One remarkable last-minute intervention came from King Hussein of Jordan, who had always looked to the Shah as a mentor, patron, and benefactor. Hussein shared the concerns of Saddam Hussein, the Saudi king, and Persian Gulf monarchs that the overthrow of the Shah would open Pandora’s box, destabilize the Middle East, and unleash a wave of religious and political violence for years to come. In December he flew to Tehran to remind the Shah that in 1970 he had almost lost his own kingdom to Yasser Arafat’s PLO during the “Black September” uprising. At that time he had unleashed the Jordanian army, and he urged the Shah to do the same now. “Don’t listen to the ambassadors,” he said, referring to Sullivan and Parsons, and he recommended that the Shah expel them from Iranian soil. As a descendant of the Prophet, Hussein said he was prepared to drive to Qom to make a personal appeal to Shariatmadari and the marjas to back the Shah. Finally, the King of Jordan offered to put on his military tunic and lead the Iranian military into battle against the fanatics and radicals. If the Shah could not issue an order that might result in bloodshed, Hussein offered to do it for him. The Shah listened but turned him down. King Hussein understood that it was over, and he left for Amman convinced that the Pahlavis were finished.
* * *
IN WASHINGTON, U.S. officials were starting to learn more about the leader of the movement to overthrow the Shah. The CIA’s National Foreign Assessment Center completed its first major study of Khomeini’s political views and the ramifications for U.S. policy in Iran and the region if he deposed the Shah. The outlook did not look good. The CIA observed that compared to the Shah, Khomeini held reactionary social views. He opposed equal rights for women, land reform, and the presence of foreigners in Iran. He stoked popular resentment against Jews, Baha’i, and other religious minorities. Khomeini and his closest aides, including Banisadr and Ghotzbadegh, maintained close ties to terrorist groups “including the Palestinian commandos.” Six years earlier Khomeini had called on his followers to donate generously to the Mujahedin, a group that targeted American officials and civilians for assassination: “The money was raised from the ulama and in the bazaars and funneled to Khomeini, who in turn gave it to the terrorists.”
Yet the CIA was convinced that Khomeini’s vision for an Islamic republic remained just that—a vision. “Khomeini has been vague as to what this would mean in practice,” read the agency analysis. “He rejects any comparison with Saudi Arabia or Libya and claims that ‘the only reference point [would be] the time of the Prophet Mohammad and the Prophet Ali.” Here was the red flag—the agency should have provided the White House with a picture of what living conditions were like in mid-seventh-century Persia. Instead, the White House was assured that Khomeini had “no interest in holding power himself.” Remarkably, Central Intelligence still seemed unaware of Khomeini’s 1970 velayat-e faqih thesis, even though it was openly for sale on Tehran street corners. The agency was of the view that Khomeini, the most political Shia marja in history, was essentially an apolitical figure, a religious leader who displayed “a lack of interest in a specific political program. For him Shia Islam is a total social/political/economic system that needs no further explanation. In addition, he would risk losing support from some elements of the opposition if he tried to spell out out a detailed program of action.… Khomeini promises social equality and political democracy in his new Iran.”
Ambassador Sullivan stepped up his efforts to reach an accommodation with Bazargan and the Islamic left. By now Bazargan had shared with Sullivan his blueprint for a post-Shah Iran. His plan called for the Shah to surrender power to a Regency Council dominated by the National Front and the Liberation Movement. The council would appoint Bazargan to the post of prime minister and hold elections for both houses of parliament and also for the Constituent Assembly, which would vote on whether to retain the monarchy. Privately, Bazargan meant to abolish the throne, but to Sullivan he offered the assurance that if the Assembly vote went the other way “Crown Prince Reza would be invited to return to Iran.” He cleverly played to American anxieties about the Tudeh Party and Soviet ambitions in the Persian Gulf, pledging that his government “would be friendly to the US [and] anti-Communist … and would even continue to sell oil to Israel.” The plan also called for an end to martial law, the disbandment of Savak, and freedom of the press. Bazargan assured Sullivan that he had nothing to fear from Khomeini or the mullahs in a future Islamic republic because their political ambitions were limited and they “would not take position of minister in a future cabinet.”
Those were the carrots; now for the stick. If the United States wished to maintain any influence in Iran in the future it would have to accept not only the Shah’s departure but also the permanent exile of the entire senior command of the Imperial Armed Forces. “Probably 10–15 senior military officers would leave with the Shah,” read the copy of Bazargan’s plan forwarded to the State Department in Washington. “Most of the purged officers would be ground force [army]. The opposition had already selected military leaders who could assume the loyalty of the army and no serious problem was anticipated. A number of officers had called recently on Shariatmadari and separately on the National Front.” If enacted with U.S. support, Bazargan’s plan would amount to the systematic decapitation of the entire senior command structure of the Imperial Armed Forces, replacing the generation of senior officers sympathetic to Washington with leftists and Islamists. Sullivan seemed to miss the point entirely and described the concept as “encouraging” because “our interests lay in preserving the integrity of the armed forces.”
Sullivan had peered through the looking glass and was in a very strange land indeed. So anxious was the ambassador to gain entrée into Khomeini’s inner circle that he allowed Bazargan to lead him to the man who wielded real power in the Islamist movement and ran Khomeini’s ground operations in Iran: Ayatollah Beheshti. In his memoir, Sullivan praised Mohammad Beheshti as an erudite anti-Communist who understood that “the prime threat to the future of Iran came from the Soviet Union and that the United States … had long been a force for social, economic, and political improvement for the people of Iran.” In fact, as the CIA was already aware, Beheshti held virulently anti-American views and had raised the funds that enabled the Mujahedin to assassinate U.S. military officers and American civilians. He had personally played a part in at least two acts of terrorism himself, the assassination of the pro-American prime minister Mansur in 1965 and the recent kidnapping of Imam Musa Sadr. Beheshti’s singular goal was to destroy any chance of an accommodation between the Carter White House and religious moderates, who, against overwhelming odds, were still frantically trying to form a block to keep Khomeini from seizing power. Sullivan’s meddling undermined this initiative and encouraged the extremists to press forward.
Sullivan’s staff also held a lengthy face-to-face meeting with the rabid anti-Semite Ayatollah Yahya Nouri at the home of a prominent bazaari in early December. The Americans and Iranians discussed a scenario under which the Shah would stay on as constitutional monarch but step down as commander in chief of the Imperial Armed Forces. Nouri assured the embassy that once in power Khomeini and his supporters “would want to retain their good relations with the US and the West while keeping their distance from the Soviet Union.” Further, Nouri dangled the possibility of fixing oil prices, though “he did not elaborate on this statement.” He lamented that the Iranian Army was to blame for recent violence and “suggested that the US use its influence with the Iranian Armed Forces and the Shah to prevent firing on demonstrators.” In a year of strange events, perhaps the strangest was the sight of American diplomats receiving two anti-American religious revolutionaries leading a violent revolt against the Shah of Iran, their staunchest ally in the Muslim world.
Sullivan and his men sincerely believed the assurances given to them by Beheshti and Nouri—they had apparently never heard of the Shia concept of taqiya, or lying for self-preservation—and were convinced they had a deal safeguarding a U.S. presence in Iran a
fter the Shah left power. The Americans were sure that Khomeini was a moderating influence over the leftists and radicals in his entourage. Each day the CIA presented the diplomats with transcripts of Khomeini’s telephone conversations with his agents inside Iran, including Beheshti. They noted with approval his negative reaction to attacks against Americans in Iran. “Tell the brothers not to use arms,” they heard him tell his agents. But the Americans missed the point. The revolutionaries in Paris knew they were under electronic surveillance and made sure Khomeini toned down his rhetoric when issuing instructions to his followers back home. “We knew we were tapped by French intelligence,” admitted Abolhassan Banisadr. The plan was always to stockpile weapons and restrain the Mujahedin guerrilla fighters until the Shah left Iran. Only then would they launch the final offensive that would take advantage of the army’s disoriented, leaderless state to overthrow the regime.
Sullivan’s freelance foreign policy merely took advantage of a crippling decision-making vacuum in the White House. On the one hand, National Security Adviser Brzezinski supported military action to save the Shah and was drawing up a contingency plan to send U.S. Marines into the southern oil fields. But military intervention was firmly opposed by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had served as President Kennedy’s army secretary in the early sixties and recoiled at the prospect of a repeat of the 1953 and 1963 crackdowns. Sullivan was disdainful of Vance, whom he regarded as absent and weak, and openly contemptuous of Brzezinski, who shared Ardeshir Zahedi’s support for a coup as a last resort. Sullivan was convinced that he alone understood the complexities of the crisis in Iran.
* * *
WHILE U.S. OFFICIALS debated their options, Americans living in Iran reached their own conclusions about where the country was headed and quite literally ran for the exits. Frightened by attacks and threats against foreigners, exhausted after weeks of living in barricaded houses without heat and postal delivery, and only intermittent water, electricity, and working telephones, they formed convoys to drive to Mehrebad Airport, where “a great wave of humanity” had congregated. Everyone, it seemed, had the same idea: it was time to get out.
There were tearful, hysterical scenes in the main passenger terminal at Mehrebad Airport, where foreigners watched in horror as Iranians threw toddlers into the air in a desperate attempt to get them to the front of the ticket lines. “We were terrified,” said Cyndy McCollough, an American teenager whose father had decided to send his wife and children out. “People were screaming and crying.” The McCollough family’s flight was so crowded, and it took off so quickly, that people had no time to secure their bags or pets, and “animals were walking up and down the aisles, cats and a rabbit.” At one point a stewardess trying to maneuver her beverages cart down the aisle calmly asked, “Can someone please move the animals?” Like the McColloughs, the Kirkendall family was stunned at the chaos that greeted them. “People were screaming to get out,” said Jonathan. “There were lost people and lost luggage. The airport was packed, lots of people, lots of noise. My memory of it is that it was dark—though I can’t imagine that the lights were out. It just seemed dim, crowded, chaotic, people pushing their way up to the ticket counters, yelling.” “When the plane took off there was a round of cheers,” said Bruce Vernor, “and when the plane left Iranian airspace there was a roar.”
Those who stayed behind bore witness to scenes of bloodlust, savagery, and unbridled anarchy. Paul Grimm, a senior American oil executive working in Ahwaz for the oil consortium, was ambushed on his way to work by Mujahedin gunmen and shot to death. Two Iranian managers for the oil consortium were assassinated on the same day. Rioters surrounded a group of young soldiers and “a colonel was dragged from his tank and axed to death by the mob. His throat was cut and he was disemboweled. His intestines were packed in plastic bags that were delivered back to the army labeled ‘executed by the people’s court.’” In another episode, a mob attacked the home of a Savak colonel on Bahar Street. “The colonel was taken alive and dismembered by the crowd,” said the press, “while his wife and children were burned in the fire which leveled their three-story house.” The dead man’s corpse was strung up outside the charred ruins of his house as a warning sign to other regime loyalists. Riots erupted in Tabriz, Dezful, and Qazvin, and in Kermanshah the Dariush Hotel and other buildings were destroyed. The Italian expatriate club in Bandar Abbas was leveled, and British Council centers and libraries were attacked and torched by rioters in Mashad, Ahwaz, and Shiraz. Anyone in a uniform became a target. Among thirty troops and police officers butchered in mob attacks was a gendarmerie sergeant dragged from his house and set alight in the street.
On Christmas Eve, high school students rioted in downtown Tehran and ran through the streets chased by army troops wearing gas masks and bearing rifles. One group converged on the U.S. embassy, chanting, “Yankee go home!” and “Death to the Shah!” They forced an American civilian and his driver out of their car at the gate and set the car on fire, then threw rocks and missiles over the fence into the yard. The young Marine guards on duty fired tear gas to discourage anyone from climbing the walls, and Iranian troops rushed to the scene firing shots into the air to clear the streets. One student said he knew his parents hoped “I would rather sit home until it all blows away. Of course, it’s not going to blow away, and everything will continue until the Shah leaves or is dead. The fact is most people want that. They don’t want him to escape. They don’t want him to have exile. They want him to die.” Another teenager, a female student clad in her chador, echoed those sentiments when she shrieked, “The Shah will not come out of this alive.”
American lawyer John Westberg had lived in Iran since the midsixties. In his diary he tried to reconcile his fondness for the Iranian people with the madness he saw on the streets. “So many Iranians seem to think the problems are attributable to the Shah and once he is gone with his retinue, all will be well,” he wrote. “The problems are, of course, older and deeper than that. I do not defend the Shah and I have concluded it is necessary for him to go entirely before anyone can hope for peace and stability here. But the sense of discussions I have with Iranians is that they think only in negative terms, that is they think by being against the Shah and getting rid of him, the problems of the country will be solved.… In my view, the central problem is Iran itself, or more cogently, Iranian culture which takes such great pride in its resistance to changes that are imperative if Iran is ever to develop into a just and stable, modern society.” The Iranian people, he concluded, “want the benefits of the modern world but they don’t want to make the changes in their way of life that are necessary.” Christmas 1978 was “the gloomiest I can remember. I fear for this sad country’s future and find no reason for hope things are going to straighten out anytime soon. To the contrary, all I can see is more trouble and reason for despair.”
* * *
EVENTS NOW BEGAN to move very quickly indeed.
Martial law collapsed on Wednesday, December 27, amid scenes of “wild shooting and lawlessness.… Trucks and cars burned in the streets of Tehran, soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons on a funeral procession, according to a witness, after they shot their own colonel, and the city became a bellowing sound stage of sirens, gunfire and automobile horns. Tear gas, smoke from pyres set aflame by anti-Government demonstrators, power cuts, stores shutting and merchants piling their stock on the back of trucks—Tehran almost visibly tottered.… All schools were closed and the state airline, rail and bus services were not functioning.” Oil production collapsed to less than half a million barrels a day, and Iranian petroleum exports halted. Pan Am canceled all flights into and out of Tehran. “We consider it too dangerous to go to the airport,” said an airline official. “It is an insane risk just driving through this city.”
General Oveissi and General Moghadam drove to Niavaran and begged Queen Farah to tell the Shah that it was time to replace the hapless General Azhari, who had suffered a mild heart attack, with the younger, more dy
namic Shahpur Bakhtiar. General Badrei, commander of the Imperial Guard, had already spoken to Bakhtiar and received his pledge that “he would kill if necessary, even if blood rose up to his elbow.” The Queen recalled the generals’ dramatic intervention. “General Oveissi and General Moghadam came to me and said, ‘If His Majesty doesn’t choose someone it will cause a problem and the mob will attack the palace.’” She went straight to her husband and he issued the invitation for Bakhtiar to come to the palace the next day. Since Farah’s meeting with Bakhtiar one month earlier, the Shah had stayed in touch with the opposition politician with the help of two intermediaries. Bakhtiar offered Reza Ghotbi an assurance that the future of the monarchy would not be put to the popular vote. “Iran is not ready for a republic,” he said. “In fifty years, maybe Iran will be ready, but if we have a good constitutional monarchy, why change? We should remain a constitutional monarchy.” Ghotbi was reluctant to become more involved in the political negotiations and readily stepped back to allow General Moghadam to assume the role of interlocutor.
Bakhtiar phoned Ghotbi after Christmas to let him know that the Shah had requested a meeting at Niavaran. “I have an audience tomorrow with His Majesty,” he said. “And I want you to see me after that.” Shortly after his morning appointment with the Shah, Bakhtiar sat down with Ghotbi and briefed him on their discussion. “I went to see His Majesty,” said Bakhtiar. “He was very kind to me. He told me that he had not seen me for years, but I did not seem old.”
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