[Mb-civic] FW: A fascinating recount of events leading to the Iranian Revolution !

[Golsorkhi]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Samii Shahla <shahla at thesamiis.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 16:22:14 -0500
Subject: A fascinating recount of events leading to the Iranian Revolution !


LETTER FROM IRAN

December 11, 1978
by Joseph Kraft
Issue of 1978-12-18

Posted 2006-02-27

This week in the magazine, Connie Bruck writes about how, as Washington
considers taking a tougher line with Iran, exiles are positioning themselves
as the country¹s next rulers. In this article, from 1978, Joseph Kraft
reports on conditions that led to the Iranian revolution of 1979.

A story from the Kennedy years which has the rare quality of being true is
that once, when the President was otherwise engaged, Dave Powers  his
original guide to the poor Irish of Boston and later a combined companion
and jester at the White House, was delegated to kill a few minute  with the
Shah of Iran. Subsequently, he was asked how he liked His Imperial Majesty.
³Well,² Powers said, ³he¹s our kind of Shah.
I was reminded of that story when I saw the Shah a few weeks ago here in
Teheran. At that point, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi wasn¹t anybody¹s kind of Shah.
He received me, as he had on several of my previous visits, in a ballroom on
the second floor of the Niavaran Palace, on the northern outskirts of
Teheran. He looked pale, spoke in subdued tones, and seemed dwarfed by the
vast expanse of the room, with its huge, ornate chandeliers and heavy Empire
furniture. He wore a double-breasted suit whose blackness suggested
mourning. He started with an apology. He was sorry to have kept me waiting.
The American and British Ambassadors had been in to see him. ³They tried to
cheer me up,² he said. ³As if there were anything to be cheerful about.²
I expressed surprise at‹and, indeed, felt some suspicion about‹this show of
gloom. There had been demonstrations in many parts of the country, and
strikes, but Teheran, apart from the university, seemed calm, and the Army
was in thorough control. Moreover, the opposition was headed by the Moslem
clergy, and they were clearly divided. Surely, I said, the factions could be
played off against each other.
³Possibly,² the Shah said, shrugging his shoulders in an elaborate show of
disbelief.
I pointed out that the leader of the lay opposition, Karim Sanjabi, was due
to go to Paris to see the most intransigent of the religious leaders,
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The gossip in Teheran was that a compromise
deal was in the works. Sanjabi would win Khomeini¹s blessing for a coalition
government. The coalition would make reforms but maintain the monarchy.
The Shah expressed doubt that Khomeini would agree to that. ³Certainly not
with Sanjabi,² he said.
I further noted that, while there was obvious unrest in the country, the
Shah himself had lifted the lid by easing up on security and initiating
reforms. Maybe all that was required was a slower pace and more publicity
for the changes he had made. I mentioned that one of the problems was
corruption in the royal family. He had decreed a new code of conduct for
royal behavior, but it had not been published. Could I get a copy? The Shah
agreed‹with a weary air.
If worst came to worst, I went on, there was always the Army. The military
was strong, and its leaders were loyal. The Shah said that force had its
limitations. ³You can¹t crack down on one block and make the people on the
next block behave,² he said.
I asked him if the Army leaders realized that. ³I hope so,² he said. He went
on to mention his son and heir, Crown Prince Reza, who, at eighteen, is now
an air cadet in Lubbock, Texas. The Shah said that he might not be able to
pass all his powers on to his son, but he could at least pass on the throne.
I remarked that I had never seen him so sombre, and asked when the black
mood had begun.
³Sometime in summer,² he said.
³Any special reason?²
³Events,² he said.
I intimated that maybe he was overdoing the blues to elicit sympathy and
perhaps support from the United States. ³What could America do?² he asked.
I said that that depended upon what happened, and asked him what he thought
that might be. ³I don¹t know,² he said.
I asked him what his advisers thought was going to happen. ³Many things,² he
said, with a bitter laugh, and he rose, indicating that that was all he had
to say.

The day after seeing the Shah, I drove, with an Iranian friend who had
agreed to serve as an interpreter, to Qum, a religious center with 
population of roughly two hundred and fifty thousand, about seventy-five
miles south of Teheran. Qum is the country¹s foremost training cente  for
the priests‹or mullahs, as they are known in common parlance‹of Shiite
Islam, the creed of ninety per cent of Iran¹s thirty-six millio  people.
Shiism was made the state religion at the beginning of the sixteenth century
by a new dynasty, the Safavids, who needed to dig in agains  the Ottoman
Turks. The Shiites form the minority‹and largely Persian‹branch of the
Moslem religion. As distinct from the majority branch‹the Sunnites (who for
centuries vested the line of authority from Mohammed in a caliphate that
followed the tides of history from Damascus t  Baghdad and thence, with the
Turks, to Constantinople)‹the Shiites traced the line of descent through the
Prophet¹s son-in-law, Ali. Ali  according to Shiite law, was the first of
twelve Imams, or holy leaders. The twelfth Imam withdrew from this world and
is due to return some tim  as a Mahdi, or Messiah. Ali was buried in An
Najaf, and his son, Hossein, in Karbala, and those cities, now in Iraq, are,
after Mohammed¹s tom  in Mecca, the principal shrines of Shiite Islam. The
eighth Imam, Reza, died in Meshed, which is a town some five hundred miles
east of Teheran  and is the most holy shrine in Iran. Reza¹s sister, Fatima,
died in Qum, so the city includes Iran¹s second holiest shrine as well as
man madressahs, or seminaries.
The most renowned students of Islamic law in Qum, Meshed, and other major
cities are referred to by the title Ayatollah, which means, literally, ³Sign
of God.² For roughly the past fifty years, the Ayatollahs of Qum have been
the dominant religious leaders in Iran. Ayatollah Khomeini, though born in
eastern Iran, was educated in An Najaf, and then in Qum, and subsequently
taught in Qum. He achieved national stature between 1961 and 1963 as the
leader of the opposition to various features‹including coeducation and, many
say, land reform‹of what the Shah called his ³white revolution.² In 1963,
Khomeini was expelled, and moved to the shrine of An Najaf. The radical
regime in Iraq, which in 1975, after years of bickering, reached an
accommodation with the Shah, forced Khomeini out last September, when
troubles became intense in Iran, and he moved to Paris. He had been
succeeded as the dominant figure in Qum by Ayatollah Shariatmadari. For most
of the past dozen years, the madressah students have made Qum a center of
opposition to the regime. Professor Michael Fischer, of Harvard, who spent
much of 1975 in that city, described the atmosphere at the time, in a
monograph he called ³The Qum Report,² as ³one of siege and courageous
passive hostility to a state perceived to be the stronger, but morally
corrupt, opponent.² The present wave of troubles was set in motion early
this year by violent demonstrations against the Shah in Qum.
I had telephoned ahead for an appointment with Shariatmadari, and had been
connected with a Pakistani aide of his named Seyyed Rivzi, who spoke
English. Rivzi told me to be in Qum by eight in the morning, because His
Holiness, as he called Shariatmadari, went to the mosque at nine and spent
the rest of the day in prayer and meditation. My translator friend and I
arrived before eight and, with the help of directions from the local police,
found our way to Shariatmadari¹s quarters. He lives in a narrow back street,
paved with white brick and lined with yellowish walls. There are doors in
the walls every ten yards or so, and, behind the doors, courtyards leading
to buildings that are used as offices and houses. We were first shown into
an office, where we were received by Rivzi, a fat, middle-aged man wearing
spectacles and a black turban; he kept pushing the turban back from his
forehead in order to scratch his scalp. Rivzi said that I was in luck, for
His Holiness was feeling ill that day. Because he was not well enough to
pray, there would be ample time for the interview. Rivzi asked me to
disclose my questions in advance. He would write them down in Farsi and then
read them off to His Holiness‹that way, there would be no mistakes. I began
reading from a list of questions I had prepared. He repeated them in
English, then set them down in Farsi, and read them back to my Iranian
friend for his approval of the translation. A couple of times, the English
version of my question differed significantly from the original, and at
length I pointed out one of the discrepancies. Rivzi said, ³I was not
trained as a reporter, but in the past few months I¹ve been the interpreter
for sixty-eight different interviews. I¹ve become quite good at framing
questions. I hope you don¹t mind a little editing.²
After the questions had been given, edited, and translated, we moved across
the street to see Shariatmadari. He is a man of seventy-six, with a white
beard, a frail frame, and a thinnish voice. He, too, wore a black turban and
glasses‹in his case, thick glasses over weak but distinctly friendly eyes.
He received us in a bare, whitewashed room lit by a single electric bulb,
which dangled from the ceiling. There were some uninteresting rugs on the
floor, and a curtain hung across the window on a string. Shariatmadari was
lying down on an opened crimson bedroll, with his head and shoulders raised
on a purple pillow. Rivzi and another aide, whose function I never
discovered, sat, legs crossed, facing His Holiness. I sat parallel to him,
also cross-legged, but with my back against a wall. In the course of our
talk, which lasted several hours, various people came in to see
Shariatmadari, kissing his hand, pressing petitions on him, often with money
between the pages, and then hurrying away. A telephone by the bedroll rang
frequently, but it was answered only rarely, by the non-Pakistani aide, who
usually managed to pick it up after the caller had stopped trying to get
through.
Shariatmadari began by asking about my trip down to Qum. I said that it had
been easy but that we had noticed a lot of troops in the town and, on the
wall of his house, a scrawled sign saying ³Death to the Butcher Shah.²
His Holiness said, ³I don¹t know what is happening in Iran. I never saw a
nation in such a spirit of revolt. It is erupting like a volcano, and, like
a volcano, after building up pressure for years and years it is impossible
to stop.²
My first question had to do with the revival of religion in Iran as a
political force. Shariatmadari said, ³Religion used to be considered
marginal‹apart from the mainstream of events. Now it has become much
stronger than before. The reason is that religion provides answers to
problems of conscience. It provides a vantage point for fighting injustice.
In our Shiite religion, spiritual leaders are ready at all times to assert
the truth and the right.²
I asked him what injustices he had in mind. He said, ³We have never had free
elections. The elections in the past were all dominated by local magnates or
the consulates of foreign powers. The consequence has been that we now have
laws repugnant to Islam and to the public interest. For example, alcoholic
beverages are permitted. There is gambling. There is illegitimate sex‹by
that I mean sexual relations between people under twenty who are not
married. The authority to marry is in the hands of civil officials. But it
should not be. Marriage is not a deal or a contract. It is something
spiritual, and so it should be performed by the religious authorities.²
At that point, there were sounds of firing in the distance, and I started.
³Don¹t be afraid,² he said. ³We¹re used to that kind of noise.²
I asked him to tell me about the troubles in Qum. He said, ³From the
beginning of the disturbances in Qum, we have asked people to speak their
minds, but with calm and dignity, not in a provocative way. But I remember a
few months ago a company of soldiers headed by a major general walked into
these premises and announced they were on a mission from the government.
They started breaking windows and shooting. One person was killed on the
spot and another died in the hospital. Later, the government apologized. But
I ask, ŒHow can you apologize for killing people?¹ Had it been the Prime
Minister¹s house, would it have been enough merely to apologize? Such an
action alone is adequate for me to declare a holy war or a revolution. That
might have happened if I were not devoted to the cause of moderation.²
I asked him how he would rectify the many injustices and wrongs he had
cited. He said that he favored a return to the constitution of 1906‹a
document that a liberal movement with support from the clergy had wrung from
the Qajar dynasty, which preceded the family of the present Shah. The 1906
constitution provided for, among other things, a supreme council of five
religious leaders who would have a veto right over all laws. ³If they found
the laws repugnant to Islam or to principles of justice or against the
interests of the majority,² Shariatmadari said, ³they could reject them.²
I asked what would happen if the five religious leaders disagreed among
themselves. He said, ³That would not be possible, for they represent the
highest spiritual authority.²
I persisted with the question about a possible disagreement. ³In that case,²
he said, ³the issue would be referred to the highest spiritual authority in
the land.²
I assumed he meant himself, and any doubts on that score were settled by
Rivzi. He said, ³His Holiness would have the final word.²
I remarked that many people in Iran, and in other parts of the world, had
different views from His Holiness on such matters as religious liberty, land
reform, and the role of women. He cut in before I could develop this theme.
³The journalistic community in the world,² he said, pointing a bony finger
at me, ³has constantly made the libellous charge that we religious leaders
are anti-progressive and reactionary and anachronistic. That is not the
case. We want science, technology, educated men and women‹physicists,
surgeons, engineers. But we also want clean and honest political leaders.
Those who make the charges against us are themselves reactionary, because
their goal is to stop us from instituting a government of hope. The
government of God is the government of the people by the people.²
I said that I would still like to know where he stood on the issue of equal
rights for women‹coeducation, for example.
Very smoothly, as if there were no break in the line of thought at all, he
asked me how many Presidents there had been in American history. I said that
it wasn¹t altogether clear whether the figure was thirty-eight or
thirty-nine.
He said, ³You come all the way over to Iran to ask about the rights of women
here, and you don¹t even know how many Presidents you have had in your own
country.²
I explained that the matter was complicated by the fact that Grover
Cleveland had been President twice but not consecutively. I said that for
the sake of argument we could assume there had been thirty-nine Presidents.
³How many of them have been women?² he asked.
I said that none had but that that seemed to me beside the point. What, for
example, did he think about coeducation?
He said, ³I¹m not opposed to the education of women for all kinds of tasks.
But I do not want coeducation. I want to separate the schools of learning
from the schools of flirting. We in Islam don¹t look on women as playthings,
accepted as long as they are young and beautiful, and then cast away. In
Islam, the older the woman, the higher her status. We know that in
coeducational schools there is a corruption of moral values, which is
reflected in the police records. The girls develop certain relations, and
some have illegitimate children, and others have abortions. The girl loses
her self-respect and her status in society. Either she suffers a great
personal loss or she takes up another way of life‹prostitution.²
I asked him his opinion of abortion. He said, ³In Islam, abortion is
considered murder. Therefore, abortion is not permitted.²
I asked him his views on birth control. He said, ³Birth control depends on
certain circumstances. In small, overpopulated countries that have no land,
birth control is acceptable. But in our country, where the population
occupies only one-fifth of the land, there is no need for birth control.
Procreation should be free unless there is a particular problem. In our
country, that problem doesn¹t exist.²
I asked him whether there was equality in Islam for people of other
religions. He said, ³In Islam, Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians are all
accepted as equal‹unless they become a Fifth Column for foreign meddling in
this country. Jews are accepted as Jews but not as defenders of Zionist
aggression.² He then referred to the Baha¹i sect, which began as a reform
offshoot of Shiite Islam, and has been popular in Iran, particularly among
educated people who have done well in business and politics. He said,
³Baha¹i is accepted as Baha¹i per se but not as a clique dividing up
government posts among themselves and working for the foreign interests.²
I asked him where he stood on the land reform that the Shah had decreed in
1963. He said, ³Land reform is a question of the past. Even if there were
some objections made at the time, there were no objections to the principle
of land reform but only to the means of implementation. The Shah could have
done the same thing in accordance with the principles of Islam. That is
typical of his regime. In order to build roads and streets, he destroys the
house of an old woman and does not give her another house.²
At that point, Shariatmadari reproached me for picking out one issue at a
time instead of dealing with the culture as a whole. ³Culture is a mixture
of many interwoven things,² he said. ³You cannot in fairness just pick on
individual matters as if they were unrelated. For example, in the West you
cannot conceive of a banking system that does not charge interest on loans.
But in Islam, for many different reasons, our view is that interest should
not be charged.²
I said that that was true; no one in the West could understand how a
government without the power to raise interest rates could control
inflation. I went on to say that his point seemed valid, and so I would
shift subjects. I asked him where he stood on the issue of meetings with
representatives of the Shah.
He had had some ³unofficial meetings,² he said, and went on, ³But we can¹t
have official meetings. The religious authorities will participate in all
offers of a solution to the present problems, but only with a fair and just
government and parliament. We can coöperate fully only after free elections
have returned a popularly chosen government.²
I said, and he acknowledged, that the Shah had tried to institute some
reforms directed toward liberalization of the regime. I observed that many
Americans felt that President Carter, by his human-rights campaign, had
played a role in fostering those reforms.
Shariatmadari said, ³Carter¹s human-rights policy has not been a very
important propelling force, though it has not been totally without effect in
pushing liberalization. But in Islam we have some skepticism about the
sincerity of Carter¹s human-rights approach, because he doesn¹t apply it to
the United Nations. In the U.N., five countries have the veto. That means we
are not equal. But the Americans don¹t say anything about that.²

A couple of days later, I flew to Isfahan, with my Iranian friend again
accompanying me as an interpreter. Isfahan, as the 1966 Hachette Guide
proclaims with unwonted effusion, is ³one of the most marvellous places in
the world.² The city lies on a plateau watered by a large oasis and a lovely
stream. Shah Abbas I‹the greatest Persian emperor, not excepting Xerxes and
the three Dariuses‹made it his capital at the end of the sixteenth century;
at that time, it had a population of about half a million, and was among the
largest cities in the world. I remembered from a previous visit, a decade
ago, broad, tree-lined avenues; a magnificent central square, the
Maydan-e-Shah; the extraordinary Bridge of Thirty-three Arches; and a
general air of refined elegance. But even from the air, I could see
burgeoning suburbs and smoke from factories‹signs that change had come to
Isfahan.
A local official, who asked not to be mentioned by name, rapidly brought me
up to date on developments in Isfahan. He said, ³Five years ago, there were
five hundred and sixty thousand people in Isfahan, and this was one of the
most beautiful cities in the world. Then the Shah decided that there was too
much administrative and economic concentration in Teheran, and that he
needed to decentralize. So he put a steel mill here. And an airbase, with a
helicopter training center. Naturally, foreign companies followed suit. Bell
Helicopter came in with the training base. Du Pont put a plant here. Now we
have more than a million people. The doubling in five years of a population
that had been stable for three hundred years has changed everything. This
used to be an educational center, with a university, many religious schools,
and lots of music. Now it is an industrial town. Over three hundred thousand
workers have come in from the countryside, most of them without their
families. They live five or six to a room in the poorer quarter of town.
They make good wages‹a dollar seventy-five an hour‹but they don¹t have their
families, and they¹re miserable. Everybody else has been affected, too. The
bazaar merchants used to be very important. Now the banks manage credit, and
the engineers are the big shots in town.
³Students have grown up under the Shah, and they don¹t know what things were
like before development started. All they know is that the Shah promised
that Iran was going to be like France or Germany. That isn¹t happening. The
huge surge in population means that services are spread too thin and are
constantly breaking down. There aren¹t enough telephones. It¹s impossible to
buy a car. The schools are jammed. Housing is scarce. During the past three
years, there has been a recession, especially in building, and many laborers
are out of work. So the students are in a mood to reject everything that has
happened. They are turning back to the old days, and pursuing an idealized
version of what things were like then. They are pushing the mullahs to go
back and re-create the wonderful past. The mullahs see a chance to regain
their prestige and power. The students provide them with a power base for
putting pressure on the government to give them the consideration and
importance they have been seeking for years. So the mullahs go along. That¹s
the dynamic of trouble in Isfahan.²
I asked about the circumstances relating to the declaration of martial law
in Isfahan back in August, a month before it was declared in the other major
cities of the country.
The local official said, ³That¹s a perfect example. All through the spring
and summer, after riots in Qum in January, and in Tabriz in late February,
this town was seething with unrest. The workers were demanding better
housing conditions, and more money to meet inflation. The bazaar merchants
were bitching about the loss of their old status, about price controls, and
competition from the big banks and supermarkets. The intellectuals were
complaining about the lack of freedom. The students were telling the mullahs
to do their stuff, and the mullahs were saying Œright on.¹ About the first
of August, a mixed group of workers and students occupied the home of the
most prominent local religious leader, Ayatollah Khademi. The
governor-general and the local Army commander went to Khademi and told him
to get them off the premises. He tried, but he couldn¹t. On the contrary,
the crowds got bigger and bigger. At one point, maybe twenty thousand people
were camping there. When Khademi tried to cool them down, the students
turned ugly. They took down the posters of the Shah and put up posters of
Ayatollah Khomeini. On August 11th, the military decided to clear the place.
Troops moved in, threw tear gas, and pushed the crowd out at bayonet point.
The crowd then went on a rampage. It burned down a bank and a hotel and
fifteen other buildings. It threw a bomb into a bus for Bell Helicopter
employees. That¹s when martial law was declared. The bazaaris‹the bazaar
merchants‹immediately went on strike and closed down their shops in protest.
The madressah students stayed in their schools, but they demonstrated every
day, always making more radical demands. On the night of August 21st, two
high-school teachers, who had built up a large following of anti-government
young people, were arrested and sent to Teheran. Next day, the kids hit the
streets, and there has been trouble of one kind or another ever since.²
I asked for and was given the names of the teachers‹who had been released
after a month in custody. They had no telephones, so my Iranian friend and I
picked one‹Hassan Zehtab‹and drove out to see him. He lives on the outskirts
of town, in a neighborhood of narrow, twisting unpaved streets. The car
could barely squeeze between the walls, and the puddles and mud in the road
reminded me anew of the origins of the custom of removing one¹s shoes before
entering a mosque. Once we were in the neighborhood, we had no trouble
finding the house; everybody we asked knew Hassan Zehtab, and where he
lived.
Mr. Zehtab turned out to be a partly bald, moonfaced middle-aged man with a
complexion slightly darker in tone than that of most Iranians. He was
carefully dressed, in a suit, white shirt, tie, and sweater. I saw only two
rooms of his home, and they were modest in size and bare of ornament. When
we arrived, Zehtab was meeting in one of the rooms with about forty
disciples. He agreed to see me, and we moved into the other room, with ten
of his disciples coming along. I asked Zehtab to tell me a little about who
he was and what he believed.
He said, ³I¹m forty years old, and I have been a schoolteacher here in
Isfahan ever since I graduated from the University of Teheran, fifteen years
ago. In all this time, I haven¹t seen one truly free election, or one
instance of concern on the part of those in authority for the happiness of
the people. I think the only way to bring about the happiness of the people
is through an Islamic culture. We¹re given to understand that the ruling
clique is talking about religion now, and putting on a turban and the white
garments of holiness. But that is a mere pretense. Even a child can see
through that. It is like the ceramic facing on the wall of a building.
Everybody knows that beneath the facing there is a real wall, of a different
material.²
I asked him if it was not true that under the Shah the country had taken
large strides toward economic development over the past fifteen years.
He replied, ³I have to say with great sorrow that our economic growth is
based on a windfall called oil. If we consider where we are, and then where
the progressive states like Japan are, we realize how little we have
accomplished. When I think of Japan, I think of a verse:
Leila and I were fellow-travellers on the road of life;
She reached her home, and I am still a vagabond.²
I said that even if some countries had done better than Iran, Iran had done
quite well.
He said, ³What we see here is inflation‹prices for food have gone way up.
What we see is the depletion of our oil reserves. At the present rate, we
have only twenty years to go. What we see is an agriculture worth zero. We
buy vegetables from Israel, wheat from the United States, onions from
Turkey, meat from Australia, oranges from six different countries. Our
industry is just an assembly line for products made in other countries. We
would be poor fools indeed if we were satisfied with that.²
I asked him what would satisfy him. He said, ³My ideal future is within the
framework of Islamic law. That is the guarantee of happiness and a good
future for society. On particular religious questions, I don¹t find it in my
area of competence to make answers. I leave that to the highest religious
authorities.²
All during the interview, Zehtab, his disciples, my Iranian friend, and I
were sitting cross-legged on the floor. I was extremely uncomfortable, and
it must have been evident, for one of the disciples asked if I would like a
piece of fruit. I said yes, and he took an apple out of a bowl in the middle
of the floor. He began to peel it for me, but at the first stroke of the
knife the blade separated from its handle. He held out the broken knife.
³There you see it all,² he said in disgust. ³Our country owns twenty-five
per cent of Krupp in Germany, but in Iran we can¹t even produce a knife that
cuts an apple.²
Everybody laughed, and I began questioning the disciples. All of them were
students or professional men between the ages of twenty and thirty, and had
participated actively in many demonstrations against the Shah. They all
supported Zehtab in his quest for an Islamic society. I expressed surprise
that young men with professional training should be so drawn to a religion
that seemed‹to a Westerner, at least‹not exactly with it. I went around the
room, asking the disciples, one by one, a single question: ³What drew you
toward Islam?²
The first to answer was a mullah, in robes and turban, who had a degree in
psychology from the University of Teheran. He said, ³My love for Islam has
grown because I have studied it and compared it with other religions.² The
others‹four students, two employees of the National Iranian Oil Company, an
accountant, an engineer, and a physicist‹all gave nearly the same answer.
Two of them said that they had compared Islam with the teachings of a
nineteenth-century European social philosopher‹that is, Marx, whose name has
been taboo in Iran‹and found it preferable. Another offered the
generalization ³Islam offers a solution to the complications of our life.²
As we drove away, I remarked to my Iranian friend that the similarity of the
answers was disappointing. ³You don¹t understand,² he told me. ³They all
followed the lead of the mullah. It doesn¹t make for interesting answers,
but it makes them happy.²

I spent the night in Isfahan at the Shah Abbas Hotel. The clientele was
entirely foreign‹a sprinkling of Japanese, Indians, Americans, an 
Europeans. Apart from the sight of a section of the hotel which had been
damaged during the riots of August, and an armed guard in the gardens  there
was no sign of trouble
Before dinner, I visited Wanda Hake, an American psychologist employed by
the United States companies working in the Isfahan region. Mrs. Hake
reported that most of the Americans in the area lived in a compound, largely
removed from contact with the Iranians. They had the problems usually found
in such communities. There was great boredom‹especially among the children.
Alcoholism was common among the women, and many of the children had drug
problems. There was a good deal of contempt for the Iranians. ³Because of
their turbans, many Americans call them rag heads,² Mrs. Hake said. ³That¹s
the nicest name they call them.²
Mrs. Hake had some guests, and one of them was a bazaar merchant from an old
Isfahan family. ³I could cry about what has happened here,² he told me. ³It
used to be a paradise of water and gardens and beautiful buildings. Now the
town is full of strangers. There are the people from the villages. They live
in shantytowns. There are ten thousand Americans. They drive up the price of
everything‹especially houses. A house that rented for five thousand rials
per month five years ago now costs forty thousand rials per month. Many
people are unhappy. One of my interests is a building project. My workers
were Afghanis‹three hundred of them. The other day, the government sent the
Afghanis home. I know why: There was a crime wave, and they did a lot of the
stealing. But nobody gave me any warning. Now what do I do?
³Lots of the young men come to see me about their problems. They don¹t know
how to deal with the young women sitting next to them in their classes. In
the past, they had never seen any women, even mothers and sisters, who were
not wearing a veil. Now they see miniskirts and bare arms and bare legs.
They say to me, ŒWhat do they want, these women? What are they trying to do
to me?¹
³When I go to Teheran, I feel as though I were in Hell. Somebody could die
right in front of you and nobody would do anything. Deep sadness comes over
me when I see the uses to which we have put our oil wealth. So it is not
surprising that there has been a political eruption. Five years ago,
Khomeini was nothing. Now he is held up as the equivalent of the Shah.²
At breakfast the next day, I met a professor of religion at the university
who had been educated at Harvard and Oxford. His family are members of the
Baha¹i sect, and he is going back to Oxford, at least partly because of
religious persecution. He said he would like to talk about the state of
religion in Iran, but only on condition that I not mention his name. I
agreed.
He said, ³As a student of religion, I read with great interest Toynbee¹s ŒA
Study of History.¹ I always wondered why he felt that the next stage of
regeneration in the world would be religious. I felt that religion had been
on the run all over the world for centuries. In some places, there have been
adjustments, but they have been made only slowly and painfully. Christianity
accommodated itself to Darwin, but it was hard even in a tolerant country
like Britain. Islam has experienced a number of shocks and adjustments.
There have been several efforts to update the religion. But they have all
failed. By and large, the clergy remains narrow, fanatical, and ignorant.²
He went on, ³The merchants of the bazaars worked hand and glove with the
mullahs. They were the two most conservative elements in the cities. The
bazaaris usually rented land from the religious foundations, and made the
foundations big gifts. But both the bazaaris and the foundations have been
outmoded by recent developments. When I left Iran to go abroad to school, in
1960, this was still a backward country. Only a few cities in the country
had running water. There were only about ten thousand people who had been or
were at universities. Most industry was handicrafts, and about eighty per
cent of the people still lived in rural villages. In 1970, when I came back,
it was a different country. All the young people‹and that is over fifty per
cent of the population‹were going to school. There are a hundred thousand
university graduates now and almost two hundred thousand people in
universities. On a normal weekend, between one and two million people drive
out of Teheran in their own cars.
³The mullahs have been losing steadily through these developments. Their
base was education. Now they have to contend against state schools and
universities. They¹ve lost the large landholdings they once had. Most of
their endowments have been nationalized, and are controlled by the state. No
one ever paid much attention to them until the present wave of troubles. The
bazaaris have also lost great power. The banks and big companies have taken
away their control over loans and credit. There are shops out in the
streets‹across from your hotel, for example‹so people don¹t go to the bazaar
as much. And for a while there was price inspection as part of a campaign
against inflation. That hit the bazaaris very hard.²
After a pause, he continued, ³People now don¹t remember what it was like in
the old days. As late as 1955, I remember going with my father to a village
in the countryside. The local khan‹the head man‹did justice the religious
way. He cut off hands for thievery, splitting people¹s tongues for
talebearing. There was a peasant in the village with a beautiful wife. The
khan took her, and the peasant complained to my father. The khan went out
riding with my father, and they encountered the peasant. The khan took his
riding crop and beat the peasant senseless.
³The oil boom ended all that and put it out of mind. But it also brought
lots of trouble. Mainly inflation. There are buses now, and vegetables, but
most people can¹t afford them. Moreover, a lot of the money has been spent‹I
almost said wasted‹on big projects and arms purchases that don¹t do ordinary
people any immediate good. And it has to be said that on the cultural side
the Western world has not done well in Iran. Students coming back from
Europe and the United States present the cities there as meccas for drunks,
whores, and illegitimate children. They depict a total breakdown of morale.
So to the difficulties of local adjustment there is added a tarnishing of
the classic model. The West is seen xenophobically, as something
frightening, and the search for old values is intensified.
³It also has to be admitted that the Shah, in his enthusiasm to build the
country, ignored the people in it. The masses were left out of his
development program. The bazaaris were left out. The mullahs were left out.
He thought he could bring them along through economic progress without any
accompanying change in ways of thought. The heart of the difficulty, though,
is the new group of university students. From fifty to seventy-five per cent
of them come from poor homes. They are very disturbed when they sit next to
a girl in class. They feel a sense of guilt, a fear of being polluted‹of
secularization. All this takes the form of opposition to the regime as the
bearer of Western values. The sexual drive pushes the students in the
direction of religion, and the mullahs latch on to them to maintain their
position of importance.²

Back in Teheran, I found mounting turbulence and confusion. A wave of
strikes that had started in September with employees of the centra  bank had
spread to other banks, to the telecommunications industry, and to the oil
workers. One day, there was a rumor that the gas-statio  workers would go on
strike. I saw hundreds of cars lined up at several gas stations. Angry
motorists jockeyed for position, and in one place troop  had to fire into
the air to maintain order. The university had been scheduled to reopen at
the end of September, and then at the end of October  Each time,
registration had been stopped by student strikes and demonstrations. After
the second effort, the authorities gave up, and turned th  campus, in
downtown Teheran, over to the demonstrators. There were daily protests, and
one morning I went to watch, with a visiting America  professor who spoke
Farsi. Armed soldiers in tanks and armored personnel carriers patrolled the
gates, but we were allowed in without an  demand to show our credentials.
There were two groups of demonstrators, marching back and forth. One
group‹of about seventy-five students  almost all men‹was clearly Marxist in
its political sentiments. The students carried placards denouncing
international imperialism, and chante  slogans calling for the unity of the
workers. The other group, obviously Islamic in orientation, bore pictures of
Ayatollah Khomeini and carrie  signs calling for an Islamic republic. There
were several hundred students in the Islamic group, including many women.
All the women wer  veiled. Some wore the chador, a garment that envelops the
body from head to foot, while others wore bluejeans, blouses, and scarves
that veiled their heads and faces. A few times, word went through the crowd
that soldiers were coming. The ranks broke and everybody rushed for cover.
But that day, at least, no soldiers came.
The professors, having no classes, were available and talkative. By far the
most interesting was Karim Pakravan, an economist trained at the University
of Chicago, whose father, a former Iranian general, had at one time been
head of the security-police apparatus, known as Savak, and was now working
at the Imperial Palace in a high administrative position. He came to visit
me at my hotel room, and talked freely of his own situation and that of his
colleagues.
³Young professional people want to escape the establishment,² he said. ³The
establishment is everybody who has real power. In one way or another, either
morally or financially, it is corrupt. We are not brave enough to join the
opposition, but by being at the university we maintain a passive opposition.
Our case against the government is lack of freedom. All creativity has been
crushed. I teach a course in economics. I¹m not allowed to say that there¹s
malnutrition or poverty, or that we¹re underdeveloped. A doctor friend of
mine went to the countryside to look at health problems. He found all the
diseases typical of underdeveloped countries‹trachoma, dysentery, that kind
of thing. He didn¹t find cancer and hypertension‹the diseases that go with
modern society. So he was never allowed to make a report.
³A whole generation of Iranians has been raised, educated, and given no
freedom. Young engineers, for instance, have only a minor chance to take
part in technological development. The Shah didn¹t develop a technology‹he
bought a blueprint of technology from the West. So there were very few major
jobs for Iranians. At least ninety per cent of our people have been left out
of development. I have a small consulting firm. I take only private clients.
Unless we were huge and foreign, we couldn¹t get government contracts
anyway. I might be able to do a project for the government at a charge of,
say, ten thousand dollars for a couple of months¹ work. But people in the
government would rather hire foreigners at a thousand dollars a day. That
way, they get a kickback.²
He continued, ³Khomeini is merely a symbol of opposition. He is respected as
a Moslem, but he has no power. Ten years ago, no prayers were said in the
universities. Religious students were mocked. Now there is a genuine student
problem. Many of the students come from poor families in the provinces. They
have to rent rooms, and the financial burden is unbearable. There has never
been a systematic study made, so we don¹t know how badly off they are. But
they don¹t have enough money. They have to cluster six or seven in a room.
In the last few years, there has been an undoubted effort to reform things.
There¹s real talk in the parliament. Those in Savak who were corrupt and who
tortured people have been ousted. There¹s an effort to bring roads to
villages, and water. If there should he elections soon, I¹d probably vote.
But I wouldn¹t join the government. Next year is going to be bad. Already,
because of the strikes and the big wage settlements, it is clear that the
gross national product will be down by ten per cent. There¹ll he an
incredible inflation. One good thing I can say: At last, after twenty-five
years, Iranian politics are becoming interesting.²
Pakravan put me in touch with another economist trained in the United
States, who divided his time between teaching and working for Iran¹s Plan
and Budget Organization. Because of his government job, he asked me not to
mention his name. He said that economists at the Plan and Budget
Organization had repeatedly done studies showing that, while the national
wealth was increasing, many people, particularly in the countryside, were
relatively worse off. He showed me a report that indicated that the income
share of the top twenty per cent of urban Iranians had risen from 57.5 per
cent in 1972 to 63.5 per cent in 1975. The share of the middle forty per
cent dropped from 31 per cent to 25.5 per cent. The share of the bottom
forty per cent dropped from 11.5 per cent to 11 per cent. While urban
consumption per head was about two times that of the rural areas in 1959, it
had by 1972 grown to three times that of the rural areas. But these studies,
while circulated abroad, were, he said, not published in Iran.
The economist went on to talk about the religious revival. ³I was very
active in politics during my high-school years,² he said. ³At that time‹the
early nineteen-fifties‹there were only two important groups: the Communist,
or Tudeh, Party, and the National Front‹which included the Pan-Iranians, who
wanted to take over parts of Iraq, Turkey, and Pakistan. The young had
absolutely no interest in religion. After that, the political situation
calmed down. There was a brief revival of politics in 1961 and 1962, when
Ali Amini came to office as Prime Minister. He started the land reform that
the Shah later claimed as his own. The Tudeh Party was dead then, but the
National Front was strong. The religious people didn¹t count. Khomeini
became important only after he was driven into exile by the Shah. The Shah¹s
father, Reza Shah, had been very successful in fighting the mullahs. He made
a direct assault on the clergy‹forcing women to take off veils, riding into
the shrines and beating the mullahs. He had public sympathy, because then
the clergy were corrupt and wealthy. They were hated by everybody. Now they
have lost their lands and the religious foundations. The mullahs have been
purified. They have the power of poverty.²

The economist at the planning agency introduced me to Magid Tehranian, an
intellectual in his middle thirties who had been trained at Harvar  and then
co-opted into the Shah¹s system as the head of an institute for the study of
communications. I went to see him at the institute, where h  looked every
bit the European or American intellectual in his cozy oyster shell; he had a
comfortable office with a couple of secretaries, and wor  a neat blue suit,
a silk tie, and shoes of soft Italian leather. He talked briefly about
Iranian intellectuals. He said, ³The great problem facing th  university
graduates once they are out of school is a lack of freedom. We have lots of
intellectuals and technocrats who have views, but they ar  never allowed to
express them. Everything is dictated from the top, and some of it is silly.
For instance, the government tried to build up th  television network‹with
which I was involved. It was extended to the point where it reached seventy
per cent of the people in Iran. Then th  palace intervened. They insisted
that we show pictures of urban guerrillas confessing their terrorist deeds.
They made us put Parviz Sabeti, th  head of Savak¹s anti-terrorist campaign,
on the screen, giving his view of history. We have an intelligentsia, but
they have no chance to participate. They¹re just supposed to support the
regime. But they don¹t like slavishly supporting the Shah, so they turn
against him. Yet, with all this, we have been surprised by the breadth of
the movement against the Shah. It reaches from plush Teheran to the remotest
villages.²
Tehranian was said to have been a Marxist before he joined the government,
and I had gone to see him primarily because I needed some help in
ascertaining the part that the Marxists had played in what had been
happening. Clearly, the Marxists counted for something in the movement
against the Shah, but I had been given the most diverse estimates of their
role, from the most surprising sources. The view around the palace was that
the religious movement had been totally taken over by the Marxists. That
view was shared by the economist who taught at the university as a form of
³passive resistance² to ³the establishment.² ³The resistance is run by the
Communists,² he had told me. ³If you want to buy weapons, there is a number
you can call and you get what you ask for. I don¹t know exactly who supplies
the weapons‹the Russians, the Cubans, or the Palestinians. But they¹re the
ones who have made the country erupt.² An American official, on the other
hand, put absolutely no stock in the theory of Communist manipulation. He
remarked to me that ³the Army and the police and Savak have been combing the
country all year looking for the Communists behind the demonstrations. So
far, they haven¹t found a single one. Why? Because there aren¹t any. The
mullahs and the bazaaris between them have informal networks that they¹ve
used for years to organize processions and festivals. That¹s all it takes
now. That¹s all there is.²
I told Tehranian of the confused picture I was getting, and asked if he
could put me in touch with any of his former Marxist colleagues. He said
that it would be easy, and set up an appointment for me with a friend
holding a high post in the Ministry of Information. The friend would
organize an interview with three officials in the Ministry. I was not to
talk about Marx. Instead, I should use the euphemism ³a European social
philosopher of the nineteenth century.²
At the last minute, I had to change the appointment from the morning to the
afternoon, but that was no problem. I went to see the official, and after a
few moments he took me into a room behind his office. Three men, all about
thirty, were sitting at a table with a woman‹a graduate student at the
University of Michigan, who acted as translator. I asked them if they were
believers in the philosophy of a certain well-known European social
philosopher of the nineteenth century, and all three smiled and nodded. I
asked them about their education and their jobs. They were university
graduates‹one from the Sorbonne, the two others from the University of
Teheran. The man from the Sorbonne helped put together public-opinion polls
for the Ministry, and the two others had jobs as engineers.
I asked what they found useful in the works of the nineteenth-century social
philosopher. One said, ³He exposes the imperialists and their rape of all
the countries of the Third World, including Iran.²
I asked how, specifically, the philosopher¹s theories were relevant to Iran,
and was told about the depletion of Iran¹s oil reserves and the purchase of
American weapons for open ³use against the people.² I asked about Iran¹s
practice of selling natural gas to the Soviet Union, and they responded that
there was no shortage of natural gas.
I asked if they felt that the Russians had designs on Iran. All of them
thought that compared to the United States influence, which was
³all-pervasive,² the Russian influence was ³so small it doesn¹t count.² I
asked what recent works by followers of the well-known nineteenth-century
social philosopher they had read. After some hesitation, the man from the
Sorbonne said, ³Jean-Paul Sartre.² No other names were forthcoming.
I asked how they felt about the religious movement against the Shah. All
said that they agreed with its objectives. I asked if there wasn¹t a
contradiction somewhere. Wasn¹t religion supposed to be ³the opium of the
people²?
³Sometimes that is true,² I was told. ³But in developing countries it is
different. At times, religious feelings and social movements go hand in
hand. That is the way it is now in Iran. We are all of us united against the
Shah.²
I asked how they thought the government of the Soviet Union felt about the
Shah. They said they felt that they had the backing of Moscow.
I asked whether they and their leaders were working from within the
religious movement. There was a silence. Then one of them said, ³We are in
an Islamic country, and all social movements inevitably have a religious
coloring. We do not believe there will ever he Communism here as there is
Communism in Russia or China. We will have our own brand of socialism.²
Later, the official who had arranged the interview told me that I should
have asked him the same questions. ³I believe that the Communists are
manipulating the religious movement,² he said. Still later, an American
official showed me a translation of an article in Navid, a new, underground
publication of the Tudeh Party. The article, entitled ³The Tudeh Party and
the Moslem Movement,² said, ³We are ready to put at the disposal of our
friends from other political groups all our political propaganda and
technical resources for the campaign against the Shah.² I was also shown an
interview with Iraj Eskandary, the secretary-general of the Tudeh Party, now
living in exile in Moscow. Among other things, Eskandary said, ³As far as
the religious aspect of the present movement is concerned, it should be
emphasized that the Shiite clergy cannot be viewed as a force demanding a
return to the past, to the Middle Ages. The position of the clergy reflects,
to a significant extent, popular feelings. And the fact that the religious
movement is now playing an important role in the mobilization of democratic
and nationalist forces against the dictatorial, anti-nationalist, and
pro-imperialist regime of the Shah can only be welcomed. . . . We are in
favor of a union with all democratic forces, including the religious ones.²

If the role played by the Marxists in the fomenting of trouble remains
obscure, the role of the liberalization sponsored by the Shah and hi 
ministers looms larger and larger. The Shah acknowledged when I saw him that
he had begun to loosen things up ³about two years ago.² I was i  Iran in the
spring of 1977, and I remember well the widespread talk of relaxation. Jimmy
Carter¹s emphasis on human rights was one of th  reasons, but only one, and
not the most important. Iranian students in the United States and Europe had
focussed attention on the repressiv  features of the regime‹particularly the
practice of torture by Savak. The international press, led by Le Monde, of
Paris, had picked up the theme. Both the Red Cross and Amnesty
International, the private human-rights group based in London, were asking
questions and proposing visits. But by far the most important reason for the
relaxation was that the rapid development that followed the great oil-price
increase of 1973 proved too complicated for direct control from above.
Dislocations and shortages were universal. I recall visiting a new aluminum
plant in an industrial area outside Teheran. The plant was supposed to
accommodate several hundred workers, but they had no housing and no
transport, and there were no telephones in the offices. All over the
country, power failures were frequent, and the pursuit of scarce goods and
services drove inflation above the twenty-five-per-cent-per-year level. An
effort to hold clown inflation by fixing prices was failing in a spectacular
manner. It was clear that the economy could be made to work only if there
was some freeing up, some devolution of authority.
Signs of reform were abundant that spring. Batches of prisoners were
released, and were allowed to talk to the press. The Shah declared that
torture would cease‹an admission that it had been going on. Corruption,
which had never been far below the surface‹as witness the Persian origin of
the word ³baksheesh²‹became public in the wake of a scandal that involved
payoffs to high officials of the Iranian Navy. The National Front, the chief
opposition party, was allowed to circulate letters highly critical of the
regime. Student demonstrations went forward with only token harassment. Even
the television appearances of Parviz Sabeti, the director of Savak¹s
political section, were part of an effort to prove that the organization had
a human face.
The direction of policy, to be sure, remained ambiguous. Low-level agents of
Savak continued to stage raids on opposition meetings. Investigation of
corruption at the highest levels was systematically blocked‹reputedly by the
Shah¹s entourage. But a key figure in the entourage, Amir Assadollah Alam,
the Minister of the Imperial Court, fell ill in 1977, and died in New York
early this year. His departure from the Court Ministry opened the way for a
political change that signalled an undoubted commitment to reform. In
August, 1977, the Shah appointed a new Court Minister, Amir Abbas Hoveida,
and a new Prime Minister, Jamshid Amouzegar. I saw both men at their homes
in Teheran in late October of this year, along with the Information Minister
in the Amouzegar government, Dariush Homayun. They all talked freely, but
not for individual attribution. What follows is my interpretation of their
accounts of what happened during the twelve months beginning in August,
1977‹a period of sweeping reforms that boomeranged to injure them, and the
Shah as well.

Hoveida, an affable and highly intelligent man, with degrees in history,
economics, and political science from the Universities of Paris an 
Brussels, came to the Court Ministry after nearly thirteen years as Prime
Minister‹the longest term in modern times. He had a major hand in th  rapid
development that changed the face of Iran and soured so many of its people.
Though he was said to have been tolerant of corruption in th  past, he was
reputed never to have been on the take himself, and he certainly did not
live on the grand scale. He had realized as early as 1975 tha  the pace of
development had to be slowed down. ³We¹re in orbit,² he had told me at the
time, ³and we have to come down to earth.² He brough  to the Court Ministry
a determination to achieve economic slowdown and political reform. As he saw
it, the key to both was ending corruption a  the highest levels. From the
beginning, he worked with the Shah on a code of conduct for the royal
family. That project brought him into conflic  with many members of the
family who had been active in private business affairs. In July, 1978, after
a long and bitter battle, Hoveida finally wo  the Shah¹s approval for the
code of conduct
The code was not published, for fear that the spelling out of what was
henceforth prohibited would be regarded as a confession of past guilt. But
the fact that it was adopted was made known, and caused virtually every
member of the royal family to leave Iran. Here‹published for the first time,
I think‹is the code that the Shah approved last summer:
CODE OF CONDUCT FOR THE IMPERIAL FAMILY
In order to maintain the high status of the Imperial family, which is
respected by all Iranians, the following principles are instituted as the
Code of Conduct of the Imperial family:
1) Refraining from conduct considered distasteful by social custom.
2) Refraining from any acts or actions not in keeping with the high status
of the Imperial family.
3) Refraining from direct contact with public officials for the purpose of
handling personal business. These matters will be handled through the
Ministry of Court or His Imperial Majesty¹s Special Office.
4) Refraining from contacts with foreign companies or organizations which
are parties to contracts and deals with Iranian public organizations.
5) Refraining from receiving commissions for any reason whatsoever, from
companies and organizations, foreign or Iranian, which are parties to
contracts or deals with the Iranian government.
6) Refraining from receiving valuable gifts from persons, companies, or
organizations. 
7) Refraining from deals of any kind with public organizations, be it the
government, organizations associated with the government, municipalities, or
public organizations.
8) Refraining from direct or indirect (through third person or persons)
partnership or holding shares in companies or organizations that are parties
to deals with the government or public organizations.
9) Refraining from founding or holding shares in organizations or companies
whose activities are not compatible with the high status of the members of
the Imperial family, such as restaurants, cabarets, casinos, and the like.
10) Refraining from the use of facilities and properties belonging to
government and public organizations for private use.
11) Refraining from the use‹for private or commercial purposes‹of the
services of the employees of the government and associated organizations who
also have responsibilities and duties in foundations associated with the
Imperial family, or related organizations.
12) Refraining from asking for special favors or making recommendations to
public officials in the interest of members of the Imperial family or
others. 
13) Refraining from the use of legal exemptions for persons outside of the
Imperial family. 
14) Refraining from the use of nationalized lands belonging to the
government or public organizations for the purpose of profiting, for
example, through construction projects or establishing commercial, service,
or industrial organizations.
15) Refraining from receiving anything from persons (natural or legal) in
lieu of influencing public officials in order to legalize acts which would
not otherwise be eligible for profit-making (such as partnership in
ownership of large pieces of land in return for registering such lands for
the purpose of making profit).
16) Refraining from the use of nationalized lands for agriculture and dairy
projects. 
17) Refraining from accepting positions on the boards of insurance, banking,
and other companies.
18) Voluntary compliance with security regulations and whatever relates to
public order. 
19) Protecting the prestige and respect of national values and beliefs
outside of the country.
20) Refraining from contacts with foreign embassies in Iran unless through
the Ministry of Court.
Amouzegar came to the office of Prime Minister with a reputation as a
brilliant public servant. He was educated at the University of Teheran, at
Cornell, and at the University of Washington, and has a Ph.D. in civil
engineering. Before becoming Prime Minister, at the age of fifty-four, he
had successively headed four Ministries‹Labor, Agriculture, Finance, and
Interior‹and had also served as Iran¹s chief negotiator in the price-fixing
sessions of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Though less
supple than Hoveida in political matters, Amouzegar was thought to be
equally free of corruption and far more competent in economics. As Prime
Minister, he set his sights on curtailing inflation and rooting out
corruption at the ministerial level. By squeezing hard on the money supply,
he cut inflation from thirty-five per cent in August, 1977, to ten per cent
in August, 1978. In the process, he earned the enmity of many of those
dependent on credit, including most of the bazaar merchants and the high
rollers in the construction field. As for corruption, he pushed General
Nematollah Nasseri out as the head of Savak and off into a corner as
Ambassador to Pakistan. He forced Hushang Ansari, the Minister of Finance,
to step out of the Cabinet and become head of the National Iranian Oil
Company. He obliged Mayor Gholam Reza Nikpay, of Teheran, to quit. Those
actions put him at odds with both the Shah and Hoveida, who had close ties
to several of those who had been shunted aside. In the recesses of the
Imperial Court, an intrigue was concocted which came to engulf everybody.
The starting point was the death, late in October of 1977, of Seyyed Mustafa
Khomeini, the son of the exiled Ayatollah. The son, a mullah, was forty-nine
at the time, and he died, according to supporters of the Shah, of a heart
attack. His father suspected foul play, and, during the Shiite days of
mourning for the dead, which fell in late December last year, circulated a
number of letters throwing blame on the Shah. Early in January this year,
there was sent from the office of the Court Minister, Hoveida, to the office
of the Information Minister, Homayun, the text of an article. Homayun, as
was the custom, passed the article on for publication to the editors of a
leading Teheran daily, Eta¹alaat. The editors at the paper were sufficiently
disturbed by the text to check with Homayun. He told them that it came from
the Court and they should go ahead and publish it. The editors then apprised
Amouzegar of what was in the works. Amouzegar called Homayun, who repeated
the explanation that the article came from the Court and was supposed to be
published. Exactly who wrote the article is not known to me, but the
unwillingness of those involved to name the author suggests that it was
either the Shah himself or somebody acting on his orders. My impression is
that part of the motive was to embroil the Amouzegar government with the
religious opposition.
The article appeared on January 7th. It bore the title ³Iran and the Red and
Black Imperialism,² and contained a harsh personal attack on Ayatollah
Khomeini. It started obliquely, with references to the recent days of
mourning in which Ayatollah Khomeini had circulated his grievances against
the Shah. It moved on to a discussion of forces designated as Red and Black
Imperialism, meaning the Communists and the clergy. It said that coöperation
between the two had been ³rare² but that an exception was ³the close,
sincere, and honest coöperation of both vis-à-vis the Iranian revolution,
especially the progressive land reform in Iran.² The article went on to
recall the opposition to land reform back in 1963, including the ³riots of
June 5th and 6th,² which had precipitated the expulsion of Ayatollah
Khomeini. It said that the opposition to the reform had come from the
Communists grouped in the Tudeh Party and from ³the landowners who had been
robbing the peasants for many years.² These groups, the article continued,
had turned for ³succor to the clergy since the clergy enjoy great respect
among Iranians.² Most of the clergy, the article said, proved ³far too
intelligent to act against the Shah¹s-people¹s revolution,² so at that point
the opponents had decided to ³recruit someone from the clergy who would be
adventurous.² That ³someone² had turned out to be Ayatollah Khomeini.
According to the article, he had ³an unknown past,² but apparently had lived
for many years in India, where he had developed ³contacts with centers of
British imperialism.² The article concluded by denouncing Ayatollah Khomeini
as ³someone who had taken the initiative in carrying out the plans of Red
and Black Imperialism . . . who fought land reform, the women¹s vote, the
nationalization of the forests . . . who would sincerely serve conspirators
and Fifth Columnists.²
On January 9th, two days after the article appeared, the religious students
in Qum went into the streets to protest the attack on Khomeini. A clash with
police ensued. Nine people were killed and many were injured. Forty days
later, in Tabriz, a memorial service was held for those killed in Qum.
Again, there was a clash with police. This time, thirteen people were
killed. After that, trouble came in Teheran and Isfahan and Meshed, and then
in Qum once more. August 5th marked Iran¹s Constitution Day, and the eve of
Ramadan, the Moslem month of abstention. The Shah delivered a nationwide
television broadcast, pledging that he would go ahead with the
liberalization program. But all through that month, in city after city,
there were assaults on the symbols of Western modernity associated with the
Shah¹s rule‹banks, casinos, and cinemas. The campaign reached a horrible
climax in Abadan, the site of the country¹s largest oil refinery. On August
20th, the Rex Cinema was destroyed by arson, and some four hundred and
thirty people lost their lives in the blaze.
After that, Amouzegar had had enough. He resigned as Prime Minister and was
replaced by Jaafar Sharif-Emami, a political veteran from a religious family
who had worked closely with the Shah as, among other things, head of the
Pahlavi Foundation, a multimillion-dollar semi-family enterprise, which is
the owner of most of Iran¹s foreign holdings. Sharif-Emami moved swiftly and
across the board to make concessions to the troublemakers. He lifted press
censorship and arranged for live radio broadcasts from the previously dozing
Majles, the lower house of the parliament. With the wraps off, resentment
found tongue. In the parliament and in the press, there was a surge of
complaints about corruption and discrimination against the middle and
working classes. The new government met the strikes with generous
concessions on wages and pensions. In response to charges of corruption,
investigations were opened into the cases of General Nasseri (who was
recalled from Pakistan) and former Mayor Nikpay. Thirty-four leading
officials of Savak, including Parviz Sabeti, were dismissed in one day. At
every opportunity, Sharif-Emami sought to placate the mullahs. He closed
down casinos, and cinemas showing foreign films. Provincial and university
officials who had taken a strong stand against religion were replaced by
milder men. Most important of all, Sharif-Emami entered into consultations
with religious leaders, including Ayatollah Shariatmadari, and with the lay
opposition, including Karim Sanjabi, the head of the National Front, for a
broad understanding about new elections.

I went to visit Sharif-Emami in his office, just before the end of October.
I found a large, bluff, partly bald man in his sixties who exude 
confidence. He said that there were many ³dissatisfied and unhappy people in
Iran who turned to the mullahs to voice their grievances.² Hi  strategy was
³to establish a good relation with the clergy.² As he saw it, the clergy was
divided into two groups. ³One group, which follow  Ayatollah Khomeini, is
radical but very small,² he said. ³The other, which follows Shariatmadari,
is moderate and very large. A split betwee  them exists in every city and
every village.² He was negotiating with Shariatmadari for some kind of
convocation where the majority coul  prevail. ³They must do it,² he said of
his plan for forcing a decision. ³Somebody must be the head of our clergy, a
Pope.
He told me he was sure that lifting the lid on censorship and on the Majles
debates was the right thing to do. ³A free press is much better than
pressure,² he said. The economic consequences of the strikes and the high
wage settlements were, he thought, ³not serious.² There would be a cost to
the state in higher wages and pensions, but that could easily he made up by
a cutback on expensive military projects and plans for nuclear power plants.
He favored the allocation of more money to the villages, for ³by increasing
credits for machinery, electricity, and water, rural life can be made more
attractive and agriculture more effective.² He said he hoped to ³draw the
men who came to town back to the villages.² He acknowledged that inflation
might be a problem, but he hoped to keep it down by subsidies on basic
commodities‹rice, bread, sugar, tea. He did not fear a military coup. ³If
they come in, there will be killing and shooting,² he said. ³Nobody wants
that.² He did sense that a test would be coming within the next six weeks,
and he hoped to put together a large political grouping that would help open
the way to free elections. Among other people, he mentioned former Prime
Ministers Hoveida and Ali Amini. ³I¹m a patient man,² he said. ³I do not
intend to leave this office until there is calm in Iran.²

Sharif-Emami had begun the interview by saying that that day Teheran, at
least, was calm. But driving from his office back to my hotel I had to
detour around thc center of town. I smelled burning rubber and saw a car in
flames. Later, I learned that students had come off the university campus
and smashed shops and destroyed cars in what was considered the worst day of
rioting that month. Convinced that Sharif-Emami could not last, I went to
see the man widely tabbed as his successor‹Ali Amini, a renowned liberal and
reformer, who had been Prime Minister at the time of the land-reform
legislation of the early sixties.
Mr. Amini received me at his home, a comfortable villa in the northern
section of Teheran. He had been educated in Paris, and, like most of the
older generation of the Iranian élite, spoke French more easily than
English. He said, ³The heart of the problem is the Shah. He doesn¹t like to
hear the truth. He has allowed himself to be surrounded by flatterers who
have isolated him. He has given over the country to a class of nouveaux
riches. They show off all the time. That shocks people and turns them
against the regime. The clergy has become important only because there is a
lack of rapport between the Shah and the people.²
His solution was to form a government of national unity which would take
over the country and open the way to new elections. He would include
representatives of the National Front. ³Sanjabi isn¹t much,² he said of the
Front leader, ³but his party has a great name.² The key to such a
government, however, was the Shah. ³He has to learn to reign, not rule,²
Amini said. ³He must accept the idea of a constitutional monarchy in Iran.
In fact, he must lead the way to constitutional monarchy.²
I asked Amini whether he thought the Shah was ready for such a step. He said
that he had not seen the Shah in some time, and went on, ³I¹m prepared, but
I don¹t think he wants to see me. That probably means he isn¹t ready to
lessen his role in government. But I¹m waiting.²