|
|
|
His Highness,
the Shah of Shahs
The Ayatollah Khomeini
Between 1953 and 1963 much poverty remained among the Iranian people, and the gap between the rich and poor grew. There was talk of the oligarchy of one thousand families. One of the great landowners was the Shah (king), Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. Another was the clerical establishment, which had acquired land through religious endowments.
The Shah was in conflict with Muslims who advocated banning tobacco, alcohol, movies, gambling foreign dress, the veil for women and punishments such as cutting off a hand. The Shah's increased Iran's tie with the United States. His agreement with a western oil consortium annoyed many, and some were annoyed by the presence of many Americans. Some Iranians saw the United States as having taken the place of the British. Some discontented Muslims formed an underground group called the Fedaiyan-e Islam. They tried to assassinate the Shah's prime minister. The Shah responded by repressing the Fedaiyan-e Islam and executing a few of its members.
The Shah was worried about the opinions of Iran's ultra-conservative Muslims, while he enjoyed the support of Iran's upper and middle classes. He had support from some clerics who saw him as an alternative to the politically Left. Some other clerics were uncomfortable with the monarchy. They remembered that the Shah's father back in 1936 had barred clerics from acting as judges in state courts. And some clerics, including the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, were offended in the early 1960s when the Shah gave himself the authority to initiate legislation.
After returning to power in 1954 the shah launched an effort to modernize Iran economically and socially. He sought to balance his increase in power with reforms that would win more favor from common Iranians. Landlords and some clerics were outspokenly opposed to these reforms. Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa (religious edict) against his reforms. The government-owned radio station responded with a ridicule. The Shah announced that his reforms would take Iran into the jet age while the mullahs wanted to remain "in the age of the donkies." Numerous clerics went over to the side of Khomeini. Fearing opposition, the Shah cracked down on dissent. On March 22, 1963, in the holy city of Qom, theological students who were agitating against a scheduled opening of liquor stores were attacked by the Shah's paratroopers and by his security agents - SAVAK. The disturbance spread to students in the city of Tabriz. There and in Qom, according to some, government forced killed hundreds.
When speaking to honor the dead, the Ayatollah Khomeini called the Shah's rule tyrannical. Then the government retaliated against Khomeini. For many Iranians Khomeini became an anti-Shah hero. His arrest on June 5 caused anti-government demonstrations and rioting in a variety of cities. The Shah declared martial law. Tanks and troops with orders to shoot to kill were sent against the rioters. Iran's airforce strafed a great column of marchers. In two days the rioting was crushed. Many had been arrested, including twenty-eight ayatollahs. A Western academic in Iran estimated that many thousands had died. An Iranian, Dr. A.R. Azimi, put the number at 10,000, while the government estimated the number of dead at 86.
The Shah's government sent Khomeini into exile, Khomeini settling in a Shiite community in southern Iraq. The amount of violence used against cleric dissent had broadened opposition to the Shah but had driven it to quiet hope, with a good portion of that hope focused on Khomeini. From Iraq Khomeini continued his attacks on the Shah, sending into Iran pamphlets and tape recordings. Khomeini stated that Islam was opposed to monarchy. He described the title King of Kings used by the Shah as the most hated of titles in the sight of God. Monarchy, he said, was shameful, disgraceful and reactionary.
From 1963 and into the seventies, the Shah struggled to modernize Iran - with help from the U.S., where foreign policy strategists saw him as a stabilizing force in the Middle East and appreciated his acceptance of the existence of Israel. With help from the United States, Iran laid plans for a proliferation of atomic power plants, and the new economic development included the introduction of new fertilizers and pesticides. Between 1963 and 1967 Iran's economy rose dramatically. Oil production boomed, producing an abundance of cash for Iran. Steel mills rose from 1,902 in 1963 to 7,989 in 1977. There were also new oil refineries, aluminum smelters, machine tool factories and new tractors, trucks and automobiles. Public education improved dramatically, as did public health services. The number of doctors increased three-fold and the number of hospital beds doubled.
But the stigma of the bloody repression in 1963 remained, and the Shah continued his repression against clerics hostile to his modernization. In 1966 he established book censorship, with police agents raiding mosque libraries. In 1967 new laws gave women the right to apply for divorce without the husband's permission, a man had to secure his wife's consent before taking a second wife, and legal matters involving families were transferred from religious to secular courts.
Despite the booming economy, many Iranians were still struggling economically. Agricultural output had been rising at a rate of 2.5 percent per year, but Iran's population had been increasing at 3 percent per year, and with the booming economy had come an inflation rate of from 30 to 50 percent a year. The government was managing the economy poorly. The Shah tried to control inflation by controlling prices, which upset merchants. Many were upset with rents having risen 300 percent in five years, which took as much as half of a middleclass family's earnings. The prosperity was benefitting those few labeled the nouveau riche. Corruption had emerged among government officials eager to acquire some of the wealth, while the income of common Iranians failed to keep up with rising prices.
The Shah attempted to bribe fence-sitting clerics onto his side, and he sought to deflect criticism by establishing a new parliamentary body between himself and the masses. The Shah was looking forward to the day when his son, Crown Prince Reza, would succeed him, and he hoped that a return to constitutionalism would make the transfer of power orderly and peaceful.
In 1976 the Shah upset some clerics by replacing the old Islamic calendar with a new secular calendar. And when a prominent critic of the change in calendar was found murdered, many assumed that it was the work of the Shah's security agents, SAVAK.
In early 1977, Jimmy Carter became President of the United States, and he put human rights into his foreign policy agenda. The Carter administration suggested that if Iran did not improve its human rights record, aid, including military assistance, might be terminated. The Shah acted on Carter's wishes. Some would view this pressure on the Shah and Carter's reluctance regarding the Shah crushing opponents as responsible for the Shah's fall.
Responding to Carter, the Shah's regime released 357 political prisoners in February, 1977, and lifting the lid of repression even slightly encouraged the Shah's opponents. An organization of writers and publishers called for freedom of thought, and 64 lawyers called for the abolition of military tribunals. Merchants wrote letters requesting more freedom from government controls. Some people took to the streets, perhaps less fearful of being shot to death, and they clashed with police. A group of 120 lawyers joined together to publicize SAVAK torture and to monitor prison conditions. Dissident academics formed a group called the National Organization of University Teachers, and they joined students in demanding academic freedom. Political dissidents started disseminating more openly their semi-clandestine publications. Some people complained openly about the Shah's sister, Princess Ashraf, going between Mecca and Monte Carlo casinos, and they passed along rumors that she had a strong sexual appetite and was living licentiously.
In late October, 1977, in the city of Najaf, Khomeini's son, Mustapha, was found dead in his bed. Islam did not allow autopsy, and what killed Mustapha remained a mystery, but again many suspected that SAVAK had committed murder. Then came a verbal attack on Khomeini published by the Shah's information minister. Theological colleges in the city of Qom closed down in protest. In January, 1978, 4,000 religious students demanded restoration of freedoms. The police came and pointed their guns at the demonstrators. The demonstrators dared the police to shoot, and the police did, killing between 10 and 72 demonstrators. The lifting of repression, designed to impress the people of Iran, failed to do so.
Khomeini called for demonstrations of mourning for the killed demonstrators. Disorder erupted in Tabriz, and numerous Iranian embassies abroad were attacked by Iranian students and local communist youth groups. In Iran, many clerics joined the protests, and 87 religious and secular leaders called on the public to stay away from work. In the demonstrations that followed one demonstrator was shot to death, while the mood of the demonstrators, mainly poor people, was rage. They chanted "Death to the Shah!" They attacked liquor shops and theaters showing movies they considered lewd. And they attacked banks, believing that in attacking the banks they were attacking the rich.
The Shaw had been diminishing in power by his method of trying to retain it. He declared martial law and moved against the demonstrators. But common ingredients in the success of revolutions appeared: some policemen changed into civilian clothes and escaped from confrontation with the demonstrators, and an army garrison refused to fire on protesters. Approximately100 more demonstrators were killed and about 600 were injured, and the rioting was quelled. But the Shah was worried about what he had unleashed, and he made a public apology. He paid a visit to Iran's greatest Islamic shrine, the Imam Ali Reza shrine in Mashbad. He promised to re-open the Faiziya seminary in Qom. The Shah increased the quota of people who could make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He banned pornographic movies, and he ended price inspections and released merchants who had been imprisoned for over-charging. In early June he removed from office the much-hated general Nemotallah Nasseri, head of SAVAK since 1965. And the Shah instructed members of his family and relatives to sever their ties with commercial interests.
It was too late. Too many of those who had at least tolerated the Shah''s rule had been lost. Demonstrations continued. The Shah declared martial law again and a curfew, following a fire at a theater that killed 410 people. The likely culprits were Muslim firebrands opposed to movies, but many were blaming everything on the Shah and SAVAK. The Shah was determined to control the streets rather than let the demonstrations burn themselves out. He was now fighting for the existence of his dynasty. He put General Gholam Ali Oveissi in charge of controlling the capital, Teheran. [READER COMMENT] On the first day that martial law returned, troops and tanks attacked crowds of protesters and others on the south side of the capital. The troops had been ordered to shoot to kill. They attacked, and assisted by helicopter gunships they drove people down narrow streets radiating out from the city square. Barricades went up around the city, and people armed themselves with Molotov cocktails. The day became known as Black Friday. The government claimed there were 168 casualties; organizers of the demonstration claimed 2,000 or 3,000.
From Iraq, the Ayatollah Khomeini was giving guidance to people eager to overthrow the Shah, and he ordered work stoppages that swept the nation. The Shah responded by managing to have Khomeini expelled from Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and Khomeini flew to Paris, where he found that he had more freedom of action, and to newsmen he began giving four to five interviews per day. There were more demonstrations in Iran and more killings by the army. The work stoppage spread. Oil workers, postal employees, bank employees, journalists, mineworkers, customs officials, transportation workers all went out on strike. So too did almost all universities and high schools. There were demands for better wages, for the dissolution of SAVAK, the ending of marital law and for allowing Khomeini's peaceful return. Iranians with a lot of money, including high ranking military officers, were sending their wealth abroad. Everywhere people were destroying portraits of the Shah.
On November 7, 1978, the Shah broadcast on television another promise not to repeat past mistakes and to make amends. The next day he had thirteen prominent members of his own regime arrested. By November 18 the Shah was deeply depressed. Many soldiers were no longer willing to fire into crowds. The question whether the Shah should crush opposition to his rule with overwhelming military force was no longer relevant. Military protection for the Shah's regime was melting away - as it had for Tsar Nicholas in February 1917. The Shah agreed to go abroad for a vacation. He accepted a new government led by an old opponent, the head of the dissident National Front, Shahpour Bakhtiar. On January 6, 1979, Bakhtiar pledged to launch "a genuine social democracy" and to end the corruption and abuses of the past. On January 16, 1979, the Shah and his family left for Egypt.
Two men had been prominent in the rising against the Shah. One was Khomeini, whose education was parochial, in other words he was Madrasa-trained. The other, Ali Shariati, had both a traditional education in religion and he was also a sociologist with a Ph.D. from the France's Sorbonne University. The portraits of both Shariati and Khomeini were carried on placards in demonstrations and the portraits of both were displayed side by side in people's homes. Shariati had been popular with students and Iran's religious communities, with thousands of students and non-students having flocked to his lectures, fascinated by his point-of-view. He had been imprisoned under harsh conditions by the Shah's regime and in 1975 released following popular and international pressure. Shariati favored a reinterpretation of the Islamic faith in order to take it back, he believed, to its true meaning, including its commitment to social justice. He was hostile to "Westernization." He has been described as a utopian. His mentor, the French existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, said that if were to choose a religion "it would be that of Shariati's. Shariati disliked U.S. influence in Iran. He was driven into exile as Khomeini had been. In June 1977, three weeks after having arrived in England, he was found dead in his apartment. His followers suspected the Shah's security agency, SAVAK.
Many Iranians shared Khomeini's lack of regard for pluralism. The liberalism of a few intellectuals was not about to sway them. Anti-Shah intellectuals, secular and Islamic, moderate and leftist misread developments. They believed that they were using the popular Khomeini and that he could be shunted aside as democracy was established. It was believed that with the success of the revolution the ulama (official community of scholars of Islam) and Khomeini would return to their mosques and schools and perhaps advise the government on Islamic matters. Intellectuals believed that religious traditionalism was something of the past and that Khomeini's view was contrary to the more modern outlook of Iran's Shia leaders, a dozen or so of whom outranked Khomeini and regarded him as their intellectual inferior.
From France, Khomeini denounced Prime Minister Bakhtiar for having accepted the Shah's appointment as head of the new government, and Khomeini called upon his followers to disobey the Bakhtiar government. Bakhtiar allowed Khomeini's return anyway - a part of the liberal spirit of the day. On February 1, 1979, after nearly fifteen years in exile, Khomeini returned in triumph from France. One week later a million or so demonstrators were following Khomeini's instructions and demanding Bakhtiar's resignation. On February 11, government buildings and radio station were seized by bands of youthful revolutionaries. Huge quantities of arms had been seized, and armed militias roamed the streets and looted. Various factions were trying to exercise power. The 40,000 or so Americans, who had been serving in various technical capacities in Iran, were returning home, fearing for their safety. The followers of Khomeini were more numerous and dominated. Khomeini was allied with a largely anonymous committee of clerics and civilians and in contact with local supporters, and he established what many recognized as legitimate authority.
Khomeini and his ulama allies wanted an judiciary government - rule by Islamic Sharia. On March 3, Khomeini announced that no judge was to be female. On March 6, he announced that women were to wear the hejab head covering. Khomeini declared that all non-Islamic forces were to be removed from the government, the military, judiciary, public and private enterprises and educational institutions. Corrupt behavior and customs were to be ended. Alcohol and gambling were to be banned and so too were nightclubs and mixed bathing. Friday noon prayer and sermons were to be focal point of the week, and all Friday prayer leaders were to be appointed by Khomeini. Men and women were to be publicly segregated, women to enter busses through one door, men through another, each with a separate seating section. In school classrooms prayers were to become mandatory. Khomeini spoke of music corrupting youth, and he banned all music on radio and television and closed twenty-two opposition newspapers.
It was announced that any spreading of corruption would be punished by death. A variety of the Shah's former friends, colleagues and generals were seized, and after trials of a few minutes they were executed - to prevent news spreading to the others who were detained. The bodies of the prisoners were loaded into meat containers and dumped into mass graves. Khomeini dismissing international protests, saying that criminals did not need to be tried, just killed.
Newspapers were banned. Protests by a left-of-center political movement, the National Democratic Front, led to the group being banned. The Khomeini regime weakened Iran's bourgeoisie by nationalizing banks, insurance companies, major industries, expropriating some urban land and expropriating the wealth of some families and by appointing managers to various companies.
Khomeini called the United States the "Great Satan" and the U.S. embassy a "den of spies." His followers seized the embassy and held 53 Americans there hostage, demanding that the U.S. deliver to Iran the Shah as an exchange. The Carter Administration refused, and Americans were to remain as hostages until November 1980.
The contest between Carter and his challenger, Ronald Reagan, was according to the polls a dead heat. Carter had been talking of limits and looking to many as weak. An attempt to rescue the hostages in April, 1980, had failed. Reagan appeared more optimistic and determined. Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States. The Shah meanwhile had died of cancer.
The Khomeini regime began new negotiations to free the hostages, fearing perhaps the tougher man, Reagan, more than they had Carter. In January 1981, on the day that Reagan was inaugurated president, Iran agreed to free the hostages in exchange for $8 billion in frozen assets and a promise by the United States to lift trade sanctions.
Meanwhile Iran had held a referendum. The results indicated support for Khomeini's rule. There was a new constitution for Iran, a new prime minister and president and a Consultative Assembly. The judiciary was to be persons expert on Islamic jurisprudence - government by faqih.
Abu'l-Hasan Bani Sadr was elected first president of Islamic Republic, having received 75 percent of the vote and the blessing of Khomeini. Mehdi Bazargan was prime minister. He had been imprisoned several times during the 1960s and 1970s for non-violent opposition to the Shah's regime. Within one year he resigned, complaining that clerics were undermining his government. in June 1981 Bani Sadr was impeached by clerics wishing to exercise political authority. Bani Sadr went into hiding and in late July was flown into exile by sympathetic persons in Iran's air force.
Other former supporters of Khomeini suffered ostracism. Former Khomeini aide and foreign minister, Qotbzadeh, was arrested with seventy military officers, some clerics and others charged with plotting a coup and the assassination of Khomeini. The respected religious leader Shariatmadari was arrested and executed. And a campaign to discredit Ayatollah Ahari'at-madari ended with his being "defrocked."
Tens of thousands of Iran's middle class had found it best to flee Iran. Stoning to death for adultery was in the offing, and death for homosexuality. Many films, Iranian and foreign, were banned or heavily censored. Movie theaters were denounced as channels for Western propaganda, and hundreds of theaters were burned to the ground. Patrols were formed to confront violations such as women showing their hair or wearing lipstick.
Khomeini and the Shia clerics around him relished the success of their return to what they saw as Islamic fundamentals, and they wished it to be an influence outside Iran. Many in the Middle East were enthusiastic about the creation of Khomeini's Islamic Republic - much as the Bolshevik capture of state power had encouraged socialists in the West. Half of the people of the region was under twenty-five years of age, and many tried shaming their parents into adopting Islamic dress. Sermons at Mosques increased the demand for militant action in behalf of advancing Islam.
PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, had been the first foreign dignitary to visit Khomeini, back in 1979, greeted warmly by Khomeini. In Libya, Muammar Qaddaffi was inspired and supportive of the success of Iran's Islamic revolution. In Afghanistan, beginning in 1980, Islamic militants, the Mujahadeen, were fighting Russian atheist forces. In Iraq, which had many Shia, the Sunni ruler, Saddam Hussein was maintaining a secular but strictly Sunni rule and afraid of Iranian influence. In 1980 he started a war with Iran. International politics was changing. U.S. foreign policy experts were hostile toward Iran - as were most Americans. These experts were supportive of what they saw as Saddam Hussein's resistance to Iranian influence, and material support and friendly relations with Saddam Hussein followed.
Additional Online Reading
A hostile view of Ali Shariati
(and Edward Said) by Amir Tehari
http://www.benadorassociates.com/article/600
"How Oil Money Polluted Iran,"
a book review in Busness Week magazine.
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/22/b352950.htm
Recommended Books
Defying the Iranian Revolution, by Manoucherhr Ganji, 2002, published by Praeger
to the top |
1945-21st century | The Siege of Mecca
Copyright © 1998-2007 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
address of this article: http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch29ir.html
corrections and comments:
