by Kim Ghattas
While Arafat took a victory lap in Tehran, the Egyptians were making headlines with their negotiations with the Israelis at Camp David. The juxtaposition of those news stories on front pages made Arafat look like the hero and the Egyptians like sellouts. The Palestinian leader went straight to meet Khomeini. They sat on the floor and held hands and talked for an hour and a half. Khomeini declared he had carried the Palestinian cause in his heart for fifteen years. Arafat leaned over and kissed the ayatollah on his left cheek. Khomeini smiled broadly. “Can you believe that the Palestinian revolution is in Iran?” asked Arafat. “Who can believe it! But a new era has begun.”
The Iranian Revolution had changed the balance of forces in favor of the Palestinians, according to Arafat. At a press conference, Arafat was joined by the ayatollah, and the two men held hands and raised them together as the crowd chanted “Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine.” Khomeini’s son Ahmad went everywhere with the guest of honor and declared: “The victory of the people of Iran did not end with the defeat of the shah. Our hope is to raise the flags of Iran and of Palestine on the hills of Jerusalem.”
Before they could do that, they had a closer target over which they could raise the Palestinian flag: the Israeli embassy. Ties between Iran and Israel had been severed right after Arafat’s arrival in Tehran, and the few Israeli diplomats who had remained in the country were expelled. They had already burned all sensitive documents. The fifteen hundred Israeli citizens working in the country had been evacuated before the shah had even left the country. Thousands of Iranian Jews had been airlifted out. Yazdi now took his guests to a three-story building with a Persian blue fountain in the courtyard, where the Israeli diplomatic mission had been based. Inside the ransacked building, broken desks, shattered glass, and mangled lamps covered the floors. Office drawers had been thrown out of the windows. A notice in Hebrew was still posted on an office door. The close cooperation between Israel’s intelligence services and the shah’s SAVAK was a source of anger in Iran and fueled the destructive fury against the building. Arafat, Yazdi, Fahs, and Ahmad Khomeini went out to the balcony on the second floor, with a ragtag group of gunmen. Above their heads, spray-painted in red, were the words: “VIVA PLO.” Arafat gave a rambling speech, and then he, Yazdi, and Ahmad held hands and raised them above their heads, flashing the victory sign. A Palestinian flag on a stick was attached to the railing, above an improvised placard with the words “PLO Embassy.” On the street outside the gates of the embassy, hundreds had gathered. They climbed on the walls and hung from the fence to get a glimpse of Arafat. They raised their fists and chanted: “Khomeini; Arafat! Khomeini; Arafat!” Standing on the balcony, wearing his clerical robe and his black sayyed turban, Fahs marveled at the sight of these revolutions joining together, erasing borders, sects, and ethnicities. He felt at one with Iran and with Palestine, with an Islam that transcended it all. He felt part of something bigger than any one nation. He believed in the revolution more than he believed in God, and for it Fahs would leave everything: his country, the Arab nation, his home. Soon he would bring his family to Tehran, and his daughter Badia would later study in the religious seminaries of Qom.
Beneath the unifying smiles of Arafat’s visit were tensions and divergent agendas. Yazdi and most of the LMI had been slow to embrace the Palestinian cause: beyond getting the military training they needed from the Palestinians, they thought it was a distraction from the main goal of bringing down the shah. In Lebanon, Chamran had had sharp differences with the Palestinian guerrillas running amok in the south of Lebanon, bringing Israel’s wrath upon Shia villages. But standing on the balcony of the Israeli embassy, embraced by huge crowds everywhere he went with Arafat, Yazdi could see the utility of championing a cause that went beyond his country’s borders. It gave Iran’s revolutionaries an even bigger aura, one that could inspire the region, maybe the world—every revolutionary’s dream. He didn’t understand the extent to which Khomeini was hoping to utilize this aspiration for his own purposes.
Yazdi had come up with the idea of holding al-Quds Day, Jerusalem Day, every year on the last Friday of the fasting month of Ramadan. The first would be in a few months, during the long hot days of August. Khomeini would take credit for what served him, including the idea of this new ritual marking Iran’s calendar. It would bring hundreds of thousands of Iranians out on the street, in support of Palestine, renewing Khomeini’s credentials as their most vocal supporter. The vision was for a worldwide day of protests, to counter Israel’s own Jerusalem Day, which marked the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli control. The ritual of protest, which would include burning of flags and chants of “Death to Israel,” would never really take root outside Iran. Khomeini wanted to control the Palestinian narrative and pressed Arafat to label his own movement an Islamic resistance. Although one man was Shia and the other Sunni, this was not an obstacle, as those words rarely featured in the politics of that era. The tension that was setting in was between nationalism and religion, between secular activism and religious fundamentalism. And Arafat, just as cunning and unscrupulous as the ayatollah, didn’t want to be owned; he wanted to lead. He would never adopt the name of Islamic resistance.
That inherent tension would never be resolved. By the end of 1979, the Palestinians would become disillusioned, with some describing the Iranians as “real nut cases.” The “nut cases” were in turn disappointed with the Palestinians: most didn’t pray, they drank, they wore ties, and had dalliances with women. By that stage, Khomeini didn’t care; he had what he needed. During Arafat’s visit he said he had carried the Palestinian cause in his heart for fifteen years. Although Khomeini was an ideologue when it came to Israel and Jerusalem, he had also made a calculated political move latching on to an issue that would help make up for his Persian and Shia identity by taking up the Sunni Arab cause par excellence. And even if Arafat didn’t want to be a part of the “Islamic Resistance,” Iran now had the means to create its own, by rallying those Lebanese and Palestinians who were drawn to Khomeini’s fundamentalist agenda. Some of those who would come to oppose Arafat’s leadership would be Palestinian Islamists, like the Hamas movement, and they would look to Iran for support.
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The Palestinian cause had not stirred many passions in Iran after the creation of Israel, except among a small minority, which included Safavi. The shah had initially warned that the partition of Palestine would lead to conflicts for generations, but in 1950 he recognized the new state and maintained ties with Israel throughout his reign. Iranian Jews were the oldest Jewish community in the region, dating back to the days of Esther, the Jewish queen married to a Persian king, who had thwarted the massacre of her people, a story at the heart of the festival of Purim. Since the late 1800s, hundreds of Jews had migrated from Iran to historical Palestine but the community was also deeply attached to its Persian identity and had prospered under the shah. Many Iranian intellectuals visited Israel before 1979, including a prominent secular essayist, Jalal Al-e Ahmad, who traveled there with his wife in 1964. He was mesmerized by the young, energetic state and wrote deeply admiring articles about the country, which he referred to as Vilayet-e Izrael: a state guided by clerical guardians, a Jewish wilayat, a model for Muslim governance. In the 1960s, Al-e Ahmad was the key intellectual of the revolution, the most important thinker in the secular opposition to the shah. After his articles about Israel appeared, Al-e Ahmad received an angry phone call from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a close acolyte of Khomeini and the future leader of Iran. His writings had rattled both men—how could someone they saw as one of theirs write about Israel, not only in such a positive way, but using terms that echoed Shia religious traditions and their own theological arguments?
Khomeini and Khamenei knew of Al-e Ahmad because in 1962, before his trip to Israel, Al-e Ahmad had written what would become the seminal, foundational text of the Iranian Revolution: Gharbzadeghi, commonly translated as Westoxication or Occidentosis. In it, he critiqued a society that was being fl
attened by rapid modernization and desperation to emulate the West, a country losing its distinct Persian identity to capitalism. That’s why he had been so taken by the model Israel could offer to Iran. He had visited the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem and expressed his admiration for the revival of the Jewish people after World War II. He had stayed in a kibbutz and marveled at the organic adaptation of Soviet socialist ideals: here was a country that was neither East nor West; it had not simply adopted outside models, it had created its own authentic one. Gharbzadeghi made the case for a return to Iran’s cultural roots, including Islam. The point was not to reject everything from the West, but to find Iranian answers to the Western machine rather than simply submitting to it in an exercise of self-loathing. Persian and Shia culture were deeply intertwined with Western culture; religious seminaries taught ancient Greek and philosophy, Iranians abroad influenced as much as they were influenced by the culture they encountered. Al-e Ahmad also referred to the work of the Western greats, like Albert Camus or Eugene Ionesco. But at its most basic level, Gharbzadeghi was a concept that appealed to Khomeini—here was yet again an idea he could manipulate. He adopted the term to feed anti-Western sentiments. Al-e Ahmad died in 1969; his intellectual heir was Shariati who kept the fire burning strong. By 1979, they were both conveniently gone, leaving Khomeini in charge of translating and twisting their thoughts. He would eventually erase these secular men from the narrative of the revolution.
Khomeini had in part been introduced to the cause of Palestine through his contacts with the young radical cleric Safavi, who had attended the Islamic Conference in Jerusalem in 1953. One of the participants was Sayyid Qutb, an Islamic thinker who was fast becoming a key ideologue of the more radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood and whose writings would inspire generations of violent fundamentalists. (His first name was Sayyid but did not denote lineage to the prophet.)
At its core, the Brotherhood was a missionary, revivalist movement, similar to the Fedayeen. One was Sunni, the other Shia, but they had much in common ideologically. The meeting in Jerusalem recommended declaring the cause of Palestine as a Muslim cause, transcending the Arab nation, while cooperating or making peace with Israel was deemed treason. Afterward, Safavi traveled to Cairo, where Qutb hosted him for a week. The Iranian was disappointed by the reception. No one in official circles would meet him. He thought he had come to a country that was ruled by Islam, where the Muslim Brotherhood was the dominant force. Instead, he had found a conservative but secular country with music and theater, where women spoke back and even a sheikh had ridiculed him for turning his face away when speaking with a woman. Still, the young zealot remained inspired by what he had heard in Jerusalem and brought his observations to Khomeini and Khamenei. Two years later, Safavi was executed by the shah and mourned as a martyr of Islam by Sunnis and Shias alike.
The connection between the Brotherhood and the Fedayeen outlived Safavi. To develop his theory and plans for an Islamic state, Khomeini borrowed heavily from Qutb (and both had leaned heavily on concepts first elaborated well before them by Abu A’la al-Mawdudi, a Pakistani ideologue and founder of the Sunni fundamentalist group the Jamaat-e Islami). Khamenei translated a couple of Qutb’s books into Persian and wrote admiring introductions. Khomeini’s Islamic Government was translated and widely read in Egypt. In revolutionary Iran, Qutb’s books would be taught in schools. He spent more than a decade in jail in Egypt and was executed by hanging in 1966. Revolutionary Iran would honor him with a postage stamp. When Khomeini was in Neauphle-le-Château, members of the Brotherhood had gone to visit him. Now it was time to congratulate him for his success in Tehran.
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On February 22, just a day after Arafat left, Yazdi arranged for another plane to land at Tehran airport. This one was a private charter coming from Islamabad, and it carried several members of the Syrian and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the current leader of Pakistan’s Jamaat-e Islami, and others from Kuwait, Indonesia, and (according to some reports) even from Saudi Arabia. The man who paid for the plane was Youssef Nada, the Egyptian Brotherhood’s key financier. Yazdi took care of the delegation, hosting them in his house. The group was meant to visit for five hours, but they stayed for three days, meeting Khomeini and Prime Minister Bazergan and visiting the cemetery of martyrs. Mian Tufayl, from the Pakistani Jamaat, later wrote that “we felt like members of the same family, travelers in the same caravan, wayfarers to the same destination who were transporting their provisions to the same place.” Though full of praise for Khomeini’s success, they all had a slightly different agenda. The Pakistanis seemed content to bask in the glow of the ayatollah and a universal, ecumenical Islam. Khomeini had met Mawdudi, the founder of the Jamaat, during a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1963. They had talked about their visions of an Islamic state.
The Brotherhood had more specific goals. According to some accounts, the Brothers offered to pledge allegiance to Khomeini and elevate him as the leader of the Muslim nation. They saw his victory as the victory of every Muslim fighting against oppression, imperialism, and colonialism. Short of anointing him a caliph, men like Youssef Nada indicated they at least hoped Khomeini could be the spiritual leader of millions across the world. But it required that Iran shed Shiism as the official state religion and become simply a Muslim nation. When the Persian shah Ismail I had founded the Safavid empire and forced his subjects to convert to Shiism in the fifteenth century, the decision had been mostly tactical. The shah belonged to a small messianic Sufi Shia order, which had started out as Sunni. As he conquered Ottoman territory and solidified his empire, the Safavid ruler sought to rally his subjects around a distinct identity, sharpening the front line with the enemy. Battles between the two empires meant that Sunnis and Shias, albeit very recent converts, were killing each other for the first time in centuries. Every king of Iran since Shah Ismail I was now the Guardian of the Shia Faith, all the way up to Shah Reza Pahlavi.
While the Brotherhood’s request to break with this tradition and become an ecumenical political leader for millions was extraordinary, it was emblematic of the fluidity of sectarian identity in politics. It also showed the enthusiasm that the Iranian Revolution had generated across borders and sects. Khomeini listened, but did not answer. The Brotherhood visited Iran again in May. One of the men in the delegation was a radical ideologue of the Syrian Brotherhood, Sa’id Hawwa. He had yet another request: the group was engaged in a low-level insurgency against their own dictator, Assad, and they sought Khomeini’s support. Assad was not a friend of the West, like the shah, but he was a secular nationalist. The Syrian Brothers had great hopes that the Islamic fervor that Khomeini had brought to Iran’s revolution could spread to their country.
Assad had offered Khomeini sanctuary in Damascus when the ayatollah had to leave Iraq. Shariati had been buried in Damascus when his body couldn’t be taken to Tehran. Syria was the first country to recognize Khomeini’s victory and sent congratulations two days after the fall of the Bakhtiar government. The Syrian leader had even provided the plane that took Arafat to Tehran. Now that Egypt was friends with Israel and America, Assad rejoiced at this new hardline addition to the anti-Western, anti-Israel camp. Khomeini likely saw the benefits of a continued relationship with Assad. Again, the ayatollah listened to Hawwa’s plea, but did not answer.
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On February 24, Husseini and Chamran traveled together to Tehran. However much they knew of Imam Sadr’s misgivings about Khomeini, they were confident that his militant, radical ardors would be curbed by the LMI and other moderate clerics. There were still pictures of Ayatollah Taleghani on the walls across Tehran. Taleghani was ten years younger than Khomeini, with deep-set, melancholic eyes and a somewhat gaunt face. He had been released from his latest stint in jail only in October 1978, so had missed some of the building momentum that Khomeini was harnessing, but he was hugely popular in his own right and one of the most powerful clerics in the country. There were other, more senior and wiser clerics as well, lik
e Kazem Shariatmadari, the gentle ayatollah with a kind face and round eyeglasses, who had a huge following and had favored gradual change in cooperation with the shah. Khomeini owed him his life: when he was arrested for his role in the 1963 uprising against the shah’s White Revolution and faced possible execution, Shariatmadari had intervened.
Husseini stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel, where just three years prior Andy Warhol had been a guest invited by the queen to make a portrait of her. North Tehran looked like Beverly Hills, the queen was known as the Jackie Kennedy of the Middle East, and Warhol was ordering caviar from room service. Now there were snipers on the streets and the portraits were stacked in the vault of the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, along with another three hundred masterpieces from the world’s great painters, a collection valued at $3 billion. There would be no more Western art. The only consolation was that the works had not been destroyed.