The Shah
Page 73
5. NSA, CIA, “Moscow and the Persian Gulf,” May 1993.
6. FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. XXII, p. 273.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 279.
9. Ibid., p. 283.
10. Vladimir Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB: My Life in Soviet Espionage, translated by Thomas B. Beattie (New York, 1990), pp. 120–122.
11. Esmail Amidhozoor, interview with author, Woodside, NY, October 23, 2004. He was an owner of Bella Shoes. I have also interviewed Siavoush Arjomand, head of Arj Industries, which sold home appliances to the Soviet Union. Arjomand, interview with author, New York, August 14, 2002.
12. NSA, National Foreign Assessment Center, “Soviet Involvement in the Iranian Crisis.”
13. For an account of the Saberi operation, see General Manouchehr Hashemi, Davari [Judgment] (London, 1373/1994); see also General Alavi-Kia, phone interview with author, August 17, 2004; I have also talked to Ebrahim Golestan for the story of his friendship with Saberi; I also interviewed General Hashemi in London for the details of the Saberi case.
14. Pahlaviha [The Pahlavis], edited by Jalaledin Zaminizadeh, vol. 2 (Tehran, 1378/1999), p. 303.
15. During several interviews, Ardeshir Zahedi told me about the message he took to the Shah about Fardust. Once General Zahedi was informed of the Shah’s response, he decided that “we have done our duty; nothing else must be done.” Ardeshir Zahedi, interview with author, Montreux, March 20, 2006,
16. General Hashemi, interview with author, London, July 4, 2004.
17. NPL, “Memorandum for Dr. Henry Kissinger, 8 May 1972.”
18. NPL, “Iranian Approaches to the US Government, ND.”
19. NPL, “Intelligence Memorandum, 12 May 1972.”
20. FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. E-4, electronic copy.
21. Ibid.
22. NPL, “Supporting the Kurdish Revolution, March 27, 1972.”
23. NPL, “Memorandum for General Hague, June 23, 1972.”
24. John K. Cooley, An Alliance against Babylon: The U.S., Israel, and Iraq (Ann Arbor, Mich., 2005), p. 85.
25. Ibid., p. 90.
26. Cooley refers to the fact that, while he was involved with the project to help the Kurds, it was Chalabi who acted as the intermediary. Cooley, An Alliance against Babylon, p. 87. Kanan Makiye, the Iraqi intellectual instrumental in convincing the United States that it should invade Iraq, and a close friend of Chalabi, confirms that long before the publication of Cooley’s book, Chalabi “used to talk, even brag about this early episode of his life.” Makiye, interview with author, Stanford University, April 16, 2007.
27. The commander of the Iranian forces in the operation was General Sanei. He kindly provided me with a copy of a written report of the operation. I also interviewed him about his activities. General Sanei, interview with author, Toronto, Canada, May 30, 2005.
28. A number of people who were in crucial political roles during the Shah’s days have told me about the different aspects of these arrangements. Abdol-Majid Majid, Ahmad Qoreishi, Parviz Sabeti, and Kashefi, the man who handled the Prime Minister’s secret discretionary funds, talked to me about these details.
29. General Hashemi, interview with the author, London, July 4, 2004.
30. Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, p. 147.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid., p. 135.
33. Ibid., p. 144.
34. Fardust, Memoirs, vol. 1, pp. 349–351.
35. I was told of the existence of this room by Armin Meyer, U.S. ambassador to Iran from 1965 to 1969. Interview with author, Washington DC, March 14, 2000.
36. I was told of these meetings and the Shah’s affinity for them by Sir Denis Wright, England’s ambassador to Iran from 1963 to 1971, as well as by Armin Meyer, the U.S. ambassador to Tehran, and Henry Precht, Iran Desk Officer during the Islamic Revolution. Earlier, Precht had served at the embassy in Tehran. He has recently published a fictionalized account of his diplomatic experiences. See Henry Precht, A Diplomat’s Progress (Savannah, Ga., 2004). Two chapters (pp. 83–125) are about Iran.
37. Several sources refer to this appetite and his search for more and more sources of intelligence. For example, Ahamad Goreishi, interview with author, Walnut Creek, California, September 22, 1999. Alam’s diaries and the memoirs of Israel’s ambassador to Iran also refer to his fascination with espionage.
38. General Hashemi, interview with author, London, July 4, 2004.
39. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II (New York, 2005), p. 180.
40. General Hashemi, interview with author, London, July 4, 2004.
41. Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, p. 151.
42. General Hashemi, interview with author, London, July 4, 2004.
43. Kuzichkin’s account of the arrest (pp. 196–198) is, by and large, corroborated by the version offered by General Hashemi.
44. Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, p. 57.
45. Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 178.
46. General Hashemi, interview with author, London, July 4, 2004.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid.
49. Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, p. 200.
50. Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 533.
51. Kuzichkin, Inside the KGB, p. 115.
52. Andrew, The Mitrokhin Archive, p. 179.
53. Ibid., p. 182.
54. Ibid., p. 172.
55. I was provided copies of the ten hours of tapes of the interview. The source has asked to remain anonymous. I was allowed to take notes and listen to the tapes of the entire ten-hour meeting. They provide a rare window into the Shah’s thinking weeks before his death.
19 The Perfect Storm
1. Ardeshir Zahedi, interview with author, Montreux, March 20, 2006.
2. Zahedi, interview with BBC, August 2009, http://www.iranian.com/main/2009/aug/ardeshir-Zahedi.
3. Bagher Mostowfi, San’at Petroshimi dar Iran, [The Evolution of Iran’s Petrochemical Industry], edited by Gholam Reza Afkhami (Washington, DC, 2001), p. 100.
4. Zahedi Papers, Handwritten Note for the Shah, n.d.
5. Ibid.
6. Dr. Flandrin’s detailed letter explaining the history of the Shah’s medical condition is provided in Queen Farah’s memoirs. See Farah Pahlavi, An Enduring Love: My Life with the Shah (New York, 2004), p. 245.
7. Hussein Alizadeh, also implicated in the deal and later exonerated of all charges, gave me detailed information as well as copies of court documents, including the deposition of Shapour Reporter.
8. Roger Owen, In Sickness and in Power: Illness in Heads of Government during the Last 100 Years (New York, 2010), p. 208.
9. Oriana Fellaci, interview, New Republic, December 1, 1973.
10. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 2, p. 58.
11. For accounts of their lives, see my Eminent Persians: The Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941–1979 (Syracuse, N.Y., 2008), vol. 1, pp. 147–149, and vol. 2, pp. 760–771.
12. Mehdi Khanbaba Tehrani, himself one of the leaders of the Confederation, provides shocking details of this forging operation in his highly informative interview with Hamid Shokat. See Hamid Shokat, Negahi az Darun be Jonbesh Chap dar Iran [An Insider’s Look at the History of the Left in Iran] (Tehran, 2002).
13. Gholam Reza Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah (Berkeley, Calif., 2009), p. 51.
14. Ibid., p. 52.
15. For a documentary history of the episode, see Hossein Kuchekian Fard, “Rosvai-Suisse [Embarrassment],” Tarikh-e Moaser-e, 4 (Winter 1376/1997): 134–207.
16. Zahedi Papers, Handwritten Note for the Shah, September 22, 1973.
17. Ibid.
18. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 2, p. 334.
19. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 335.
20. NSA, no. 9799, U.S. Embassy, Tehran, “End of Tour Report, August 4, 1975.”
21. Shahrough Akhavi, Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy-State Relations in the Pahlavi Period (Albany, N.Y., 1980), p. 127.
22. I was given a lengthy su
mmary of this thesis by the professor who supervised it, and who is now teaching at the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Management. I am thankful to Professor Garashedaghi for his willingness to discuss both the thesis and his own acute observations about Iran. Some scholars have pointed to the overall sharp rise in the number of mosques compared to the restrictions on the number of secular civil society institions. See for example Ali Mirsepassi, Negotiating Modernity in Iran: Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization (Cambridge, 2000), 161–167.
23. Parviz Sabeti, telephone interview with author, September 3, 2005.
24. I have not seen a copy of the report. In an interview with the author, Sabeti offered details of this report and the Shah’s reaction to it.
25. PRO, “Iranian Internal Situation,” 12 October 1978, PREM 16/1719.
26. PRO, “Iranian Internal Situation,” 16 September 1978, PREM 16/1719.
27. CIA, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, October 23, 1978. I obtained a copy through a Freedom of Information Act request.
28. CIA, Profile of the Shah, Freedom of Information Act Request.
29. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 1, p. 75.
30. Alam recounts other episodes in the fifth volume of his Daily Journals. I have discussed the letters, the response, and how the government’s decision to ignore them strengthened Khomeini. See my “Alam and the Roots of the Iranian Revolution,” in Sayyad Sayeha [King of Shadows] (Los Angeles, 2005), pp. 46–79.
31. NSA, no. 2048, “Religious Leaders Fear Departure of the Shah,” January 9, 1969.
32. For an account of this center’s management, see Ali Rahnama, An Islamic Utopian: A Political Biography of Ali Shariati (London, 2000).
33. For a sympathetic account of his life, see ibid.
34. For an account of their lives, see The New Republic, March 11, 2010, pp. 12–15.
35. Manouchehr Shahgoli, a close ally of Hoveyda, went to the American Embassy at the time and told diplomats that the Shah had dismantled the party and opted for the one-party system because he “realized how strong the party itself was getting. . . [T]he Shah decided it was time to crush yet another organization.” NSA, no. 2177, “US Embassy, Tehran, Iran, Hoveyda Loyalist Lets off Steam, January 25, 1977.”
36. FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. E-4, electronic copy.
37. Alam, Daily Journals, vol. 2, p. 271–3.
38. Mehdi Samii, Notes, October 6, 1972. Copy of the notes was provided to me courtesy of Mehdi Samii.
39. Mehdi Samii has kindly provided me with his notes, taken at the time of his meetings with the Shah. They are a remarkable document in the honesty of their discussion.
40. For a tragicomic narrative of these lapsed Stalinists fighting on behalf of their patrons—Hoveyda and Alam—in developing party structure and ideology, see Hamid Shokat’s interview with Kourosh Lashai, in his series on the Oral History of the Iranian New Left. Neghai az daroon Be jonbesh-e chap-e Iran [A look from within Iran’s Leftist movement] (Tehran, 1381 / 2002).
41. In my Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Washington DC, 2000), I have described in some detail Hoveyda’s cynical disposition toward the new party.
42. I have written at some length about the origins of the one-party idea in The Persian Sphinx: Amir Abbas Hoveyda and the Riddle of the Iranian Revolution (Washington, DC, 2000), pp. 275–287.
43. Zahedi papers, “Letter to the Shah,” n.d.
44. Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (New York, 2010), p. 276
45. For a detailed account of this behind the scenes, see Andrew Scott Cooper, “Showdown at Doha: The Secret Oil Deal that Helped Sink the Shah of Iran,” Middle East Journal 62, no. 4 (Autumn 2008), 567–591.
46. PRO, G.B. Chalmers in Tehran to Foreign Office, 6 September 1978, FCO 8/3184.
47. Ibid., p. 3.
48. Jamshid Amuzegar, “A Letter from Dr. Jamshid Amuzegar,” Rahavard, 34 (Summer/Fall 1373/1994): 271–275.
49. In several interviews with the author, some in Washington and a few on the phone, Asar offered detailed accounts of his office’s dealings with the clergy.
50. NSA, “A Brief Overview of the US–Iran Relations,” p. 27. The report was prepared in the early 1980s; it has no author or other indications about who commissioned it.
51. Shah, Answer to History, pp. 93–97.
52. Ibid., p. 116.
53. Ibid., p. 146.
54. Movahhad Mohammad Ali, interview with author, London, September 17, 2009. He was one of the top negotiators for Iran and has written a two-volume authoritative history of the oil movement, from the time of Mossadeq until the fall of the Shah.
55. Both men kindly recounted to me accounts of their meetings with the Shah.
56. PRO, Embassy in Tehran to Foreign Office, September 8, 1978, FCO8/3184.
57. PRO, Embassy in Tehran to Foreign office, November 9, 1978, FCO8/3184.
58. I was provided a copy of the tape but asked to not identify the source.
59. Carter, White House Diary, p. 276
60. NA, “Tehran to State Department, August 27, 1961.”
61. See the chapter on his life in my Eminent Persians, pp. 305–310.
62. PRO, Tehran to Foreign Office, September 7, 1978, PREM 17/1518.
63. PRO, “Iran’s Change of Government,” August 29, 1978, FCO/3184.
64. NA, “Memorandum of Conversation, Eslaminia with US Embassy,” Tehran, May 15 1978.
65. PRO, “Internal Situation,” 8 September 1978, FCO/3184.
66. Hossein Shahid-Zadeh, Rahvard Roozgar [Gift of Time] (Los Angeles, n.d.), pp. 350–359.
67. William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride: The Fate of an Ally (London, 1989), p. 99.
68. I interviewed some of the generals who told me about their plans. The Shah demurred. General Azar-Barzin, interview with author, Los Angeles, September 2006.
69. Dr. Massoumeh Torfeh, “The BBC Persian Service, 1941–1979,” in www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/diasporas/conference/pdf/history_bbc_persian_servie.pdf.
70. PRO, British Embassy to Foreign Office, September 29, 1978, PREM 16/1716.
71. Mehdi Samii, a prominent technocrat, describes an angry Shah telling him and a few others gathered in a meeting, “After all we have given them, why are they still opposing us?” Samii dared to declare that the problem was that they considered what the Shah thought he has given them to be their rights. Mehdi Samii, interview with author, Los Angeles, September 3, 2008.
72. PRO, British Embassy to Foreign Office, 25 September 1978, PREM 16/1719.
73. PRO, “Iranian Internal Situation,” 12 December 1978, PREM/16/1719.
74. PRO, 30 October 1978, Prime Minister’s office to Foreign Ministry, PREM 16/1719.
75. For Sullivan’s discovery of democratic Islam, see NSA, “Understanding the Shiite Islamic Movement, February 2, 1979,” document no. 1298.
76. Charles Kurzman, The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Cambridge, Mass., 2004). Also, two different studies, one by Mohammad Mokhtari and the second by Mehdi Bazorgan, the first a poet and the second the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran, come up with slightly different percentages on the content of the slogans. For a discussion of the two studies, see Mohsen Milani, The Making of Iran’s Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic, 2nd ed. (Boulder, Colo., 1994), p. 136.
77. For a collection of Khomeini’s books, see Islam and Revolution: Writings and Declarations of Imam Khomeini, translated and annotated by Hamid Algar (Berkeley, Calif., 1981). For a brief biographical sketch of his life and intellectual development, see the chapter on Khomeini in my Eminent Persians, pp. 350–358.
78. For a brilliant exposition of this history, see Mahdi Haeri Yazdi, Hekmat va Hokumat (London, Shadi Press, 1995)
79. NSA, “Understanding the Shi’ite Islamic Movement, February 2, 1979,” document no. 1298.
80. US Embassy in Tehran, “Alternative Views from the Province,” in Asnad-e Laneye Jasusi [Docum
ents from the Den of Spies], vol. 16 (Tehran, n.d.).
81. George Ball, “Issues and Implications of the Iranian Crisis,” p. 16. A copy of the report can be found in Princeton University Library, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
82. Ibid., p. 20
83. Shafa, personal correspondence with author.
84. I have been told about the circumstances surrounding this speech by several people who were present at the Court at the time. They include the Shah’s chief of protocol, Afshah, and the head of his security detail, Colonel Jahanbini. Others such as Shafa, Ardeshir Zahedi, and Hushang Nahavand have provided background details. I have a copy of a handwritten note sent to me from Iran by one of my students, purporting to be a copy of the text itself. The Shah had made minor changes on the handwritten draft. Reza Kotbi refused to discuss the handwritten draft.
85. PRO, Tehran to Foreign Office, 6 July 1978, FCO 8/3184.
86. Digital National Security Archive, “Proposed American Pro-Shah Group,” December 28, 1978.
87. A member of the Sadighi family kindly provided me with some details of these meetings, including critical passages from the daily notes he took in his legendary attention to details.
88. PRO, Tehran to Cabinet Office, December 19, 1979, PREM 16/1720.
89. Ibid.
90. An account of these meetings is provided in Afkhami, The Life and Times of the Shah, p. 491.
91. PRO, “Meeting of the Nine,” Iran, 7 September 1878, PREM 16/11719.
92. Dr. Sadighi’s daily notes, courtesy of the Sadighi family.
93. Carter, White House Diary, p. 273
94. PRO, Tehran to Cabinet Office, December 19, 1979, PREM 16/1720.
95. CPL, “White House Press Office, December 7, 1978.”
96. CPL, “Carter Summer Lead, AP, January 4, 1979.”
97. CPL, “AP Lead, January 4, 1979.”
98. CPL, “Additional Sensitive Security Issues for Guadeloupe, January 2, 1979.”
99. CPL, “Pool Report, January 5, 1979.”
100. CPL, “Remarks of the Principals at the Guadeloupe Meeting, January 6, 1979.”
101. Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith: Memoirs of a President (New York, 1982), p. 445.