Faced with Azhari’s request, the Shah summoned the Queen and their closest advisers to his office to discuss the matter. “I am being pressed to authorize the arrest of Hoveyda, under the powers allowed by martial law, because they say it would pacify public opinion,” he said. “Let me ask you to give me your advice on this matter.” The consensus among those in the room was that the arrested men would be well looked after by the military and ensured a fair trial. But elderly court minister Ardalan expressed disgust at the idea they should serve up their own to appease the mobs. “I do not understand how you can arrest a former prime minister who was in power for thirteen years,” he protested. At one point the Shah’s phone rang and the others watched as he listened in silence. He hung up the receiver and told them they had run out of time. Later, he told his wife that Savak chief General Moghadam had informed him that “Mr. Hoveyda’s arrest was more important than our daily bread.” The group approved the arrests but the Shah balked at phoning Hoveyda as a courtesy to explain his decision. “That would not be easy for me,” he said. He turned to the Queen: “You could do it, perhaps.”
“Why me?” Farah protested. “He was your prime minister, not mine!”
The Shah hurriedly swallowed the pill: “It shall be done.” But as the meeting broke up he was heard to say, “How hurriedly we are putting nails to our coffin.”
* * *
ON ROOSEVELT AVENUE, Ambassador Sullivan decided that the Shah was finished.
The ambassador wrote a lengthy cable to Washington titled “Thinking the Unthinkable,” in which he argued that the Shah’s basis of support had shrunk to the military, which was unlikely to sanction a bloodbath to keep him in power. The ideal scenario Sullivan laid out was the departure of the Shah and his top generals into exile, followed by an accommodation between younger officers and the opposition. “The religious [people] would find it useful for the military to remain intact because they have no Islamic instruments for maintaining law and order,” Sullivan advised. Khomeini “could be expected to return to Iran in triumph and hold a Gandhi-like position in the political constellation.” Because Khomeini was likely to choose as his new prime minister a politician like Mehdi Bazargan, who could work alongside the military, moderates and anti-Communists were likely to win the 1979 elections. It was a gamble, but if the Shah was replaced by Khomeini the Iran of the 1980s would likely assume a less pro-Western posture in international relations but could still be relied on as an important anchor of stability in the Persian Gulf. According to Sullivan’s logic, Khomeini was not a threat to U.S. interests. The “Thinking the Unthinkable” telegram became the basis for what Henry Precht later referred to with dry disdain as “Sullivan’s grand idea that Khomeini and the military could run the country.” In fact, the ideas expressed in the telegram were not those of Sullivan but of Mehdi Bazargan, leader of the Liberation Movement of Iran, which showed the extent to which the ambassador and his diplomats had become influenced by English-speaking, Westernized republican Iranians.
The telegram showed that William Sullivan was at sea in Iran: the complexities of the country’s political fabric, its religious traditions, its culture, and the characteristics of its people eluded him. What Sullivan failed so spectacularly to understand was that many Iranians, including most farmers, workers, moderate ulama, and conservatives in the middle and upper-middle classes, still supported the Shah and counted themselves as royalists. Khomeini was one of only several marjas—and the junior one at that—but Sullivan bestowed on him the title “leader” and inexplicably decided he was a pacifist in the spirit of Gandhi. He was utterly wrong on the question of the military. The Shah’s generals, men such as Oveissi, Badrei, and Khosrodad, consummate military professionals and patriots who had sworn their lives to serve crown and kingdom, were not about to voluntarily board planes and hand Iran over to the mullahs. If anything, they were prepared to either stage a coup or retreat to the south and then wage civil war.
Though Sullivan ended his telegram endorsing the current U.S. policy of supporting the Shah and the military, he made it clear to his senior counselors that the telegram should be interpreted as their blueprint for action. “Sullivan had these ideas himself,” confirmed George Lambrakis. “And he talked Washington into it. Basically, Sullivan was trying to walk his way through the muck. He was also working closely with Tony Parsons. We thought the moderates might have enough weight to balance Khomeini. We believed that Khomeini would go to Qom. Khomeini was the big political ayatollah but he was not the main ayatollah. We believed he was isolated and his religious credentials were not of the highest order but his political influence was.” Sullivan pursued a self-paralyzing policy. On the one hand, the ambassador pressed the Shah to continue with liberalization and appoint Azhari, a softhearted military prime minister unlikely to crack down hard on dissent. “We didn’t want to be responsible for shedding blood or a repeat of 1953,” explained Lambrakis. Yet the Shah’s refusal to use force made him appear weak in Sullivan’s eyes. “When the Shah failed to react strongly after Jaleh Square and November 5, we concluded he was finished,” said Stempel. “He was fucked! He would not order the troops to shoot. If he’d come down hard he would have survived.” But the Americans also concluded they were powerless. “After November 5 nobody gave a shit what we thought,” Stempel admitted. “The U.S. was sidelined.”
Through his words and deeds, Ambassador Sullivan sent Mehdi Bazargan the unmistakable signal that he was ready to cut a deal on behalf of the United States, in effect declaring American neutrality and offering Khomeini an assurance that “we were not involved on either side, to let them know that the Americans were perfectly prepared to deal with them.” Though the ambassador had not cleared his strategy with the White House, Bazargan naturally assumed from Sullivan’s behavior that the Carter administration had withdrawn support from the Shah. In fact, Sullivan’s strategy encouraged the Shah’s enemies and removed one of the last obstacles to a takeover of Iran by Islamic fundamentalists.
* * *
IN LATE NOVEMBER, Queen Farah became involved in two extraordinary initiatives to try to prevent collapse. The first involved Shahpur Bakhtiar, one of the leaders of the National Front and a former cabinet minister in Mohammad Mossadeq’s government. Bakhtiar’s grandfather had been executed by the Qajars, and his father was jailed and executed under Reza Shah, and as he once told his cousin Reza Ghotbi, “I have blues on my skin from the Shah’s jail.” Yet Bakhtiar had never walked in lockstep with his allies on the secular left. Though he opposed the Shah’s personal rule, he admired the general thrust of his social and economic reforms, and he was appalled that men such as Bazargan were prepared to set aside their own deeply held principles and accept Khomeini’s leadership of the anti-Shah forces, whom he regarded as “barbarians.” Bakhtiar worried that the extremists could easily overpower the leftists and democrats who lacked their own charismatic leader and were not trained for armed combat.
After Bakhtiar made his concerns clear, former prime minister Jamshid Amuzegar gently steered him toward the Imperial Court. Bakhtiar hoped to enter into a dialogue with the Shah but refused to come to Niavaran until he had a better sense of the monarch’s attitude toward political reform. The Queen asked her husband, “Do you want me to go and talk to him and see what his position is?” He agreed, and Farah arranged a clandestine rendezvous at the home of her aunt Louise Ghotbi, Reza’s mother. Farah’s role as mediator between the Shah and Bakhtiar was carried out with the blessing of both men, though later she was accused by her critics of promoting Bakhtiar to advance her own clan interests. In true Iranian fashion, and although the two had never before met, Farah and Bakhtiar were related. “My mother was the sister of Bakhtiar’s mother,” said her cousin Reza Ghotbi. “Although we were first cousins I had never met him, though I knew his son, Yves, because Shahpur was much older. My mother didn’t like his policies. We had a very large family. I had five uncles and I only met two of them.” Farah’s critics neglected to point ou
t that Bakhtiar was more closely related to Queen Soraya, who was also a cousin, and that as late as November she still believed Hushang Nahavandi was the best candidate for the premiership.
The Queen’s meeting with Bakhtiar took place on a cold, overcast late November day. Louise Ghotbi’s house was a two-mile drive from the palace, and Farah set off, with her security detail bringing up the rear. Bakhtiar arrived thirty minutes early and spent the time chatting with Mme Ghotbi. “He told her she looked so much like her sister,” said her son Reza, “and that he lost his mother when he was very young and he always wanted to see the aunt who looked like his mother.” The Queen arrived and Louise withdrew to leave them alone. After formalities, Bakhtiar began by launching into a litany of complaints. “He made an analysis of the situation. He lamented the past—the Shah had ruled instead of the government—and said the Shah must reign and not rule. If he had done that we wouldn’t be here. Everything was going wrong and it all pointed in one direction—to him.” Farah listened patiently but felt there was no time to waste. “Look,” she said, “the country is in deep trouble. We now must concentrate on saving it rather than harping on the past.” Bakhtiar said he agreed with her. He was prepared to meet with the Shah if certain conditions were met. They included the release from jail of opposition leader Karim Sanjabi, who had been detained following his trip to Paris to see Khomeini. Farah returned to Niavaran and briefed her husband on the conversation. They both felt this first contact was promising. Bakhtiar supported the Constitution and the monarchy, and he would not let old grudges get in the way of working for the national interest. His name was put on a short list of names for the position of the next civilian prime minister.
The Queen’s second initiative was led by her private secretary Hossein Nasr, who was involved in intense negotiations with moderate ulama. Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari still had not given up on reaching an accommodation with the Shah, though he was under relentless pressure from Khomeini’s agents in Qom, who surrounded his residence and spied on him. “At the height of the revolution Shariatmadari wanted to talk to the Shah,” said Nasr. “But there were men downstairs with guns. He said to me, ‘I can’t call until nine p.m., when the gunmen have gone. I will go to the women’s part of the house and call you on my wife’s phone.’” The day and time were arranged, and the Shah sat by his phone for two hours, waiting for the Marja’s call. But Shariatmadari was unable to get away and the conversation never happened. “I don’t know what is happening in Iran,” said the Marja. “It is erupting like a volcano, and, like a volcano, after building up pressure for years and years it is impossible to stop.”
Next, Nasr set his sights on Grand Ayatollah Abol Qasem Khoi, who lived out of harm’s way in Najaf and led the “quietist” school favored by Musa Sadr. Despite the publicity that surrounded Khomeini, Khoi enjoyed the status as paramount marja and boasted the biggest following among the Shia faithful. “Khoi was not siding with the revolutionaries,” said Nasr. “And he did not believe this was the role of Shiism. He was the supreme enlightened one, the most emulated by the Shia. I decided to go and visit him.” Nasr decided that Queen Farah should accompany him so that she could be seen in the presence of the most influential and popular of the marjas. “It was Dr. Nasr’s idea,” she recalled. “The idea was that if I go and see Khoi he might say something [in public] to help ease the problems.” Her willingness to go, and Khoi’s decision to receive her, showed just how desperate the moderates were to try to form a block against Khomeini’s ambitions. Farah was escorted by Nasr and accompanied by her mother, Mrs. Diba; her children Farahnaz and Ali Reza; Reza Ghotbi; and two generals.
The Queen and her party flew first to Baghdad on November 18, where they were met at the airport by Iraq’s minister of health. When they arrived at their guest villa they learned that Saddam Hussein wished to pay his respects. His motorcade pulled up at four o’clock and he swept in with his entourage. Nasr was impressed with the Iraqi leader’s height, dark good looks, and natty dress sense: “He arrived wearing a European suit with an Islamic cloak, an abaya, which fell off when he shrugged his shoulders, and his servants rushed to pick it up.” It made for great theater. Farah introduced Hussein to her mother and then to Nasr. He shook everyone’s hands and then told Nasr, fluent in Arabic, that he had something to tell the Queen in private.
Saddam Hussein, the Queen, and Nasr moved to a side room, where they shared a small sofa. Nasr sat between them and translated. Hussein had already offered to assassinate Khomeini, whom he worried was stirring grievances and sectarian tensions inside Iraq, which, like Iran, was a Shia-majority society. He preferred a stable, pro-Western Iran under the Shah to a radical theological state that might be tempted to export its revolution throughout the region. The Iraqi turned to Nasr and calmly said, “Tell Her Majesty to tell my brother the Shah to take out his tanks and guns and turn them against the revolutionaries. Tell him it is better that a thousand Iranians die now than a million people die later.” Nasr translated this to Farah “and we looked at each other.” After Hussein left they agreed that Farah would go back to Niavaran and relay the Iraqi strongman’s advice to her husband.
From Baghdad they traveled to Najaf to see Khoi. This was not an easy trip for Farah. Since childhood she had associated the mullahs with bullying and repression. She bitterly resented them for cheering her husband to his face for so many years while plotting behind his back. “All these mullahs would push each other out of the way to have pictures taken with the King,” she remembered with distaste. The trip to Najaf made her nervous. “I was uncomfortable. I remember entering the small entrance to his house and everyone was sitting around [looking obsequious].” There was a momentary flash of anger when Khoi’s aides told her not to look directly at him. “I was told to look down. It was very difficult. He started talking Turkish with me because he knew my family came from Azerbaijan, but I don’t speak Turkish.”
Khoi told Farah that he acknowledged the Shah as the true Custodian of the Faith. He said he would pray for her husband, and in keeping with tradition presented her with a gold ring to give him. But he offered no public statement of support that could be used to rally the majority of the Shia people to the Shah’s side. He proceeded to lecture the Queen on the state of daily life in a country he had not lived in for decades. “In Iran people are dying of hunger,” he said. Farah was indignant. This was like Khomeini telling the world that schoolchildren in Iran ate grass to survive and that a hundred thousand people were behind bars. She wouldn’t let these lies go unchallenged. “What hunger?” she retorted. Her decision to talk back struck a nerve. The paramount Marja decided that the Queen of Iran, though a direct relative of the Prophet, still needed to be taken to the woodshed and schooled in how to behave like a good Muslim wife. He regarded Farah as willful and therefore deviant. “At the end,” said Queen Farah, “he told me, ‘You are a Moslem, your pictures should not be in the newspapers, and you should not shake hands with me.’ He lectured me on my clothes and about modesty.”
Farah’s mission to Najaf ended in failure, but at least an effort had been made. She returned to Niavaran to give her husband Khoi’s ring and passed on Saddam Hussein’s message to bloody the opposition. As she expected, he dismissed the idea as repellent: “I cannot sully my hands with the blood of my people.”
* * *
TEHRAN UNDER MARTIAL law was a shadowland of rumor, intrigue, and barely suppressed hysteria. “In the downtown area, barricades have gone up around the ravages of burned-out cinemas and bars, and steel plates have replaced broken windows,” reported Time. “Not many Iranian women venture out into the streets anymore; those who do shroud themselves in the chador, the long black veil that has become a sort of silent symbol of solidarity with the protest movement. Because everyone has to get home before the 9 p.m. curfew, the cocktail hour begins and ends earlier. Conversation, in more fashionable circles, tends to center on the shortage of butane gas for cooking and whether to stay and support the Shah or g
et out. Then everyone says their farewells and leaves, only to become ensnarled in a huge traffic jam on their way home. Promptly at 9 the shrill of the traffic gives way to silence and a long low rumble: the Shah’s tanks are once again rolling into position.”
As the world around them collapsed, Tehranis were prepared to believe the most fantastic and bizarre conspiracy theories. Iran’s most persecuted religious minority, the Baha’i, supposedly pulled the strings of revolution. The British government plotted with the Freemasons to divide the Middle East between them. The CIA orchestrated the labor unrest in the southern oil fields. Queen Farah plotted a coup to depose her husband and seize the Peacock Throne. “The condition affects even the most rational and educated of men,” the Los Angeles Times reported from Abadan. “Many people here and in Tehran are convinced that the Israelis are here helping the Shah put down public unrest. During the recent disturbances in Tehran, one Iranian pointed to troops guarding an intersection and said they were Israelis. When the soldiers were questioned, however, they answered in the everyday Farsi of the average Iranian. But the man still wasn’t convinced.” The belief that an unseen hand guided events from afar was not new. The Shah himself suspected that the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union schemed to divide Iran among them. The conspiracy theories conveniently relieved Iranians, and middle-class Iranians in particular, of any responsibility for the catastrophe befalling the kingdom.
The Fall of Heaven Page 59
