Mother Father Revolution

by Owen W. Cameron

  The uprising came from Mohammed Reza’s new enemy. With a sense of momentum after the defeated bill, Khomeini spoke to his students on 2nd December 1962, announcing his entry into politics and calling for a host of changes, including the Prime Minister Asadollah Alam’s resignation.

  Mohammed Reza still believed in his “White Revolution” plan for land distribution, profit sharing and women’s suffrage. He went over the heads of Parliament and the clergy to propose a plebiscite on a host of economic and social reforms, many of which (again) wedged the opposition, who supported one initiative but not all of them. Polling day was set for 26th January 1963, and in the lead-up, tensions ran high around the country. With the wind in his sails, the Shah gave a poor, ill-tempered speech49 in Qom that he would come to regret, saying the clergy were “ignorant and desiccated individuals whose minds have not stirred for centuries and cannot be stirred!”50

  By virtue of the Shah’s words, or because of an already uneasy existence between the clergy and many peasants, the traditionally conservative city of Qom became a powder keg. On 21st March, Khomeini’s home and the nearby Faizieh Seminary were teeming with people, many of whom had come to argue for reform and confront the preachers. The Faizieh was a two-storey arcade by the courtyards, where many young students had their rooms and quarters. When scuffles broke out, the seminarians retreated and relied on a pyramid of mud bricks to throw down on the crowd, killing two men. Peasants, royalists and some uniformed police officers stormed up the stairs, throwing students over the edges, down to the courtyard pavement; for one, to his death. In the ensuing chaos, turbans, cloaks and other precious possessions of the students were thrown into the courtyard and burned.51

  Khomeini was prevented by his students from visiting the chaos – but in his own mind, there was now no turning back. History might’ve been different had the Shah got his way when Ayatollah Hakim in Iraq offered to house the Iranian clergy in the Holy Thresholds of Karbala and Najaf. But Khomeini knew this would make him out of sight and out of mind, and he astutely declined.

  After a range of mourning ceremonies, and in the heat of summer, Khomeini finally stormed over to the Faizieh Seminary behind a barricade of students and supporters, and before a crowd of microphones, let rip with a tirade that would’ve stunned a crowd anywhere in the world in 1963: he pondered if Mohammed Reza was secretly Jewish or Bahai, blamed Israel for the attack on the Faizieh, slandered Mohammed Reza’s father and asked the Shah if he wanted to befall the same fate.52

  With such incendiary words, the Shah had no option. Two days later, Khomeini was arrested at his house at three in the morning, driven to Tehran and bundled into the Qasr Barracks with around sixty other clergymen. In the chaos of the arrest, neighbours heard his son’s screams for assistance. By dawn, the main streets around the Khomeini residence were flooded with people carrying makeshift weapons, looking to be of use if another skirmish broke out.53

  The rest of the day had echoes of the 1935 Goharshad Massacre54 – a dark chapter of Iranian history that lingered in the memory of all those in the clergy. After four peaceful days of protest over Reza Khan’s attempts to reform the country at the Imam Reza Shrine at Mashhad, the officer in command of troops lost control, and scores were killed in the ensuing violence. Despite it being an event nearly thirty years in the rear-view mirror, Goharshad has been seen by many as the beginning of the schism between the Pahlavi dynasty and the clergy. Much of the religious establishment viewed it as a cautionary tale of the capricious power any Shah is capable of; and much like Goharshad in 1935, panicky soldiers in 1963 were again removed from their command and opened fire in the streets around Khomeini’s home. Eleven students were killed and twice as many local villagers sustained casualties. History had indeed repeated itself.

  News of the arrests and bloodshed spread, and crowds began to mobilise across the country, burning cinemas and bus depots, and attempting to seize radio stations and government buildings. It felt like the days of the Mossadegh coup had revisited the Shah. Poor reporting from SAVAK fed inaccurate numbers to Mohammed Reza on the scale of the villagers seeking to march into Tehran. The number killed in skirmishes has never been accurately recorded; but after a week of strikes and military convoys in the street, order was slowly restored.

  The clergy were reduced and humiliated, but they also felt leaderless. Then a decision was taken by a group of leading clergymen: they would grant Khomeini the title of “Grand Ayatollah”. This was not a small step, but if he was not granted this title (which, in effect, placed him beyond the law), he might’ve been held in custody forever, or banished from Iran. Khomeini was released but walked the delicate line of softening his words without changing his position. The Shah eventually appointed a new Prime Minister – Hassan Ali Mansur, whose hands were clean from the uprising and could manage the clergy better.

  Khomeini didn’t need to wait long for another spoke in the fire. A routine Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA was proposed by the US Government to put some legal certainty around the US servicemen, who’d increasingly found themselves on assignment in Iran, and their dependants. This was a standard arrangement in almost every nation where US servicemen were stationed, but it came around the same time as a $200 million loan from America to Iran. When the detail of the Status bill was made public in the Iranian Parliament, Khomeini used his house sermon to launch a critique that struck a chord with many Iranians:

  “Our dignity has been trampled underfoot… If someone runs over a dog belonging to an American, he will be prosecuted. Even if the Shah himself were to run over a dog belonging to an American, he would be prosecuted. But if an American’s cook runs over the Shah, the head of state, no one will have the right to interfere.”55

  Khomeini continued not long after:

  “Let the American President know that in the eyes of the Iranian people, he is the most repellent member of the human race.”56

  And herein lied Khomeini’s most powerful weapon – Iran (and the world) had been used to men of faith speaking with reserve and gravitas; but in the Grand Ayatollah’s case, he fused this reverence with the audacity to say what few others would.

  On 4th November 1964 Khomeini was arrested again and, somewhat ironically, placed on one of the Iranian Air Force’s new US-made Hercules transport aircraft for a flight to Ankara. After a stay that tested the Shah’s relationship with Turkey, Khomeini was moved to Baghdad a year later. He would spend the next five years in the Najaf Seminary in Iraq, teaching and building networks with Iranian students around the world (many of whom would play a role in the lead-up to 1979).

  History views the 1963–64 Khomeini uprising as a close call. But economic growth is often a soothing balm to matters of religious principle, and on this count, the Iranian economy did very well in his absence. GDP rates of 8–9% coincided with lower infant mortality rates, better access to creature comforts, and a rise in house building, hospital beds, schools and university places.

  For the many educated Iranians my parents met in their early years, they looked on Khomeini as a sincere old man who believed in relic versions of the Iranian way of life. And yet, how did such prosperity and calm lead to revolution? Much of the answer lies in Mohammed Reza himself, and his inability to see the 1963 uprising for the warning sign it should’ve been.

  *

  On 12th January 1965, the revived Fedayan group assassinated Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur on the steps of Parliament.57 Mansur was reported to have been “tried” by a secret Islamic court (made up of Khomeini followers) and sentenced to death on a charge of “warring on Allah” via the decision to send Khomeini into exile. Then on a spring morning in April 1965, Mohammed Reza strolled up the steps to his office in the Marble Palace as Reza Shamsbadi, an Imperial Guard officer, opened fire with a submachine gun, more than likely procured in one of the Shah’s expensive US military contracts.

  With his university campus experience of 1949 never far
from his thoughts, the Shah shifted into a pantry while two other Imperial Guardsmen took the assailant’s life at the expense of their own. On the security advice of both domestic and foreign agencies, Mohammed Reza moved out of central Tehran and into a place known as Niavaran, a palace for state guests that sat to the north of the city. It perched the Pahlavi family high above the movement of daily life; and arguably, for many, any connection to or feel for the daily mood of the people which the family might’ve possessed never returned.

  His wife Farah took every chance to spruce up the Pahlavi residences, employing French interior designers for the curtains and living spaces, and installing a home cinema for Mohammed Reza’s film nights. His infidelities and love affairs split the royal household into those who knew, and those who pretended not to know. Each new piece of gossip involving other women merely emboldened Farah and her side of the family to spend everything they could.58

  By the mid-1960s, the Shah had been on the throne for nearly twenty-five years. His government had all the hallmarks (and problems) of a monarch that couldn’t be reined in. To his credit, there was a Prime Minister, Cabinet, bicameral Parliament, political parties and a diverse (but loyal) fourth estate. At the same time, he ran the SAVAK intelligence services, kept business interests and land behind the charitable veil of the Pahlavi Foundation, and oversaw an armed force contingent that bought what impressed the Shah at the demonstration events, and had no costings or administrative scrutiny. On this last point, the Iranian military had fallen prey to every autocrat’s wish of a “big” army – but it was now too large for small border and domestic security issues, and also of little use to the US or others in a larger regional conflict.

  The best of the Iranian bureaucracy held their own as students in the halls of Paris and London. Through these pathways, a capable civil elite had risen up in the post-war years. Many came to believe that the technical demands of modern government would eventually require Mohammed Reza to devolve some decisions to others, or at least take counsel on important matters of state.59 Still they waited to see if these hopes came true.

  Then came a major funeral in late March 1969 – not for an Iranian, but instead for former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mohammed Reza flew to Washington to attend and dovetailed the trip into a long White House meeting with President Nixon on 2nd April, who that summer had been busy developing what became known as the “Nixon Doctrine”. Later in July, during a stopover in Guam on an international tour, Nixon formally announced the doctrine.60 With resources and attention on Vietnam, Nixon wanted to supply anti-Soviet supporters rather than spread a weary US military any thinner.

  By the close of the 1960s, the Iranian military capability had been transformed beyond all recognition. Tattered World War II vehicles and meek soldiers who could barely control internal unrest had now been overhauled. Now Iran had a well-resourced infantry, 1,000 artillery pieces, Hercules C-130 aircraft, Hawk missiles, British destroyer escorts, Hovercrafts and a shallow water fleet of Corvettes for the Navy.61

  The Shah’s true love of the sky was even more outlandish. The Imperial Iranian Air Force’s expansion in the three years after 1965 was effectively a doubling, a speed rapid for any nation in the world, and obviously prone to growing pains and waste. Mohammed Reza was permitted to order 32 McDougall Douglas F-4 Phantom flight-bombers, and then ordered another whopping 105 units of the same model.62 The sale of a further 92 Northrop F-5E jet fighters involved a Northrop arms agent by the name of Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson to former US President Theodore Roosevelt, and as chance would have it, the former CIA Tehran officer who persuaded Mohammed Reza to sign the firmans during the 1953 Mossadegh coup.63 The chain of events from Eisenhower’s funeral led to a procurement spree that gave Iran one of the most powerful military arsenals in the region. This excited some, and deeply concerned others.

  Then came the birthday party. Or more accurately, five days of celebrations in October 1971 that doubled up as the queen’s birthday and came to signpost the isolated and out-of-touch royal family in a nation that by the end of the 1970s would tolerate neither.

  Pahlavi rule had its most lavish affair by the ancient ruins of Persepolis, to coincide with the tenuous anniversary of 2,500 years of Iranian monarchy. No expense was spared: chefs, bathroom fittings, tents and music ensembles were transported to the remote site, with the world’s most important dignitaries (read: the monarchies of Europe) to be in attendance.

  Sixteen presidents and many royal families attended – and for a time, Mohammed Reza watched the RSVPs come in, believing he would finally host an event of global splendour that would banish a lifetime of the snubs and condescension that came with being a nation of Iran’s standing.

  The apologies, however, cut to the core: the French President Pompidou declined, President Nixon sent Spiro Agnew and, crucially, Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales did not attend. The event was underwhelming and deemed by the foreign press to be a shallow grab for class, much in the way any nouveau riche family seeks to impress.64 The entire escapade was ridiculed globally. Music performers scrubbed it from their CVs, and the collective reputations of the Parisian chefs flown out for it never recovered. Iranians were not invited to attend, but watched on black and white televisions with a sense of passing confusion. Meanwhile the Iranian Treasury counted the cost, never confirmed but perhaps as much as $20 million in the money of the day.65

  In hindsight, the event at Persepolis laid bare all the failings of the Pahlavi reign. They attached their lineage to a history of monarchy that was never truly plausible. They were guided by the impressions of the West, and a European royalty that never would’ve accepted them. And they failed to grasp how their largesse was viewed in a country with $2 billion of debt to foreign creditors, and an annual national income of $500 per head. The banquet was a catalyst in the mind of an exiled Khomeini, who became more convinced than ever that monarchy and Iran were not meant for each other.

  Philosophy And Oil

  In a series of lectures through January and February 1970, Grand Ayatollah Khomeini took to a stage in Najaf, Iraq, and sought to fix a political position for his followers. In the lectures entitled Islamic Government: The Stewardship of the Jurist, he moved to a new view on clerical government or religious dictatorship, one that had not existed in his philosophy before leaving for Iraq in 1965.66 His teachings are laced with a longing for a simpler, more conservative world: “the Islamic judge in each town, assisted by two or three officials and just a pen and inkpot”, swiftly resolving disputes between people and sending them about their business.67

  Clearly, there were inconsistencies in Khomeini’s approach. Reputable Islamic scholars68 contend that all the passages in scripture and the Traditions that Khomeini quoted in support of clerical dictatorship can be easily argued to the contrary.69 There is also the inconvenient fact that the Shia clergy happily supported the Safavids, the Qajars, and Reza’s crowning in 1924; and even Khomeini himself acquiesced to Mohammed Reza’s legitimacy in 1953. But these facts mattered for little to Khomeini now – in this moment in history, he’d become convinced that monarchy in all its forms had no place. For now, he simply waited and watched to see what new examples of hubris the Shah would provide.

  Sure enough, Mohammed Reza obliged. With a need to feel control, the Shah finally dismissed the masquerade of a Western-style political system in Iran.70 He wanted participation, but in depoliticised terms. He wanted two “wings” or factions, but he orchestrated them so only the voices he accepted were heard. He wanted debate, but only on non-contentious things like traffic, rent and the role of women.71

  In February 1975, the Shah called a meeting of the Prime Minister, the speakers of Parliament, and Senate, and declared that there would now be a single political party in which everybody could participate.72 A new Parliament opened in September, with a single Rastakhiz or Resurrection Party, and two divided wings supposed to argue for social equity or devel
opment. Mohammed Reza had taken the same step as every other leader who believed a one-party state was workable, and it unsettled the population more than almost any of his actions through the 1970s.73

  *

  Meanwhile, the world’s relationship with oil was changing. Back in 1960, a producer’s cartel known as the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) was created. Together with the peak in US domestic production in 1970, and a worldwide desire to strip the major multinational companies of their power, the oil market increasingly became a seller’s market (in other words, traditionally poor countries with oil wanting to take back power from rich countries whose companies extracted and sold it). A weaker US dollar, which had been inflated to finance the Vietnam War, also led to a poorer deal for producers of a dollar-billed commodity.

  It was no longer the case that OPEC countries like Iran, Iraq or Venezuela were afraid of the major Western oil companies. After dramatic negotiations in Tehran, a deal was struck on Valentine’s Day 1971 that broke the back of the oil industry.74 The oil companies conceded a 30-cent increase in the price paid per barrel of crude oil from the Persian Gulf basin, rising in five years to 50 cents. The effect on the Tehran Oil Price Agreement for Iran itself was a doubling of oil revenues.75

  Why did price changes matter so much? Because the world needed oil – and through the 1960s, Western countries and Japan had kept their economies happy and growing thanks to cheap oil. A third Arab–Israeli War in October 1973 jolted the region, when Syria and Egypt, with support from other Arab nations, launched a surprise attack on Israel during the holiday of Yom Kippur. The conflict rocked the natural order of sellers and buyers. Arab members of OPEC met in Kuwait and resolved to cut back production, mostly to starve the US and the Netherlands in response to their support for Israel. The Kuwait meeting resolved to hike the Arab producers’ price by 70%, from $2.90 to $5.11 per barrel, but this was only the beginning. The National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), now fully owned by the state, went to show its muscle, auctioning a consignment at $17.34 per barrel – over three times the previously hiked price.