Nobody can overthrow me. I have the power.
—THE SHAH
The Shah will be gone before I leave.
—U.S. CONSUL MICHAEL METRINKO
To everyone’s relief, except for a strike that closed shops in southern Tehran, the fifteenth anniversary of Khomeini’s June 1963 uprising passed uneventfully. The Shah had rejected Sabeti’s raft of tougher measures, but even the limited arrests of several hundred religious opponents was enough to calm the streets. “Rumors and alarmist reports notwithstanding, Tehran and the rest of the country had a quiet day yesterday,” reported one observer. “Workers went to their factories and employees to their offices. The shops were open; the streets were as usual jammed with traffic.” The government had succeeded in puncturing the rumors and gossip flying about town and the vast majority of Tehranis “gave clear indication that they opt for moderation and that the extremists of any color have little following.”
Hopeful that the “forty-forty” protest cycle had ended, the Shah wasted no time in moving forward with the next phase of liberalization. On Tuesday, June 6, he fired General Nasiri as Savak’s chief and appointed him to the post of Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan. “Political sources said the surprise dismissal indicated the Shah’s displeasure with Savak, and claimed it will probably lead to stricter control on its future activities,” reported the Washington Post. The next day the Imperial Court announced that Lieutenant General Nasser Moghadam, chief of military intelligence, would run the secret police. Moghadam had led the effort to reform the trials of civilian suspects hauled before military courts, and the previous month he had presented Hushang Nahavandi with the report documenting corruption at the highest levels of court and government. The Shah presided over his two-minute swearing-in ceremony but kept his remarks to the bare minimum: “I’m sure you know your job.” No newspaper reporters or cameras were present to record the moment.
From there, the Shah walked out onto Niavaran’s front lawn to deliver his second major announcement of the day. Waiting for him on the sun-dappled grass under the plane trees were several hundred members of Hushang Nahavandi’s think tank of intellectuals, lawyers, industrialists, and civic leaders. In years past the Shah had dismissed the group as a talk shop. Now he wanted the liberals to know that he was with them. It was at this moment that he removed the mask of authoritarianism with which he had never been comfortable and revealed his true colors as a progressive and social activist. With Savak reformed, the king who had emancipated women, liberated the peasants, enacted profit sharing for workers, and nationalized the forests and waterways was finally free to be himself. He believed that his decision to replace Nasiri with Moghadam had removed the shadow of police state repression. Fresh from his triumph in Mashad, and with the streets quiet, commerce resumed, and classes over for the summer, Niavaran’s warm summer day felt like a fresh start. A burden had been lifted—finally he could be the sort of father to the nation he had always aspired to be. Just before they walked out before the television cameras, the Shah turned to Nahavandi and with a broad smile said, “Well, I hope you’re satisfied.”
“I think Your Majesty made the right choice,” answered Nahavandi.
They strolled into the center of the gathering and the Shah smiled again and shyly remarked, “Who says the intellectuals don’t like us?” He soaked up the cheers and applause.
Nahavandi spoke first. He began by reminding everyone that “the stability and unity of Iran depend upon cooperation between the religious authorities and the monarchy.” He spoke of popular unhappiness with corruption, gently reminding the Shah that “those who surround Your Majesty and are closest to you ought to be exemplars of moral rectitude, virtue and integrity.” Then he pointed out that the Rastakhiz Party had failed in its mission to bring the crown closer to the people and that more than ever the regime had to initiate a dialogue with opposition groups. He ended his remarks by urging the nation “to renew its confidence in the King, to direct us at this decisive turning point, deal with the problems of the present and prepare for the future.”
The Shah said he was “gratified to see you here again in such strength.” He proceeded to deliver his most detailed explanation yet of what he hoped to achieve with liberalization and why he was not worried about street protests. “Eighteen months ago we began to give the people greater freedom and more opportunities in every field,” he told the crowd. “Some say by giving these freedoms we have caused all the commotion and events that we witnessed, that they have led to attacks on banks and window smashing. But this is the price we must pay to achieve maximum freedom. Obviously, this freedom must be within the framework of the country’s laws and sovereignty.… You have surely seen the results of the advancement of freedom. This process will continue and lead to maximum liberty—liberty minus treason.” A decade ago Iran had needed strong leadership from the center to push through reform programs and industrialization schemes in the most efficient and time-saving manner possible. Now, with the first phase of reforms completed, it was time to return power to the people. He was confident that the White Revolution “has led to enough social, political, economic, and cultural progress to sustain such liberalization policies. If such confidence did not exist, the government would not so heatedly pursue decentralization and the promotion of individual liberties.” The Shah complained that more attention was being paid to “troublemakers” than to the reformers in his audience. Once again, he recapitulated Iran’s recent history by reminding his audience of how far the country had come in recent years. He ended by pledging his support for measures that would respect constitutional conventions and ensure the separation of the executive, judiciary, and legislative branches of government.
The Shah’s speech was a tour de force. “This was the first time that the Monarch has directly replied to those who are known to have reservations about the overture towards greater freedom of debate and dissent that began nearly two years ago,” wrote journalist Amir Taheri in the pages of Kayhan. “It is now clear that the critics of liberalization will either have to find stronger arguments than broken windows or step aside, allowing those who understand and support the process to continue with the current reforms and changes of attitude.” Liberalization had never been intended as “a tactical move” but was the result of the Shah’s carefully considered assessment that Iran was not the country it had been fifteen years ago and that the political system had to be reformed. The Shah’s view was that some unrest was to be expected as controls on speech and assembly were loosened. “Disturbances began to spread, first on university campuses and later in the streets and bazaars,” wrote Taheri. “Part of this was, no doubt, the work of traditional opposition groups that had remained dormant for many years. But a good part was also due to an accumulation of discontent with tight control, over-centralization, lack of sufficient open debate and a general feeling that corruption and inefficiency together with arrogance have struck the bureaucracy. All this had to come out in the open.” Part of it came out in “aimless riots” that received widespread coverage in the international news media. But most dissent has been “aired in a responsible and constructive manner.” Millions of Iranians were debating the country’s shortcomings and ways of overcoming them. Part of this process was taking place within the Rastakhiz Party. In the media, articles critical of the system could now be published. Even state-owned television has “encouraged and organized a series of pertinent debates on various aspects of the nation’s life.” Tension with the clergy was also natural. “Periods of disaffection between the government and the Shi’ite clergy have punctuated Iran’s history during the past 400 years. But both sides have always succeeded in sorting out their differences in the end. Seen from every angle it appears impossible to counsel against liberalization. If anything, the counsel of wisdom would be aimed at speeding up the process, giving it more tangible form on the way.”
In laying out his vision for Iran’s future, the Shah hoped to rally the disaffected middle class, consolidate the support of workers and farmers, and reassure his foreign allies that he was committed to liberalization. His view that riots were the price of progress found support from prominent foreign scholars and academics, most notably Iranologist George Lenczowski, who taught political science at the University of California–Berkeley. In May 1978 Lenczowski visited Tehran in his capacity as chairman of the Hoover Institute’s Committee for the Middle East and assured his Iranian audiences that the recent violence was actually proof that the Shah’s policies were working. Such dissent was “unthinkable in a totalitarian system,” which was why it was not seen in the Soviet Union. Nor was he especially worried about the resurgence of Islam throughout the region or “any basic conflict between the Iranian clergy and leadership … judging by the notions of progress nursed by the regime, very close cooperation between Church and State in Iran seemed the most natural option.” The Shah felt encouraged by Lenczowski and others to believe that the best antidote to unrest was more and not less liberalization. He had always been impressed by academics boasting Ivy League credentials, and now they confirmed his own instincts to stay on course. He seemed not to grasp that having set down his sword and shield he was walking naked into the storm.
* * *
SIX DAYS AFTER the Shah’s June 6 speech, Israel’s ambassador Uri Lubrani sent Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan a memorandum that warned the Pahlavi Dynasty was doomed. “Many feel that an accelerated process of challenging the Shah has started; this process is irreversible and will ultimately lead to his fall and to a drastic change in the structure of the regime in Iran,” he warned. “It is very difficult to estimate time scopes and my personal estimate, which is not based on any objective factors, is that we speak, more or less, about five years.” Lubrani’s pessimistic report recommended that Israel start looking for oil elsewhere and prepare to walk away from its extensive military and commercial investments in Iran.
* * *
AMBASSADOR SULLIVAN TOOK the opposite view. On the eve of his departure for a summer-long vacation in Mexico he wrote a long memorandum to the State Department in which he assured his colleagues that while the Shah was not yet “out of the woods,” the end of unrest was in sight. Tougher security measures and the Shah’s effort to find common ground with Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and moderate ulama had eased tensions and yielded results.
Sullivan and his political counselors Lambrakis and Stempel were anxious to start their own dialogue with Shariatmadari. Sullivan played tennis on Tuesdays with Hossein Nasr, Queen Farah’s cultural affairs adviser, and knew him to be well connected in clerical circles. Sullivan, Nasr recalled, “began to pester me for a meeting with Shariatmadari independent of the government. It really began after Tabriz. He picked my brains. He wanted to meet these people.” Nasr was coolly indifferent to the ambassador’s overtures. Sullivan had more luck with Mehdi Bazargan, leader of the Liberation Movement of Iran and the only mainstream opposition leader inside Iran who everyone assumed had Khomeini’s ear and shared the Marja’s confidence. On May 25 diplomat John Stempel was introduced to Bazargan at the home of an associate, and they talked about the Shah’s liberalization and the Carter administration’s human rights policy. Bazargan admitted that opposition groups had taken advantage of the “open space” to test the limits of censorship and the regime’s tolerance of dissent. They had felt encouraged when Parviz Sabeti’s Savak agents stood on the sidelines and did nothing. Bazargan insisted that Savak and not the religious underground was behind the riots around the country.
Both sides were pleased with how the meeting went. Stempel went back to the embassy to tell his colleagues that Bazargan was someone they could do business with. Bazargan in turn said he “looked forward to a dialogue with the American embassy and was quite pleased with the initial talk.” Following the discussion, Bazargan’s associate Mohammad Tavakoli confided to Stempel that moderates like Bazargan were in a race against time against young hotheads and supporters of Khomeini were were pushing for an open confrontation with the regime. Six months ago, he explained, the Mujahedin and Fedayeen had almost given up on the prospect of peaceful change in Iran. When Stempel asked how he knew this to be true—was Bazargan in contact with these same terrorist groups?—Tavakoli became vague, “indicating the LMI had learned this from ‘friends.’ I did not press the point.” Tavakoli assured Stempel that the Islamic movement opposed to the Shah was basically pro-Western and “it would be a pity if the Shah drove it into the hands of other hostile forces.”
Sullivan flew back to Washington to start his summer vacation and told his colleagues not to worry: the cycle of unrest was broken and the Shah had matters well in hand. “The fix is in,” he told Henry Precht, the Iran desk officer at the State Department. “He told us he had been assured that the mullahs had been bought off,” said Precht. “Then he went off to Mexico.”
In Sullivan’s absence the day-to-day running of the embassy was left in the hands of Deputy Chief of Mission Charlie Naas, a new arrival from Washington. Naas was settling in when he chaired a meeting of senior political officers and consular officers to get an update on where things stood. Senior political counselor George Lambrakis began by pointing out that the Shah’s policy of all-out liberalization “raised the question whether [he] is in full control or not. Has the process come so far as to be irreversible?” He reminded everyone that moderate, leftist, and nationalist groups like the National Front and Liberation Movement were once again speaking out, and students felt free to stage protests without fear of retribution. Senior military and civil service officials were puzzled by the Shah’s inaction, and there was an upsurge in anti-American sentiment on the streets of Tehran. U.S. support for the Shah meant that it was by default the “fall guy for Iran’s problems.” The presence of tens of thousands of American citizens in Iran was also causing problems because they “pushed up rents and food costs.… At the moment, US power is not respected and we are seen as a weak, indecisive nation.… There are situations in which the US could turn very swiftly into a scapegoat for Persian problems.”
Isfahan consul David McGaffey told the group that his local contacts were convinced that “the Shah does not know the breadth and depth of popular discontent,” and that in an attempt to buy social peace he was giving away too many concessions to the clergy. “While the Shah shows moderation, his opponents never will.… Hence there is pressure from the bureaucrats favoring strong action against discontent.” The same was true of younger officers in the air force who were “very uneasy about a liberalization which would give substantial concessions to those [they] opposed.” McGaffey observed that Isfahan’s senior religious leaders had their own concerns. Worried that they were losing their younger followers to Khomeini’s extremism, they feared the Marja but were powerless to challenge his appeal.
Mike Metrinko painted a depressing picture of life in Tabriz. The once-vibrant city, he told the room, was now in the grip of Islamic hard-liners. “Virtually the only entertainment that exists is through the mosque,” he explained. “The normal social structure has been reduced. Social clubs and movies have been closed. In Tabriz, Empress Farah (who is widely respected elsewhere) is despised even by members of her family, who claim the Tehran Dibas have ceased being Turkish. There is some belief that the Shah is not fully informed about what has been unleashed in Tabriz.”
Religious minorities were in a state of panic and looking for ways out of the country, chimed in Metrinko’s colleague Thomas Dowling: “The Armenian archbishop is reportedly encouraging his supporters to leave Iran.”
Those around the table agreed that if anything happened to the Shah “the military will be the final arbiter in a succession crisis. Although there is some religious influence in the military, it is expected to remain loyal to the Empress or the Crown Prince. If the entire royal family is killed, Iran will be up for grabs.”
“What do you think, Mike?” Naas asked Metrinko.
“The Shah will be gone before I leave,” he confidently answered.
Naas laughed and said, “Well, I hope your next tour is a long ways away.”
“No, it’s next summer.”
* * *
THE FIRST HEAT of summer rolled in the second week of June 1978.
In Khuzestan, 124-degree Fahrenheit temperatures and forty-mile-per-hour wind gusts sandblasted thousands of acres of farmland, scorching crops and burning freshwater melons in the fields. Television antennae, tree branches, and shop signs were blown down. In Aghajari trees were torn up by the roots and “the city was left in total silence with all residents keeping indoors.” In stricken Ahwaz, “hot winds hurling hot dust into the faces of pedestrians have caused many to pass out, while others have been hospitalized with heat stroke. The city has taken on the air of a ghost town with many shop owners not opening in the afternoons, and taxi drivers parking their vehicles, leaving the streets empty.”
Rolling power cuts that lasted up to eight hours a day pitched the port cities along the southern coast into darkness and left millions at the mercy of the cruel heat. Earlier in the year the Water Board had provided the public with an assurance that Iran’s dams were full. There was no need to measure water levels “to see if there is enough water to meet the needs of everyone” over the summer. Electricity Minister Taqi Tavakoli had been careful not to rule out future power cuts. “The national power network is linked by only one line, which can create problems in the entire networks,” he pointed out. But he explained that the grid would double its capacity in time for the hot season and said he saw no need to take the precautionary step of purchasing electricity in advance from neighboring Turkey and the Soviet Union. But four months later, with pumping stations in the south “forced to shut down due to the lack of electricity, leaving residents with no running water for most of the day,” hospitals in Abadan reported ten heat-related deaths and numerous cases of food poisoning involving children eating spoiled food. With all sea travel in the region halted, thousands of residents thronged the airport and rail and bus terminals each morning, desperate to find a way out of town.
The Shah had devoted the greater part of his reign to taming Iran’s unforgiving terrain and climate, investing billions to construct dams, reservoirs, and canals and put in place ambitious reforestation and conservation projects. But the collapse of the power grid in June 1978 exposed the limitations of rapid industrialization and the White Revolution. Even the north experienced dry conditions. When Queen Farah visited Mazandaran in the same month she was told by local officials that the biggest problem they faced was “a shortage of drinking water.” In a year when nothing seemed to go right, a second disaster, of biblical proportions, threatened when the United Nations warned Iran to prepare for a plague of East African locusts. Observation posts were erected along the southern coast, forty aircraft and two thousand ground-spraying units were rushed to the region, and in the fertile southwest locust detection centers were built near fruit, cotton, and wheat fields. By unhappy coincidence, the last locust invasion had occurred in 1963 at the time of Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s rebellion.
The regime made three other major missteps. Thanks to austerity, over the past year, the budget for the Customs Department had been slashed, with seventeen hundred staff laid off and another eight hundred employees retired. To reduce bottlenecks at the borders and speed the flow of merchandise to market, customs protocols were changed so that “trucks importing materials for a firm would not be stopped at the border, but rather would be inspected and charged customs levies only upon arrival at the site of the industrial unit.” What this meant in practical terms was that a truck driver could pick up his cargo in a European city and pass through Iran’s frontier without having his load inspected until he arrived at the depot in Tehran. This devastating gap in border security played into the hands of the Palestine Liberation Organization and black market smuggling networks, which were stockpiling guns and explosives inside the country. “There were no controls and everything flooded into Iran in 1978,” lamented one former senior Savak agent. “Most people in Savak did not know about this. It wasn’t seen as such a big deal at the time. But on one occasion a customs officer ordered an Austrian driver to open a single crate in the back of his truck. The driver had been paid to drive the cargo to Tehran no questions asked. When the crate was forced open the inspector and the driver discovered a cache of automatic weapons. We tried to trace the contents back to Vienna but it was too late—the trail had gone cold.”
While one government policy left Iran’s borders unguarded, a second, this time involving taxes, hastened the flight of capital, property, and people to safe havens abroad. In a country where tax avoidance was regarded almost as a birthright, wealthy Iranians were stunned in June by the news that their tax burden would increase. Worse, the criminal statute of limitations would no longer apply in cases of tax evasion, and specially trained agents would be hired to “hunt down” tax cheats. Wealthy individuals and businesses immediately began off-loading their property and assets. Reform of the travelers’ exit tax also backfired. Under the new rules a traveler who paid $30 to fly from Abadan to Kuwait was soaked with $300 in exit taxes. Iran’s new exit tax, the most punitive in the world, was intended to boost government coffers but had the perverse effect of punishing short-distance travelers and rewarding those who flew the farthest and stayed away the longest. “The further abroad you go,” explained one travel writer, “the smaller the exit tax becomes as a percentage of the total fare. The Iranian tourist is thus looking at more distance destinations. Similarly, the exit tax applies to a trip of one day or one lasting months. In this context, on a one-day trip the exit tax costs $300 per day. On a 30 day trip it costs $10 per day.” The new tax regime encouraged middle-class and wealthy Iranians to spend the entire summer of 1978 abroad rather than the usual month of August. This was to the benefit of the religious revolutionaries, who chose that month to make their bid for power.
The third miscalculation involved the security forces. The Shah sent several intermediaries, including his trusted financial adviser Mohammad Behbahanian and General Nasser Moghadam, the new Savak chief, down to Qom to try to broker an accord with Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and moderate ulama who had not sided with Khomeini. Flattered that Moghadam was interested in hearing their views, the clerics issued a series of tough preconditions for talks. First, they demanded the release of the several hundred religious activists arrested in the wake of the May riots. Second, they insisted that the clergy and not the government should decide who attended pilgrimages to holy cities in Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Third, the government should suppress publication of “antireligious articles” in the popular press. Fourth, justice should be meted out to Savak officials implicated in human rights abuses. Fifth, the government should pay handouts “to people who are ill or whose families are in bad shape.” Sixth, the regime should “pay more attention to the religious people.” Finally, they opposed an agreement that would allow Austria to send its nuclear waste to be buried in Iran’s deserts.
General Moghadam’s decision to meet their demands and approve the release of religious extremists from prison shocked his own rank and file. To those who protested, Moghadam explained that the plan to buy off the clergy with concessions was the brainchild of the unscrupulous double agent Hedayat Eslaminia and had won the support of Court Minister Hoveyda and General Fardust. Parviz Sabeti’s suspicions were aroused by Moghadam’s change of tone. Two and a half months earlier, Moghadam had asked him to prepare the report for Queen Farah detailing the main causes of unrest before flying to Washington, DC, for a series of briefings with U.S. intelligence officials. “When he came back he was no longer a hard-liner,” Sabeti recalled. The head of Savak’s Third Directorate was convinced that Moghadam had been “turned” by the CIA, persuaded that he would be rewarded if he stood down the security forces and entered into negotiations with regime opponents. In early June, Sabeti and Moghadam attended the wedding of a mutual friend. The younger man challenged the general to justify his decision to release the prisoners. “His Majesty said this is wrong,” protested Moghadam. “We got into a fight,” said Sabeti. “I said, ‘We should not release these men until the forty-day cycle is over.’ Moghadam believed I was sabotaging him. Our fight lasted for almost five months.” The split within Savak weakened the security forces at a critical time. On two earlier occasions, in 1953 and 1963, the Shah’s dread of bloodshed and his natural instinct to avoid conflict had been countered by the intervention of strong-willed personalities such as General Zahedi and Prime Minister Alam. Fifteen years later, Zahedi, Alam, and General Khatami, the strong-willed air force chief, were dead, and the Shah was surrounded by advisers who reinforced his own personal conviction that further concessions would defuse political and religious tensions.
Sabeti managed to keep the agitators off the streets until the June 19 memorials and the state visit of the Spanish King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia passed uneventfully. The army’s show of force included Qom, where troops with bayonets standing guard at key intersections worked wonders. “I control this city,” declared Shariatmadari, who fully endorsed the regime’s decision to flood the streets with armor. “I didn’t want bloodshed and insisted there be peace.” He personally banned street protests and limited strike calls to prevent an escalation of unrest. Even so, demonstrations were reported in Isfahan, Tabriz, Ahwaz, Yazd, Zanjin, and Khorramshahr. In Mashad, saboteurs attacked Ferdowsi University, setting fire to the university generator and lobbing Molotov cocktails into the security office, causing a fire that incinerated one guard and mortally injured his colleague. Khomeini’s agents were determined to claim a new batch of martyrs to reinvigorate their dwindling protests. In Tehran on Monday, June 19, fire quickly spread from the basement of the Kasra Cinema on Shah Reza Avenue, sending plumes of smoke billowing over Bahar Street. Two moviegoers perished from smoke inhalation during a hasty but otherwise successful evacuation.
Still, palace and government officials were relieved that the security forces had avoided deadly clashes with religious demonstrators. Once again, the Shah’s determination to avoid bloodshed and confrontations looked like it had paid off. The avoidance of casualties meant “no new ‘martyrs,’” observed the Washington Post, which meant “there seems no ceremonial basis for new demonstrations 40 days from now.” Days later Khomeini’s men, who had been in detention since the May riots, were released and walked to freedom.
The Shah, as inscrutable as ever, gave little away in his meetings with ministers and courtiers. But his shrewdest advisers suspected the pressure was getting to him. In late June Lieutenant General Amir Hossein Rabii, commander of the Imperial Iranian Air Force, saw his friend and palace courtier Kambiz Atabai at the Imperial Country Club, where the two men often played tennis. “This morning I had an audience with His Majesty to discuss the F-16s,” Rabii said in reference to an order the Shah had placed for new American jet fighters. “For the first time he didn’t seem very interested. What has happened to him?”
“I don’t think you should read too much into it,” Atabai assured him.
“Kambiz, he’s lost his balls.”
“He trusts you.”
“This is not the same Shah we knew,” said Rabii. “He is no longer commanding me.”
* * *
SHORTLY BEFORE HIS departure for Nowshahr on the Caspian Sea, where he planned to spend the remainder of the summer, the Shah sat down for a lengthy interview with the American newsmagazine U.S. News & World Report. He made it clear he fully understood that his decision to loosen the reins was fueling unrest—but that he felt he had no option than to accelerate the pace of reform. If unrest flared again he said he would try to maintain order without resorting to repression. “The liberalization will continue, and I view law and order as a separate issue,” he said defiantly. “Nobody can overthrow me. I have the power. I have the support of 700,000 troops, all the workers, and most of the people. Wherever I go there are fantastic demonstrations of support. I have the power, and the opposition cannot be compared to the strength of the government in any way.”
The Queen completed her last engagements of the season, flying to Mashad to attend the Fourth Tus Festival, dedicated to the poet Ferdowsi’s literary masterpiece Shahnameh. Entering the festival grounds and “escorted to the Imperial Stand by Zaboli dancers and musicians and Quchani men carrying trays of crystalline sugar cones and burning frankincense,” the Queen received a “rapturous traditional welcome” from thousands of spectators and participants. Farah sat on a dais from where she was entertained with wrestling displays followed by a garden concert performed by Azerbaijani musicians, whose “mellow music against the backdrop of Ferdowsi’s majestic marble mausoleum, and the tall silvery poplars rising into the evening sky created an enchanting atmosphere.”
* * *
ON MONDAY, JULY 3, on the eve of General Nasiri’s departure for Islamabad to take up his new post as ambassador, Pakistan’s envoy threw a farewell luncheon in his honor at his residence in Tehran. While the guests mingled, Nasiri took aside Lebanon’s Khalil al-Khalil for a quiet word. He explained that a Savak agent in Beirut had arrived bearing a secret communication from Musa Sadr that included a gift for the Shah. Fully aware that Ambassador Qadar despised the Imam, the agent had agreed to Musa Sadr’s request to bypass the envoy and deliver the letter in person to General Moghadam. Nasiri and Sabeti were both briefed on the contents. “In the letter, Musa Sadr offered to help the Shah,” said Sabeti. “He offered to talk to Khomeini on his behalf. He also offered to help change the Shah’s policies to make them more reflective of Islam—he was offering his services.”
Lebanon was in the third year of the brutal civil war that devastated Musa Sadr’s kingdom in the south. In March 1978 Israel’s invasion to uproot Palestinian bases forced 250,000 Shia villagers from their homes and collapsed the local economy. The Shah condemned the Israeli action and rushed food, clothing, and medical supplies to the region in C-130 transport planes, earning praise from local Shia and presenting Musa Sadr with an opportunity for rapprochement. “By responding quickly to the material needs of the Shia refugees,” said the Christian Science Monitor, “the Shah’s intervention had exposed Musa Sadr as powerless: the Shah, many observers believe, has struck a decisive blow at Imam Sadr’s already declining prestige since the Imam’s self-styled ‘Movement of the Impoverished,’ aimed at self-help for the impoverished Shia farmers in south Lebanon, lacks funds or other means to help.” The Shah’s intervention in Lebanon served a dual purpose: the UN peacekeepers he sent to Lebanon included Savak agents who operated under cover to hunt down PLO-trained Iranian dissidents. By now the regime fully understood that the Khomeini movement was using Lebanon as the springboard to launch insurrection inside Iran. The Shah’s action made it clear that he “plans to end if he can the role of south Lebanon as a sanctuary for what he has termed ‘outlaws, terrorists, and Islamic Marxists’ trying to escape pursuit by Savak.”
Musa Sadr was also under intense pressure from Iran’s revolutionary movement and its Palestinian and Libyan allies to overcome his resistance to clerical involvement in politics and finally throw the full force of his moral weight against the Shah and behind Khomeini. They were already furious with the Imam’s support for Syria’s invasion of Lebanon. “Musa Sadr was not considered as someone who was particularly anti-Shah,” confirmed Abolhassan Banisadr. Banisadr harbored a visceral dislike for his old childhood playmate and suspected him of playing a double game. Over the summer of 1978 he and other senior figures in the anti-Shah revolutionary movement “were in disagreement with Musa Sadr’s position in regards to the Syrian involvement in Lebanon.”
Colonel Muammar Gadhafi of Libya had his own set of grievances with Musa Sadr, this time to do with millions of dollars in donations he had given to the Imam’s Amal militia to buy weapons to use against the Israelis. “[Musa Sadr] promised Gadhafi to take action in the south of Lebanon against Israel and he never did,” said Ambassador al-Khalil. “Gadhafi wanted him to motivate the Shia to work against the Israelis and work with the Palestinians. He gave him a lot of money and he did nothing. He did not live up to his promise.” Gadhafi offered to broker a meeting at his residence in Tripoli between Musa Sadr and Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, Khomeini’s most trusted aide and a key architect of the Islamic underground’s assault against the Pahlavi state. Gadhafi believed it was time the clergy patched up their differences and joined forces for a final push to topple the Shah’s regime. Beheshti was no stranger to Musa Sadr. During the Ayatollah’s years living in exile in Hamburg he had also cultivated a reputation among Western diplomats and foreign correspondents as a cosmopolitan and a moderate. But Beheshti’s erudite personality and admiration for German culture masked a fanatical side—he had after all played the key role in the assassination of Prime Minister Mansur of Iran thirteen years before.
Imam Musa Sadr still harbored the dream of returning to Iran to play a role in public life. There were those who believed he wanted to enter politics. “He actually had a great ambition to become something great in Iran,” said Ambassador al-Khalil. “He used Lebanon as a stepping-stone to move politically into Iran. He involved himself in Lebanese and Iranian political life.” But Musa Sadr’s ambitions were confined to the religious sphere. By temperament and training he was staunchly opposed to Khomeini’s idea that the ulama should rule Iran. Among moderates in Qom he was seen as the hope of the “quietists,” the natural successor to the great marjas Khoi and Shariatmadari, and the only senior cleric with the skill and charisma to reconcile Shiism with the modernist thrust of the Pahlavi state. They also saw him as their best means of blocking Khomeini’s power grab. By the summer of 1978 he and the Shah were two men in search of a lifeline. From the Shah’s vantage point, the humbling of Musa Sadr in Lebanon made him a more acceptable candidate for negotiation.
At his farewell luncheon, General Nasiri explained to Ambassador al-Khalil that Musa Sadr had extended an extraordinary offer of assistance to help the Shah reach an accommodation with moderate ulama. “He wants to improve relations,” said Nasiri. “What do you think? What do you think is behind this letter? What is he thinking?” The ambassador asked if he could see the letter for himself. The next day, Nasiri sent one of his aides to al-Khalil’s residence with the letter. Its contents were explosive. “I am ready to help you if you bring Mehdi Bazargan and the people from the Liberation Movement into government, and if you dissolve parliament and allow free elections,” read the missive. “If you do these things I am going to help you as much as possible.” Musa Sadr’s offer of help came with unpalatable conditions—the Shah associated Bazargan with his old nemesis Mossadeq—but it also provided the palace with an opportunity to break the impasse with Qom.
Ambassador Khalil listened as the letter was translated from Persian to Arabic, and then telephoned Nasiri to say that he was impressed with what he had heard. “And why not?” he said. “What do you have to lose by meeting with him? You have every reason to hear him out and no reason to close the door to him.”
The next day Nasiri’s aide told al-Khalil that the Shah, who was apparently informed of Musa Sadr’s message but not the detailed conditions, had agreed to send a personal representative to confer secretly with Musa Sadr in West Germany from September 5 to 7.
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VISITORS TO NOWSHAHR found the Shah engaged in his work and active in his leisure pursuits. “The holidays of the summer of 1978 began relatively peacefully for the Shah, who believed he had defused the crisis, and for the Imperial family,” wrote Hushang Nahavandi. “There was almost no change to the usual routine. The Shah had more visitors than previously, and the Shahbanou, who had taken a complete break in preceding years, also began to give audiences in order to keep pace with events.” “He would work until one o’clock,” recalled Elli Antoniades, who spent part of the summer at Nowshahr with the Pahlavis. “He received guests, ambassadors, ministers, then had lunch and then recreation.” After dinner, “the elder folk would play cards, without stakes, while the younger ones danced on the terrace.”
Back in the capital, however, and as far away as Isfahan, the streets were “awash with rumors of the Shah’s health.” “At every social occasion embassy officers and I have received anxious inquiries from Americans, Iranians and other diplomats,” Charlie Naas cabled the State Department. “By now most of the home offices of US firms have probably received the story of ill health. The rumors range from terminal malignancy, leukemia, simple anemia to having been wounded in the arm or shoulder by General Khatami’s son or Princess Ashraf’s son. The latter rumor has the assassination attempt taking palace at Kish Island earlier this year or recently at the Caspian and has on occasion included the death or wounding of security guards.” In his telegram, Naas noted that the rumors had been spurred by the cancellation of official events in late June and early July and the Shah’s absence from the front pages of the newspapers. He also recounted his most recent visits to see the monarch, the first on July 1, when he had escorted Lady Bird Johnson, the widow of Lyndon Johnson, to Niavaran for tea with the Imperial couple.
Gossip about the Shah’s health reached Nowshahr. Prime Minister Amuzegar sent officials to the Caspian “to see if the rumor was true,” remembered the Shah’s valet. “There was a rumor that the son of Princess Fatemeh killed him,” said Amir Pourshaja. “His Majesty was water-skiing and the officials cried, ‘Look, look! Thank God, Thank God!’” Another rumor had it that the Shah couldn’t walk by himself and so he and the Queen staged a photo opportunity for the press where they walked “hand in hand” up and down the beach together. Cynics back in Tehran decided the photos had been doctored to fool the public.
Charlie Naas and Under Secretary of State David Newsom flew to the Caspian on July 9 to break the news that the Carter administration had decided not to sell Iran a ground-to-air missile system. The official reason given was that the United States had decided to cancel development of its own project. But even Naas “wondered whether there was growing concern [back in Washington] about selling such a sensitive program at that stage to Iran. The Shah’s disappointment was seen in his face.” Not surprisingly, he interpreted the decision as a loss of confidence in his leadership. Naas’s trip to the Caspian masked an ulterior motive. Embassy staff were worried enough about the rumors of ill health that they asked Naas to make a studied inspection of his appearance. “We sent Charlie up to see the Shah,” admitted John Stempel. During his conference with the Shah, Naas looked for any sign of obvious distress or illness. “He looked a little tired but was otherwise fine,” Naas reported back. At one point the American watched as the Shah took a small medicinal bottle out of his pocket and swallowed some pills—he was so close he could see their different colors. “He did take some medication with his tea,” Naas wrote. But an Iranian palace source had assured him that “that the Shah is fine and enjoying his rest.… [He] blames the Russians for starting the rumors. Our own sources indicate that there is no doubt the Russians in fact are spreading the stories, but at this point everybody is in on the act. At this time I tend to discount well over 90 percent of the nonsense but we shall continue to try to keep ourselves informed. We are taking the line, when comment is unavoidable, that ‘to the best of our knowledge the Shah is fine.’”
Back at the embassy, meanwhile, Naas’s consular officers were issuing on average six hundred to seven hundred nonimmigrant visas every day to Iranians impatient to gain entry into the United States.
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THE START OF the summer vacation season, coinciding with the closure of high schools and university campuses, reinforced the illusion of normalcy. The government’s tough austerity measures were finally starting to pay off. Inflation had fallen to 12 percent, and in the past fiscal year the gross national product had registered a modest 2.4 percent increase. Each weekend in July more than a million people flocked to beaches along the Caspian Sea. The European Community expressed optimism that Iran would be granted favorable trade status by the end of the year to sell its manufactured goods within the Common Market. West Germany signed an accord to work with Iran on joint projects related to science, engineering, and “advanced technologies.” Hungary agreed to build a $12 million date processing plant at Banpur. Work resumed on local infrastructure projects, including Tehran’s underground metro and international airport. Construction began on the Trans-Iranian Gas Pipeline, one of the Shah’s more visionary projects to increase European reliance on Iran as an energy provider. By 1981 the pipeline would bisect Europe’s east–west divide transiting Czechoslovakia, Austria, West Germany, and France; the Czechs alone were expected to earn transit rights of $100 million each year. In the same week, Paris agreed to sell to Iran four nuclear power plants at a cost of $4 billion. The nuclear deal bailed out France’s nuclear industry, which “has been running into increasing financial difficulties of late because of the slowdown of nuclear power plant construction programs in France and abroad.”
The old anxieties lurked just beneath the surface. In a year when everything fell apart, and when Iranians looked skyward for answers to their terrestrial troubles, it made sense that so many people found inspiration in Steven Spielberg’s science fiction epic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which opened at the Goldis Cinema over the summer, with its hopeful depiction of what might happen if the heavens did actually open. On July 16, at two o’clock in the afternoon, two young men in southern Tehran were taking pictures with their new 150-rial camera when they saw overhead what they claimed was a spaceship. “Suddenly, we spotted something flashing an orangish color over our heads,” said Ali Farboudi, who with his best friend, Amir Barjan, enjoyed national celebrity status in the days that followed. The boys contacted Mehrebad Airport to report the sighting, and their infamous photograph was splashed across the newspapers. The skeptics had a field day. “We think Ali and Amir are having us on,” chided the editors at Kayhan International. “Everyone we have shown the picture to says the same thing—clever, but it’s not a UFO.”
Twenty-four hours later, however, duty officers in the control tower at Mehrebad Airport watched in disbelief as an unidentified aircraft with flashing lights moved at high speed through the night sky. The strange vessel was also spotted by the flight crew and passengers aboard a Lufthansa airliner as it prepared to make its final descent into Tehran. On the ground below, eyewitnesses contacted a radio station to report a UFO sighting. No one was joking this time.
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JOHN STEMPEL AND his Russian counterpart Guennady Kazankin sat down for lunch, this time at a Chinese restaurant on Pahlavi Avenue. The talk around town was of the UFO sighting the night before, but their discussion focused on more mundane events, specifically what they thought was happening in the palace. The Russian pressed Stempel for his views on the Shah’s decision to democratize Iranian life. The American, “pleading a return from vacation, merely said he had heard the political system was opening up,” and noted that elections were planned for next year.
Kazankin snorted in derision. “If the Shah is still around next year,” he acidly remarked, “everything will be rigged by the government.”
Stempel “picked up on the ‘if’” and asked whether Kazankin “has any news that would suggest differently. Were the Soviets planning something in Iran?”
The Russian “cleared his throat and treated Stempel to the rumor that the Shah was reportedly sick with cancer or some other blood disease.”
Stempel rolled his eyes. As he explained in his account of their conversation, rumors of a possible illness affecting the Shah “abounded in many quarters and may be of Soviet inspiration.” Later, he defended his decision to ignore Kazankin’s tip. “The Russians always believe conspiracy rumors,” he protested. “And when it came right down to the revolution, Kazankin knew nothing.”