear was that the Shah would appoint another in a line of mild-mannered milquetoasts, men who lacked the guts to make the tough decisions. General Azhari, for example, was known in the officer corps as a man who spoke loudly and carried a small stick. He was also seen as too close to U.S. officials, who were known to oppose harsh measures to restore order. The crowd hushed. Sullivan and Parsons appeared at the top of the landing, and the crowd parted to let them walk through the grand lobby. The ambassadors brushed past General Khosrodad and his friend Kambiz Atabai. Atabai could not contain himself and asked Parsons, whom he knew socially, “Mr. Ambassador, who is going to be nominated prime minister?”

  Before Parsons had a chance to reply, William Sullivan wheeled around and delivered the smug news everyone dreaded: “A civilized general.”

  Khosrodad and Atabai were crushed by the news. “When we heard that we knew it would be Azhari,” said Atabai. “He was a good general for the salons but not a decisive man. And he did not want the job. In that moment I knew it was all over. We were finished.”

  General Azhari most certainly did not want the job. He arrived as Sullivan and Parsons were on their way out. As he climbed the stairs he looked like a man consigned to the gallows.

  * * *

  ELLI ANTONIADES WAS in Greece when she heard that the Shah had appointed a military government. For the past several weeks daily life had become an ordeal for the Queen’s oldest and closest friend, who lived with her mother behind the Russian embassy near Rudaki Hall. Every morning now the two women opened their door to see the familiar refrain “Death to the Shah” painted in large letters. A friend had recently handed Elli a revolver and told her to keep it ready in case “they” came over the wall. She stubbornly refused to submit to the new regime on the streets or wear the obligatory head scarf. “People threw things, they yelled abuse,” she said. “A lot of women covered up because they felt threatened.”

  Before leaving Athens to fly home to Tehran, she called on a friend who worked in the Greek foreign ministry. He asked why she was going back. “Elli,” he said. “It’s finished. It’s over.” “It was so difficult,” she remembered. “Not to understand, but to accept.”

  23

  SULLIVAN’S FOLLY

  How hurriedly we are putting nails to our coffin.

  —THE SHAH

  Tell the Shah that it is better that a thousand

  Iranians die now than a million people die later.

  —SADDAM HUSSEIN

  On Monday, November 6, Iranians awoke to the news that the country was under military rule and a 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew. For the first time since the unrest began, troop commanders were handed orders to shoot martial law violators on sight. Twenty tanks entered the capital from the west, and tens of thousands of troops took up positions near key installations and trouble spots. There were scattered outbreaks of violence but no major challenges to the army. Troops fired into the air to break up small crowds around Rudaki Hall, Tehran University, and the British embassy, but otherwise the streets were quiet. The threat to shoot curfew violators and rioters was popular among Tehranis still shell-shocked by Sunday’s rampages. “A jolly good job, too,” an office worker told an American foreign correspondent. “I think shooting is the best thing. These people [the rioters] are mad.” “We feel the army will give us protection now,” said a construction worker repairing the entryway to the battered Waldorf Hotel. The driver of a pickup truck agreed with that sentiment: “Maybe now we get peace.”

  This time martial law was backed up by arrests. Leading dissidents and opposition leaders were detained, and censorship was reimposed. Schools and universities were closed for one week and street gatherings of more than two people were banned. Tehranis cautiously ventured into the streets to stock up on food and other essentials. “Long lines of automobiles and people with plastic containers formed at gasoline stations in the capital of the second-largest oil exporting country in the world,” reported the New York Times. “With almost no bus transportation and relatively few cars on the streets, businesses closed and some food shortages developed. Uncollected garbage piles are rising throughout the city.” The country’s telex system remained out of order. Credit dried up, investment was frozen, capital flight accelerated, and people rushed to buy foreign exchange. Along with the hardship there was a general sense of relief that the authorities had finally intervened to restore order. With Iran’s major cities secure, the battle for Iran’s future moved from streets in the north to the oil fields in the south. The intellectuals, students, and leftists weren’t about to give up and decided to try to collapse the national economy with the help of striking oil workers. “With the oil workers on our side, we found new confidence,” said one protest leader. Skeleton crews kept oil output at 1.2 million barrels a day, barely enough for domestic consumption but far below the usual 6 million barrels required for export. “We were suppressed for so many years,” said an oil worker. “We suffered for so long that now we have burst. It was not the Shah who liberalized but we who grasped liberalization from him. We took it.”

  Reza Ghotbi arrived at Jahan Nama Palace on Monday morning with a television crew in tow. The night before, the Shah had phoned him at home requesting help to write a speech he planned to give to the Iranian people the next day explaining his decision to install a military administration. “Sire, I am not a speechwriter,” Ghotbi protested. The silence on the other end of the line convinced him otherwise. “I had the impression he thought or may think I am refusing his request. So I said, ‘I will do whatever Your Majesty wants me to do.’” He offered to consult with Hushang Nahavandi and Hossein Nasr in putting together a draft.

  “Nasr,” said the Shah.

  “What does Your Majesty want in the speech?”

  “I will bring a patriotic government,” explained the voice on the other end of the line, “but because of the turmoil I have to bring in a military government first.”

  Ghotbi reminded the Shah that “military governments are also patriotic.”

  “I don’t mean patriotic,” the Shah said, correcting himself. “I mean democratic. I am going to send you some notes people have written for the speech.” He was referring to former prime ministers Ali Amini and Amir Hoveyda who had been asked for their thoughts.

  Later that night a court official drove to Ghotbi’s house and delivered typed-up notes for the draft. Ghotbi noticed that one phrase in particular was underlined and circled for emphasis: “I have heard the voice of the revolution.”

  The Shah’s hero de Gaulle had expressed similar sentiments to the people of France when he made his dramatic appeal to them in 1968 to rally to his side, and like his hero the Shah wanted to deliver a speech that cloaked him in the mantle of national unity while acknowledging past mistakes. Trying to achieve a balance between strength and contrition would not be easy. “In my mind that was what he wanted,” said Ghotbi. “From the notes, and from our conversations, my idea was that the Shah was the Good King, the father of the country.” Ghotbi recalled a story the Shah had told him from his youth. During a visit to the provinces an old woman had approached him and said, “You are younger than my son, but you are my father.” Her words had stayed with the Shah ever since. “What I thought he wanted to do was say, ‘I am the loving father of his nation but at this moment what the nation needs is tough love.’” The Shah made it clear that he wanted Ghotbi to collaborate with Hossein Nasr. “For months, I and Ghotbi would say to the Shah, ‘Why don’t you talk to the people?’” said Nasr.

  On Monday morning, Ghotbi and Nasr went to the Queen’s chambers with their speech draft but found her out of sorts. The unrest of the previous day had frayed her nerves. “She came out and said she couldn’t read the speech because she had taken a sleeping pill and was not alert,” said Ghotbi. Farah read the speech only after it was delivered. “I did not find an
ything wrong with it,” she said. “But I don’t know what transpired before. Dr. Nasr says the ideas came from His Majesty. Who was involved in drawing up those ideas I do not know.”

  The Shah became testy when by late morning he still had not read the speech. “I was asked to see what had happened to the speech,” said Amir Afshar. “I was informed that Reza Ghotbi and Hossein Nasr had taken the draft of the speech to the Empress. Once I informed the Shah of this, he became very angry.” “Why have they taken the speech to Her Majesty?” demanded the Shah. “Is she the one who reads it on television? Am I not to read it at least once to know what it contains before I deliver it?” Ghotbi and Nasr hurried over. “For the first time, the Shah came to my office, and sat behind my desk,” recalled Afshar, who called in two secretaries in case the Shah wanted to make notes and changes. As the Shah read through the speech he expressed concern because he thought it “put him in a position of weakness.” “I should not say the things that have been written here for me,” he protested.

  Ghotbi and Nasr assured him that “if he were to give a speech of this sort, he might as well put himself squarely on the side of the people and say what the people wanted him to say.” “Your Majesty, you have to say now what the people want to hear and you have to raise their spirits and change the atmosphere.” The Shah threw the speech down on the desk and, followed by Afshar, stalked out. After calming down he made several revisions, but with no time to rehearse before the two o’clock deadline he swallowed his reservations and decided to proceed. “He was not forced or manipulated,” said Ghotbi.

  Instead of the usual two o’clock national news broadcast, the Iranian people tuned in to watch and listen as the Shah explained his decision to install a military government. He appeared ill at ease, tense, and gaunt. He struggled to read the handheld cue cards from behind his desk. “In the climate of liberalization which began gradually two years ago you arose against oppression and corruption,” he began. “The revolution of the Iranian people cannot fail to have my support as the monarch of Iran and as an Iranian.” The Shah, who had already surrendered his executive powers, now proceeded to bury his legacy. “I once again repeat my oath to the Iranian nation to undertake not to allow the past mistakes, unlawful acts, oppression and corruption to recur but to make up for them,” he mechanically intoned. “I heard the revolutionary message of you the people, the Iranian nation. I am the guardian of the constitutional monarchy which is a God given gift. A gift entrusted to the Shah by the people.” It was a phrase that became synonymous with appeasement and surrender.

  The Shah’s speech evoked not de Gaulle but another French ruler, Louis XVI, sent to the block with his wife, Marie Antoinette, and Nicholas II, the Russian emperor shot and bayoneted with his wife, Empress Alexandra, and their children and servants in a Siberian cellar in 1918. “In this speech, instead of pointing to all the good things done in the country, and all the progress, he only spoke about the failures,” observed Amir Afshar. “The speech was a total failure.” The servile, apologetic tone caused revulsion among royalists, who could not bear the humiliation of watching the King of Kings debase himself before the mullahs. “The tone was contrite,” reported Time. “The words were conciliatory. The old imperial arrogance was gone.… The speech was unprecedented for Iran’s proud autocrat.”

  Royalists who had not yet left the country began packing their bags: they could tell that the Shah had no fight left in him. Liberals were more hopeful that the speech might appease moderate ulama and persuade the National Front and the Liberation Movement to reach an accommodation with the palace. “People called the court and said they liked the speech,” said Ghotbi. “Shariatmadari said he had tears in his eyes.” The Shah was polite enough to phone Nasr afterward and thank him for his work. Later, he considered the speech one of his biggest regrets. “I should never have agreed to give this speech,” he admitted to Afshar.

  * * *

  IN PARIS ON November 6, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini told a large crowd of journalists gathered at Neauphle-le-Château that he would not relent in his crusade to bring down the monarchy. “In one hand, the Shah held out a letter of repentance for his crimes, but in the other he held out a bayonet and a gun,” he jeered. “Until the day an Islamic republic is installed the struggle of our people will continue.” He expressed “great bitterness” toward the U.S. government for its continued support for the Shah. “The relationship between the American government and our government that is now like that of a master and a servant should finally cease and a healthy relationship would then replace it.” As long as the United States remained “hostile to our Islamic movement our attitude will be negative.” Khomeini repeated his earlier call for soldiers in the Iranian army “to join the people” against “the traitor.”

  In the months since Khomeini’s arrival in Paris, Abolhassan Banisadr, Ibrahim Yazdi, and Sadegh Ghotzbadegh had successfully molded his public image in the foreign press as a venerable sage leading an uprising against a corrupt and cruel king. Reporters were required to submit their questions each morning in advance of Khomeini’s daily fifteen-minute afternoon press conferences. The several-hours delay gave Banisadr and his media relations committee time to draft replies, which were intended to present Khomeini as a social moderate, respectful of women’s rights and human rights, tolerant of different political views, yet a dedicated anti-Communist. They emphasized that Khomeini had no interest in politics and was opposed to only those aspects of the Shah’s modernization program that did not help the poor. Banisadr told reporters that Khomeini “rejects the authoritarian models of Islamic republicanism in much of the Arab world. Iran is not an Arab country.” After he returned to Iran, he explained, Khomeini would leave politics to the politicians and spend the rest of his days in a seminary in Qom.

  Khomeini went along with the game but at times chafed against his handlers’ constraints. He could barely contain the hatred he felt for Americans. In his November 6 press conference he insisted that “at least 45,000” American military advisers were in Iran and that the Iranian Army was “totally under their control.” This was yet another gross exaggeration: only 5,000 of the approximately 52,000 Americans living in Iran were military personnel. The rest were dependents, civilian professionals, and Americans married to Iranians. Khomeini’s condemnation of all Americans living in Iran as “hostile to our Islamic movement” placed everyone, including women and children, in the direct line of fire.

  * * *

  IN WASHINGTON, PRESIDENT Carter’s national security team met at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, November 6, to discuss the Tehran riots and their aftermath. If a week was a long time in politics, the seventy-two hours since National Security Adviser Brzezinski had assured Jimmy Carter that Iran was not in the throes of a full-scale revolution was a lifetime. Brzezinski was especially critical of the CIA, which apparently had failed to anticipate the serious nature of unrest, and also of Ambassador Sullivan, who he had learned had been in contact with the revolutionaries.

  One of the most pressing questions facing officials was what to do with the large American community residing in Iran. Popular hatred toward the Shah extended to Americans, who were blamed for propping up the regime and profiting from the oil boom. American citizens reported daily harassment in the streets. American homes were firebombed, businesses invaded and sacked, and family pets poisoned. “There has been an increase in number of random telephone threats to foreigners,” reported the U.S. embassy. “Many callers know name of recipient and those receiving calls are being advised to leave Iran in 24 hours, two weeks, or by December 2, or be killed.” The date marked the start of the Muslim holy month of Muharram. “Absence of newspapers and minimal reporting on radio have left both Iranians and foreigners prey to loosest kind of rumors. Example is story which is untrue, repeat untrue, that three Americans were killed evening November 8 in Tajrish area of north Tehran. It appears opposition is attempting to increase psychological pressure on foreign residents by threats and rumor-mongering.
” Some companies began pulling out family dependents but most followed official instructions to stay in place and hunker down.

  In Washington, officials considered an airlift using wide-bodied jets and aircraft carriers but admitted an evacuation could take nine or ten days, assuming Iranian airports remained open. The other question was how an evacuation would affect the Shah’s confidence and army morale. Brzezinski shut down the conversation: “Any discussion of evacuation implies doubts about the Shah and about U.S.-Iranian relations, which can be very damaging.”

  The Israeli government was not about to wait and see what December would bring. The Shah’s November 6 speech to the nation provided a convenient cover for three El Al airliners to leave Iranian airspace on Monday, bound for Tel Aviv. The 365 passengers on board comprised the final airlift of Israeli citizens from Iranian soil. With the exception of Israeli diplomatic staff and their families who stayed behind, everyone else was safely out.

  * * *

  IRANIANS EXPECTED PRIME Minister Azhari to take a no-nonsense approach to unrest and end the strategy of concessions. They were startled when in his first address to the Majles he preached conciliation instead and even recited quotes from the Quran. “We are in office temporarily,” he intoned. “Once order is restored, we will hand over power to a truly national government which will organize entirely free elections and which will grant all liberties.” Azhari invited the ulama to join new “emergency committees” established by the military to enforce order in riot-torn cities. They rejected the offer, and the National Front called instead for more strikes. But while the opposition rejected Azhari’s authority, Niavaran swiftly agreed to his demands to cooperate with an investigation into the finances of all members of the Imperial Family and secure the Shah’s authorization to arrest former prime minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda and other former top officials on charges relating to graft, financial mismanagement, and abuse of power. Others prominent on the list included Dariush Homayoun, the former minister of information who back in January had ordered Ettelaat to print the defamatory letter against Khomeini that sparked the riots in Qom, and Gholam Reza Nikpey, former mayor of Tehran.