Iran Under the Ayatollahs

Iran Under the Ayatollahs

Dilip Hiro

Routledge & Kegan Paul

A comprehensive study of the Middle East’s most strategic country, Iran under the Ayatollahs is set against the background of the Islamic heritage of Iran and the rise and fall of the Pahlavi dynasty. It describes the various phases through which the Islamic revolution has passed, gives an incisive account of the Gulf War, and provides an historical survey of Iran’s relations with the West, the Soviet bloc, and other countries of the region.

Dilip Hiro was born in Pakistan, and educated in India, Britain and America. He now lives in London and is a full-time writer and freelance journalist, contributing articles to such publications as the Sunday Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Guardian and International Herald Tribune. His other books include Inside India Today (1976), Black British, White British (1971) and Inside the Middle East (1982).

Contents

Abbreviations / vi
Glossary of Arabic and Persian words / vii
Islamic calendars: lunar and solar / xii
Preface xiii
Introduction / 1

Part I Before the Islamic Revolution / 7
1 The Islamic heritage 9
2 The Pahlavis / 25
3 The end of monarchy / 66
Part II THE REVOLUTION / 101
4 The founding of the Islamic Republic / 103
5 The American hostage crisis / 136
6 The Gulf War / 164
7 The Mujahedin challenge / 186
8 Consolidation of the revolution / 222
Part III IRAN AND THE WORLD / 269
9 Iran and the Soviet bloc / 271
10 Iran and the West / 294
11 Iran and the region / 332

Conclusion / 357

Postscript / 368

Notes 395

Select bibliography / 418

Index / 421

PREFACE

My purpose in writing this book is to offer a political and economic history of Iran which, while dealing primarily with the events before and after the 1978-9 revolution, takes into account the Islamic heritage of Iranian society. That is why I begin with a brief history of Islam and the rise of an Islamic state which came to include Iran. I then shift the focus on Iran, and the Safavid and Qajar dynasties which ruled it from 1501 onwards. Chapter 2 deals with the Pahlavi dynasty which started in 1926: Reza Pahlavi until 1941, followed by his son Muhammad Reza Pahlavi. It highlights the uneasy relations that existed between the state and the mosque. The conflict between them - personified by the Shah, the ruler, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini - reached a climax in June 1963. Khomeini lost, and was deported. The second clash between them came fifteen years later, and forms the core of Chapter 3. This time the Shah went, for good.

I devote the second, and the longest part of the book to the Islamic entity that arose out of the ashes of the Pahlavi kingdom. As before, I have divided each chapter into sections. In Chapter 4 I concentrate on the immediate problems that the Islamic regime had to face, and the governmental style and the constitution it offered the nation. The crisis caused by the seizure of the American embassy and diplomats in November 1979 is the main subject of the next chapter. Against this background I examine the differences between Khomeini and his chief theological rival, Ayatollah Muhammad Kazem Shariatmadri, and narrate the history of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (People’s Combatants).

Chapter 6 deals primarily with the Iraq-Iran war and its integration into the domestic politics of Iran, and secondarily with the ousting of President Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr. In the next chapter I describe the effect on the government of the armed struggle waged against it by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, and discuss the impact of the war on the economy. The final chapter of this section weighs the pros and cons of the Gulf War. It also provides a survey of the various revolutionary organisations which have been established, and the extent to which society has been Islamised. These provide important pointers to the future of Iran.

Part III deals with Iran’s relations with the outside world. In Chapter 9 I set the current Iranian-Soviet relations in a historical context. I do the same in the subsequent chapter regarding Iran’s ties with Western powers - concentrating first on Britain and then on America. Lastly I focus on Tehran’s links with Arab Gulf states and other neighbours - and Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians. I end this part of the book with a brief description of how Iranian leaders evaluate themselves and their revolution within the Islamic world.

In my conclusion I analyse the nature of the Iranian revolution by examining the social forces at work in its favour and against it. I speculate on the effect that Khomeini’s departure will have on the government and the opposition. I also consider different ends to the Gulf War, and the impact each outcome will have on the future of the Islamic revolution.
My three visits to Iran after the revolution, lasting nearly four months, were useful in gaining first hand knowledge and understanding of the changes that Iran has undergone. Besides Tehran and its outlying towns and villages, I visited Qom, Khomein (the birth place of Khomeini), and various cities in Azerbaijan and Khuzistan.

A word about place names, and the spellings of Arabic and Persian words. I have used the term ‘the Gulf’ for the gulf that divides Iran from the Arabian Peninsula. But I have listed the two other names in vogue - the Arabian Gulf and the Persian Gulf - in the index. There is no standard way of spelling Arabic and Persian names. I have used one of the most widely used spellings in the English-speaking world, and stuck to it - except when the spelling of an author is different from mine. There I have simply reproduced the published spelling. A particular difficulty arises when different spellings of a proper name, or an object, begin with a different letter. Common examples are Koran and Quran, and Ghom and Qom. I have solved this problem by using one spelling in the text but including both in the index.

In general I have tried to be simple and consistent. Instead of writing ‘a’ ’, I have chosen ‘aa’; and instead of following the example of authors who write Shiite and Alawite (but never Sunnite), I have stuck to Shia, Alawi and Sunni. I have used the terms Mujahedin-e Khalq and Mujahedin interchangeably; and so also Fedai Khalq and Fedai. Since most of the Arabic words which appear in the text are part of the Persian vocabulary, I have prepared a combined glossary of Arabic and Persian words.
Rial is the Iranian unit of currency. Rials 75 to 85 are worth one American dollar.

In Iran, whereas a religious title always precedes a person’s name, a secular title often follows it. For instance, Ayatollah Khomeini, but Muhammad Reza Pahlavi Shah. The following Arabic and Persian words signify religious or secular titles: ayatollah, dawla, hazrat, hojatalislam, imam, mahdi, saltane, sayyed, sepahdar-e azm, shah, shahbanu, shah-en-shah, shaikh and sultan.
Dilip Hiro June 1984

Introduction

Iran has produced more surprises in six years than most countries do in sixty. A revolutionary movement sprang up in Iran at a time of economic prosperity, military strength and political stability. It was led by a seventy-five-year-old cleric, Ayatollah Ruhollah Mousavi Khomeini, operating from abroad. He relied heavily on Islam, and Islamic customs and festivals, to energise the movement and destroy the Pahlavi dynasty. In the process the movement neutralised the region’s strongest military machine. The clergy, who provided most of the revolutionary leadership, possessed neither an organised political party of their own nor a blueprint of the social order to be created in the post-Pahlavi Iran.

In 1977 Iran was in its fifteenth year of economic growth. During that period per capita income increased fivefold in real terms. Between 1973 and 1977 the statutory minimum wage rose from Rials 80 to Rials 210. Iran was the most powerful country in the region. Its military was unflinchingly loyal to the ruler, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi Shah. Its intelligence services and political police were formidable. On the eve of the New Year Day 1978, the visiting American president, Jimmy Carter, called Iran ‘an island of stability in one of the most troubled areas of the world’.

When the revolutionary movement gathered steam during the summer of 1978, the Shah did not trust the reports he was getting. One day he flew over the capital in a helicopter to survey the demonstrations against him. The experience shattered him. He could not believe that these were the same subjects who only a few months earlier had lined the streets of the eastern city of Mashhad in their tens of thousands to greet him. With his domestic base gone, his support abroad also fell rapidly. Even the US government, the staunchest of his backers, became equivocal. When Carter was asked at a press conference in December whether the Shah would survive, he replied: ‘I don’t know. . . . That’s something in the hands of the Iranian people.’

Within a year the region’s most stable island had become the most turbulent.

The emergence of Khomeini as the undisputed leader of the revolutionary movement was another major surprise. He had been in exile for thirteen years when political agitation began in Iran. He had in the past briefly led protests against the Shah. But he was by training, and inclination, a theological teacher, not a politician. He was certainly not a revolutionary, nor even a serious student of revolution. (Very few in the West had heard of him. He had published many books, but even the American Central Intelligence Agency had not acquired a single title.) Despite his lack of knowledge of the dynamics of a revolution, he soon recognised the revolutionary potential of the protest which began in early 1977. He made astute use of Islamic history and Iranian nationalism to create and encourage anti- monarchical militancy. His spartan style of life won him popular standing among people who were sick of the corrupt and luxury-living politicians. The fact that he was a man of God gave him the spiritual authority that secular leaders lacked. He kept his message simple. And like revolutionary leaders before him, he united the disparate opposition to the established order under the highest demand: an end to the monarchy.

Revolutionaries everywhere face their toughest test when challeng¬ing the military. Iran was no exception. How to overcome a force of over 400,000 armed men totally loyal to the Shah - that was the most crucial problem which the revolutionary leaders faced. To this Khomeini offered a unique solution. He urged the strategy of ‘fighting’ soldiers through martyrdom. Let the army kill as many as it wanted, until the soldiers were shaken to their hearts with the massacres they had committed, he said. Then the army would collapse, he predicted. And it did. On the morrow of the revolution, there was not a single soldier left in the capital.

That the revolution would succeed was as much of a surprise to revolutionaries as it was to the Shah and his foreign backers. Asked as to when exactly he expected the revolution to win, Khomeini’s elder brother, Ayatollah Murtaza Pasandida, replied that he did not expect the revolution to succeed at all. It seemed to be more a divine miracle than a human endeavour.

The coalition of diverse religious and secular forces, which overthrew the Shah, broke up almost immediately after the event. The Islamic regime, which followed the Shah, was plagued with acute political, economic and security problems. Such conditions were conducive to the success of the counter-revolutionary forces at home and abroad, intent on destroying the revolutionary state. There were times when Iran seemed on the verge of civil war. But, leaving aside the Kurdish region in the north-west, civil strife did not erupt. That was another major surprise.

…..

Dilip Hiro

Iran Under the Ayatollahs

Routledge & Kegan Paul

Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
Iran Under the Ayatollahs
Dilip Hiro

Routledge & Kegan Paul
London and New York

First published in 1985
Paperback edition, with corrections and
new Postscript, published in 1987 by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE, England

Published in the USA by
Routledge & Kegan Paul Inc.
in association with Methuen Inc.
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Set in Times
by Columns of Reading
and printed in Great Britain
by T.J. Press (Padstow) Ltd, Cornwall

© Dilip Hiro 1985, 1987; new Postscript
© Dilip Hiro 1987

No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form without permission from the publisher,
except for the quotation of brief passages in criticism

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hiro, Dilip
Iran under the Ayatollahs.
1. Iran—Politics and government—1979-
1. Title
955’.54 / DS318.8

ISBN 0-7102-1123-6