By saying this he lost God’s farr, and through
The world men’s murmurings of sedition grew.
—THE PERSIAN BOOK OF KINGS
If my people don’t want me, I will not stay by force.
—THE SHAH
On Monday morning, September 4, fifteen thousand people gathered in a dusty lot in the northern hills neighborhood of Qeitariyeh in Shemiran to mark Eid-e Fetr, the joyous last day of the monthlong Ramadan fast. After morning prayers and a speech by a clergyman who condemned the Shah and Prime Minister Sharif-Emami’s government as un-Islamic, the large crowd began an eight-mile “long march” down into the center of town. Along the way they were joined by tens of thousands more demonstrators waiting at designated meeting spots, their way cleared by an escort of “Motorcyclists for Allah.” Though the marchers refrained from calling for the overthrow of the Shah, they held aloft banners displaying Grand Ayatollah Khomeini’s face and chanted slogans calling for their hero’s return from exile. “Iran is our country!” “Khomeini is our leader!” “Why do government troops kill our people?”
Army units posted at key intersections along the route warily eyed the marchers. “At one point shortly after the march began, nervous troops surrounded by the teeming thousands seemed to get riled by some of the strong slogans they chanted,” reported an Iranian journalist. “But the marchers quickly gathered around their army trucks, shouting ‘Soldiers, brothers don’t shoot brothers,’ and ‘We’ve got nothing against you if you’ve nothing against us.’” An army officer rose from the back of his truck and declared, “You are indeed our brothers but we have our duty to fulfill.” The tension broke and the crowd threw flowers into the truck, a sight repeated again and again along the route. Many onlookers came out of their homes with melons and pitchers of water to quench the marchers’ thirst. Not everyone was happy with the display of religious power, and many Tehranis, “clearly frightened by the size of the demonstration, stayed indoors, fearing the worst.” As the procession moved through the busy commercial district, marchers appealed to curious bystanders to join them in celebrating the end of Ramadan, and by early afternoon a carnival atmosphere prevailed with an estimated two hundred thousand religious protesters, students, office workers, middle-class housewives, and pensioners exchanging flowers, kisses, and handshakes. The urge to participate proved irresistible. “I was in the middle of the crowd,” said one middle-class Tehrani. “In front of me, behind me, to my side, wherever I looked I saw people in this great wave as drops in the sea, and I too was in the sea of this immeasurable gathering of the people of Iran. There was no ‘I’ there, we were nothing but ‘We.’”
Visions of a “Persian Spring” with asphalt streets turned into a field of flowers heartened liberals and leftists, whose lingering fear of the mullahs was replaced by respect and admiration for the ones who had come out into the streets to defy the Shah and his army. Some even joined in the scattered chants of “Down with the Shah!” “The never before sighted demonstration of ‘flower power’ followed pleas for restraint from religious leaders and the police,” wrote one newspaper. “They said it with flowers not the sticks and stones that have marked demonstrations after religious meetings throughout Ramadan. The sight of women and children putting garlands around the necks of troops and throwing flowers into their trucks could not help conjuring up the Vietnam peace demonstrations of the late 1960s in the United States.” The news from the provinces was more ominous. Radio and television news bulletins reported violent clashes, with five demonstrators killed in Elam; two in Karaj; two in Khomein; and one death in Qom, where police struggled to contain a crowd of thirty thousand protesters.
In advance of Eid, moderate clerics and opposition leaders had counseled moderation. The Qeitariyeh rally had been approved only after the authorities received assurances from National Front spokesmen that “the meeting would be similar to such gatherings in past years and would not develop into street marches or demonstrations.” Khomeini’s men agreed to the plan and then simply hijacked it by flooding the venue with their followers and marching them down the hill into town to invade the bastion of middle-class commerce. The Shah paid the price for his steadfast refusal over the past two years to legalize political activity by the National Front and Liberation Movement, his more moderate opponents. At one time both groups might have channeled popular discontent into the political process. “These groups and ‘parties’ provide the basis of what could develop into a constitutional opposition, capable of helping Iran achieve a true system of democratic debate and accountability,” noted one political commentator. “Ultimately they could serve the nation by helping create the moderate center that a truly balanced democracy needs in order to function effectively and smoothly.” Instead, their absence from the political scene allowed the opposition movement to “fall into the hands of the extremist and radical groups.” Prime Minister Sharif-Emami’s decision two weeks earlier to end restrictions on political activity had caught them unprepared. With no time to raise funds or campaign, the moderate left was swamped by the rising groundswell of support for Khomeini and a more radical approach to forcing political change.
* * *
ON NIAVARAN HILL, palace courtiers reacted with shock and disbelief to news reports that as many as a million people were protesting in the streets of downtown Tehran. The Shah, who had spent the morning in a salaam ceremony with high government dignitaries, generals, and ambassadors, asked his bodyguard Colonel Djahinbini, commander of the Imperial Guard General Abdul Ali Badrei, and commander of Air Corps Forces General Manuchehr Khosrodad to fly over the demonstration, make a reconnaissance, and report back to him.
The Queen called for her helicopter, too. But rather than fly over the crowds, Farah made the sensational decision to set down among them. Her office contacted Eqbal Hospital, in southern Tehran, and hastily arranged a visit to the facility’s cancer ward, so hasty indeed that officials had no time to assemble an official welcoming party or to mobilize crowds of supporters. Nonetheless, word quickly spread that she was en route, and by the time her chopper fluttered down onto the hospital grounds a throng had gathered to cheer the Queen as she made an impromptu walk along Bagher Khan Street. Farah was accompanied by Hushang Nahavandi, who had resigned his post as her private secretary and accepted a cabinet position in the new government. While the Queen toured the wards and spoke to hospital staff and patients, the crowd of admirers grew in number to several thousand. Farah waded into the throng amid cries of “Long live the Shah!,” shaking hands, asking questions, and listening to concerns. Journalists on the scene said “the crowd was so large the helicopter pilot had trouble in picking up the Queen on her way out.” Her gamble to join the Eid demonstration had paid off. “It was a remarkable, entirely spontaneous demonstration,” recalled Nahavandi.
The Shah’s distinctive helicopter, with its blue and white markings, flew low over Shah Reza Avenue so that Djahinbini, Badrei, and Khosrodad could provide an accurate assessment of the number of demonstrators. They estimated the crowd at well under half a million people but could still hear the chants of “Down with the Shah!” They returned to Niavaran and presented their findings to the Shah, who until now had convinced himself that popular discontent with the economy, corruption, and repression was not directed at him personally but at the government and bureaucracy. As the father of the nation he believed that he somehow floated above the fray in his role as guide and counselor, and for fifteen years he had flattered himself that he could wield executive power yet escape blame for executive failings. The Day of Eid changed everything. In a single, crushing instant he realized how wrong he had been, and that far from symbolizing unity the throne had become the major source of division in the land. The farr was gone and nothing he could do could bring it back.
By day’s end the Shah had reached a momentous decision: he would quit Iran at the earliest possible chance and end his days in exile. He was not about to beg for another chance from an ungrateful people. “He was like a man who had lavished everything for years on a beautiful woman only to find she had been unfaithful to him all along,” was how Court Minister Hoveyda described the Shah’s mood of self-pity and grief. Yet the Shah’s decision to end his mission was also an act of courage and tremendous self-sacrifice. He had never known a life other than public service, and his departure, he hoped, would restore peace and end disunity in Iran. “If my people don’t want me,” he said, “I will not stay by force.”
* * *
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER Ardeshir Zahedi was visiting the Texas town of Lubbock, where Crown Prince Reza had begun training as an air force pilot, when Queen Farah called and asked him to telephone the Shah, who felt demoralized and needed encouragement. “The Shah was not in a good way,” said Zahedi. Their conversation convinced him to hurry back to Tehran. He was already fielding calls from worried friends asking him to return home. “We need you,” they said. “The Shah can’t make up his mind and it’s like 1953 again.”
During a brief stopover in Washington, Zahedi tried to talk with CIA director Stansfield Turner and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, but found they were preoccupied with the Camp David peace talks. The Eid-e Fetr march had dispersed and the streets were quiet when Zahedi’s plane landed at Mehrebad Airport late on the night of Monday, September 4. The ambassador was greeted by the Imperial Court’s grand master of ceremonies, Amir Aslan Afshar, who briefed him as they drove through the darkened streets. Their car was spotted pulling up outside Saadabad’s main entrance shortly before midnight. Queen Farah sent an aide down to Zahedi with a request that he talk to her before seeing her husband. Zahedi refused, insisting that he had come to see the Shah, but before he could make a start for the Shah’s suite Farah appeared at the top of the stairs. She came down and pleaded with him to take care: “Don’t say anything bad to His Majesty because he may kill himself.”
Zahedi ran past her and up the stairs to the Shah’s study. The Shah greeted him and brushed aside his offer to return in the morning. “No, we must meet now,” he said, and the two men took their seats while tea was served. The ambassador’s nerves were so frayed that when at one moment the Shah reached into his jacket pocket, Zahedi lunged—he feared his hand was reaching for a pistol. The Shah gave him a quizzical glance: “Ardeshir, this is a vitamin.” But his next remark hinted at the emotional scenes that had preceded Zahedi’s arrival. “The Queen is so upset she may jump out the window,” he said. Zahedi was nonplussed. “Maybe you should push her out,” he snapped. The ambassador blamed the Queen’s liberalism for her husband’s political collapse. The Imperial Court was in disarray, the generals were circling, and the ministers were unsure what to do. Everyone wanted to be in charge, but no one would make a decision. “If you have too many midwives, the child will be born without a head” was how Zahedi later put it. But Zahedi had also misread the situation. During his years in Washington he had lost touch with events and the street. He knew nothing of the Shah’s cancer and like everyone else had been blindsided by the Shah’s determination to liberalize his regime, cede power, and introduce genuine democratic reforms.
The next morning Zahedi met in secrecy with a delegation of senior courtiers, generals, senators, and parliamentarians, who begged him to assume a leadership role. “They recalled the crisis in 1963 and how they took their orders from Alam and not the Shah,” said one participant. “They were looking desperately for a civilian to step in and tell them what to do. They were waiting for the Shah to act, and they wanted someone who was a hundred percent loyal to him.” Zahedi also paid a quiet visit to southern Tehran to meet sympathetic clergy, who were prepared to support an army putsch to prevent Khomeini from seizing power.
Out of these meetings emerged Operation Kach, a top secret plan for a military coup d’état to overthrow Sharif-Emami’s flailing government and smash Khomeini’s rebellion. Named after a small town deep in Iran’s desert interior, Operation Kach relied on the commanders of the three branches of the armed forces to take leadership positions. In phase one of the operation, the Shah and his family would retire to Kish Island, while the army, navy, and air force arrested moderate opposition leaders and detained them at the naval base on Kharg Island. Anyone who came out onto the streets to defy martial law would be rounded up and held in Tehran’s Olympic stadium. “The police would have a list and the arrests would be made at the same time,” said Zahedi. “We made sure the facilities had enough food, showers and toilets for a long stay.” Religious extremists and Mujahedin and Fedayeen guerrilla fighters would be flown to holding pens at Kach, deep in the province of Baluchistan, near the border with Pakistan. The coup planners studied how to keep Iran’s cities supplied with food and powered with electricity if workers went out on strike. Strict discipline would be imposed on the army. “Being tough, you have to look to your army,” observed Zahedi. “But you have to keep your army off the streets to stop fraternization and not let the soldiers get infected by protests.” Once order was restored, only after a suitable cooling-off period would the ruling junta implement far-reaching political reforms to return power to parliament, stamp out corruption, and hold free and fair general elections. The Shah’s role would be reduced to that of a constitutional figurehead.
The coup plotters were overtaken by events when on Wednesday, September 6, Mujahedin commandos staged a daring early morning raid on a police barracks in Tehran. Armed with submachine guns, they killed the officer on duty and fled the scene, leaving behind a car bomb that failed to detonate. Fearing the assault was the prelude to an armed uprising, the government announced an immediate ban on all unauthorized rallies. The Islamists responded by staging a show of strength after dark, massing twenty thousand people at the southern end of Pahlavi Avenue and announcing plans to hold a second big rally, at Qeitariyeh field, on Thursday morning. In Shemiran, a Mujahedin terror cell tossed a pipe bomb under a bus taking eighteen British aerospace workers home. Though there were no injuries, news of the ambush spread fear throughout the foreign community. Everyone sensed events were rushing to a climax.
On Thursday morning, September 7, for the second time in three days tens of thousands of Khomeini supporters filled Tehran streets in a defiant show of force. This time they left the flowers at home and came in anger. The men wore white to signify their willingness to die, and the women marched in separate columns clad in black to proclaim their chastity and modesty. They chanted in support of an Islamic republic and cried “Death to the Shah!” The surging crowds alarmed Iranians and Americans alike. Across the road from the Tehran American School, where more than three and a half thousand American children went to class, high school senior Jonathan Kirkendall was taking a nap in his family’s apartment when he began “dreaming of an ocean, the murmur of the waves driving themselves onto a sandy beach.” He slowly awakened to hear “excited, noisy voices in the living room” and assumed his father, James, had returned home. He was very much mistaken when he realized that “in the distance came another noise. It sounded like the ocean that I had heard in my dreams, a low, ever present murmur, but louder and more rhythmic than the ocean. I got up from bed and went out onto the porch. I could make out a chant. It wasn’t an ocean of water, but an ocean of people, and as I was later to see and hear carrying banners and chanting ‘Death to the Shah!’” His mother, Libby, looked out the window at the flood of people surging past their home and shook her head in dismay. “The ball has started rolling,” she told her son. “Not even the Shah will be able to stop it now.”
The Shah stuck to his schedule and held a working lunch with Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda of Japan as though nothing were wrong. In private, however, the reports of mobs out on the streets left him “visibly shaken,” reported Newsweek. “Obviously things had gone too far.” In the afternoon he received a delegation of senior generals “who argued that the demonstrations were surely eroding his authority—and in turn the army’s—and must be stopped.” To press home their point the officers raised the specter of civil war. “We told the Shah, as Lincoln once said, a house divided cannot stand,” said one participant. One of his fellow generals bluntly told the Shah that he faced an insurrection if he refused to take action: “It is against our military honor to stand the present situation.”
Lost in the excitement of the day was the news that Queen Farah had appointed the Islamic scholar Hossein Nasr to replace Hushang Nahavandi as the new head of her Special Bureau. The appointment of such an eminent authority on Islam was hardly a coincidence. Nasr had studied in Qom’s seminaries and was well known to the senior ayatollahs. In making the appointment, the Pahlavis wanted to send a signal to Qom that they were serious about reforming their household and Islamizing the monarchy. “Ayatollahs Shariatmadari and Khonsari favored me working with the Queen,” said Nasr. “I accepted the position on the condition that there was an expectation on all sides of reform. The reforms included a complete change in the type of personality around the King and Queen. I wanted rid of morally decadent people.” Nasr understood that if the Shah faltered then it would be Farah, in her capacity as Regent, who would wield power until Crown Prince Reza came of age. He envisioned his job as building “a bridge between the monarchy and the ulama who wanted to head off the unrest. My office became the center of action.” In his talks with the moderate ulama, Nasr drew on the Safavid era for inspiration. “Nasr could be the bridge between the clergy and the Court,” said his friend Reza Ghotbi. “He had the idea of an Islamic monarchy, something like in Safavid times. It could have been a good solution, bring back the old-fashioned Safavid-era monarchy.”
While Tehran shook, Princess Ashraf boarded a flight from Alma-Ata, the capital of Soviet Kazakhstan, where she had attended a meeting of the World Health Organization. After hearing of the latest unrest she decided to defy her brother’s admonition to stay outside the country. On arrival at Mehrebad, the Princess learned that roads to the north were blocked by demonstrations and that Saadabad Palace could be reached only by helicopter. “As I flew over the Shahyad Monument, I saw that one corner was completely dark,” she recalled. “A moment later I realized this black mass was a mass of Iranian women, women who had achieved one of the highest levels of emancipation in the Middle East. Here they were in the mournful black chador their grandmothers had worn. My God, I thought, is this how it ends? To me it was a little like seeing a child you had nurtured suddenly sicken and die.” Her private secretary noticed the stricken look on her face. “Why aren’t we doing anything about it?” she asked him. As soon as they landed she went straight to see her brother, who assured her everything was under control.
Court conservatives were relieved to hear that the Shah’s feisty twin sister, who had played an important role in defeating Mossadeq twenty-five years earlier, was back in town. Anxious to gain her support for Operation Kach, a small group came in the evening to Ashraf’s residence and petitioned her to support their plan for a crackdown. The men in the room included the commander of the Imperial Guard, General Badrei; courtiers; and an industrialist who offered to raise funds and another who promised to turn out the crowds. Ashraf expressed shock when the plotters suggested her brother should retire to Kish Island and let them get the job done. “His Majesty is in control,” she reassured them—he had told her so himself. The men in the room vehemently disagreed. “The situation is getting out of hand,” they told her. The conspirators left the Princess without obtaining a firm commitment of support.
Shortly before seven o’clock, Iranian guests attending the Japanese prime minister’s cocktail reception froze when Hushang Nahavandi, the only government minister in attendance, was handed a note and abruptly excused himself without explanation. Clutching the piece of paper, he rushed to his car and drove to an emergency meeting of national security advisers who included the prime minister, the cabinet, and generals. Nahavandi arrived to find the group learning details of a plot by Khomeini’s agents to seize power in a coup. Apparently emboldened by their show of force on the streets, the Coalition of Islamic Societies had decided to mass their followers in Jaleh Square on Friday morning and stage a march to the Majles. Once there they planned to force their way in, seize the prime minister and members of parliament, and declare an Islamic republic. In the debate that followed, Sharif-Emami sided with conservatives who supported an immediate declaration of martial law in twelve cities. The Shah was dining with Queen Farah and Ardeshir Zahedi when he received a call from the prime minister to ask his opinion. He expressed ambivalence about putting inexperienced army conscripts on the streets—the sight of young soldiers accepting flowers from the crowds on Eid-e Fetr had raised questions in his mind about their preparedness to open fire on civilians. He asked his dinner companions what they thought. Ardeshir Zahedi made clear that he had no confidence in Sharif-Emami regardless of the decision. The Queen worried that there was not enough time to issue alerts over radio and television to ensure that people did not venture out before the curfew was lifted. The Shah was loath to challenge his prime minister and generals and reluctantly approved the martial law decree.
Reza Ghotbi was finishing up his last day at work as director of National Iranian Radio and Television when he received a telephone call at about 11:00 p.m. Two weeks earlier, Ghotbi had handed in his resignation during the change of government but agreed to stay on an extra two weeks to help with the transition. His deputy and successor, Mahmud Jaafarian, had attended the National Security Council meeting and phoned Ghotbi to brief him about the martial law decision. He said he was worried that with only an hour left before television went off the air they had run out of time to issue news bulletins. “What shall we do?” he asked.
“I will be out of the office in a few minutes,” Ghotbi answered. “You will have to decide.” He suggested Jaafarian call Minister of State for Executive Affairs Manuchehr Azmun for guidance, and Azmun agreed that to avoid possible confusion and bloodshed it would be better to start the broadcasts as early as possible on Friday morning, starting at six o’clock. Throughout the night, army trucks with loudspeakers moved through the deserted streets urging people to stay off the streets and comply with curfew regulations.
* * *
ON FRIDAY MORNING, September 8, Reza Ghotbi was at home when he received another harried call from Mahmud Jaafarian, who begged him to come back into the office. “The streets are filling up with people and crowds are heading for Jaleh Square,” he said. “You’ve been at this organization for twelve years. Come in please.” Ghotbi drove in and helped marshal the staff, dispatching reporters and camera crews onto the streets and asking them to radio in eyewitness accounts. He also instructed that a helicopter be readied so his reporters could survey the scene from the air.
Jaleh Square was a misleading name for the modest traffic circle that joined Farahabad Road with Jaleh Road, a narrow carriageway that passed the American Community School in a westerly direction toward the Majles. Overlooking the roundabout, which could be entered from several sides, were low-slung, flat-roofed buildings containing apartments and small businesses. On Friday morning several thousand people converged on a space too congested to accommodate everyone. They ignored warnings from police and army officers to disperse and listened to a fiery speech by Ayatollah Nouri, who led them in chants for Khomeini and an Islamic republic and against the Pahlavi Dynasty and the monarchy. “Death to the Shah!” they cried. The mostly male crowd was comprised of Khomeini supporters, students, and leftists, but also a contingent of PLO-trained Mujahedin guerrillas, who regularly used big crowds as a cover to stage provocations and take control of the streets. A second, less visible armed group was at the scene. They were battle-hardened veterans of seven clandestine militias that reported directly to Khomeini’s agents in Najaf and Qom. Their presence exposed the fallacy of Khomeini’s public claim that he supported a nonviolent approach to street protests. “Khomeini did not believe in armed struggle but there were armed groups under his observation” was how the young religious revolutionary Ali Hossein cautiously put it. “In some cases there was a need for such groups. For example, if the regime was going to attack demonstrators these groups would support the demonstrators. And in some cases, since the army of the Shah was on the streets there should be power to protect the people [and stage] attacks against the army of the Shah.” The Khomeini movement followed its usual practice of placing women, children, and young people at the head of the demonstration to intimidate the security forces and provide cover for their gunmen.
The tension exploded at 9:20 a.m. Reza Ghotbi was at his desk when two eyewitness accounts were radioed in from journalists at Jaleh Square. The first reported seeing and hearing shots fired from apartments overlooking Jaleh Square and people collapsed on the ground. The second journalist stated that shots were being fired from within the square, though apparently over the heads of the crowd. The scene was one of pandemonium and panic.
Exactly who fired first was never conclusively determined, though Reza Ghotbi’s correspondent and other eyewitnesses insisted that at least one gunman had opened fire from a high window overlooking the square. If his intention was to shoot into the crowd to cause maximum bedlam and provoke a gun battle, it worked. When the army troop commander saw his men coming under fire he ordered them to lower their weapons, assume combat positions, and fire machine-gun blasts into the crowd. “According to witnesses, the troops ordered the demonstrators to abandon the demonstration several times, then fired overhead and shot tear gas canisters into the crowd,” reported the Washington Post’s William Branigan, who wrote one of the most succinct accounts of what happened during those first chaotic moments. “The demonstrators replied by throwing rocks at troops and breaking nearby bank and government office windows, the witnesses said, whereupon the troops opened fire, literally mowing down scores of people.” Confirmation of an attack on the soldiers came from the Islamists themselves. “At Jaleh Square there were people among the crowd who used guns,” admitted Ali Hossein. “One probability is that both sides shot into each other.” An investigation later conducted by the U.S. embassy, which sent a ballistics expert to the scene, concluded that “troops were attacked by a stone-throwing, club-wielding crowd at Jaleh Square, they had had no weapons with which to retaliate other than their rifles. They wore helmets but carried no shields. When their rifle bursts into the air failed to stop the advancing crowd, the resulting slaughter was inevitable.”
The crackle of gunfire set off a panicked stampede to safety. Blood-splattered survivors stumbled down side streets. “Shortly after the shooting, demonstrators left the scene with clothes blood-soaked from helping carry away victims,” reported the the Post’s Branigan. Riots broke out almost immediately as the crowds vented their anger. Bonfires and barricades were set alight, women wept in the streets, and men angrily shouted anti-Shah slogans. One young man tossed a piece of wood and shouted to no one in particular, “We only need guns.” Nearby, a woman wearing a chador cursed the Shah’s “fascist” government. She cried, “We only want an Islamic government with a religious leader like Khomeini.”
* * *
CHARLIE NAAS WAS leaving his residence in the American embassy compound when he heard gunfire. “I was outside the bedroom window and my wife was standing on a ledge trying to see over the perimeter wall.”
“What’s going on?” asked Jean.
“I don’t know,” said Charlie. “There’s a lot of shooting.”
Naas ran back to the chancellery, where Ambassador Sullivan was rounding up his staff. “You manage the place,” Sullivan told his deputy, “and I’ll be the chief political officer.” They started phoning their contacts around town to find out what was going on. John Stempel reached one of his sources, Associated Press correspondent Parviz Raein, who said he had been in Jaleh Square standing next to the army’s communications gear when the shooting erupted. Raein told Stempel that he “heard the radio announce there had been no more than ninety dead,” though he estimated another twenty to thirty killed in the surrounding streets.
* * *
ONE OF THE few souls brave enough to head down to Jaleh Square after everyone else had fled was Dr. Fereydoun Ala, director of the national blood bank. He set out in an ambulance with colleagues bound for the city hospital that fell within the army’s security cordon and that was also treating most incoming casualties. They drove carefully through Jaleh Square dodging bits of debris that lay scattered on the ground. To their astonishment they were forced to stop and present their papers at street barricades that were manned not by army troops but by swaggering Mujahedin guerrillas sporting Palestinian head scarves. The hospital was a desperate scene. Local residents dragged in mattresses, donated medical supplies, and lined up in their hundreds to donate blood. “The hospital’s ramp was spotted with blood and inside frantic nurses tried to cope with the new arrivals,” reported the Guardian. Relatives of the dead and wounded besieged the hospital gates looking for their loved ones. “Just before 11 a.m., the troops, roaring ‘Shah, Shah!’ moved in to disperse the increasingly angry crowd. ‘We will kill you!’ one soldier yelled at foreign journalists who assembled outside. ‘Go and hide!’ The crowd chanted back, ‘Shame on you!’ and ‘Who pays for you?!’ Minutes later the troops fired. They were followed by 14 trucks and there was a heavy silence except for the sporadic bursts of gunfire in the direction of Iran’s lower house of Parliament on Baharestan.”
* * *
BY MIDDAY SMOKE from more than a hundred fires floated above rooftops in eastern and southern Tehran, and the sound of automatic weapons fire resounded through the streets. Flames engulfed the Armstrong Hotel on Amir Kabur Avenue. Twelve banks, two supermarkets, and the Ramsar Now restaurant were put to the torch, and major boulevards were littered with the burning hulks of tankers, refuse collection trucks, and double-decker buses. In some areas fires raged out of control when emergency crews were caught up in traffic as thousands of residents fled to safer neighborhoods. “South-east Tehran was a scene of destruction tonight,” reported the correspondent for the Times of London. “I was caught in a taxi on one main square as troops fired to disperse groups of people.” The scale of unrest overwhelmed the army, which lacked trained personnel, armor, and rubber bullets. “Unless the government makes a bigger show of force,” remarked a European ambassador, “these demonstrations and riots are likely to continue and the Shah may be forced to step aside.”
In the early afternoon a devastating rumor took hold that the Shah had been seen in a helicopter hovering over Jaleh Square and that he had not only ordered the massacre but also picked off demonstrators with a rifle, like a big-game hunter on the African veld. Khomeini’s men were quick to distribute leaflets alleging that the bloodletting had actually been carried out by Israeli paratroopers disguised as Iranian soldiers. “It’s the Israelis!” hysterical mobs bayed in the streets. “Tell the world that the Israelis are killing us!” The revolutionaries also spread the false rumor that Khomeini’s close aide Ayatollah Nouri had been murdered by Savak agents. Most effective was their claim that the official death toll of eighty-six was a cover-up. The real number, they insisted, was at least two thousand and most likely three thousand killed. Blared a headline in Britain’s Guardian, “3,000 DEATHS IN IRAN SAY SHAH’S OPPONENTS.” The newspaper’s correspondent dismissed the government death toll as “a gross underestimate” and repeated unproven allegations that the registry at Tehran’s Beheshtzahra Cemetery showed three thousand bodies buried in a “mass grave.” In fact, a drive to the cemetery would have revealed there was no burial site and that the registry showed just forty new bodies. Many years later, the Islamic Republic’s Martyrs’ Foundation confirmed a death toll of eighty-eight—sixty-four in the square and twenty-four in surrounding streets—or two higher than the original estimate provided by the Shah’s government. By then, of course, the damage had already been done, and the Shah was given the moniker “Butcher of Jaleh Square.”
The Shah was devastated when he heard that dozens of civilians had been killed on the streets of his capital. Much like Russia’s Czar Nicholas II after the 1905 massacre outside the Winter Palace, the King of Iran now occupied a throne stained with the blood of his people. Black Friday was the final confirmation that he had indeed lost the farr. The proud Shah of old was gone and in his place was “an immensely saddened man,” reported two Americans who saw him shortly after the tragedy. “It showed in his face, which was grim and gaunt, and in his eyes, which were tired and melancholy. Even his dress, so often elegant, was somber.” Ambassador Sullivan cabled Washington that “the Shah looked awful” and described him as “a shattered man who looked to be on the brink of a nervous collapse.” He made no attempt to deny rumors that he planned to abdicate the throne in his son’s favor. “I would like to wave goodbye but that would be a catastrophe,” he admitted. “It is certain that the main program, which is the liberalization and democratization of the country and then real, free elections, will continue. Martial law is for six months, and it will end before the elections start. In the meantime, all aspects of freedom, free speech and everything, will be absolutely carried out. But democracy will take place in the parliament, as in any civilized country. We have not stopped the clock. We will not go back.”
On the afternoon of that terrible September day, Princess Ashraf went to the palace to comfort her brother. By her own account, the Princess described him as “completely calm on the surface, but I could see that he was extremely anxious.”
“What will you do?” she asked him. “How much danger is there?”
He avoided direct answers to her questions. “It is not wise for you to be here right now,” he advised her. “You know how often you are made the object of attacks against the regime. I think you had better leave at once.”
“I won’t leave you alone,” she retorted. “As long as you are here, I’ll stay with you.”
The Shah “raised his voice” at her for the first time “in our adult lives”: “I am telling you that for my peace of mind, you must go.”
She left after an hour.
“His Majesty asked me to leave,” the chastened Princess told her private secretary. He was shocked at her decision, which he thought was so out of character. “This is not the time to go,” Reza Golsorkhi told Ashraf. “We have to put up a fight. Either we all die or we can win.”
The Princess was in no mood to argue. “No,” she told him. “My brother is in control. And if he wants me to leave then I must go. We will leave.”
* * *
THE SHOOTINGS AT Jaleh Square finally concentrated American attention on the crisis engulfing its Iranian ally.
On Sunday, September 10, President Carter phoned the Shah to offer his condolences and support. The call from Camp David was placed to Saadabad at 7:56 a.m. and lasted all of six minutes. Gary Sick, who listened in, described the Shah’s “flat, almost mechanical voice.… [He] sounded stunned and spoke almost by rote, as if going through the motions.” The Shah restated his commitment to democratization. “We shall have freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of demonstration according to the law, freedom of the press,” he told the president. “The next elections will be free, there is no other way. The country must be prepared for democracy.” He asked Carter to issue a public statement of support as “it would have a good effect. Otherwise, his enemies could take advantage of it.” He added that if Carter “wanted a free independent friendly Iran allied to the West, he believed that he would have to come forward very clearly and very frankly. The President said he understood.”
* * *
THE ISRAELI OFFICIAL responsible for organizing the evacuation of his country’s nationals arrived in Tehran. Military attaché Segev and Mossad chief Eliezer Tsafrir took Nahum Navot out onto the streets so he could “smell the burning tires and sense the atmosphere.” They told him that Iran’s Jewish community was thoroughly panicked at the prospect of a takeover by Muslim fundamentalists, and Navot agreed the evacuation plan should be expanded to include any Iranian Jews who wanted to leave. Within one week the Israeli presence in Iran was reduced by a third, to around a thousand people. Those who chose to stay behind were given detailed instructions on how to conduct themselves during riots and where to go in an emergency. Embassy staff were taught how to defend themselves if the embassy was attacked by mobs, and as a precaution they began burning sensitive documents.
* * *
THE ARMY PRESENCE restored calm to the streets of Tehran. “In many parts of the city, martial law had a benign appearance yesterday, with the usual traffic jams clogging the streets and shoppers crowding the stores in the smog-covered central part of the city,” reported the Washington Post. “No serious incidents were reported yesterday in the capital or in provincial cities, and the government continued to encourage the appearance of a city returned to normalcy following the aberration of social unrest.” The weekend after Jaleh Square marked the official end of summer, and forty thousand travelers flocked to Caspian Sea beaches. Football fans had a chance to watch the Valiahd Cup games in Bandar Pahlavi. Hundreds of visitors flocked to Tehran from around the world for the conference of the Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, while corporate executives jetted in for the sixth Tehran International Trade Fair. The underlying mood was skittish. “Traffic was chaotic on many roads and there were also many accidents as residents of the north set out for home around 7 p.m.,” reported Kayhan. “Those who left it later only just got home in time and in many cases were unable to collect bread and other commodities they needed for their families.”
The combined impact of an evening curfew and the new mood of Islamic obeisance dealt another blow to Iranian nightlife, arts, and entertainment. Canceled were the Shiraz Festival of Arts, the Isfahan Festival of Popular Traditions, the Kerman Traditional Music Festival, and the Tehran International Film Festival. Rudaki Hall abruptly pulled its production of The Merry Widow and sent the Austrian cast home. The magazine Rangeen Kaman was banned “because in its latest issue it printed material contrary to Islamic tenets.” The mosques were quiet, too. “Sentries in battle dress were posted on the main avenues around the mosque,” reported Joe Alex Morris of the Los Angeles Times. He visited the Shah Mosque in downtown Tehran for noontime prayers and found it deserted. “They were reinforced by armored cars and other vehicles at crossroads. The mullahs—Moslem priests—have decided for the moment, to cool it.… there were no fiery speeches on Friday. The mullahs asked people to pray at home. Only a few old men prayed in the courtyard, unable to break years of tradition.”
Martial law was supposed to instill fear and discourage dissent and lawbreaking, but by the end of the first week Tehranis were back to displaying their usual contempt for authority. “People hardly glanced during the day at the occasional trucks full of soldiers at the ready who were there to remind us of the martial law situation,” reported the local press. “The Tehranis’ natural sense of humor was more noticeable again, as drivers and shopkeepers exchanged their more usual badinage.” Those with money weren’t about to wait for the next crisis. Outbound flights were booked up through the rest of the month, and the flow of capital to safe havens abroad picked up. “As previously reported,” Ambassador Sullivan wired the State Department, “numerous Iranians readily voice to us their intent to migrate [sic] if they become convinced that the future is with conservative Muslims.”