What did I do to them?
—THE SHAH
He will lead us straight into the abyss.
—GENERAL MOGHADAM
The cries from the back of the Rex Cinema auditorium set off pandemonium. “In total darkness,” said a survivor, “I with the rest of the spectators was watching the beginning of the movie when we suddenly heard noise from the back seats and felt smoke and then saw flames … all in minutes. Soon all the spectators had found out the cinema was on fire. But darkness and panic caused some to die under the feet of spectators trying to escape. People cried, jumped over each other.” Groping in the dark, the panicked crowd rushed to the emergency exits only to find them locked. Those who were not crushed to death or asphyxiated by toxic fumes were engulfed by a raging inferno. “It began at the corner near the top and soon spread everywhere,” said another survivor. “Everybody was screaming and running around. But all the doors were locked and kept in place despite our frantic efforts to force them.”
News of the tragedy quickly spread, and the streets around the Rex filled with anguished family members, friends, and neighbors who tried to force entry but were beaten back by the smoke, heat, and flames. “The cries for help were so pathetic that I could die hearing them,” said one bystander. “There were hundreds watching a disaster take place, but there was very little they could do.” The first fire crew arrived after twenty-five minutes to discover the closest fire hydrant had a broken knob, the second nearest was underground and covered by tiles, and the third lacked enough water pressure to be of any use. “The cinema was engulfed in the conflagration,” said one firefighter injured by a falling brick. “I saw tongues of flames emerging from the air-conditioning ducts. We managed to reach the upper floor and extinguish the fire near the lavatories. All the entrance doors remained shut.” Rescuers successfully pried open one door, pulled several survivors to safety, and then ran in. “We raced to the rear of the cinema and while my colleagues directed water hoses on the fire, I used a pickaxe to unhinge the door. I gave a loud call above the din of the raging fire but no one, not a single soul moved forward. There was no movement among the doomed audience, only whining and whimpering, terribly muffled, as if from the bottom of a sepulcher.” The firemen were confronted with a hellish scene. “Several rescuers collapsed in nervous hysteria when they gained entrance to the charred building,” said a witness. “For many the greatest fear was that those unrecognizable heaps of flesh lying on the floor may have been their friends, their relatives, people they knew.”
One of the few survivors was Hossein Takbalizadeh, an unemployed welder, heroin addict, and recent convert to fundamentalist Islam. The day before the fire he had left a drug treatment facility and met up with three friends affiliated with the local chapter of the Khomeini underground. They were under orders to carry out a sabotage operation to mar the formal ceremonies marking August 19, 1953, and National Uprising Day. Though Takbalizadeh had been out on the streets for only a few hours, he agreed to help the others set fire to the nearby Soheila Cinema. Fortunately for the patrons inside, the solvents used in the attack failed to explode. The next day, the four men went to a field on the outskirts of town to test and strengthen the fuel. They drove back into town in the evening only to find the Soheila’s box office closed, and it was by chance they noticed that the Rex Cinema was still selling tickets to the eight o’clock screening of The Deer. The young men paid the entry fee, took their seats at the rear of the hall, and shortly after intermission slipped out into the lobby, where they sprinkled four small bottles of solvent around the concession stand and along the corridor leading to the main stairwell and only exit. Takbalizadeh proudly lit the first match and fled the scene. Passersby told police they saw a man running from the cinema as the fire took hold.
Iranians awoke to the appalling news that a single act of arson had caused the deaths of 377 men, women, and children; the final death toll reached at least 430. The inferno, the worst anywhere since the Second World War, was at the time modern history’s deadliest recorded act of terrorism. “The holocaust stunned Iranians from all walks of life,” reported one newspaper. “Radio Iran stopped its music programs and declared, ‘The slaughter of innocents in Abadan has plunged all Iran into mourning.’” Around the country, cinemas closed their doors in sympathy. The streets of Abadan, said one visitor, “echo with scores of muezzins reciting the Quran, and many people on the streets are wearing black, weeping for relatives or friends lost in the holocaust. Thousands of people have attended memorial services and mosques are booked for the next 15 days for ceremonies for the dead.” Businesses and homes were draped in black. Physicians treated hundreds of people for shock, and local pharmacies ran out of tranquilizers. Throughout Khuzestan Province, crowds gathered in town squares to demand that the authorities investigate the shoddy rescue effort and find and punish the culprits.
* * *
FEW DOUBTED THAT the arson was connected to the Ramadan riots. The date of the fire, National Uprising Day, was significant, and so too was the location—the Rex had been targeted once before by religious fanatics. Over the past nine months, Khomeini’s revolutionary cadres had burned twenty-nine cinemas and hundreds of private businesses. The Marja’s incendiary rhetoric criminalizing the Pahlavis, and the Islamic underground’s use of solvents and explosives in crowded spaces, made the Rex Cinema a massacre waiting to happen. “The Khomeini people selected August 19 to show their power even though it was the day the regime had to show its strength,” said Minister of the Interior Assdollah Nasr. The Rex Cinema was not the isolated act of a bunch of misfits but the centerpiece of a concerted terrorist campaign to destabilize and panic Iranian society and shake the foundations of the Pahlavi state. During Ramadan the authorities reported 123 bombs planted in public places and 184 acts of arson. There were 158 assaults and 3 armed attacks against police officers. At least 336 public and commercial buildings were attacked. In the same twenty-four-hour period that coincided with the Rex Cinema tragedy, religious fanatics set fire to a cinema in Mashad, killing three people, while in Shiraz another two were hurt in a cinema fire. Tehran’s famous Hatam Restaurant, on Pahlavi Avenue, was badly damaged by arson, and the Baccara, the capital’s biggest nightclub, was gutted.
Khomeini’s agents were not deterred and may even have been encouraged by the slaughter in Abadan and subsequent chaos. Five days after the outrage an attempt by two men to plant explosives on the roofs of two cinemas in Shiraz was foiled by alert pedestrians who spotted them on the street below. Properties owned by Jews and Baha’i were assaulted. Southern Tehran’s vegetable market was destroyed by arson, and three children were injured when their family’s furniture workshop was firebombed. Elsewhere in the capital, arsonists destroyed a brewery, a mob threw rocks at a school for intellectually handicapped children, and the Darvish nightclub was firebombed. In Khorramshahr, a large blaze gutted the harbor authority’s warehouse, a restaurant was bombed in Yazd, in Qouchan a private construction company was burned down, and near Elam a restaurant was set alight in forested parkland. “There is no question now that a stupendously savage and sinister hand is behind this spreading bloodbath,” declared one newspaper in a front-page editorial. “There has been no dearth of violence since the political liberalization program started. Thousands of people have been hurt and hundreds killed. Now, the situation seems to be getting out of hand. Extremists on the Left and the Right seem to have gone berserk. The madness must be stopped in the most urgent manner possible.”
Thousands of angry Abadan residents besieged police headquarters to demand expulsion from the city of preachers “who have urged people to go to mosques instead of to movies. The demonstrators put the brunt of the blame on the preachers.” Observers noted that Khomeini was the only marja who did not immediately condemn the arson, and Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari all but accused his rival Khomeini of culpability when he condemned “hot-headed people with whom we have no link whatsoever.” He added, “Such a crime must be the work of Nazi-type people. We are still not sure who is responsible, but you can be certain that no true Muslim was in any way involved.”
The Shah issued a ritual statement of condolence and urged the authorities to find and punish those responsible, but he blundered badly when he allowed his mother’s annual garden party to mark National Uprising Day to proceed. Each year Queen Mother Taj ol-Moluk marked the anniversary of her son’s return from exile with a lavish soiree in the gardens of Saadabad Palace. Court Minister Asadollah Alam would never have allowed the festivities to take place, but his successor, Hoveyda, feared crossing the eighty-two-year-old grande dame even in the midst of national mourning. Iranian public opinion was scandalized that the Pahlavi elite drank champagne while Abadan mourned its dead. “As always, the reception was sumptuous, the buffets beautifully laid out and the quality of food and drink was exceptional,” recalled Hushang Nahavandi. “Two orchestras, one Iranian and one Western, played alternately. Gentlemen wore evening dress and ladies wore gowns and jewels which would have been the envy of the finest receptions in Paris and Rome.” Inside the palace, however, the smiles were as tight as the gowns. The Shah “mingled with the guests, as was his wont. He seemed relaxed; but he was wearing his habitual mask, through which no hint of his real, inner misgivings could penetrate.” The Queen struggled with her own emotions. Earlier in the day the government had rejected her offer to fly to Abadan to console families of the victims. Farah was told that her safety could not be guaranteed and that her presence in the stricken town might actually trigger riots. “Usually when there was a tragedy I would go down,” she recalled. “I asked if I could go to Abadan and was told, ‘No.’”
For three days Khomeini, with his usual flair for the dramatic, maintained a stony silence. When he did finally speak out it was to sensationally turn the tables and accuse the Shah of orchestrating a massacre. “This heart-rending tragedy is intended by the Shah to be his masterpiece, to provide material to be exploited to the utmost by his extensive domestic and foreign propaganda apparatus,” Khomeini declared. “Who benefits from these crimes other than the Shah and his accomplices? Who is there—other than the Shah—that has ever enacted savage slaughter of the people every now and then, and presented us with barbaric scenes such as this?” Khomeini warned that “the regime may commit similar savage acts in other cities of Iran in the hope of defiling the pure demonstrations of our courageous people, who have watered the roots of Islam with their blood.” The crime was the Shah’s devilish attempt “to show the world—and in particular the Americans—that the Iranian people are not ready for his program of ‘liberalizing’ the political atmosphere.” Khomeini’s protégé Ayatollah Yahya Nouri, architect of a campaign of virulent anti-Semitism, was also quick to claim the moral high ground when he denounced “the burning of human life” that “could only be regarded as inhuman in Islam.” In mosques in the capital, sympathetic preachers read out an open letter repeating the smear of Pahlavi complicity, while to the east, in Mashad, a crowd of thirty thousand gathered at the Holy Shrine of Imam Reza to listen as the Shah’s “crimes” were broadcast in lurid detail over loudspeakers.
With public emotions running high, Khomeini and Nouri succeeded in convincing many devout Iranians that the Shah had ordered the fire lit and then tried to shift blame onto the ulama. Public grief boiled over in Abadan, where ten thousand mourners packed the town cemetery. “Men, women and children poured earth on their heads and writhed around in the dust in scenes that even shocked and sickened hardened detectives and veteran crime reporters,” reported one eyewitness. “Scores of ambulances, on standby to rush those overcome by grief to hospital, were very busy throughout the sorrowful ceremony.” Fearing riots, the City Council barred police and firemen from the site and turned over crowd control to young Boy Scouts, who sobbed as relatives of the dead tore their hair, clothing, and leaped into grave pits, begging to be buried with friends and family. Newspaper reporters and photographers ran for their lives when the mob turned on them, leaving several beaten and bloodied. Mourners rioted in the streets of downtown Abadan, smashing up banks and storefronts and lighting fires. Faced with a second major urban insurrection in as many weeks, the Shah made it clear to his security chiefs that he wanted no civilian casualties, and the police were instructed to fire live rounds over the heads of the crowd. When he was informed that order had been restored without loss of life, the Shah telephoned Khuzestan governor Baquer Nemazie to express his gratitude.
Iranians braced for more attacks to coincide with the birthday of Imam Ali, and the security forces instituted bag checks in government ministries, hotels, restaurants and public venues. Worried officials noticed that with each passing day the crowds of unruly demonstrators and rioters were swelling in size. Protests that one month earlier might have drawn dozens or even hundreds of people now attracted thousands. With Savak emasculated, the army confined to barracks, and the police holding fire, the crowds lost their fear and took over the streets. On the evening of Friday, August 25, demonstrators in Qom waving black flags clashed with police and lit fires around the town, prompting firemen to turn their hoses on the crowds. The next day, when several thousand demonstrators chanted slogans and hurled bricks, stones, and explosives, police were ambushed by men tossing Molotov cocktails out of house windows. The unrest quickly spread to the streets of the capital, where a crowd rioted outside a mosque in southern Tehran, while in Shemiran a group of thirty men set fire to a branch of Bank Saderat. In nearby Karaj, rioters assaulted a cinema and broke bank windows. To the south, zealots in Abadan burned the grand bazaar to the ground and destroyed several hundred stores. Police in Hamadan fired live rounds into the air to clear the streets, and a terrorist was killed when his bomb prematurely exploded. Violent unrest was reported in another half dozen cities and towns.
* * *
REZA GHOTBI WAS in Vienna when Cinema Rex burned down. “I cut my stay short and went back because of the government’s reaction,” he remembered. He was alarmed when Information Minister Dariush Homayoun all but dared the public to challenge the government’s version of events.
Back in Tehran, the Queen’s cousin attended meetings where government officials and courtiers discussed the worsening security situation. Everyone was waiting for a signal from the Shah to do something. “At many different meetings people would say, ‘We hope he knows what he’s doing,’” said Ghotbi. “If he is not reacting it is because either (1) Carter and the Americans have told him to democratize or (2) people thought he was intriguing and would come back even harder. People wouldn’t even believe there wouldn’t be a reaction.” Ghotbi agreed with the others that “something has to be done.” Still, he recalled that “no one at that time except some in the military said we need a military solution.” He joined Hushang Nahavandi and Savak’s General Hossein Fardust at a meeting in Court Minister Hoveyda’s office. They wanted to know what was going on. “Things are going awry,” said Fardust, “and I hope His Majesty knows what he is doing because it is not possible he has no plan. I hope you, Mr. Hoveyda, will ask him and tell us so that we have nothing to fear. Otherwise things are going to end badly.”
* * *
AMERICAN DIPLOMATS IN Tehran remained curiously detached from the crisis. “We were not panicking in August,” explained Deputy Chief of Mission Charlie Naas. “With Rex, all we could do was report it and the different explanations for it. We thought the Savak story [of culpability] was weak. It was a terrible tragedy—it boggled my mind that anyone could say the Shah did it. We did not recognize it as such a severe blow.” Still, Ambassador Sullivan’s first day back at the embassy after his summer on the Mexican riviera coincided with the mass burial in the Abadan cemetery. Sitting on his desk at the top of a stack of papers was a memorandum written by John Stempel describing the dreadful events of recent weeks. The headline he wrote reflected the somber mood: “While You Were Away … the place really didn’t turn to crap, but it might have looked like it.”
* * *
ISRAELI DIPLOMATS, BY contrast, saw the Rex Cinema as the decisive turning point in the Shah’s fortunes. After deciding that the Shah’s reluctance to use force meant he was finished, Ambassador Uri Lubrani, who was about to return home to accept a new diplomatic assignment, requested the Foreign Ministry to start drawing up emergency plans for a wholesale evacuation of Israeli nationals. The Israelis were also acutely sensitive to the panic sweeping Iran’s Jewish community. Ayatollah Nouri’s campaign of anti-Semitism had awakened the beast. “Some of the slogans say ‘Jews out of Iran,’ while others blame the Shah for being a ‘Zionist stooge’ and not supporting the Arab Muslim cause,” reported the Jerusalem Post. Propaganda leaflets were distributed in the oil fields “calling on Iranian oil workers to stop working on oil production to Israel.” Iranian Jews followed the example of the Armenian Christian population by drawing up evacuation plans, selling property, and sending wives and children to safety abroad. “Many of those who have already left are well-to-do families who have settled in either North America or Western Europe,” reported the Post on August 25. “Some of them have been operating various businesses abroad for some time in preparation for such an eventuality.”
Confounded by the pace of events, Sullivan visited Lubrani, who “expressed concern that Jews will be the next target of Muslim fanatics.” When the American asked him to describe what he thought was happening, Lubrani’s deputy interjected. “It’s a revolution,” he said, a remark that prompted his boss to look at him as if to say, “Shut up.”
* * *
THE TUMULTUOUS EVENTS of August 1978—the Ramadan rising, the Isfahan insurrection, and the fire at the Rex Cinema—ended any hope the Shah had for a peaceful transition to Western-style democracy. For the first time in twenty-five years he began to have doubts about his mission. Visitors to the palace noticed he was more subdued and reflective than usual. The old confidence and buoyancy were gone. “When the King came back from Nowshahr he wouldn’t talk much,” said Reza Ghotbi. “He was not active in conversations. He would listen much more than he talked. I went to the residence and you could feel some sort of isolation.” He could no longer dismiss the unrest on the streets as the work of a few terrorists and malcontents—the sight of crowds massing in late August suggested broader opposition to the regime and a more personal rejection. The question he asked friends and family members changed from, “What do you think is going on?” to “What did I do to them?” He succumbed to feelings of guilt, self-pity, and bitterness, and on his worst days he lashed out at family members, advisers, and ministers, wondering who among them he could trust. At other times he blamed the Iranian people for behaving like spoiled children—if they no longer wanted him then they could run the country on their own and see what happened. In late August, Prime Minister Amuzegar offered a disturbing insight into his agitated state of mind. “If the people are so ungrateful, His Majesty may leave,” Amuzegar warned General Moghadam. He repeated the remark to shocked cabinet ministers. No one needed to be reminded that the Shah had left Iran under similar circumstances once before.
Disoriented by events, the Shah miscalculated when he lurched from one extreme to another. He abandoned his plan for a gradual transition to democracy, deciding instead to give the people what they wanted now by simply lifting the lid off. “In the past few days that I have been back in Tehran,” Ambassador Sullivan informed Washington, “it has become clear to me that the Shah has made a fundamental political decision, as announced in his Constitution Day speech, to transform his authoritarian regime into a genuine democracy. He has reached this decision as a result of his own intellectual convictions, because he feels Iran has become too complex and too volatile to govern through the current processes of benevolent authoritarianism. He therefore feels that the only way to preserve the integrity of the country is to change the political system, even if that change puts the monarchy at risk. Indeed, he realizes that, unless the system changes, the monarchy is predictably doomed.”
Sullivan explained that the Shah believed that events were forcing his hand and that he was moving faster than he ever intended or indeed wished to open up the political system. “The Shah had not made his dramatic decision in a burst of exhilaration,” wrote the ambassador. “He is remorseful, morose, nervous and suspicious. His game plan, which he nurtured in such confidence for two decades, has had to be scrapped. He has little confidence in the wisdom or the responsibility of the Iranian people even though he has decided to put his faith and that of his country in their hands. He fears that everyone will perceive him as slipping and then in the best Middle East tradition join in kicking him as he goes down. He especially fears the United States will do this.” Sullivan warned that the Shah’s enemies “will try to frustrate political liberalization and prove that the Shah’s ‘democracy’ is a farce by taking to the streets and forcing the Shah to institute a martial law regime.… The fabric of this society, under the stress of a genuine democratic opportunity, may disintegrate and the Shah may feel he has to reimpose strict political controls. That sort of thing has happened before and the US assisted in the reestablishment of internal security.” Senior Iranian officials were themselves unsure what to do or how to react. Even those who have encouraged the Shah in that direction “are nervous, because they have never played the democratic game before and they are not sure how things will turn out.… They are nervous and afraid of ‘that great beast,’ the people of Iran.”
The Shah announced a new raft of concessions that signaled weakness to supporters and opponents. He canceled the controversial deal to allow the burial of nuclear waste in the Kavir Desert, sent his brothers and sisters and their families out of the country, and agreed to sack Jamshid Amuzegar as prime minister and replace him with Jafar Sharif-Emami, the Senate president who he was told enjoyed good relations with Shariatmadari and other senior ulama. He had chosen poorly. Sharif-Emami was a lackluster politician widely suspected of skimming profits from the assets of the Pahlavi Foundation, which managed the Imperial Family’s wealth. The foundation’s portfolio of investments, which he oversaw, included many of the same casinos and hotels that were now under attack from Muslim fundamentalists. Even the Shah’s most devoted followers reacted with shock and amazement when they heard that he was on the verge of demanding Amuzegar’s resignation in favor of Sharif-Emami’s appointment.
On the morning of Thursday, August 24, Hushang Nahavandi, who aspired to the prime ministership himself, drove to Saadabad Palace to find out if the rumors were true. He arrived just as a clearly distressed General Moghadam left the Shah’s suite. When the two men saw each other, Moghadam approached and asked Nahavandi if he could secure an immediate audience with the Queen. Farah listened as the general begged her to help him stop Sharif-Emami’s appointment. “I permit myself to intercede with you about this appointment, because it is the worst which could possibly have been made, at this critical juncture in the nation’s affairs,” begged Moghadam. “Sharif-Emami is not the man for this situation. Not only does he have no following, popular or otherwise, but he has an abominable reputation. His appointment as prime minister—it is my duty to tell you—is nothing less than catastrophic. He will lead us straight into the abyss; but there is still time to stop it. Please, Your Majesty, persuade the Shahanshah to reconsider.”
Farah picked up the phone and dialed her husband’s office. “Sire, your chief of Savak is here, begging me to throw myself at your feet and implore you by no means to make Mr. Sharif-Emami your head of government,” she explained. “His reputation is execrable and he’s the most dangerous choice you could have made at this time.” Listening in silence to what the Shah had to say, she put down the phone after a few minutes and looked at her two visitors. “Unfortunately,” she said, “there’s nothing to be done about it as far as I can see.”
Outside the Queen’s office, Moghadam vented his frustration. “I just can’t believe it. How can the Shah be so ill informed? Sharif-Emami! There will be a general insurrection within two months! I’ve done all I can to stop the worst from happening—you are my witness to that—and even now I beg you to keep trying.”
The Queen tried again, too. She favored Nahavandi for the job of prime minister. Though his arrogance alienated many of his colleagues, Farah recognized his credentials as a liberal reformer loyal to the throne. “I thought Nahavandi should be prime minister but His Majesty wouldn’t have him,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Is Nahavandi again trying to become prime minister?’ He didn’t like him.”
Reza Ghotbi made a similar appeal. “I proposed Nahavandi as prime minister,” he recalled. The Shah rebuffed him. “Nahavandi?” he queried. “He has no weight.” To emphasize his point the Shah held out his hands, palms facing upward, and raised and lowered them in quick succession: “The Shah took [Nahavandi] as a loyal, good intellectual who could be of interest as a contact between the palace and scholars and intellectuals.”
* * *
ON SUNDAY, AUGUST 27, the palace confirmed that Jafar Sharif-Emami would replace Jamshid Amuzegar as Iran’s new prime minister. “I thought it was a joke,” recalled Iran’s ambassador to Washington Ardeshir Zahedi. “I didn’t take it seriously. It wasn’t possible. His name was ‘Mr. Five Percent’—he was totally corrupt.” Princess Ashraf also was “astonished at the choice. I felt the situation called for a stronger leader.” She told Parviz Radji, Iran’s ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, that “for us—and by us I mean the Pahlavis—it is virtually over, it being only a matter of time before a republic based on Islamic principles is proclaimed. His Majesty will never agree to be King in a country where Khomeini or Shariatmadari exercise the ultimate power. He will never have anything to do with the mullahs.” The Princess criticized “the Iranian people who are incapable of gratitude after all that my father and brother did for them.”
On Sunday, the day of Sharif-Emami’s appointment, the new prime minister’s televised speech to the nation included the admission that the reforms of the White Revolution “had been too rapid and uncoordinated, resulting in an unprecedented spread of corruption and unsuitable bureaucracy.” His remarks signaled that the Pahlavi state was in full retreat before the Islamist onslaught. The new government replaced the Imperial calendar with the Muslim lunar year—Iranians found themselves plunged back into the year 1357—and Mahnaz Afkhami’s Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the first in the Muslim world and one of the only ministries of its kind anywhere, was abolished. Bars, clubs, and liquor stores were shut down, copies of Playboy and Penthouse were hurriedly pulled from store shelves, and for the first time since 1963 Iranian newspapers were permitted to display Khomeini’s portrait and mention his name on their front pages. “The Club Discotheque, normally a place of frenzied activity for Iran’s newly rich upper middle class, was shuttered,” reported Time. “Television stations broadcast readings from the Quran and Islamic sermons in place of Cannon and Police Story. It seemed that Iran’s uncertain advance into the 20th century had stumbled again, and that the nation had been thrust back into the dark Islamic puritanism of the 18th century.” Khomeini’s campaign of intimidation combined with Sharif-Emami’s concessions brought a sudden, ignominious end to the Pahlavi Dynasty’s half-century effort to balance Iranian religious traditions with secular government and Western-style modernization.
* * *
TWO DAYS EARLIER, Imam Musa Sadr had arrived in Tripoli on the first stop of a three-week trip scheduled to take him to Rome and then on to West Germany, where he planned a secret meeting with the Shah’s envoy. Musa Sadr was accompanied by two close associates, his aide Sheikh Mohammad Yaqub and Abbas Badreddin, a Lebanese journalist assigned to cover the trip for the Beirut press. Shortly before his departure he had written an essay in France’s Le Monde that described his view of events back in Iran. In “The Call of the Prophets” the Imam drew an idealistic portrait of different classes and social groups joining together to fight injustice. The language and spirit of the article reflected mainstream Shia thinking and were in keeping with French Enlightenment traditions. They provided a real contrast to Khomeini’s message of fundamentalism and violence. Where he used the word “revolution” to describe the troubles, Musa Sadr was referring to a revolution of ideas and not politics. Though careful to acknowledge the guiding role of “the great Imam Khomeini” in leading the opposition to the Pahlavi state, nowhere did Musa Sadr personally condemn the Shah or advocate the replacement of the monarchy with religious rule. Senior clerics often cloaked their opinions in carefully phrased sentences, and Musa Sadr’s essay, written to assuage the doubts and suspicions of men such as Ahmad Khomeini and Abolhassan Banisadr, actually left open the door to rapprochement with Niavaran.
Musa Sadr and his companions were picked up at the airport in Tripoli and whisked to the al Shate’ Hotel. Ayatollah Beheshti was expected to arrive shortly. Curiously, the Libyan press failed to mention the presence in their country of one of Islam’s most revered leaders. Musa Sadr usually phoned his office and family when he was away, but on this trip they never heard from him. Journalist Badreddin’s employers noted that he did not file a single news dispatch during his stay in the hotel. Gadhafi finally consented to receive Musa Sadr on the evening of August 29–30, then begged off, pleading a busy schedule. Beheshti’s party never arrived. Musa Sadr became impatient to leave—perhaps he realized he had walked into a trap after all—and at one o’clock on the afternoon of August 31, 1978, the trio was spotted by a group of Lebanese visitors in the lobby of their hotel. An aide to Yasser Arafat later confided to his contact in American intelligence, CIA Beirut station chief Robert Ames, what he was told happened next:
Arriving at the Tripoli airport, Musa Sadr was escorted to the VIP departure lounge. In the meantime, Beheshti told Qaddafi over the phone to detain Musa Sadr by all means necessary. Beheshti assured Qaddafi that Imam Sadr was a Western agent. Qaddafi ordered his security force to delay Musa Sadr’s departure. Qaddafi instructed that the imam should just be persuaded to go back to his hotel. But Qaddafi’s security officers accosted Imam Sadr in the VIP lounge and addressed him disrespectfully. An argument ensued, and the imam was roughed up and thrown into a car. Things had gotten so out of hand that the imam was taken to a prison.
In Beirut, one of the Imam’s friends passed in the street Mohammad Saleh Hosseini, the founder of the Farsi Brigade, which trained Iranian guerrilla fighters in Lebanon. Hosseini knew Musa Sadr and enjoyed good relations with Colonel Gadhafi. When Hosseini mentioned his intention to fly to Tripoli to attend Gadhafi’s festivities, the Imam’s friend asked him to pass on his greetings to Musa Sadr. Hosseini fixed him with a hard stare and without explanation said, “Musa Sadr is gone.”
* * *
ON AUGUST 29, while Musa Sadr cooled his heels in a hotel room in Tripoli, the Shah and Queen Farah received Chinese Communist Party leader Hua Guofeng at Saadabad. The first ever trip by a Chinese Communist leader to Iran couldn’t have come at a worse time. Security was so tight that the usual ride from the airport in a gold coach was scrapped and the two leaders drove to the Shahyad Monument by car, and from there flew by helicopter the short distance to Golestan Palace. “Security around Hua’s Golestan Palace guest residence in teeming South Tehran, a short distance from the teeming Bazaar area, was drumtight to prevent the approach of any demonstrators,” reported the Washington Post. They came anyway. An evening rally drew thousands of protesters to downtown Tehran. They attacked a bank and a cinema, lit fires in backstreets, evaded police lines to block traffic, and hurled burning garbage cans.
At Niavaran the Shah, Queen Farah, and their Chinese guests were halfway through their banquet dinner when the King was approached by an aide who whispered in his ear. The Shah thought for a few moments and then rose from the table and excused himself, unheard of behavior for someone so concerned with protocol. The Iranians in the room exchanged furtive glances—what could be so important that His Majesty would leave his own table during a state dinner? Several minutes later the Shah returned but instead of entering the dining room signaled to Prime Minister Sharif-Emami and General Moghadam to join him outside. Moghadam went to pick up his hat but the Shah made it clear it was not necessary. The two men listened in stunned silence as the Shah told them he had just taken a phone call from Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, where Khomeini lived in exile: “Saddam Hussein was telling me, ‘This mullah, Khomeini, is causing problems for you, and for me, and for all of us. It would be wise to get rid of him. But I need your agreement to take care of it.’” The Shah said that he responded, “I personally cannot make this decision. I have to speak to my responsible officials.” He looked at Sharif-Emami and Moghadam and added, “Saddam Hussein is waiting on the phone for my answer. I wanted to know your thoughts about this.”
Sharif-Emami and Moghadam then conferred between themselves for several more minutes. Moghadam had nothing to say and preferred to hear the prime minister’s opinion. Neither man wanted to take responsibility for the assassination of a marja. “Your Majesty,” said Sharif-Emami, “you know better than anyone else what should be done.”
The Shah looked at them and gravely said, “In my opinion, this is not the right action.” He turned and walked back up the stairs to give his reply to Saddam. For the second time in fifteen years, the Shah saved the life of the man he knew wanted to destroy him. Then the Shah walked back down the stairs, returned to the dining hall, and resumed his seat as if nothing untoward had happened.
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THE NEXT DAY, Wednesday, August 30, the Israeli ambassador Uri Lubrani recommended that his government establish an emergency committee to monitor the worsening unrest in Iran. Prime Minister Menachem Begin was at Camp David in the United States, negotiating a peace treaty with Egypt’s president, Anwar Sadat, and President Carter, when his deputy back home authorized the Israeli security forces to start planning for the evacuation of Israeli citizens from Iran.
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RESIDENTS OF THE northern Tehran enclave of Shemiran, “flooding back into town from Europe,” spent the last evening of August at the newly refurbished Farahabad racetrack, mingling at the new Café de Paris restaurant, and taking in dinner and a fashion show. They looked forward to the splashy opening of the Tehran skyline’s latest addition, the luxurious new twenty-six-story Hyatt Crown Tehran, which boasted a rooftop restaurant and nightclub, health club with sauna, and indoor swimming pool. Despite the closure of many watering holes and clubs around town, the autumn still promised another rich season in arts and culture entertainment. The Merry Widow was set to open at Rudaki Hall, and symphonic recitals of works by Corelli and Tchaikovsky were scheduled. The Museum of Contemporary Art featured exhibitions of modern Iranian works and Finnish and Italian architecture, and the poetry of Hafez was set to music by Shahin Farhat at the City Theater. The yacht club at Karaj Dam Lake hosted the final weekend of water skiing, and children’s rides were still open at the Mini-City amusement park on Lashkarak Road.
If outward appearances counted, Shemiran residents were more focused on their social plans and preparing to resume work and school than the troubles several miles to the south. But the glamorous scene at Farahabad was deceptive, and an undercurrent of tension ran through the salons. Returning vacationers were shocked at the changes they encountered at home. Parts of the capital were deemed no-go zones, too unsafe to venture into even during the daytime. Their maids wore head scarves, interrupted their chores to pray, and recited quotes from the strange man they called “Imam Khomeini.” Friends who had stayed in town through the summer sported Islamic garb and stopped returning their calls. One wealthy couple noticed something was amiss when their chauffeur failed to pick them up at Mehrebad Airport. They arrived home in a taxi to find that their palatial residence had been requisitioned by the servants, who hurled abuse and refused to follow instructions. Royalists found “the windows of their homes broken and dead cats thrown into their gardens.” Queen Farah’s friend Elli Antoniades returned from Nowshahr to discover the graffitied message “Death to the Shah!” scrawled across her front door, something that would have been unthinkable six months ago.
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ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, at the end of another long, grueling week of riots and civil unrest, Queen Farah decided her husband was in need of a change of scene. Fridays were the one day of the week set aside to entertain family and friends at the palace. “There was usually dinner for forty people,” said Elli Antoniades. “It was the only time the King and Queen were free to be human beings. There was horseback riding and playing bridge with his friends.” Today, however, Farah arranged an excursion by helicopter to Lake Latian, a popular boating and nature destination north of the capital. The Queen pleaded with the small party not to mention the troubles in conversation with her husband. “We felt the situation was serious,” said Elli Antoniades, “but we were afraid to talk about it. I remember the Queen said, ‘Whatever is happening, please don’t discuss it. It stays here.’”