by Abbas Milani
Even before the uprising begun, Alam had asked and surprisingly received the Shah’s consent to command the military and security forces for the duration of the uprising. His idea was simple: he would use the full force of the military to put down the uprising, and if he succeeded, the Shah could take the credit and suffer no blame. If Alam failed, the Shah could fire him and accuse him of mismanagement.
Lest the Shah prove indecisive in the middle of the confrontation, Alam made sure his contacts with him that day were minimal. The armed forces were ordered to shoot to kill. Alam told the generals, “[T]he guns you were given are not toys. Use them.” The morning of June 5, the Shah called Alam and asked, “[N]ow that we have a revolution on our hands, what will you do?” Alam said, “[G]uns and canons are in my hand. . . . I will tear their mothers apart.” The Shah “laughed from the bottom of his heart and said I agree and I am fully behind you.”55
By that night, Tehran was awash with rumors about rivers of blood and of an imminent court-martial for Ayatollah Khomeini with a death sentence to be handed down for treason. The organizations and networks he had used, with leaders like Ali Khamenei, Hussein Ali Montazeri, and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—all future leaders of the Republi—got busy encouraging ayatollahs from around the world to write to the Shah and confirm that Khomeini was a full-fledged ayatollah—and was thus protected by a provision of the Iranian constitution prohibiting the death penalty for ayatollahs. In fact, no such provision exists, and the constitutional movement proved the power of their popular base when they executed Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri, an ayatollah at the time, a foe of the constitutional movement, and later a hero of Khomeini. Yet if Alam is to be believed, the possibility of the death penalty was for Khomeini was simply a false rumor. On the afternoon of June 6, Alam told U.S. Ambassador Holmes that “Khomeini [would] be tried by [a] military court for inciting against public order and resistance to enforcement of law. He expected the court would not give more than a prison sentence.”56 More crucially, Alam even claims that while religious leaders had formally sent notes supporting Khomeini, “they had sent word to the Prime Minister that their appeals should be disregarded.” Alam was counting on “jealousy of Khomeini” and “individual rivalries” amongst the mullahs for preventing Khomeini from ever emerging as the leader of the Shiite community.57 Incredible as Alam’s claim about private communications against Khomeini from ayatollahs might seem, it fits what is now known about the bad blood between the unyielding mullah and other more moderate clergy—particularly Shariat-Madari. In fact, Ayatollah Shariat-Madari believed that on June 5, Khomeini, in cooperation with a supposed army of nomadic tribes led by the Qashgai brothers, was actually planning to seize power.
On the afternoon of June 8, when the Shah and Ambassador Holmes were in a meeting, Hussein Ala and Abdollah Entezam—an elder statesman and for many years the head of Iran’s oil company—went to the Court and, according to the Shah, “they shouted at me, and said enough is enough, enough bloodshed, dismiss the government of Alam, and make your peace with the mullahs.” The Shah heard their arguments but then, in his own words, “threw [Ala and Entezam] out of [his] office,” summoned Alam to the Court, and ordered him to arrest the two men. Alam also makes clear that the Shah had ordered out not just Ala and Entezam but the other three elder statesmen who had met at Ala’s home and complained about the government’s approach to the crisis; Alam claims he did not follow the Shah’s orders, however, asking him for forgiveness.
Reports and rumors about the number of people killed on June 5 ranged from the opposition’s claim of “thousands” to the regime’s official figure of about 120. The American Embassy gave the number of dead as 200. When the Shah was in exile, and free from the immediate incentive to fudge or fidget, a curious Denis Wright—sent to the Bahamas by Margaret Thatcher to meet the Shah—asked him about the “real number of those killed” that June, and the Shah declared that the same number announced by the government at the time had been correct.58 Moreover, contrary to the fear that the army would not fire on their fellow citizens—something that had frightened the Shah two years earlier—the army proved willing and killed “no small number” of protestors.59 The White House, on the other hand, was not happy with the events of June 5. Two weeks after the event, Ambassador Holmes was instructed to protest to the Shah “about the incompetence of his government.”60
By June 9 the city began to return to normalcy. For the rest of his political life, Alam never ceased reminding the Shah that he saved the throne and deracinated the power of the clergy. A few days after the bloodshed, when Denis Wright met Alam, he found him “like a cheerful schoolboy, and [he seemed] quite unworried by last week’s rioting. Rather like an ostrich, I fear.”61 Wright concluded, however, that “nothing is quite the same.” Serious trouble, he wrote, “has been nipped in the bud for [the] time being but this won’t be the end.”62 A couple of weeks after the June riots, a dispatch from the British Embassy in Tehran concluded that “the weakness of character and judgment” the Shah had shown in the past had not been “exorcized. . . . The country is waiting for leadership which somehow despite all the brave words, the Shah never quite provides.”63
At the same time, taking his cues from the Shah, Alam continued trying to convince leaders of the National Front, many of them then in prison, to join a coalition government. If before the bloody suppression such a coalition was hard to imagine, after that June it was virtually impossible to fathom. The U.S. Embassy kept asking about the time when the imprisoned National Front leaders would be released, and the Shah clearly felt he must make at least one more gesture of readiness for reconciliation. As he told the American Ambassador on July 18, 1963, he had agreed to the broad outlines of a deal with the National Front. In fact, while they were in prison, the leaders met with an Iranian who introduced himself as a “well-wisher” who had close ties to representatives of the U.S. government and tried to hammer out the terms of this deal. The deal called for the release of the leaders and a meeting with the Shah “when they would give him oral assurances that they accept his leadership and realize that during this revolutionary period, the Shah must play more active role than of constitutional monarch.” The only hitch, as the U.S. Embassy observed, was that the National Front leaders wanted to first be set free and then work out the finer elements of the agreement, but the Shah did not trust them. Eventually, the Shah agreed to have the men put “on parole for a stated period to see whether or not they would comply with the understanding tentatively reached.”64 The deal ultimately fell through, as the younger, more radical elements of the National Front agitated against it.
What is not clear is whether the Shah really intended to seek reconciliation with the National Front or whether he made the offer in the hope of sowing dissension amongst the ranks of the Front and in this way separating the more moderate elements from the rest. In reality, the reverse happened. Some of the more radical members of the National Front became convinced after the bloody suppression of the June uprising that there was no room for reconciliation with the Shah. They took up arms against the regime. The religious elements created the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and the Marxists founded the Feda’yan-e Khalq Iran (Martyrs of the People). In less than six years, in what came to be known as the Siahkal Incident—taking its name from the village nearby—a small group of these radicals fought against the small military post stationed there. The battle would shock the Shah and the intelligence agencies and lead to the use of increasingly harsher methods by SAVAK and numerous reports of torture.
The leaders of the National Front were not the only ones surprised by developments after June 5. Alam clearly felt he was owed a long tenure in appreciation of his role in saving the Crown. He had at least one other major accomplishment. Again, under the direct command of the Shah, Iran normalized its tense relations with the Soviet Union. This was the first step in a major shift in the Shah’s foreign policy. If, in 1963, he promised the Soviets that Iran would never allow a foreign mil
itary base on its soil,* two years later, after an important trip by the Shah to the Soviet Union, a new leaf was turned in the relations between the two countries. Iran agreed to sell gas to the Soviet government in return for help in establishing a steel mill—something the Shah and his father had coveted for more than three decades. In many private conversations, Alam tried to take at least some of the credit for this normalization.
But none of these real or claimed services could save him. In fact, he had a big surprise in store. A little more than two weeks after the June 5 uprising, the Shah shared his intentions to dismiss Alam and appoint Hassan-Ali Mansur with an American Embassy official. Furthermore, the Shah felt the need to engage in the “ruthless dismissal” of some of the “people surrounding him,” a “house cleaning.” Amongst those the Shah wanted to dismiss were Ja’far Sharif-Emami and Abdollah Entezam. He also planned to create “a single political party . . . to become the main political force in the future.”65 Before long, the Shah put his support behind the Progressive Circle and ordered the creation of the Iran Novin Party. At this time, the Shah confided to the British Embassy that he was now “convinced of the need of a one-party system in order to reach the people.”66 These pronouncements are particularly interesting in light of the fact that only three years earlier, in Mission for My Country, the Shah had condemned one-party systems as befitting only totalitarian Communist societies.
In the meantime, one of the accusations against Ayatollah Khomeini was that he had accepted money from Nasser of Egypt. Khomeini was also accused of creating an unholy alliance with General Bakhtiyar, and it was this alliance, the regime claimed, that had played a role in fanning the flames of discontent. Many in Iran and some of the diplomats stationed in Tehran at the time doubted the veracity of the charge that Khomeini had taken money from Nasser. Denis Wright, for example, wrote in his journal, “a tense day . . . marshal law . . . Persian government is claiming Nasser’s hand behind it. I doubt this very much.”67 Using the safety of exile, Bakhtiyar had in fact begun to actively work against the Shah. He had no qualms about his potential allies. Whoever was against the Shah—from Nasser in Egypt to Ayatollah Khomeini, Communist members of the Tudeh Party, or members of the newly established Confederation of Iranian Students, and after 1968, the Ba’ath party in Iraq—he saw as a potential ally and went out of his way to form an alliance with them.68
In fact, Bakhtiyar’s actions against the Shah had begun in the days when he was still the head of SAVAK. In the fall of 1959, he had let American officials know that “he was sympathetic to the idea of action which would place him at the head of Iranian government.”69 On March 10, 1959, the CIA reported that “Bakhtiyar has been making contingency plans” for the time “the Shah lost control.”70 A month later, the same source reported to a meeting of the National Security Council that Bakhtiyar was “continuing to formulate plans” in the event “the Shah disappears.” Bakhtiyar even tried to frighten the American government into supporting him. In August of that year, Bakhtiyar told American officials that “present policies of Shah and government are leading Iran towards revolution” and that “he expects the Shah will flee to Europe in near future.”71 Proof of this prediction, Bakhtiyar told American officials, was that the Shah was converting “royal property into hard currency” and no longer showed any “interest in domestic investments.”72 Ironically, Bakhtiyar who had by then come to symbolize all the brutalities of SAVAK, whose name conjured terrifying tales of torture against the opposition and rampant financial corruption in the regime, claimed that the chief source of his discontent was the fact that the Shah forced him to use SAVAK to rig elections. In recent elections, American officials were told, the Shah had personally picked “every one” of the Majlis deputies.73 These efforts to woo American support for the idea of a coup had all failed. Interestingly, there is no evidence that the CIA reported any of these machinations to the Shah. Only in 1961 when Bakhtiyar tried to convince the Kennedy administration to support his plans, did Kim Roosevelt inform the Shah.
What Bakhtiyar had failed to accomplish with the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations in the years between 1959 and 1962, he tried to achieve in exile. He first tried to solicit the help of the British. On October 12, 1962, he met with Denis Wright, who had served in Iran for many years and was soon to return as ambassador. The meeting took place in the Ritz Hotel in Cannes, where Bakhtiyar was spending some of his time. Bakhtiyar was known as a bon vivant and an incorrigible womanizer, and the French Riviera had always been one of his favorite spots. He talked of “growing discontent among all classes in Iran” and of increasing Russian influence in the country. He blamed “the Shah exclusively” for the country’s serious troubles. Iran’s sole salvation, Bakhtiyar said, was “for a strong man and an equally strong team” to rule in the name of the Crown Prince. There was, of course, no doubt that the strong man he had in mind was none other than Bakhtiyar himself. Denis Wright was less than supportive. He first gave the standard British claim when they wanted to refuse help to someone, saying, “Britain did not get involved in the domestic political situation” of Iran. Bakhtiyar knew as well as anyone how influential the British were in Iran’s domestic politics—Bakhtiyar himself owed his job as the head of SAVAK at least partially to their support. But the crucial part of Wright’s response came when he said it was the policy of Her Majesty’s government “to support the Shah.”74
After that October 1962 meeting, the British government faced a dilemma. Should they keep silent and hope that the Shah never found out about the meeting, or should they tell him about the meeting and risk his wrath but also stoke the fires of his paranoia about what he considered the constant British machinations against him? Denis Wright argued that they should tell the Shah exactly what had happened—emphasizing that as far as they were concerned, Bakhtiyar had virtually ambushed him—and assure him that no other contacts with the General were planned.75 The British government chose the Wright approach, but the Shah was not convinced that they were telling the truth. In fact, a few years later, one of the biggest public confrontations between Iran and Britain took place over Bakhtiyar’s alleged ties to the British.
The Shah’s troubles on the days of the June uprising were not limited to Khomeini, Bakhtiyar, angry landlords keen on keeping their villages from expropriation, and a disgruntled urban population. On the night of June 6, 1963, the royal family and a handful of their friends were gathered for what was beginning to have the regularity of ritual—an evening at the house of one of the members of the Shah’s family, dinner, a card game for some, a film for all, and early retirement to their individual homes. That night it was Princess Ashraf’s turn. The Shah and the Queen were, as was customary, the last to arrive. That night, with occasional sounds of gunfire in the air, the Shah arrived in his Royal Air Force uniform. He still smoked in those days and after sipping some Scotch (Black Label was his favorite) and smoking half a cigarette with his long holder, he began to go around to meet with the guests. Everyone was nervous. Groups of three and four had gathered around the large hall and chatted in hushed voices. When the Shah finally came to the group that included Dr. Yahya Adle, his friend of many years and a member of the loyal opposition Mardom Party, he was shocked by the sudden verbal volley of angry words coming from Adle. “Do you know what is happening around the city?” Dr. Adle asked. In a voice trembling with anger, he said, “[Y]ou can’t keep your throne afloat on a river of blood.” The hall suddenly came to a complete silence. “Yahya, you don’t know what you are talking about,” replied the Shah. Those like Adle who knew the Shah well were aware that when he was particularly angry at a friend, he would call him by his first name. But to everyone’s surprise, Adle’s outburst cost him nothing other than this one sentence.
Dr. Adle’s surprising burst of anger that night was simply the tip of the iceberg. Scholars like Ann Lambton considered June 5, 1963, “a turning point” in the history of Iran in that it was on that day that the Shah “showed unexpected resolut
ion in dealing with trouble-makers.”76 This was a far cry from the judgment passed by Sir Roger Stevens in 1958 as he was leaving his post as British ambassador to Iran. “He is, I fear,” he wrote of the Shah, “incapable of formulating, let alone executing a really constructive policy of any kind. . . . So long as he is on the throne of Persia, it is hard to imagine that there will be a decent government, let alone social justice.”77
The radical clergy claimed that the day was proof positive that reform within the Shah’s regime was untenable and the only solution was a revolution. For forces loyal to Ayatollah Khomeini, June 5, 1963, was nothing short of the birth of the “Khomeini Movement.” For Alam, on the other hand, June 5 was the end of the Shah’s Khomeini problem. From that day on, he never ceased reminding the Shah that thanks to his efforts, the mullahs were no longer a viable political force. For the Shah, the day was also historic in that it once and for all exposed the reactionary nature of his opposition.
But reports of the army’s opening fire on defenseless demonstrators and of “thousands of dead”—as the opposition claimed—did little to improve the Shah’s image or to endear him to the Kennedy administration. In May 1963, in a brief prepared at the White House, the opinions and suggestions of different factions in the administration were clearly articulated. What is incredible is the stark reality that virtually no one supported the Shah and his increasingly personal rule outright. According to the brief, “Attorney General, Justice Douglas, and some legislators and academic figures believe US should force the Shah to turn power to pro-Mossadeq urban white collar groups around the National Front.”78 Associate Supreme Court Justice William Douglas in fact went one step further himself, writing that “I talked to Jack [Kennedy] frequently about conditions in Iran and the corruption that was rampant. Then when he entertained the Shah at the White House, when he was here on an official visit, Jack concluded that the Shah was corrupt and not a person we could trust. . . . The idea was to withdraw American support for the Shah causing his abdication,” and bring to power a regency that “had already been selected.”79 Other sources suggest that, aside from Ali Amini and the Qashgai brothers, a couple of other National Front leaders were considered for the Regency Council. The State Department opposed this alternative and concluded that it would only lead to a “replay of Mossadeq era chaos with Communists having learned not to miss their cues.”80