To
understand the truth about the late shah
and what
really happened in Iran in 1979,
one must
read this article by Alan Peter,
An expert
on security and intelligence matters in
Iran.
=================================
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919-1980),
A retrospective on his reign on the occasion of the
twenty-fifth anniversary of his death.
"They revere you in fortune
and trample you in defeat"
(Moliere)
Some 25-years
ago this summer, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
the Shah of Iran was dying in Cairo. Egypt's
President Sadat had offered him his last refuge and helped him escape
from a perilous exile in Panama.
Historically, Egypt
has been famous for providing shelter -
even to those they do not approve - like the family of Yasser Arafart - at the time that Arafat was
public enemy #1 in Egypt for inciting
the overthrow of Sadat's regime, his wife and children were guarded by Sadat's government bodyguards.
In the case of the
Shah, Sadat liked him and the Shah's
marriage to former Egyptian King Farouk's daughter made him "family", too.
In Panama, the fate
of the ailing monarch had hung in the
balance for several weeks as shadowy contacts between Panama's
strongman, General Torrijos, and
emissaries from the Islamic revolution increasingly pointed to a swap deal - the extradition of
the Shah against the release the 52
American Embassy hostages in Tehran.
While the Shah's
hand-over to Khomeini was seriously
contemplated by President Carter, his administration had been drawn into an eerie gambit in Panama of
which the hostage end-game was unknown .
The Shah's
succumbing to cancer on July 27th, 1980 must have brought a sigh of relief in Washington as
indeed in many other capitals burdened
by the past courtship for refuge of the Iranian monarch, many of whom
had previusly benefitted from his
largesses.
Two decades and many
sorry events later, some of the
intricacies of the Shah's personality and rule still beg scholarly probe.
The majority of
Iran's current population has been born
after the Shah's demise. His image in their mind, as indeed in the minds
of many casual observers abroad, has
been shaped through unrelenting distortions of
historical facts by Carter and an obliging liberal Media, intent on
justifying Carter's decision to remove
the Shah.
The younger Iranians
deserve an unbiased account of these 37
years in its baffling turns and twists and
contradictions. Including that when he left Iran for the last time, the
Shah also left behind some $3 Billion of
the Pahlavi Foundation funds over which he
had total control and relied on some $90 million of his own money, accumulated over many decades, through investments in
Europe, one of which was a jewelry
business in Switzerland.
To be sure, a
distilled account of these years would
not completely vindicate the Shah. His handling of the constitution was self-defeating in ways that escaped his
political savvy. Yet, at worst, was
still aimed to benefit the country not himself. He had all the prestige
he needed and required no constitutional
short cuts to stroke his ego.
His authoritarian rule, much of it because he
could not find "managers" to help run
the country honestly and efficiently, carried the seeds of instability
and a backward thrust, the prevention of
which had served as an alibi to silence
dissent. Yet, the surfeit of slander and libel before and after his
downfall was largely undeserving.
Few leaders in
history have been adulated and demonized
in such a frivolous manner. A good illustration of hypes comes from two prominent Americans. On the New Year's
Eve of 1978 -- a few short days before
the triggering event of the Islamic revolution -- President Carter stunned the
US western allies by calling the Shah
his most trusted ally and dialogue
partner.
Carter's effusive
flattery - describing Iran as island of
stability - was in opposing symmetry to another hyperbole by Senator Edward Kennedy, who some two years later, at
the height of the American Embassy
hostage crisis, castigated the Shah for having
run "one of the most violent
regimes in history of mankind".
Kennedy
continues, even today, in his baseless
attacks on anything and everything, including his own government and citizens.
Both remarks were
clearly calculated to achieve short-term
objectives. Carter came to Teheran, desperate to check the soaring price of the crude oil.
Kennedy's remark was
timed to optimize the chances of his
emissary to Tehran, tasked to obtain from Ayatollah Khomeini a token release of the American hostages.
Kennedy, then
seeking to snatch the Democratic
presidential nomination from the incumbent Carter, had chosen the former US Senator James Abourezk (of Arab
extraction) for this unpublicized
mission to Tehran.
Where should the
line be drawn? In a mixed bag of
achievements and flaws the Shah's balance sheet resembles other
modernizing states. Many would grade it
superior. What tarnished his image most
was his alleged record on human rights and political freedoms, much of which proved in the
aftermath to be highly exaggerated.
Detractors state
"a silence of a cemetery" to
characterize the political arena in Iran during most of the Shah's rule. The ubiquitous security agency SAVAK,
created in 1957 with the help of the US
through General Teymour Bakhtiar, later a sworn enemy of the Shah, was the instrument of the repression of mostly
Communist attacks on the monarchy
triggered by the Soviets.
By the seventies, the
suppression had spawned violence as
groups, sprung from the very edges of the ideological spectrum, resorted to urban guerrilla tactics
and acts of terrorism. A vicious circle
set in. General Bakhtiar, domiciled in
Iraq, was instrumental in sending waves of terrorists into Iran. Terrorists
willing to shoot to kill.
For the first time
traffic police, who usually had empty
holsters or unloaded guns at their waist were
issued side arms and bullets. The terrorists robbed banks to fund their operations and for the first time in Iranian
history, the robbers shot innocent
clerks to make a point.
Then SAVAK blended
ruthlessness with incompetence.
It had been
effective in dismantling the clandestine
structure of Iran's Communist party (Tudeh) but failed to guage the
creeping popular discontent, fanned by
Marxist groups like the Mojahedin and Fedayeen,
still less the coming of the fundamentalist Islamic bane that surprised the Soviets and snatched away their Marxist
revolution to place it in clerical
hands.
When the crunch
finally came in 1978, this colossus fell on its
clay feet unable to save its master. A dozen Soviet urban guerilla
psychologists, operating from inside the
Soviet Embassy in Tehran and calling the shots for anti-Shah operations overwhelmed Iranian intelligence
and police autorities, who had no
training in how to handle or oppose these attaacks.
For instance, they had their Marxist minions
knock on people's doors begging for
Mercurochrome (a red antiseptic liquid common in Iran) and cotton wool.
Ostensibly needed to treat wounded innocents shot by the Shah's forces in
such huge numbers that pharmacies no
longer had enough of stocks to provide them to
these volunteers.
The red
Mercurochrome was in fact used to stain the
streets and clandestine flyers would then claim the Shah's men had
shot innocents nd removed their bodies.
As proof they used
another gambit. They collected old shoes
- men's, women's, children's of both sexes and threw one shoe of each pair by the hundreds on top
of the stains. The flyers would then
invite people to witness the amount of deaths by those single shoes that had fallen off the bodies as the Shah's
forces allegedly hurriedly removed the
victims and left the shoes behind.
The extent of repression
was never close to claims recklessly
advanced in some quarters, including by such
reputable institutions as Amnesty International, which finally concluded in late 1978 that
there were less than 2,400 political
prisoners in the Shah's jails.
Only this number
despite the wide spread Soviet efforts
to install their minions and find passage to warm waters providing thousands of candidates. Despite
the Bakhtiar terrorists sent in their
hundreds, despite the Marxist and Fedayeen in their thousands openly
attacking the regime. And the
Hezbollah-to-be, pro-Khomeini adherents who disregrded laws and inviting arrest ona daily
basis.
No mass graves
trailed the Shah when he finally quit
the country in January, 1979. No "death caravans" haunted his memory. Tehran produced no equivalent of
Buenos Aires's "Plaza de Mayo"
where "grandmas" gather every Sunday to reclaim news of their
missing children. To be sure the
military courts were quick to mete out death sentences. But the practice of royal pardon was
abundantly resorted
to. The sentences were systematically
commuted or annulled.
Some viewed this
practice as a gimmick to earn political
capital but be it as it may, few now dispute the fact that the Shah was averse to cruelty or execution. He even stayed
Khomeini's execution in 1964 at the
behest of General Pakrvan, head of SAVAK. In hindsight the gravest, catastrophic mistake possible, which
not only later cost Pakravan his life
but also Iran's progress into a modern nation instead of a deep well of suffering and pain it is today.
The overall number
of executions by the military tribunals,
including those occasioned by drug
related offenses, after drug smuggling and distribution became a capital offense, were estimated at
around 350 cases in a 25-year period.
The USA has more than this and Iran
currently has close to 200 a year, including teen-agers of both genders,
which contravenes all laws and even
Iran's own.
Figured among them
were a few prisoners of conscience including
some twenty-five ring-leaders of the military
wing of the Communist party of Iran. Their crime, leading to execution,
was to have been mesmerized by Stalinist
Russia. The rest of the six hundred communist
officers arrested in nineteen fifties - as indeed the bulk of other
political prisoners - were
rehabilitated, many
were co-opted into
the Shah's administration.
One of his favorite
gambits was to invite dissident leaders
into senior government positions and then ask them to do the job better than the person they replaced.
Then chortle when
they eventually admitted they were
unable to because the system and co-workers were too cumbersome and their staff
often sabotaged work or were incompetent and they now understood why their predecessors failed to succeed.
Having experienced
the challenges first hand, they usually
ended up becoming strong supporters of the Monarch in his efforts to change and modernize the
nation.
All in all some
3500 persons were reportedly killed in
street unrests or by order of military courts
during the Shah's reign, between 1953 to 1979 though little
substantiaion exists for such a number.
In one famous
incident of Jaleh Square, where claims
of 5,000 deaths were made, secret martial law figures later showed only
eight had died from bouncing bullets
fired into the air to control the crowd
and another 30 had been wounded the same way. The square was also not big enough to hold 5,000
people making such a claim even less
possible. Over a thousand "unmatching" shoes were found in the square
the morning after!
The Geneva based
International Committee of Red Cross
which visited all Iranian prisons in 1977 in an anti-Shah mission
inspired by Carter and his allies, put
the number of political prisoners at 3200 while some seventy prisoners were declared unaccounted
for.
American liberal
democrats, as was the intention, could
pretend to be horrified by these figures, moderate though they are in
relative terms and could use them to
justify the removal of the Shah.
This having been
said, there is another facet of human
rights in the Pahlavi era which has largely been disregarded in the rush to condemn.
In an average middle
class neighborhood in Tehran of the
nineteen fifties, for example, a small alley had taken its name after a
Jewish doctor, who had been the first to
construct a house in that vicinity.
The alley housed an Assyrian Christian family,
several Baha'i families, a Zoroastrian
family and of course many Moslem households. No hint of bigotry disturbed the serenity of this cultural
mosaic. Tolerance or lack of it was a
personal matter not a government imposition and for the most part if you lived your life to the fullest
but avoided anti-government activity,
nobody
bothered you.
It would be
hypocritical to claim that religious
minorities were by law on the same footing as Moslems but intolerance was being discouraged and the
system moved progressively towards full
equality of rights among citizens.
There were
differences: minority members could not
rise above the rank of Brigadier-General in the military. On the other hand, each ethnic minority had
representation in the Majliss
(Parliament) and Senate proportionate to their numbers in the
overfall population.
A previously unknown
historical anecdote cited by a US
scholar in a recent book best illustrates the point. It concerns the
protection of the Iranian Jews living in
the occupied Europe during World War II.
Reich on the
false pretence that these citizens,
having lived in Iran for over two millennium, had been assimilated in the Persian (Aryan) race.
According to the author, the Iranian
Government of the time, managed to procure them safe conduct from the authorities of the Third
The status of women
is another case in point. Under the
Pahlavis Iranian women were brought to the society's mainstream. The mushrooming institutions of
higher learning opened their doors to
women. Teachers, doctors, lawyers and administrators were trained and
fielded in different walks of life, to
the very highest levels such as Minister of
Education, Member of Parliament and so
on.
The right to vote,
to seek divorce and be protected from an
abusive husband was - to the dismay of the
clerics - written into the law - weakening their supersititious and
religious hold on the general populace.
And creating resentment among them toward the
Monarchy.
Today, the Iranian
women remain one of the vanguards of
resistance to scourges of the fundamentalist
Mullah rule.
The Bazaar merchants
also resented their monopolistic control
of imports and exports and general business
being extracted from their little bazaar booths, which represented
billions of dollars never put back into
circulation for the improvement of the
economy.
The Shah moved much
of this into modern, multinational
organizations in uptown Tehran, so the miffed merchants funded the
clerics and encouraged them to foment
trouble and use religion to attack the
monarchy.
Much of the bravura
exhibited by the Shah's administration in
the seventies, was in the sphere of economy. The exuberance of the
double-digit growth was indeed
intoxicating. In 1974 - in the wake of a quantum jump in the oil price -- the Shah dismissed the counsel
of prudence by experts and decreed an
even faster growth. In his complex psyche, many imperatives drove him to
go full
blast.
One factor was to
firm up the throne for Crown Prince Reza
but he was equally concerned with his legacy and place in history -
should he not disprove those detractors
who claimed he did not measure up to the towering figure of his father. Reza Shah the Great, to
use his full title, was a stern
disciplinarian with a strong will to unify the country and willing to
use force tobring
Iran's tribal
chieftains under Central Government control. A hard act to follow for his diplomat son.
But the economic bullishness did not pay off in the
face of the sabotage by the bazaar. The
country's weak infrastructure buckled
under the weight of imports and the rise in the price of oil resulted in lower consumer demand in world markets.
As the economy
wobbled and Carter's human rights agenda
aimed like a javelin at the Shah, forced him to
make liberalizing gestures, and the tide began to change.
Iranians respect
power and strength. The moment he showed a "co-operative"
attitude, they turned on him. Egged on by both the funds from the bazaar and the hostile
clerics, whose influence had been
diminished to almost nothing among a much more modern populace with open
ties available to Western life styles
and mind sets.
All these were
unexpected perks for the disgruntled
clerics. The magnetizing effect of the boom had
already drawn rural masses to major cities glutting the congregations in mosques. Now the clerics reaped the harvest
of fanned discontent, brandishing
radical Shiite doctrine both as a challenge and a remedy.
The Shah's "politics of liberalization" had
also created its own sliding spiral. To reverse
these trends, the Shah should have - but failed - to rally secular
political forces to his side.
With the hindsight,
it is also fair to say that the rigidity
of some of the secular National Front
leaders, who could have showed support and not eventually been destroyed themselves by the clerics, was an error of
historical scale on their part.
Marxist and
libertarian influences also made them
into a philosphical, snobbish elite, which could not see the pitfalls of their mindsets relative
to increasingly literate but basically
uneducated and inexperienced Iranian populace.
To what extent the Shah's judgment had been impaired by the
secret diagnosis of lymphatic cancer in
1974 has not been established. Such a link is hard to quantify, all the more so that the Shah had apparently not
been told of the exact nature of his
illness, until the later years.
Be it as it may, his
most serious errors occurred during the
ensuing period. It was at this time that the Shah decided on one party rule to prevent the
bickering that had ensued in the two
party system of Iran Novin and Mardom and to allow very capable men in
the minority Mardom party to accept
important positions to carry the nation forward. Instead he decreed that the Rastakhiz party
would have two "wings" to cover the
differing views of the elected parliamenterians.
He replaced the
Islamic calendar with an ostentatious
imperial calendar in a historical acknowledgement - not of his reign - but that of some 5,000
years of Monarchy in Iran. Anti-Monarchy
groups, using any excuse, immediately attacked this as personal grandure.
The Shah had also
begun his somewhat fanciful flights on the
"Great Civilization." The new royal mindset had the Iranians
believe that within a generation or so
Iran would rank among the world's industrial elite. Had he beengiven more time, his investments in key
industries in the West, like Krupp steel
and internal develoment of essential items like cement plants, nuclear power, etc., could well have made his vision
come true. With all the various pieces
inside his almost photographic memory he was looking beyond the horizon.
Had a race against
the clock already began for the Shah? A
wild-west climate of profiteering marked these balmy years. Abusive
business practices, including by the
Shah's close family and friends, became a hallmark of the laissez-faire policies practiced at
overkill scale. Partly because policing
or regulating everything in a rapid growth arena with too few people to help him, became too much to handle.
Remember, a country
resembles a major corporation and needs
competent managers, directors,
vice-presidents, senior vice-presidents and staff to run profitably
and efficiently. Iran's growth far
outstripped the availability of persons who could accept responsiblity with any degree of competence
- or sadly - with honesty and not line
their own pockets.
The Shah himself
could hardly be given a clean bill of
health as he brooked corruption in his entourage, yet he was far from the rapacious persona, with a
fabulous wealth, which the revolutionary
puffery sought to depict. In fact he was a pragmatist. When complaints reached hin that his Minister of
Interior had misappropriated some $40
million and should be sacked and thrown in jail, the Shah refused.
He explained that the man had been Minister of
Interior for some ten years or so, knew
his job well and if he were fired, would spend a few years in prison and then be free to go to Europe and enjoy his
plunder.
Instead, the
Shah stated, he will be at his desk every
morning at six a.m., know that I know
everything - and if from nothing else but guilt will do his job for the
country better than before.
Which would be
preferable to releasing him to go play
in Europe with his stolen money, which could probably no longer be found
to retrieve it.
During the
Embassy hostage crisis, the
revolutionary authorities kept no stone unturned to find documentary evidence of financial wrong
doings by the Shah. This search was
aimed, inter-alia, to substantiate claims in the extradition brief
submitted to Panama.
In March 1980,
foreign correspondents scrambled for
scoops in the jammed conference hall of the Tehran's Central Bank, where President Bani Sadr was to make the
Islamic Republic's legal case against
the Shah. Scathing revelations were expected. Yet nothing worth the
print could be wired back to editors.
The revolutionary authorities had not been able
to pin the Shah to any financial
irregularity. This was not, however, the case in respect of some of the Shah's close
family members.
Interesting to
note, however, is that within six months
of taking power, the Mullahs had rapaciously
transfered funds to private overseas accounts they created for
themselves, which exceeded by about ten
times the total amount of what the 1,000 elite families of Iran had placed overseas during the last
25-years of the Shah's reign.
Most of the
money transfered out of Iran just prior
to the revolution was done by trades people.
Plumbers, carpenters, construction contractors, builders, electricians
etc., who got their money out and
quickly left while the Shah was still there.
When the crunch finally came in 1978, the Shah was
unprepared and not up to the challenge.
He was quick to shed the awe-inspiring mask of the mighty king and meekly looked for advice.
The Anglo &
American Ambassadors were solicited
most, yet their counsel was tentative and vague, reflecting indecision and discord with their own chancelleries.
Others consulted, were an array of
retired politicians, social scientists, military leaders and some
prominent clerics.
Their advice was too
contrasting to allow the Shah to overcome
his indecision. In managing the crisis the Shah committed blunders,
practicing appeasement from a position of weakness. By the last quarter of
1978, in the face of an astounding
quiescence by the Shah, the largely apolitical mass of the urban population, 60% under the age of
25-years and still wet behind the ears politially, swung to insurrectionists'
inflammation of them, rendering the trend
irreversible.
But to his credit
the Shah skirted a bloodbath. Evidence
abounds that on this score he had
remained steadfast throughout the crisis period. He repeatedly rejected the get-tough advice proffered not only by
some of his generals but coming also
from some unlikely quarters in the West.
By the year-end the
Shah was ready to unclench his hold on
power.
Images of his
tearful farewell at Mehrabad airport on
In a grisly act
of disappointment, the Shah left behind
in detention his loyal and highly refined
Prime Minister of 13-years, Amir Abbas Hoveyda. The ex-Premier was
summarily executed by the revolution's hanging
judge, Mullah Khalkhali, shortly
thereafter.
With the Shah's departure, Iran sank into the darkness of the
Middle Ages. A reign of terror, of which
he had presciently warned the nation,
set in. The first public act of Khomeini, when he took over the reins of power in February
1979, was to abolish women's right to
sit in as a judge in a court of law.
He initially
dissolved the Ministry of Justice,
stating that anyone against him was against Allah and should be killed where they stood - with no need for a
trial or other justice system.
That presaged
the calamities and blood-letting that
were to follow.
Perhaps no ruler
in history like the Shah has benefited
from a postmortem redemption, due not to any
re-appraisal of his balance sheet but the misdeeds and brutal excesses
of those who succeeded him in power. Far
above and beyond anything of which he could have been accused even by his most biased
opponents.
A case study
would support a theory that the value
accorded to any given regime should be measured
in light of its inevitable successor and the ability of the latter to
improve conditions and ills of which
they accused the predecessors.
As they ask in American politics, are you better off now?
Iranians would certainly say
"no".
About Me
Name:Alan Peters
For many years
involved in intelligence and security
matters in Iran and had significant access inside Iran at high levels during
the rule of the Shah, until early 1979. Currently serve as an SME (subject matter expert) Iran
analyst/commentator.