What do you think is going on in my country?
—THE SHAH
Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a “pre-revolutionary” situation.
—CIA
In a year when the fortunes of the old Persian kingdom hinged on a cancer diagnosis, funeral processions, and visions of spaceships hurtling through the night skies, perhaps it was fitting that a fatal car crash on a lonely stretch of highway outside Mashad proved enough to tip Iran back into a state of siege. It was the Shah’s bad luck that Haj Sheikh Ahmad Kafi was no ordinary traffic fatality but one of Tehran’s most popular preachers. At age eleven the former child prodigy had dazzled crowds in his hometown of Mashad by leading prayers at the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza, and in his early forties Sheikh Kafi presided over a network of religious institutes and enjoyed a sizable following among the people. The traffic pileup that claimed his life on Friday, July 21, and injured his wife and five children was an accident, but Khomeini’s agents were quick to spread the legend that Parviz Sabeti’s men had rammed their car off the road. The death in London of a second respected cleric, Ayatollah Molla Ali Hamadani, only added to the Shah’s woes. The passing of these two mullahs ensured that Shia mosques would be packed with memorial services through the holy month of Ramadan, set to begin on Saturday, August 5. Two other calendar events loomed as major tests for the security forces. This year the first day of Ramadan also happened to fall on Constitution Day, the national holiday that served as a reminder of how far Iran had strayed from the democratic ideals of the 1906 revolution. The twenty-fifth anniversary of Mossadeq’s ouster, National Uprising Day, fell on August 19 and promised to be another flash point for royalists and republicans.
Among the thousands of mourners who thronged the streets around Mashad’s main shrine for Sheikh Kafi’s funeral procession on Saturday, July 22, were young knife-brandishing provocateurs loyal to Khomeini who began chanting antiregime slogans. They leaped from the crowd and slashed police officers, butchering one on the spot and wounding seven others, and triggered street brawls with the security forces that lasted through the day. One week after the Sheikh’s death, mourners in southern Tehran blocked traffic, smashed bank windows with bricks and rocks, and attacked the headquarters of the Boy Scouts. Buses ferrying American workers in Isfahan were stoned. Even as King Hussein of Jordan presented his new bride, Lisa Halaby, to the King and Queen, who were in residence at Nowshahr, riot police in the capital teargassed demonstrators who converged along Amireh Avenue. In Qom, a police officer was blown up when he caught a device thrown from a passing car that turned out to be a live grenade. Rioters in Shiraz assaulted banks, cinemas, and the Iran-America Society building. Mobs ran wild in Kashan, Hamadan, Rafsanjan, Behbehan, and Jahrom, setting fires and attacking public buildings and businesses owned by religious minorities. By the end of the weekend the authorities counted at least six deaths and had made three hundred arrests.
Khomeini’s agents staged the latest provocations to reinvigorate a protest movement that had petered out eight weeks earlier. “The relative calm evidently did not sit too well with the monarch’s more extreme opponents,” reported the U.S. Department of Defense. “Followers of the exiled-Khomeini appeared to have been behind much of the violence, or at least exploited the genuine commemorations of the religious majority. Other cities also reported some incidents, which apparently were perpetrated by religious extremists.”
The tempo of religious dissent sharply accelerated on the eve of Ramadan. From sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan observant Muslims deprived themselves of food, liquids, and sexual relations to cleanse their minds and bodies. The mosques were more packed than usual, and evening meals were a time for families and neighbors to come together. In their elevated spiritual state the devout were more likely to listen to and act on the urgings of Khomeini’s agents. “The preachers took advantage of Ramadan,” explained the young revolutionary Ali Hossein. Since staging the attack on the cafeteria at the University of Tehran he had risen to become a close aide to Ayatollah Rasti Kashani, Khomeini’s representative in Qom. “The people were high. There was fasting. The companions of Khomeini and the preachers held gatherings throughout the country, and intellectuals and young people propagated in favor of an Islamic government.” From the pulpit, the Shah was indirectly compared to Yazid, the treacherous villain who had assassinated Imam Husayn at Karbala. “Khomeini made use of this point to the maximum extent,” said Ali Hossein. “He used the mourning ceremonies to ask preachers to talk about this interpretation of the uprising and provoke people. The preachers told their congregations but in a way that did not mention the Shah by name but made it obvious he was Yazid in their eyes.”
* * *
IRAN WAS AT war on two fronts. The first, between the Shah and Khomeini, was over which leader would wield ultimate political power in Iran. The second, between Khomeini and Shariatmadari, would decide the future of the Shia faith. Since 1906, tension had always existed between the ulama’s majority “constitutionalists” and minority “rejectionists.” Over the past several years the “rejectionists” had won the hearts and minds of younger clerics, whose energy and enthusiasm began to overwhelm the “constitutionalists.” If Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari was to prevail in this contest he would have to show his supporters that moderation could yield results, which in turn meant the Shah would have to pledge to respect and enforce the Constitution.
If the Shah was slow to act it was because just eight weeks earlier he had been feted in Mashad by senior clergy and acclaimed by vast crowds. Meanwhile, the dwindling of religious unrest in late May had restored the illusion of normalcy. Convinced that the worst had passed and that enough steam had been let out of the system, he saw no need to hurry along the dialogue with Shariatmadari or announce new reforms. He groaned when Hushang Nahavandi flew up to Nowshahr to deliver the Marja’s latest list of complaints and demands. “Oh, that old man!” the Shah said with a sigh. “Of course, you’ll have to keep on going to see him.” He was too insensitive to the pressures weighing on Shariatmadari. In early August Khomeini used Ramadan as a cover to step up his campaign to isolate, discredit, and smash Qom’s moderates. As a pretext he cited a recent interview Shariatmadari gave to a French publication in which he criticized the use of violence to achieve political goals and expressed support for the 1906 Constitution. “Within [the] past few days Ayatollah Khomeini sent Shariatmadari a message to stop talking about a constitution and parliament since Khomeini opposed them all,” reported the U.S. embassy. The contempt was mutual. “Source who has been involved in government/religious discussions tells us Shariatmadari sent Khomeini a ‘put up or shut up’ message to effect that if Khomeini was so strong, he should come to Tehran and speak face to face with the ayatollahs who live in Iran. Shariatmadari noted Khomeini lived far away in Iraq and had refused to criticize Iraqi government when it took severe action against demonstrators in Najaf about two years ago.”
The Shah was not entirely to blame for inaction. For months he had held out for some form of acknowledgment from Shariatmadari that he was making a sincere effort to open up the political system and reform the government and the Imperial Court. The Marja’s defenders argued that to do so would violate Iran’s church-state divide, which the Shah had enforced with such enthusiasm. The role of the clergy, they reminded the palace, was to reflect and not shape public opinion, and so the marjas were duty-bound to keep their silence. “My father was not pro-monarchy or anti-monarchy,” explained Hassan Shariatmadari, who served as his father’s private secretary. “He saw the ulama as the voice of the people—we do not involve ourselves in politics.” Still, by late July the Marja’s preferred list of demands extended to sacking not only the prime minister but the entire cabinet, silencing Princess Ashraf, and firing the Shah’s personal physician—General Ayadi was a Baha’i whose faith singled him out in the eyes of the clergy as an apostate. Speaking to Nahavandi, Shariatmadari rapped the monarch’s casual attitude toward religion: “I can’t just ring him up and give him a moral lecture, although God knows he needs it; do you dare take this message?”
Royalists cried foul. They recalled Shariatmadari’s decisive intervention in 1963 when he had orchestrated Khomeini’s elevation to grand ayatollah, and they pointed out that even now the Marja insisted that the Shah give away his powers without offering so much as a public blessing. “Shariatmadari was very weak,” said Ali Kani, one of many establishment figures who begged him to lend public support to the Shah. “One day I went to him and said, ‘Do something.’ The Marja protested to Kani that he was under intense pressure from the militants. “His own students wanted him to do something,” said Kani. “He was nothing.”
The impasse weakened both leaders and the moderate cause. “The failure of the Shah was that he never agreed to make real reforms,” said Hassan Shariatmadari. “The moderates were losing ground in late 1977 and early ’78. My father urged the Shah to reform. The various middle men sent from the Court to Qom misinterpreted his words. The Shah was too distrustful and showed more interest in international politics than in domestic reform.” The senior marja was especially worried that with the onset of Ramadan the situation in Iran would deteriorate. When Hushang Nahavandi visited Qom at the Shah’s behest he received an earful from his host. “We have a constitution which ought to be honored and applied both in the spirit and the letter, and a Sovereign who ought to act as an impartial judge, completely detached from factional interests,” said Shariatmadari. “Indeed, he’s throwing himself away at the moment; he is terribly exposed.… I am convinced that the time has come for him to take a radical decision, in order to change the course of events. He is still in a position of strength, and the situation can be managed without any appearance of retreat; but, if the King fails to take this decision within the next few weeks, he will lose everything.”
U.S. diplomats watched as the Shah’s attempt to strike a deal with Shariatmadari faltered. Charlie Naas concluded that the King’s efforts “to come to some sort of arrangement with religious forces have not been successful … the competition between Iranian mullahs for politically religious prominence can have the effect of forcing all mullahs to support their more extreme brethren, however lukewarmly, in any civilian confrontation with security forces.” Privately, Naas and his colleagues suspected sabotage from within the Shah’s inner circle. “The paradigm we were working under in the summer of ’78 was to reach an accommodation with the moderates,” explained John Stempel. “There was some suspicion that someone wasn’t getting the message out. We decided Hossein Fardust wrecked the chances of an accommodation. He felt he had been treated badly by the Shah, treated like a peasant—he wanted to do the Shah in.”
Regardless of who was to blame, or whether sabotage and high treason were involved, there remained a striking gulf in perceptions between Niavaran and Qom. “Still one finds [Prime Minister Amuzegar] to be relaxed and conciliatory in his spacious office, not ready yet to call for the display of force that might have been expected in this monarchy not so long ago,” Wall Street Journal correspondent Ray Vicker informed his readers on August 2. “He is convinced that dissenters represent only a small minority of this country’s 35 million people.” Ever the loyal technocrat, Amuzegar took his cues from the Shah. “Our problems stem from the fact that we have been making rapid progress toward liberalization without having the institutions necessary for a democratic society,” he said. Amuzegar admitted that the government had been caught flat-footed by events. Remarkably, the Majles had still not passed legislation allowing for peaceful protests, and his prescription for future action was hardly reassuring: “We have convinced ourselves we are moving in the right direction. We must convince the people, and I think we are doing that.”
* * *
EARLIER IN THE summer, Isfahan consul David McGaffey had warned his colleagues that Isfahan was a tinderbox. The incident that pushed the city over the edge was the disappearance of Ayatollah Jalal Al-Din Taheri, a prominent Isfahan cleric and Khomeini supporter, from his home on the evening of Monday, July 31. His followers accused Savak of detaining their leader, but there was enough confusion initially that McGaffey wondered if the entire incident had been staged by Khomeini’s agents as another pretext to stage a riot. The next day, Ayatollah Taheri’s acolytes seized control of the streets around the main shrine, erected and set ablaze barricades, hurled explosives into banks, and attacked public buildings. The security forces lost control and fired live rounds into the crowd. One American caught up in the violence told diplomats that “one child was hit in the head and died. Others may have been injured and possibly killed as well. Same source saw small groups of police chase some rioters into small alleys and return after single shot had been fired.” Isfahan’s American Club was firebombed, an American was shot at on his way to work, and a pipe bomb was thrown over the wall of the U.S. consulate. Mob attacks were carried out against a cinema, restaurant, and businesses either popular with Americans or owned by Jews or Baha’i.
The return of unrest cast a pall over the holiday atmosphere at Nowshahr, where guests and courtiers quietly passed on the latest grim reports of the unrest to the south. “Every day His Majesty heard on the phone the bad news,” recalled his valet Amir Pourshaja. Too late, the Shah accepted Shariatmadari’s advice that he needed to make a bold gesture if he was to convince Iranian public opinion that his commitment to constitutional rule was genuine.
On Saturday, August 5, Reza Ghotbi flew to Nowshahr with a film crew from state television to film the Shah’s annual Constitution Day speech, which was broadcast to the nation. Ghotbi read the speech before the taping and was struck by the contrite, defensive tone. “He talked about when he and his father took leadership of the country, how we had more students and universities,” said Ghotbi. “It was a list of accomplishments, mostly material, but also how other countries now respected Iran and treated it as a partner. I said it was somehow apologetic.” Reporters invited to a pre-broadcast briefing were assured by Minister of Information Dariush Homayoun that the Shah “is serious about opening up the system, but plans to do it carefully. Local newsmen were told [the] Shah remains in full control, and plans to loosen up as [the] system shows it can take it. Press was told criticism was all right except of [the] Shah himself and [the] prime minister by name, pending new press law.”
Millions of Iranians turned on their television sets and radios to hear the Shah promise the most sweeping political reforms in decades. He pledged to hold free and fair parliamentary elections in 1979 and challenged his opponents to test their strength at the ballot box instead of in the streets. He provided the assurance that “in terms of political liberties we will have as much liberty as democratic European nations, and, as in democratic countries, the limits of freedom will be specified.” Peaceful public gatherings would be allowed and freedom of the press and speech regulated by a press code that guaranteed criticism of every institution except the monarchy and the Shia faith. Yet if the Shah expected gratitude for this latest round of reforms he was very much mistaken. Conservatives despised them as concessions to mob rule that made the palace and government appear weak. Leftists, meanwhile, denounced the Shah’s “Father knows best” attitude and dismissed the promise of elections as a cynical gimmick. “They are glad the Shah has given them a weapon to beat him with—the promise of political freedom—but distrust his commitment to specific measures and remain deeply suspicious of his ultimate intentions,” Charlie Naas reported back to Washington. “His public commitment to free elections will keep [the] political pot boiling.” For Khomeini’s followers, the promise of democratic elections was like waving a red flag to a bull. In their eyes the national parliament, the Majles, a holdover from 1906, was the ultimate symbol of Western liberal decadence: only an Islamic legislature was truly capable of representing the people. Sensing that the Shah was on the defensive, Khomeini’s forces launched a wave of arson and sabotage attacks in Tehran and instigated a full-scale insurrection in Isfahan.
On Thursday, August 10, hundreds of young men fanned out from Pahlavi Square in Isfahan chanting antiregime slogans. They invaded banks, forced out staff and customers, and “proceeded to pour benzine and set the banks on fire.” Police responded with tear gas, firing rounds into the air to disperse demonstrators, but the rioters regrouped, took back the avenues, and tossed bags full of benzine at passing army trucks. In the evening and through the next eighteen hours this most elegant and sophisticated of Iranian cities passed into the hands of the mob. Amid scenes of complete anarchy the barricades went up and cinemas, banks, department stores, and hundreds of private cars and rescue vehicles were set alight. For the first time, small bands of heavily armed men trained in Palestinian terror camps in Lebanon and Yemen engaged the security forces in running gun battles. Five police officers died of bullet wounds, and the streets were turned into deadly crossfire zones. Hospital emergency rooms were jammed with the dead and the dying. With Isfahan on the verge of becoming a second Beirut, the Shah had no choice but to send in the troops. Martial law was declared and a thirty-day curfew imposed. At 8:00 p.m. on Friday evening, with plumes of smoke billowing into the night sky, helicopter gunships clattered overhead and Chieftain tanks rumbled along Isfahan’s broad avenues trailed by hundreds of heavily armed soldiers. But even as calm returned to Isfahan, protesters in Shiraz demonstrated outside the New Mosque, scaling its high towers and hurling projectiles onto police lines below. Other rioters set fire to motorcycles, mopeds, bicycles, and cars, turning them into explosives and ramming them through police lines. The security forces opened fire, causing “a number of deaths” and many injuries.
Foreign tourists were caught up in the drama when several hundred rioters launched an assault on Isfahan’s luxurious Shah Abbas Hotel, running for cover as the mob threw bricks through windows and tossed an incendiary device into the hotel’s fabled Golden Hall, which quickly caught fire. Bruce and Pat Vernor, who eight months earlier had greeted the Pahlavis at Mehrebad Airport, were on a driving tour of the south when they stopped for the night in Shiraz. From the streets outside they heard the pop of firecrackers. The next morning the couple and their daughter Eileen were at the checkout desk and about to set off for Isfahan when they learned that the firecrackers had actually been shots. Bruce was handed a newspaper “that said someone had thrown a firebomb through the window of the Shah Abbas Hotel where we had reservations.” He called ahead and was told it was still safe to travel to Isfahan but to avoid the area around the bazaar, which was surrounded by tanks. A run-in with Iranian soldiers left the family sufficiently shaken up to end the trip early and head back to Tehran. “For us, August was when the trouble began,” said Bruce.
* * *
ISFAHAN WAS LIKE a distress flare that lit up the night sky. Over the next several days a wave of riots struck major urban centers, including Tehran, Abadan, Ardebil, Kermanshah, Khoramabad, Qazvin, Tabriz, Arsanjan, Arak, Ahwaz, and Qom. “In Babol on the Caspian Sea,” reported Time, “a mob tied to prevent the opening of a touring Italian circus, retreating only after its owner threatened to let loose his lions on the crowd.”
As the pace of unrest escalated, so too did the level of violence directed at foreigners. On Sunday evening, August 13, a man carrying a black bag walked into the Khansalar Restaurant, a favorite Tehran nightspot for American and European diners. He surveyed the room and strode out back, where the kitchen and bathroom were located. Seconds later, a blast and fireball tore through the building, collapsing walls, hurling debris, and burying patrons beneath rubble. With the lights knocked out, survivors clawed their way to safety amid horrific scenes. “While I was going to help the injured I felt myself walking on something soft,” said one survivor. “I touched it to find that it was an injured woman’s body. You could see men, women, and children panicking and running here and there, trying to find the door out. The bodies of many whose limbs were nearly torn off could be seen lying on the ground with blood and destruction all around.” Another bloodied victim who staggered over twenty bodies to make his escape noticed that “the heads of two of them were split and blood could be seen oozing out.”
With Ramadan under way, the anniversary of Operation Ajax fast approaching, and mosques gearing up for the birthday celebrations of Imam Ali on August 24–26, August was the month when Shariatmadari’s religious moderates were overwhelmed by Khomeini’s extremists. August was also the hottest month of the year, a time when the streets of northern Tehran’s wealthy enclaves emptied. That meant the men and women who ran the kingdom—the Shah and Shahbanou, the prime minister and his cabinet, senior generals and leading industrialists—were absent during the critical few weeks when Khomeini’s men made their power play. Only too late, the few who remained behind became aware of the southern suburbs rising from the desert floor to start the inevitable advance toward the northern foothills. “August was the crucial time,” recalled an Iranian physician who ventured into southern Tehran during the hot season. “There was a very feverish atmosphere. Preachers were in the mosques giving fiery speeches. Thousands of people attended, some hanging from trees outside mosques and halls. People were excited at the prospect of ‘change.’ That was the cry, ‘We want change.’” “Rhetoric and crowd activity in Tehran” was on the increase as religious leaders prepared to commemorate the death of Imam Ali, the U.S. embassy reported on August 17. “Eyewitness Iranian source tells us there has been almost continual minor upheaval in south Tehran for past seven to ten days. Ayatollahs at major mosques have become more anti-government and in some cases anti-foreign and directly anti-American.” In one incident, demonstrators were chased to the corner of Takht-e Jamshid and Old Shemiran Road, just six blocks from the embassy grounds. The embassy obtained documents linking a prominent Khomeini follower, Ayatollah Yahya Nouri, to a virulent campaign of anti-Semitism. “Even before the inception of Zionism, Jews have never lived in peace and harmony with their neighbors,” Nouri preached. “Due to their transgression and hostility to others they were always rejected by society.” Without naming the Shah, Nouri condemned governments in the region that dealt with Israel, “the aggressive enemy,” and insisted Muslims boycott Coca-Cola, which was “a big Jewish company.” He urged the devout “to avenge Jewish bloodletting in Lebanon by an ‘eye for an eye.’”
The simmering unrest was brought to the attention of Reza Ghotbi, who had stayed at his post at National Iranian Radio and Television. He dispatched correspondents to southern Tehran to keep an eye on the mosques and then report straight back to him. Their accounts made for chilling reading. “People would break their fast before going to the mosques,” he recalled. “When they came out they were shouting for Islam and against the Shah. My reporters were shocked. They made some interviews and smelled alcohol—these were very secular people, leftists, communists, so they had the protection of the holy place.” For the mullahs to find common cause with socialists, atheists, and anarchists who drank alcohol and ate during the day in Ramadan could mean only one thing: something big was about to happen.
Minister of Women’s Affairs Mahnaz Afkhami was so worried she went to see Court Minister Hoveyda. “Things are terrible,” she told him. “I feel really scared.”
“Why don’t you go to the prime minister?” said Hoveyda.
“I’ve tried. I tried the Princess. Now I’m trying you. You have access to the Shah.”
Hoveyda picked up the phone and dialed Nowshahr. Afkhami listened as he relayed her concerns over the phone to the Shah, though without mentioning her name. “He is going to have a press conference when he gets back,” Hoveyda assured her.
“Does he want us to prepare anything for him?”
“No. He will do it himself.”
* * *
ON AUGUST 11, the same day tanks rolled into Isfahan, White House national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski received a written report from Professor William E. Griffith, an old friend who had recently returned from a visit to Iran and the region. Griffith was an expert on communism and a scholar whose opinions Brzezinski greatly respected.
Since late May Brzezinski had been following news of the troubles in Iran prepared for him by his Iran desk officer, Gary Sick. Griffith’s deeply pessimistic analysis went one step further, reflecting the outcome of his meetings in Tehran with officials including the Shah, Prime Minister Amuzegar, Iranian government officials, and foreign diplomats. Griffith was that rare Cold War warrior who understood that something new was taking shape not only in Iran but also throughout the region. Crucially, he perceived that the real danger to the Shah was coming not from communism and the far left but from Islam and the far right. The Shah’s liberal social and economic policies, he warned, were stoking an inferno:
On balance, I should think the domestic situation [in Iran] is serious and the future of the dynasty is in question (this is not the view of the Embassy, and I saw no opposition leaders, but I am still of this view). The Shah began liberalization and is continuing it; the demonstrations are primarily fundamentalist Moslem; the new Prime Minister, Amuzegar, whom I saw, is impressive and committed to continue the liberalization; but the Shah (whom I also saw) seemed to be less so, and I fear that the intelligentsia is largely alienated.… The Shah is, even more than usual, concerned about US steadiness of will; and the Soviets seem to him regionally successful and on the offensive.
Griffith urged Brzezinski to order up a fresh intelligence analysis of the situation in Iran and indeed throughout the Middle East. Second, he recommended that the White House publicly throw its weight behind the Shah’s attempts at political reform. “The Middle East and indeed most of the Moslem world, is in the grip of a rising fundamentalist Islam,” he advised. The main causes for religious fervor, he argued, were “strains of modernization and the perceived failure of both Western models, parliamentary democracy and Marxism. Thus the return to Islam is the current solution for the problem of identity.” An Islamic resurgence posed a real threat to the president’s foreign policy goals in the Middle East and especially his efforts to build peace between Israel and its neighbors: “A gloomy picture, in short, but there is no point in not realizing it—and in not continuing to try to prevent it coming true!”
Bill Griffith had never lived in Iran, did not speak or read the language, and had never been regarded as an expert on Islam or indeed the Middle East. As a result, Brzezinski read the memo with interest but ultimately decided not to act on it. “On the one hand, his warning was probably one of the first,” said Brzezinski. “On the other, I knew he didn’t speak Farsi and he was not an area specialist. So I decided his view was not decisive.” Griffith’s insights were also private, which meant no official follow-up was required or requested. To date, President Carter had not been briefed on the unrest in Iran. From the West Wing to Roosevelt Avenue, the consensus among U.S. officials was that the Shah had matters firmly in hand. “Iran is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation,” the CIA concluded in early August 1978. “There is dissatisfaction with the Shah’s tight control of the political process, but this does not at present threaten the government. Perhaps most important, the military, far from being a hotbed of conspiracies, supports the monarchy.”
In mid-August President Carter left town for a two-week white-water rafting vacation in the Rockies. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was fully absorbed with preparations for the Egypt-Israel peace talks, set to start at Camp David in the first week of September. NSC Iran desk officer Gary Sick was away on leave for the rest of the month, and Ambassador Sullivan was enjoying his second month of vacation in Mexico. For the American public, the big story of the late summer was not Iran but the death of Pope Paul VI and the election of Albino Cardinal Luciani as John Paul I. Only in hindsight did it become clear that the last two weeks of August were the critical time when the fate of the Shah and the Iranian nation was decided.
* * *
KHOMEINI TOOK ADVANTAGE of Ramadan to mobilize his followers. The fatwa he issued was the moral equivalent of a declaration of war against the state. “The people will not rest until the decadent Pahlavi Dynasty has been swept away and all traces of tyranny have disappeared,” he thundered. Free elections were pointless because “as long as the Shah’s satanic power prevails not a single true representative of the people can possibly be elected.” Khomeini ordered his followers in the army, security forces, and government to lay down their arms and abandon their posts. “Do your duty by Islam,” he instructed. “Put yourselves where you belong, and you will be rewarded in this world and the next.” The Marja went still further when he called for the murder of the head of state: “Death to the Shah is an Islamic slogan which all men of religion should take up.”
In the Shia tradition a marja’s followers were expected to emulate his teachings. Khomeini did not boast as many adherents as Grand Ayatollahs Shariatmadari or Khoi, but those he did have were more likely to share his fundamentalist interpretation of the Quran and emulate his conservative social views. They were, in fact, prepared to give their lives for him. Though most were poor and illiterate laborers, others were army conscripts or had risen from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie to work in government as low-level civil servants. Still others were powerful in the bazaar, wealthy industrialists, society ladies, and even senior ranking army officers. Khomeini’s fatwa tore at their consciences, as he surely knew it would. He was making it clear that now was the time of choosing—they were either with him or against him. Was their loyalty first to God or man, to the mosque or to the state? Soldiers who disobeyed Khomeini’s fatwa were deemed legitimate targets for reprisal and attack.
Rattled by this latest escalation, the Shah finally awoke to the danger and sent General Moghadam to Qom for an urgent nighttime rendezvous with Shariatmadari’s son-in-law Ahmad Abbasi, who restated the demands the Marja had presented earlier in the summer. The Shah was mulling whether to accept them when he received two American officials at Nowshahr. Charlie Naas escorted General Robert E. Huyser, deputy commander of U.S. ground forces in Europe, to brief the monarch on Huyser’s proposed blueprint to reform the command and control system operated by the Imperial Armed Forces. The Shah broke the ice by raising the sensitive subject of unrest. He restated his commitment to liberalization but declared that the “recent vandalism” had to end. Turning to Huyser, he reminded the general that “he had predicted this development” in a conversation the two men had earlier in the year. The Shah admitted that the crisis “had come more quickly than he expected” and that although the situation “was very serious … he did not want me to become overly alarmed.” He added that “he was not going to lose control.” The Americans interpreted this to mean that the Shah was prepared to call out the army to prevent the collapse of law and order.
As the meeting broke up the Shah asked Naas if he could have a quiet word.
“Mr. Naas,” he asked, “what do you think is going on in my country?”
“Your Majesty, we in the embassy have come to no particular conclusion about what is happening. We are following it very closely.”
“But what do you think?”
“Your Majesty,” Naas replied, “I agree with your assessment. You are opposed by the Red and the Black.” Later, Naas admitted that his answer had been calculated not to offend: “As chargé, I was very conscious of not being ahead of government policy.”
The Shah sensed as much. He looked at him doubtfully and signaled it was time to leave.
* * *
THE SHAH’S QUESTION to Charlie Naas was a tacit admission of his bewilderment at the rapid turn of events. Two years earlier, when he first decided to open up the political system, he had expected a certain amount of unrest. But this? Cities in flames? Mobs with knives? Suicide bombers blowing up restaurants packed with women and children? The King who prided himself on always having a plan was at a loss as to what to do. For the first time doubts crept in, and with the doubts came hesitancy, second-guessing, and bitterness. At Nowshahr, family and friends were startled to hear their host, always so quiet and confident, repeat the same question over and over. “The Shah was asking, ‘What do you think is going on?’” said Elli Antoniades.
His unease was on display at the press conference held to mark his return to Tehran in late August after forty-two days away and on the eve of National Uprising Day. Drawing parallels with that earlier time, the Shah directed his fire at “Islamic Marxists,” whom he accused of fomenting riots and for wanting to turn Iran into “Iranistan.” “We offer the people the Great Civilization with all the benefits we have detailed,” he said. “They offer the Great Terror.” “But the situation is different now,” he told his audience of newspaper editors. “As I said earlier … the patriots, the Armed Forces and I will not let them execute their plot.” Reminiscing about the Mossadeq era, he conceded that he had taken a long time to act in 1953 because “perhaps the conditions of the time did not permit an alternative response. But the situation is drastically different now.” For the first time he admitted to doubts about his decision to dismantle authoritarian rule. He had “considered riots to be the price of democratization” but “did not think this price would be so high.” Many people in government “were already afraid of the consequences of political liberalization and asking the question ‘Where are we going?’”
The Shah asked himself the same question. Still determined to win over the skeptics, he provided more explicit details of his road map to democracy. Liberalization would continue, and the first bills to be submitted to the Majles after the summer break would provide guarantees for freedom of speech, press, and assembly. The Rastakhiz Party would no longer hold a monopoly, and other political groups were free to form. Parliamentary elections would take place as scheduled next year, and opposition candidates could participate as long as they were prepared to swear the parliamentary oath of allegiance to the Throne and the Quran. Addressing the issue of corruption, the Shah announced that members of the Imperial Family were henceforth banned from government affairs and private business. Denying rumors of illness, he insisted he was in good health: “I have never felt better.” He took a swipe at upper-middle-class Iranians fleeing the country, calling them “chicken-hearted.” Their departure would only “cause house prices to fall even further.” Asked what he might do if the riots continued, he left the door open to a temporary suspension of elections and civil liberties until order was restored. “If, despite all the civil, individual and political liberties they are to enjoy … they still refuse to quiet down, then what are we supposed to do? I do not need to spell it out. You can readily come up with the answer.” Few reporters took him at his word—by now they sensed he was in full retreat. “Press noted this could mean change in liberalization plans but Shah saw it as reaffirmation of [his government’s] decision to move forward despite heavy sledding,” reported the U.S. embassy. “The press conference went badly,” said Mahnaz Afkhami. “He lost an opportunity.”
In light of the Ramadan riots, the Shah’s decision earlier in the summer to send an envoy to meet with Imam Musa Sadr now assumed real significance. Behind the scenes, Shariatmadari and the moderates struggled to come up with a formula that would satisfy most ulama without humiliating the palace. They found inspiration from the Safavid period, when Persia’s kings had shared power with the marjas. Modern-day Morocco offered another model in King Hassan, who had shown a canny ability to keep his country’s clergy on his side. One idea was to ask the Shah to replace his prime minister with a statesman with impeccable religious credentials, “somebody with [the] confidence of both Shah and people.” As early as mid-August the U.S. embassy reported to Washington that the moderates favored Senate president Jaafar Sharif-Emami for the post of prime minister “because he is a religious man himself and has solid political backing.”
The religious moderates’ most intriguing and creative proposal was that an invitation should be extended to Musa Sadr to return to the land of his birth to lead them against Khomeini. The Imam’s attributes were obvious. He was a highly respected Shia theologian and had the personal skills to draw large crowds. He had once enjoyed the Shah’s admiration and was known to favor Grand Ayatollah Khoi’s opposition to a religious state. Worldly, tolerant, and a brilliant communicator, some in the clergy even dared hope that the Shah would appoint Musa Sadr to the post of new prime minister. “When the revolution began, many people said Musa Sadr knew more about the affairs of the world than Khomeini,” said Hossein Nasr, Queen Farah’s adviser on cultural affairs. “Musa Sadr was not known inside Iran either, but he was known in Iraq, the Arab world, and he knew the present day situation. He knew the ulama in Qom. To be frank, I thought it was an interesting idea. Musa Sadr had the experience and the exposure.” The plan, he said, was for Musa Sadr to return to Iran “and keep the Shah on as a figurehead. I had heard it from younger ulama in Qom and in ulama circles in Tehran, from people involved in religious circles.” The Imam would “establish a formal religious government and restore order. Khomeini would come back to Iran, go to Qom to live, and stick to scholarship. This was discussed with the generals. The Shah and Empress knew about the plan to put in Musa Sadr as head of government.”
The moderates believed Musa Sadr was the only cleric capable of standing up to Khomeini and preventing what they feared was an inevitable slide toward civil war and massive bloodshed. “I have heard [the ulama] believed Musa Sadr could be an alternative as a leader,” confirmed Hassan Shariatmadari. “Relations between Musa Sadr and my father were very good. He had the ambition to become the leader of Lebanon—he also wanted to become the leader of Iran. The Khomeini people feared him.” “Musa Sadr was a threat to Ayatollah Khomeini,” agreed Ali Kani. “Khomeini was scared of him.”
Musa Sadr’s admirers in Iran had every reason to believe he would accept an offer of leadership if it was extended. In early August in Beirut the Imam hosted an old friend, Ali Reza Nourizadeh, the political editor of Iran’s Ettelaat newspaper. The two men reminisced about Iran, and Musa Sadr was brought to tears listening to tape cassettes of Marzieh, the Iranian chanteuse who sang traditional Persian music. He confessed that he had been so excited by Googoosh’s recent tour of Lebanon that he had asked a friend to film the concert so he could watch it at home. The two men spent long hours talking about the troubles in Iran. “You don’t know Khomeini,” Musa Sadr told Nourizadeh. “He is a dangerous man.” The Imam said he had recently asked Ahmad Khomeini to talk to his father and try to calm him. “You don’t want Iran to become Lebanon,” he had warned Ahmad. “He didn’t want the Shah to fall,” said Nourizadeh. “He was very worried about Khomeini’s intentions.”
With Iran and the region coming to a boil, Musa Sadr’s friends worried about his safety. When he told them he had decided to accept Colonel Gadhafi’s invitation to stop over in Tripoli before flying on to Rome in early September, they begged him to reconsider. King Hussein of Jordan and the president of Algeria suspected the Libyan leader had laid a trap. Gadhafi was “crazy,” they told him, and prone to violence. Iranian diplomats sympathetic to Musa Sadr also advised him to cancel his travel plans. “Our ambassador in Syria told him not to go because Gadhafi might kill him,” recalled Parviz Sabeti. But Musa Sadr was undeterred. Supremely confident in his powers of persuasion, he could not imagine that a Muslim head of state—not even Gadhafi—would dare harm one of Islam’s most beloved and respected figures.
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ON THE MORNING of August 19, National Uprising Day and the anniversary of Mossadeq’s downfall, the editors of Kayhan published a special editorial that warned the country was “in a virtual state of war. What is taking place now is nothing less than an open, concerted and tenacious aggression [from the religious right].” “The Shah is on a tight rope—trying to minimize violence while channeling political conflict into [the] electoral realm,” agreed Charlie Naas. The air was thick with tension. “Goose-stepping Iranian soldiers paraded in Tehran, and the government organized pro-Shah rallies in most major cities,” reported the Washington Post. “The parades in Tehran drew crowds of mildly curious onlookers, but public enthusiasm for the display was visibly lacking. There was virtually no applause and the generally listless spectators did not join in the troops’ shouts of ‘Javid Shah’ (Long live the Shah).”
To the south, residents of Abadan endured another miserable day of appalling heat, water shortages, and power blackouts. “More than half the doctors in Abadan have left, because of the intense heat,” reported the press, “but a medical spokesman in the city said it had not caused any inconvenience because 150,000 other residents had left with them.” Air-conditioned cinemas remained the preferred place of refuge from the heat and on Saturday evening the six-hundred-seat Rex Cinema was filled almost to capacity for a screening of the Iranian movie The Deer. Two months earlier, religious extremists had made an abortive attempt to bomb the Rex, and it was to prevent a second incident that the proprietor had taken the precaution of bolting the exit doors from the inside to prevent saboteurs from sneaking in unobserved. Halfway through the screening, ticket holders near the rear noticed a commotion behind them and smelled smoke. Out of the darkness a cry went up, “The cinema is on fire!”