The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States

THE SHAH, THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION AND THE UNITED STATES

DARIOUSH BAYANDOR The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States Darioush Bayandor The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States Darioush Bayandor Nyon, Switzerland

ISBN 978-3-319-96118-7 ISBN 978-3-319-96119-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96119-4

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland To Iranian youth; the bright, vibrant and connected generation born after the Revolution. Author’s Preface

This book offers a retrospective view of an event of rare historical impor- tance and influence. Beyond having durably transformed Iranian society, the Islamic Revolution of 1979 changed the political landscape of the Middle East with far-flung reverberations that continue to resonate strongly in world politics. The passage of four decades provides enough perspective for a reexami- nation of all the factors, in their complex diversity, which went into the making of that seminal event. The narrative is set against the backdrop of the socio-economic transformations attempted by a modernizing autocracy in the face of a cultural backlash. It portrays the pre-revolution setting in Iran of the 1970s and describes how, through a combination of systemic flaws, cultural dichotomy and far-flung external developments—the post-Vietnam zeitgeist and perceptions surrounding the advent of the Carter administration in the USA—the country was inflamed and an ailing ruler lost control. Monarchy had haltingly spanned Iran’s millennial history yet its fall, in February 1979, would have been an unremarkable feature of the post-war Middle East had it not been for two inter-related characteristics. Firstly, like the French and the Russian Revolutions before it, the Islamic Revolution came with an ideology and doctrine. Its drift and glow over- rode national boundaries and engulfed the region in incessant conflicts and conflagration. Secondly, contrary to common perceptions, the movement led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was not a struggle against one single regime or an incumbent dynasty even if his enmity toward the two Pahlavi monarchs was deeply entrenched. The doctrine he upheld aimed

vii viii AUTHOR’S PREFACE at ending profane rule over the Islamic nation and to restore the dynasty of the Prophet’s progeny, who had briefly ruled in early years of Islam and then was decisively suppressed in the battle of Karbala in 679 CE. The book is also concerned with external factors even if the make-up of the Revolution was uniquely indigenous. The history of that seminal event cannot be fully grasped divorced from the influences that crept in from the major power poles abroad or, alternatively, from deliberate manipulations by a faction in the Carter administration. Several chapters of the narrative are devoted to the study of this latter aspect, sourced by recent finds in the hitherto untapped American archive files. It is my hope that this will help to answer a longstanding question discussed among Iran observers, given the lingering conspiracy theories and still rampant speculations about foreign involvement. Finally, the issue of the inevitability of the Revolution is a topic that the book aims to address. A Harvard historian of revolutions, Clarence Crane Briton, once wrote—and Zbigniew Brzezinski quoted him in his memoirs: “Revolutions were inevitable only after they had happened.”1 Ill-judged policy decisions and missteps along the road, which sparked the revolt, are inherently avoidable, as this study demonstrates. Most emanated from systemic flaws, yet the more consequential ones came from tempestuous calls by the man at the helm, Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi. Ill health may have compounded bad judgment and indecision. Yet the Shah was also the leader who refused to plunge the nation into civil war in order to save his throne. Some chapters in this volume shed light on this facet of the conundrum. One final point needs to be underscored. The topic stirs, even today, a great deal of passion among Iranians of different political persuasions. However, this book purports to be apolitical and non-judgmental. In describ- ing protagonists on either side of the divide I have remained within the strict confines of hard evidence and archives; the task of historian is to produce data and lay out facts but avoid conclusions, which so often hinge on subjec- tivity. No one is condemned or vindicated in the pages that follow. I am grateful to Palgrave for the opportunity that the publication of this book has afforded me to share what I consider a factual account and expla- nation of that seminal event. I have been fortunate to have worked with leading professionals at the history department of Palgrave New York as well as its peripheral divisions. My thanks go especially to Megan Laddusaw and Christine Pardue. In my research for this volume, I was privileged to be granted access by the Graduate Institute of International and Development AUTHOR’S PREFACE ix

Studies, Geneva, to their vast digital network of academic material as well as the magnificent library. A freelance editor, Susan Kaufman, helped me with the Chicago formatting of my manuscript. My old friend and academic companion, Bijan Dolatabadi, read several chapters of the manuscript and offered his insightful observations. So did another old friend, Iraj Amini, himself author of several valuable publications. Foremost, I wish to record my gratitude to Ambassador John Limbert and Professor Michael Axworthy, both renowned Iran experts, for taking time to read and comment on this volume.

Nyon, Switzerland Darioush Bayandor April 2018

Note 1. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle: Memoirs of National Security Advisor (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983), p. 355 [History Professor Crane Brinton was the author of classic book Anatomy of Revolution (W.W. Norton, New York, 1938)]. Contents

Part I The Pre-revolution Setting 1

1 A Retrospective 3 1 Social Forces and Political Dynamics in Modern Iran 3 2 Events and Protagonists in Post-war Iran 5 3 Socio-cultural Mutations in the 1960s 14

2 Nezam Shahanshahi: The Shah’s Imperial Order 27 1 An Autocracy in Disguise 27 2 The Two Faces of a Monarch 29 3 The Inner Circle 31 4 Oil Diplomacy (1963–1973) 34 5 An Economic Powerhouse 40 6 The Shah’s Great Army 47 7 A Regional Superpower 55 8 Iraq, the Kurds and the Settlement of the Shatt al-Arab Dispute 63 9 Nuclear Ambitions and Ambiguities 69

xi xii Contents

Part II The Onset of Revolution 89

3 Downslide 91 1 A Man in a Hurry 91 2 The Cycle of Boom and Bust 94 3 The Court’s Vanity Fair 98

4 The Opposition 109 1 Ayatollah Khomeini: The Years of Exile 109 2 Rebellious Youth 117

5 Changing Tack (1976–1977) 129 1 Images in the Curved Mirror 129 2 Liberalization and the Myth of Carter Ambiguity 133 3 Mutual Policy Readjustments 137

Part III The Revolution 143

6 1977: The Year of all Dangers 145 1 Tehran on the Eve of the Revolution 145 2 Sounding out Democracy 147 3 The Opposition Curve: From Civil Society to Radical Islam 150 4 The Shah’s Visit to the Carter White House (November 1977) 155

7 The Spark (Spring 1978) 161 1 Iran: Island of Stability 161 2 The Shah’s “Original Sin”: The “Rashidi–Motalq” Affair 163 3 Backlash in Tabriz 167 4 A Spring Not Like Others 169

8 Actors, Strategies and Structures 177 1 Mehdi Bazargan and His Game Plan 177 2 Kazem Shariatmadari: the Two Faces of a Quiescent Divine 180 3 The Shah Facing the Crisis 182 4 The Mosque Network 186 Contents xiii

9 The Abadan File 195 1 The Event 195 2 The Cabal 199 3 The Enigma of an Appointment 202

10 Appeasement and Recoil 207 1 The Government of National Reconciliation (27 August–5 November 1978) 207 2 The Great September Confluence 210 3 Black Friday 210

11 October Countdown 225 1 The Ayatollah in Paris 225 2 Giscard d’Estaing’s Dilemma 230 3 Political Deadlock 233 4 Season of Strikes (Fall 1978) 238 5 Public Opinion Swing 242

12 November Countdown 251 1 Tehran: Tales of a Wasteland 251 2 Tug of War in Washington 253 3 The Soft Fist Option 259 4 The Voice of the Revolution Heard 261 5 The Perfect Scapegoat 263

13 The Military Spell: Prime Minister Gholam-Reza Azhari 271 1 Induction and Gains 271 2 Entanglement and Retreat 274 3 The Muharram Plebiscite 277 4 The Politics of Despair 282

14 Carter’s Quandary 293 1 The Carter Administration: A House Divided 293 2 Consultations Among Allies 300 3 Washington Dumps the Shah 303 4 The Guadeloupe Summit 310 xiv Contents

15 The USSR and the Iranian Revolution 317 1 Expedience Vs. Ideology 317 2 The Leipzig Connection 319

16 The Dawn of a New Era 325 1 Tehran, New Year, 1979 325 2 Bakhtiar, the Bird of Storm 327 3 General Huyser’s Mission to Tehran 332 4 Shah Raft 340

17 The United States’ Attempt at Dialogue with Ayatollah Khomeini 347 1 The Eliot Mission 347 2 Zimmerman-Yazdi Channel 349

18 Swansongs 357 1 The Post-Shah Political Line-Ups 357 2 The Rift in the Armed Forces 364

19 The Collapse 373 1 Khomeini’s Return from Exile 373 2 Armageddon 383 3 Postscript 397

Sources of Study 407

Index 421 Abbreviations

CENTO Central Treaty Organization CREST CIA Records Search Tool CWIHP Cold War International History Project Bulletin DOS Department of State DSFDS Department of State Archive Files seized in 1979–80 from the so-called Den of Spies DSWL Department of State Archive Files Declassified in March 2014, Released by WikiLeaks FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office FISOHI Foundation of Iranian Studies Oral History Interview FK Cherik’hay’e Fadaei’e Khalq (Marxist Urban Guerrilla Movement) FMI Freedom Movement of Iran FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States, Department of State, History Department (1861–1979) HIOHP Harvard Iran Oral History Project MAAG [United States] Military Assistance and Advisory Group MKO Mojaheddin Khalq Organization (urban guerilla movement) NF National Front Movement of Iran NIOC National Iranian Oil Comoany SITREP Situation Report USG United States Government

xv List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 An official portrait of the royal family, 1976. (Source: UtCon Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) 28 Fig. 2.2 Prime Minister Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, in an open-air ceremony accompanying the royal couple, c. 1974. (Source: UtCon Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) 32 Fig. 2.3 The Shah at work in his office at Saheb-Qaranieh (Niavaran) Palace, at the apex of his power in 1974. (Source: INTERFOTO/Alamy Stock Photo) 41 Fig. 2.4 Mohammad-Reza Shah in Air Force uniform, c. 1972. (Source: Historic Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) 49 Fig. 4.1 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, circa 1979. (Source: Peter Probst/Alamy Stock Photo) 110 Fig. 6.1 President and Rosalynn Carter during the Shah and Queen Farah’s visit to the White House, November 15, 1978. (Source: Keystone pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo) 156 Fig. 8.1 Mehdi Bazargan, circa 1979. (Source: Keystone Pictures USA/ Alamy Stock Photo) 178 Fig. 11.1 Leading prayers at the garden of the compound in Neauphle- le-Château, October 1978. (Source: Keystone pictures USA/ Alamy Stock Photo) 229 Fig. 12.1 Ambassador William H. Sullivan. (©William E. Sauro/The New York Times/Redux) 256 Fig. 14.1 President Jimmy Carter flanked by the Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance (first from the left), and the National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski (first from the right). (Source: ZUMA Press, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo) 294

xvii xviii List of Figures

Fig. 16.1 Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, January 1979. (Source: Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo) 328 Fig. 19.1 Ayatollah Khomeini naming Mehdi Bazargan as the prime minister of the provisional revolutionary government, February 5, 1979. (Source: Historic Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) 380 PART I

The Pre-revolution Setting CHAPTER 1

A Retrospective

1 Social Forces and Political Dynamics in Modern Iran Revolutions emerge from the past; their foundations are laid in history.1 The Islamic Revolution in 1978–1979 in Iran was no exception. One can search into the more esoteric roots, going back to the birth of the Shi’ism in the fourteenth century, given the revivalist essence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s doctrine. Yet the manifold factors that went into the making of the Islamic Revolution are primarily a product of, and require an understanding of, latter-day Iranian society and the dynamics that the clash of traditional and modernist forces unleashed to shape that monumental event. In the final analysis, the Islamic Revolution was a product of those dynamics. This introductory chapter aims to address that need while offer- ing a panoramic view of the main post-war occurrences that provided the backdrop to the years of crisis. At the onset of the twentieth century, the crown and the ruling elite still held all the instruments of power while the clergy held unrivaled sway over the masses. A third social group, the intelligentsia, comprised of secular modernists, social democrats and the radical left, had just emerged and was soon in a position to challenge the establishment. Foreign influence in different shapes and forms was yet another factor: Anglo-Russian rivalries, wartime alliances, Britain’s often pernicious pry- ing into internal Iranian affairs, the Soviet post-war gaze over northern

© The Author(s) 2019 3 D. Bayandor, The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96119-4_1 4 D. BAYANDOR provinces of Iran and, finally, the Cold War context, which brought an implacable American influence during the final decades of Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi’s rule. Beginning with the Constitutional Movement (1905–1909), virtually every landmark event in Iran resulted from the interplay of the above three internal socio-political groups meshed with foreign input. Alliance between two against the third invariably defeated the latter. During the Constitutional Movement, the clergy and the intelligentsia worked in harmony, to the det- riment of the reigning monarch, who was compelled to accept significant limitations to his absolute power imposed by the (1906–1907) constitution. In 1924, the three principal Shii divines underwrote Premier Reza Khan’s bid for dynasty change, leading to the advent of the Pahlavi dynasty.2 The all-powerful Reza Khan had initially planned to replace the Qajar dynasty with a secular republic along the lines of Kemal Ataturk’s Turkish model. That was anathema to ‘ulama’, who made a display of their rabble- rousing prowess to bring Reza Khan to see reason.3 In the late 1940s and early 1950s the liberal-nationalist movement championed by Dr. Mohammad Mosaddeq benefitted from a tactical alliance with a high-profile activist cleric, Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqassem Kashani, whose mixed bag of followers included a terrorist group called ‘Fada’ian Eslam’. Mosaddeq’s road to power was paved by the latter group through the assassination of the incumbent prime minister—and Mosaddeq’s principal adversary—Ali Razmara.4 In 1953, a different coalition, this time between the crown and the clergy, resulted in the downfall of Mosaddeq. The victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 did not escape the shift- ing pattern of alliances among social groups in as much as the clergy-led grand anti-Shah coalition in 1978 encompassed the full spectrum of intelligentsia on the left and in the center, which included the intellectual and literary community. Without the fully fledged participation of these groups, the uprising in 1978 would have been crushed. Another point of historical relevance—ignored by historians—needs elucidation. Much of the political commotions in Iran in the years prior to the revolution were rooted in the eclectic character of Iran’s 1906–1907 fundamental law in as much as it was an incongruous blend of the 1831 Belgian constitution with clerical exigencies. It was the outcome of a grand bargain struck precisely among secular modernists, the clerical estate and the ruling elite. Secular democrats obtained an elected assembly known by its short name, Majles, with wide legislative and supervisory powers. The “Shia hierocracy” earned a prerogative to ensure that Majles A RETROSPECTIVE 5 legislation would not infringe Islamic law.5 This came with a ringing endorsement of the Shii faith as the official religion of the country, which the sovereign was duty-bound to protect.6 The crown’s absolute powers were curtailed, but significant prerogatives were retained (Articles 35 to 57 of the constitution). They notably included the function of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces (Article 50). In later years ambiguities in the formulation of the crown’s prerogatives would lend themselves to contrasting interpretations, with troubling rami- fications through much of the post-war history of Iran. The French word “inviolable,” included in the 1831 Belgian constitution, was translated in article 44 as “magham’e mobara az mas’ouliat,” a classic case of double entendre which could mean the absence of real executive responsibility or alternatively denote an exalted authority with well-defined prerogatives but not accountable to parliament. The conflicting interpretations caused an irreparable rift between the Shah and Mosaddeq in 1952 and became an impediment to later reconciliation attempts in the post-Mosaddeq era. A whole generation of Iranian literati grew up in the belief that the prerogatives accorded by the constitution to the Shah were nominal and inoperative. In practice, Iran’s Magna Carta as forged by the constitutionalists was never respected. As early as 1911, the Regent Nasser-Al-Molk felt compelled to evince deputies by force and exiled the more recalcitrant among them to rule in the next three years by decree.7 The power of veto granted to clerics in Article 2 of the 1907 supplement was also trampled on by the advent of the First World War and long periods of legislative interregnum followed by the drive to secularization under Reza Shah (1926–1941), which rendered that provision inoperative. The Pahlavi monarchs rode roughshod over the Majles and ignored much of the other constitutional provisions. Even Mosaddeq, who in the public consciousness personifies constitutional rule, moved to curtail the powers of the Majles by obtaining special legislative powers known as ekhtia’rat and ended up dissolving the upper house and the Majles in two separate strokes.

2 Events and Protagonists in Post-war Iran In February 1921 a military coup d’état—encouraged by local British military and diplomatic agents without the knowledge or approval of London— ushered in a new era in Iran.8 The coup’s military leader, Reza Khan Mirpanj, swiftly trashed political rivals and engineered his own accession to 6 D. BAYANDOR the throne to found the Pahlavi dynasty. His roughly 20 years as strongman and king transformed Iran from an archaic near-failed state into a country with the rudiments of modern statehood. He laid the foundations for a modern army, a universal system of schooling and modern judiciary; he dramatically improved the status of women and built the first fully fledged modern university as well as roads, hospitals, factories and more; but along the way he also quashed liberties, subdued the Majles, humiliated the clergy and abused his power for self-enrichment. His reign came to an abrupt end after the Anglo-Russian wartime allies invaded Iran in August 1941, giving a pretext for the presence of a sizable number of German technicians in the country accused by the invaders to be the German fifth column. In actual fact Britain sought to secure the British-run oil installations, of immense strategic value, in the south of Iran and run a secure a supply route from Persian Gulf to the Caspian to feed Russia’s war efforts. The political system that replaced Reza Shah’s autocracy had all the trappings of a parliamentary democracy but was closer to an oligarchy. The eruption of liberties spawned a full spectrum of political parties as well as a plethora of newspapers and tabloids. Prompted by the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, the Tudeh party (“the party of masses”) was founded in 1941 from the wreckage of the ephem- eral “Communist Party of Iran,” formed in Anzali in 1920.9 Its founders were the remnants of a group of 53 leftist intellectuals imprisoned under Reza Shah using a law he had enacted that proscribed the communist ideology. The Tudeh party, which shunned the communist label, soon became a major political force, falteringly present on the political scene to the time of the Revolution and beyond. On a different terrain, steps were taken in 1943 to roll back Reza Shah’s secularization measures, which restored ulama to the social standing they enjoyed prior to his advent.10 The revival brought in its wake a campaign against apostasy, culminating in the assassination in 1946 of Ahmad Kasravi, an outspoken Azari free-thinker and renowned historian. The move heralded the birth of radical Shia Islam, then championed by a young seminarian named Seyyed Mujtaba Mirlohi, alias Navvab-Safavi, who created that same year the terrorist cell named Fada’ian Eslam. The “restoration” process provided space for the emergence of clerics of a different stamp and temperament; the mid-ranking Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini was active in the anti-apostasy campaign in concert with Navvab-Safavi.11 His treatise Kashf’al-Asrar̄ (Revelation of secrets), anon- ymously published in 1944, was a militant manifesto that pugnaciously argued for the primacy of the Sharia. He argued that no government, of A RETROSPECTIVE 7 any form or constitution, could be regarded as legitimate unless it applied the divine law, which he considered eternal and unalterable by mortals.12 At the time, Khomeini held a chair at the Qom seminary and was close to the supreme leader Shia Marja, the Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Hossein Boroujerdi.13 The quiescent school maintained that in the interval before the reappearance of the “Occult Imam” the ulama should leave temporal affairs to secular leaders. Khomeini concealed his inner thoughts in line with a Shii rule of Taqiah; he was not of a sufficiently high rank to play any role other than discreet exhortation and advocacy. Political Islam was then being championed by Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqassem Kashani, with whom Khomeini maintained discreet ties.14

The Azerbaijan Crisis, 1945–1946 The episode known as the Azerbaijan Crisis has its relevance to the history of the revolution insofar as it left a strong imprint on the mindset of the young Shah and influenced his future conduct. The crisis was sparked by the Soviet refusal to withdraw forces from Iran at the expiry of the evacu- ation deadline agreed with the occupying Allied forces. Documents extracted from the Baku archives in recent years reveal a stunning secret scheme adopted by the Kremlin in July 1945 to implant separatist move- ments in the entire expanse of northern Iran conceived as security buffer as well as a possible economic zone for the Soviet Union.15 In the immedi- ate, Stalin decreed the creation of autonomous districts in the Iranian provinces of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, with help from the local branches of the Tudeh party.16 By then a showdown between the wartime Allies was looming. In March, the US Secretary of State, James Byrnes, warned Stalin to withdraw his troops from Iran at once.17 Stalin was unwilling to confront the west and decided to withdraw, but not before securing from the Iranian prime minister, Ahmad Qavam, a promise for an oil concession and a pledge to pursue in earnest the autonomy talks with the rebel authorities.18 The Baku archives also indicate that Qavam was colluding with Moscow.19 In June 1946, he signed an agreement with the head of the Azerbaijan insurrectional authority granting almost all their demands.20 He created his own political party and enlarged his cabinet by inclusion of three Tudeh and two center-left Iran Party ministers. His strategy seemed to be to organize, with Moscow’s blessing, a broad-based coalition of leftist forces under his own patronage to sweep the impending Majles elections, reaping dividends that could extend to eventual regime change.21 8 D. BAYANDOR

In complicity with the US ambassador, George Allen, and assured of support by army chiefs, the young Mohammad-Reza confronted Qavam and forced his hand to make a swift policy reorientation. All along he had urged the dispatch of troops to Azerbaijan to dislodge the puppet regime in Tabriz and end the Mahabad Kurdish Republic. In an about-turn, the shrewd Qavam dropped the Tudeh ministers and found face-saving argu- ments for the dispatch of troops to Azerbaijan. Stalin did not react and told the leaders of the breakaway provinces to cease resistance.22 The country had narrowly escaped disintegration, and the Shah knew he owed this to Washington. That recognition underpinned his staunchly pro- western posture for the rest of his reign.

Mohammad-Reza Shah’s Early Years Mohammad-Reza’s debut was tottery and insecure. His psyche was a product of the disturbances that had placed him on the throne in September 1941, at the age of 22. His father, Reza Shah, had left him with few defi- nite loyalties outside the armed forces. Upon accession to the throne, Mohammad-Reza tried to assuage his internal foes and appease the occupying allied powers. He knew that the British, who had helped his father to power in 1941 and engineered his abdication twenty years after, were at best lukewarm towards him; they had come close to discarding him as heir to the throne in view of his perceived pro-Axis sympathies.23 This background nourished the Shah’s fears and suspicions of Britain, distorting his judgment until the final days of his reign in 1979. His sense of insecurity made him chary when faced with strong or popular prime ministers along the lines of Mosaddeq. The Shah also had an as yet suppressed propensity to hold the reins of power in his own hands, with a predilection for the army and foreign affairs. He was fiercely patriotic, capable of cold calcula- tion in what he perceived as the high interests of the crown and the nation—two ideas that he juxtaposed and frequently confused. His acute sense of realism was often misconstrued as indecision or timidity—although he did have these qualities too. The Azerbaijan episode had boosted his standing as well as the morale of the army. Another wave of sympathy came after the failed assassination attempt in February 1949. The Shah took advantage by having the constitution amended to increase his prerogatives. He was thenceforth empowered to dissolve the parliament and fill half of the senate’s seats by appointment. Perennial constitutional debates on the nature and extent of the crown’s prerogatives continued. A RETROSPECTIVE 9

Mosaddeq and his National Front (NF) allies considered those prerogatives as nominal and never recognized the validity of the Shah’s 1949 constitutional amendments.

Mohammad Mosaddeq and the National Movement of Iran The Azerbaijan saga had left behind a fractious body politic consumed by squabbles over the oil issue. Britain’s oil concession for southern Iran, dating back to 1901, had once been revised under Reza Shah in 1933 with marginal gains, yet Reza Shah had also agreed to extend the duration of the oil concession by another 30 years. In 1947, the Majles approved a resolution calling upon the government to reopen oil negotiations with Britain with a view to full restitution of Iran’s rights in the British-run southern oil fields. A ‘Supplemental Oil Agreement’ negotiated by the Sa’ed government became a bone of con- tention and failed to get past the outgoing 15th Majles. Nationalists called for the abrogation of the 1933 accord, a move that entailed confrontation with Britain. In contrast, the court-affiliated pragmatic politicians supported a non-confrontational approach that could allow increased oil receipts without compromising the country’s traditional ties with the west. The government was in bad need of funds to help finance the “seven- year development program” and increase its creditworthiness. The dichotomy grew in time to form a permanent fault-line between politicians who emphasized national interests versus those who pleaded for national rights, with the former group denounced by the intelligentsia as unpatriotic and subservient to foreign interests. The tug of war between the two factions was highlighted in dramatic fashion during the 1949 campaign for the upcoming 16th Majles elections, which included the assassination of the Shah’s confidant, the court minister Abdul-Hossein Hazhir, the cancellation of the rigged Tehran elections and the birth of the NF in November 1949. The latter was an umbrella organization of political parties and independent politicians all subscribed to Mosaddeq’s nationalist cause. In the renewed Tehran elections Mosaddeq and most of his slate, Ayatollah Kashani included, were elected, forming a vocal minority with a platform to end British control over the country’s oil resources. The idea of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) as an alternative to abrogation of the 1933 oil accord had been developed at a Majles sub-committee chaired by Mosaddeq, but the Majles oligarchs at 10 D. BAYANDOR the plenary session initially refused even to discuss it. It took another assassination—that of Prime Minister General Haj Ali Razmara in March 1951—to compel the reluctant deputies to enact the Nationalization Law shortly afterwards. Less than two months later, on April 28, 1951, Mosaddeq was named prime minister. The British, on the verge of financial ruin but with unshaken imperial pride, explored the full gamut of measures to regain control. These ranged from internal subversion, boycott and naval blockade to a military plan to occupy Abadan, code-named Buccaneer. More astutely, with the complicity of other major oil powers, Britain helped foment an oil glut by ratchet- ing up the production elsewhere in the region; this put the Iranian oil virtually out of the market.24 In parallel, London also embarked on American-assisted oil talks with Iran and resorted to all available diplomatic recourses. Mosaddeq remained steadfast and valiantly pleaded Iran’s case at the UN Security Council, and later at International Court of Justice in The Hague, where he emerged victorious. The Shah had reluctantly supported Mosaddeq and resisted incessant pressure from Britain and his own entourage to remove him.25 Things came to a head when, in July 1952, Mosaddeq challenged the Shah’s prerogative as commander-in-chief. The old demons, noted earlier, reappeared. In the face of the Shah’s resistance, Mosaddeq resigned and the oligarchs in the Majles voted Qavam back into office. The ensuing bloody uprising on 30 Tir [July 21, 1952] returned Mosaddeq to power with his standing enhanced, allowing him to rule by decree. This and a host of other unre- lated issues ended Mosaddeq’s alliance with Kashani and caused a rift with the conservative wing of the NF. Washington was concerned that an oil-less economy would make Iran prone to communist encroachment and eventual domination. Mosaddeq tapped into those fears. Though officially banned, the Tudeh party enjoyed a full range of liberties. In time, its negative attitude toward Mosaddeq shifted to tactical support. When Eisenhower moved into the White House in January 1953, he was determined to break the oil logjam and allow the flow of Iranian oil back into the market to allow the Iranian government to remain solvent.26 A new oil proposal, ironed out between London and Washington in early 1953, went a long way to attaining that objective. The Iranian oil experts considered it a reasonable compromise and urged the prime minister to accept it.27 Mosaddeq demurred, fearing that Iran might be saddled with paying an exorbitant amount of compensation to the defunct Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. In a fateful decision on March A RETROSPECTIVE 11

11, 1953, he turned down the proposal and broke off the tripartite talks. That, for Washington, was a step too far.28 The CIA was now tasked to join hands with Britain in a plot to unseat him.29 The Anglo-American plot to overthrow Mosaddeq, code-named TP-Ajax, was launched in the late hours of August 15 but was aborted. The Tudeh party, well implanted in the military barracks, had learned about the planned coup and communicated details to Mosaddeq. Putschist officers were detained and the coup leader, General Fazlollah Zahedi, went into hiding while the Shah, who had reluctantly acquiesced in the plot, flew in panic to Baghdad. The foiled coup unleashed a chain of events that culminated in the overthrow of Mosaddeq on Wednesday August 19—a tectonic event. Between August 15 and 19, boisterous street rallies by the Tudeh party and pro-Mosaddeq crowds had foreshadowed the end of the monarchy. The Tudeh had gone as far as calling for a “democratic republic” to be formed in a joint “anti-imperialist front” with pro- Mosaddeq forces. These commotions seriously alarmed senior clerics in Qom and Tehran. The high quiescent clerics upheld the institution of monarchy as the guar- antor of the Shii faith (Article 1 of the 1907 constitution). In earlier years, the supreme leader Boroujerdi had exhorted clerics to keep away from politics, but, as CIA files now reveal, he did not remain indifferent when he thought the higher interests of the faith were in jeopardy. As early as April 1953, according to these files, Boroujerdi, Kashani and Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Behbahani, the senior-most cleric in Tehran, had arrived at an understanding to support the Shah against Mosaddeq.30 The cacophony about a republic became “the clincher,” unleashing forces that only the clergy were capable of mobilizing. As of the early hours of Wednesday August 19, their supporters formed throngs and set alight pro-Mosaddeq press organs and political parties without being seriously challenged by the security forces. Pro-Shah elements in the military were waiting in the wings, and street events that day drew them into the fray leading to the downfall. The TP-Ajax operatives were still in Tehran on the day of the event. Their chief, Kermit Roosevelt, was quick to claim credit for the feat; in his debriefing in Washington he claimed that a political and military plan for that day had been devised some 48 hours earlier at the US embassy compound. The CIA files released in 2017, however, reveal that as late as the morning of August 19, Roosevelt and his team were completely in the dark about the events that were about to unfold.31 12 D. BAYANDOR

The myth about the CIA having engineered the fall on August 19—bist’o hasht’e Mordad in the Iranian calendar—has haunted genera- tions of Iranians ever since. Over the years, it eroded the Shah’s credibility in the eyes of the intelligentsia. He had added insult to injury by putting Mosaddeq on trial. Helped by the Tudeh party propaganda, a process of demonization of the Shah and the ruling elite became anchored in the public consciousness of educated Iranians. In 1955, following a failed assassination attempt on Prime Minister, Hossein Ala, the Fada’ian Eslam leadership were put on trial and executed. There were some indications that the Fada’ian might have acted in collu- sion with, or been inspired by, the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Shah’s nemesis.32 The Shah turned a blind eye to an appeal for clemency made by Boroujedi.33 Khomeini was utterly dismayed.34 By the end of the 1950s, the pressure for structural reforms drove the Shah to make overtures to the NF in a bid to create a common front for such reforms. The fractious NF leadership, however, were unable even to test the good faith or viability of the Shah’s repeated overtures. In the words of the Socialist Party leader, Khalil Maleki, “The National Front missed a historical opportunity to return to business.”35 The advent of the Kennedy administration in January 1961 was yet another signpost. The Shah felt under pressure to name the reformist Ali Amini—deemed a Washington favorite—as prime minister. In an alliance of convenience, the two worked successfully to relaunch the elu- sive land reform. Amini in turn tried but failed to rally the NF behind his reform and anti-corruption agenda. Instead, the landed oligarchs, in concert with a few clerics and disgruntled military figures, embarked on a major destabilizing ploy in January 1962. Beset by internal adversity and unable to balance the budget, Amini resigned in July 1962. Washington had refused a bailout. The Shah now assumed the full own- ership of the reform drive, extending it beyond the land reform to include gender, literacy and income distribution reforms. The package of six major reforms was referred to as the “White Revolution.” When in January 1963 the package was put to public vote, the ulama of all strains reacted negatively. Two top clerics in Tehran and Ayatollah Khomeini in Qom called for a boycott of the referendum. Pro-Mosaddeq activists of every stripe joined in the boycott. A RETROSPECTIVE 13

The Advent of Khomeini Khomeini had already led a successful campaign a year earlier against a municipal reform bill which accorded women the right to vote and provided for full participation of religious minorities in the municipal elections. The withdrawal of that bill by the government earned Khomeini fame and respect in conservative milieus. Now, in the aftermath of the referendum, he made an impressive networking effort to build alliances. At his behest, the remnants of Fada’ian Eslam affiliated with bazaar mosques merged to form a militant Islamist group named hay’at-hay’e Motalefeh Islami (“affiliated Islamic congregations”). They geared up to play a critical role in the upcoming upheaval and re-emerged as the opera- tional arm of the radical clerics in the travails of the Revolution. A decisive showdown was prepared to coincide with the Muharram season of mourning in June 1963. The sequence began with a provocative harangue aimed at the Shah on the day of Ashura, which led to Khomeini’s arrest and set off a well-prepared uprising on 15 Khordad—the now famil- iar date in the Persian calendar that corresponds to June 5, 1963. The ferocity of assaults by the fired-up counter-elite gangs, who torched all vestiges of modern living on their trail, took the regime by surprise. The Shah was given to be ‘on pins and needles’. At the time, the Qashqai tribe was already in revolt, with arms reportedly shipped from Egypt. A parallel plot featuring the renegade ex-intelligence chief, Teymur Bakhtiar, was also in the making. Evidence emerged at the time suggesting that President Abdel Nasser might have attempted to encourage and finance Khomeini’s anti-Shah campaign in 1963—attested to by a close confidant of the Egyptian president in post-Revolution years.36 A collapse was narrowly avoided by the resolute reaction of Premier Amir-Assadollah Alam, who jolted the Shah out of indecision and made him authorize the use of live ammunition to crush the uprising. The showdown resulted in several dozen deaths and hundreds of gunfire injuries. The Shii clerics of all strains mobilized to obtain the release of Khomeini and other detained religious leaders. Moderate elements within the regime were keen to spare the Shah the consequences of yet another high-profile trial. In hindsight it is known that the execution of Khomeini was never an option: resort to such punishment could have entailed a rupture between the crown and the clergy. The face-saving solution, in which the regime was complicit, consisted of having three top ulama recognize Khomeini as a “Grand Ayatollah,” or source of emulation, a distinction that carried 14 D. BAYANDOR immunity from prosecution.37 Khomeini thus returned to Qom unharmed, only to be rearrested a year later, when he once again harangued the Shah over the issue of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed with the United States, which he portrayed as a return to the long-abolished “capitulation regime.” This time the Ayatollah was banished to Turkey, from where he migrated to Najaf in October 1965. The attitude of the opposition parties was mixed. The NF leaders had joined the ban on the referendum but did not endorse the clerical movement. However, the nationalist-religious strain in the pro-Mosaddeq camp that had formed the nehzat’e azadi Iran, or Freedom Movement of Iran (FMI), in 1961 embraced Khomeini’s cause, for which its leadership paid a high price. Mehdi Bazargan, Yadollah Sahabi and Seyyed Mahmoud Taleghani (later Ayatollah) were put on trial and received long prison terms. Scores of its radicalized younger members went to Cairo for train- ing in use of weapons.38 The secular NF leaders escaped prison but, torn by infighting and rejected by Mosaddeq, they withdrew from the political scene in what for most became a permanent farewell to politics. Three of them, however, returned to activism in circumstances discussed in Chap. 6. The hardcore Khomeini backers had not run out of steam. On January 21, 1965, only three months after Khomeini’s exile to Turkey, Prime Minister Hasan-Ali Mansur was gunned down in front of the entrance to the Majles by a young zealot from hay’at-hay’e Motalefeh Islami. The flam- boyant Mansur had been named prime minister in a bid by the Shah to replace the old guard with new blood. The Shah named Amir-Abbas Hoveyda, the closet associate of the slain prime minister, as his replace- ment, to ensure continuity of the new technocracy. Less than three months later, on April 10, Mohammad-Reza narrowly survived an attempt on his life by a conscripted Imperial Guard soldier, also an Islamist fanatic. The new technocratic approach adopted by the executive branch in the backdrop of the Shah’s “White Revolution” heralded a new era marked by economic prosperity but also by political drift; it is subject of in-depth examination in the next chapter.

3 Socio-cultural Mutations in the 1960s The intellectual and literary climate under the first Pahlavi monarch and in early post-war years was decidedly secular in nature, bordering on irreligiosity.39 Reza Shah’s intrusive secularization, while unpopular, was given solid intellectual support by educated men, many of whom willingly A RETROSPECTIVE 15

abandoned clerical attire to take up positions in state administration or civil society. Luminaries such as Allameh Mohammad Qazvini, Saeed Nafisi, Seyyed Hassan Taqizadeh, Seyyed Ahmad Kasravi, Ali-Akbar Dehkhoda and Ali Dashti were fiercely secular; their writings bore an anti- clerical slant which was tolerated in the prevailing politico-cultural envi- ronment under Reza Shah. Dashti was the anonymous author of Bist’o-seh Sal (The 23 years), a critical review of the Prophet Mohammad’s 23-year path from the “revelation” to his death in June, 632 CE. Ali-Akbar Hakamizadeh, the editor of a literary journal, Homayoon, wrote Asrar Hezar Saleh (The secrets of the thousand years), which provoked indigna- tion from Khomeini and spurred his rebuttal in Kashf al-Asrar in 1944.40 The best-known member of this group was Kasravi, the author, among several other books, of Shieh’gari (Shia-mongering), who, as noted earlier, became a victim of the anti-apostasy campaign and was assassinated by the Fada’ian Eslam in 1946. In the post-war years, the intellectual climate was almost exclusively dominated by leftist literary figures. Figures such as Nima Yousheej—the avant-garde poet who shed the straitjacket of classical rhyme to introduce sheer’e no, or new poetry—the dramaturge Abdul-Hossein Nushin and the novelist Bozurg Alavi were active or lapsed communists. The iconoclastic writer–essayist Sadeq Hedayat (1903–1951), who more than any other literary figure epitomized the era in which he lived, was closely associated with the Tudeh party but, not unlike Jean-Paul Sartre, shunned member- ship. Sadeq Hedayat’s opposition to religiosity took an irreverent, even contemptuous, slant. He disparaged Islam as an alien cult forcibly grafted onto the fabric of Persian culture: “What did they [Arab Muslim invaders] bring us after all? A dungy hotchpotch of contradictory precepts and opin- ions borrowed undigested from the previous creeds, sects and supersti- tions, opposed to all human instincts, the antidote to the uplifting of mind, to human ingenuity and pursuit of excellence; this is what was forced upon us by the sword.”41

The Intellectualization of Islam The earliest flashes of the backlash against cultural alienation were sparked by Seyyed Fakhruddin Shadman, a polymath from a traditional Shii family. An establishment intellectual by affiliation—he had served the Pahlavis in ministerial and cultural positions—Shadman took issue with the cultural drift associated with modernization in the1940s. He derided the craze for 16 D. BAYANDOR all things European among the modernizing elite through a mock-up character he referred to as “Fokoli” (from the French faux-col), who, standing halfway between the two cultural poles, had not fully grasped either.42 The most coherent and convincing articulation of this backlash came from the Swiss-trained sociologist Ehsan Naraghi, who criticized westernization as a social ill that had afflicted the higher strata of Iranian society. The glare of western innovations, he argued, had blinded Iranians to their own heritage, with its rich diversity, endowed with sufficient sources of knowledge and wisdom to obviate the need for borrowed values. He tied Iran’s cultural identity to the Persian language—essentially a post-Islamic phenomenon—enriched by the mysticism of Rumi, the agnosticism of Khayyam and Hafez, the rhymed aphorisms of Saadi and the epic poetry of Ferdowsi. Like Shadman, Naraghi was an establishment intellectual from a clerical background.43 To the extent that the reigning technocracy preferred western tools and methodology to indigenous methods and values, Naraghi’s commentary was an implicit criticism of the Shah’s modernization and secularization drive.

Jalal Al-e-Ahmad and Qarb’zadegui A more acerbic criticism of the phenomenon of “alienation” appeared in the early 1960s under the buzzing title Qarb’zadegui (Westoxication) by a well- known literary figure, Seyyed Jalal Al-e-Ahmad (1923–1969).44 The loaded term “Qarb’zadegui,” casting westernization as a social pathology, had been coined in the mid-1950s by the German-trained Iranian philosopher Seyyed Ahmad Fardid (1912–1994), a “counter-enlightenment” thinker.45 Not unlike his mentor Martin Heidegger, Fardid had zigzagged through contrasting schools of thought and had bounced over political divides. He had befriended Saddeq Hedayat, flattered the Shah and eventually rallied to Khomeini to claim that the Islamic Republic was the apotheosis of Heidegger’s thoughts and the embodiment of his paradigm.46 Al-e-Ahmad had also trodden an uneven intellectual path. An autodi- dact born into a clerical family, he embraced Marxism in the 1940s, before accompanying Khalil Maleki in his historic split from the Tudeh party in 1947 and becoming one of the founding members of the pro- Mosaddeq socialist party, Niroy’e Sevvom (“The Third Force”), in 1952. His “irreligiosity” in early life, for which he admitted the influence of