In his final years in power Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, was given the ultimately destructive advice to his rule—to go easy on his clerical opponents. Until then, the Shah with the assistance of SAVAK had been merciless, but in his final years, the Shah went easy on them, thereby allowing them an opportunity to rebuild their network of followers. The most successful, and the most vituperative against the Pahlavi dynasty was Ayatollah Khomeini. Rather than be imprisoned or executed the way so many of his fellow clerics were, he was allowed to go into exile in France. From there, he penned a number of vituperative pamphlets about the Shah, which the followers of the Ayatollah got covertly cyclostyled and distributed throughout Iran. Among his least vituperative writings about the Shah were “Oh you miserable little man, you worm, know that your end is near”. Khomeini was correct.
By 1979 the population of Iran was roused to fever pitch, with crowds filling the streets of Teheran and shouting abuse against the Shah. Many were imprisoned, some were shot, but to no avail. The crowds kept swelling, the chants of abuse grew ever louder. Finally, the junior elements in the police and the army refused point blank to fire on their own people. By now the Shah was riddled with cancer, and he had had enough, leaving with his wife, the Shahbanou, and children by a special flight to the US.
He had a miserable time there as well, with President Jimmy Carter panicking when staffers in the US embassy were taken prisoner by raucous students chanting the “Death to America” slogan wherever they clustered. The Shah had been a compliant satellite of the US (which in a CIA operation brought him to power) but that was forgotten by President Carter, who shunted him off to Panama in the expectation that the US embassy staff would be released. They were, but only on the day that it was announced that Carter had lost the Presidential polls to Republican candidate Ronald Reagan. By his disavowal of the Shah, Carter shone a spotlight on the ease with which the US could discard their satellites, once their use was over. At the same time, Khomeini’s refusal to free the captives in the US embassy in Tehran showed the futility of the concession made by Carter to Khomeini.
In Panama, the Shah was fleeced of his money by the strongmen ruling the country, and because his treatment came to a premature stop with his departure to Panama, he was overwhelmed by the cancer, which ended his by now miserable and fearfilled existence.
Ayatollah Khomeini returned from France in an Air France flight triumphantly. Millions hailed him as a deliverer from the rule of the detested Shah. They would come to know that their privations only multiplied with the post-Shah rule of the clerics. In France, exiled Iranian led by Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr fussed over the Ayatollah, who as a consequence appointed Bani-Sadr as the first President of Iran. Bani-Sadr believed that the Ayatollah would be content in his clerical role, while he as President would exercise temporal power. He was soon disabused of such a surmise, as Khomeini removed him from office and assumed full command of the Government of Iran in his newfound role of Supreme Leader.
Since then, the President of Iran has had to function under the Supreme Leader, now Ayatollah Ali Khamenei after the death of Khomeini on 3 June 1989. To “Death to America” was added “Death to the Jewish entity i.e. the State of Israel”. It was not just a slogan but was sought to be carried out, almost entirely against Israel, since Khomeini’s time. As a consequence of its terrorist actions against Israel, sanctions were applied by the US on Iran that crippled its economy and made the lives of its people far more miserable than had ever been the case under the rule of Shah Reza Pahlavi.
As a consequence, unrest within the public has mounted that is directed against the clerical regime. Such riots have now reached a crescendo in cities across Iran, undamped by the killings of many by the security forces. Mossad has been blamed by the clerical regime for the unrest, but it was not Mossad who initiated the “Death to Israel” movement in Iran and the consequent terror operations against Israel, including by proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
For the sake of the Iranian people, it is imperative that a regime takes over that abandons the futile quest to demolish the only Jewish-majority country in the world. Were such a regime to take charge, the people of Iran would have a better life once sanctions were removed. The whole democratic world has a stake in witnessing Iran become a democracy for the first time in its millennia-long existence, previously known as Persia. This time around, the people of Iran must succeed in bringing down the clerical regime, just as they succeeded in 1979 in removing the monarchy.
The people of Iran have creative talent in abundance, and once the country is at peace with all its regional neighbours including the State of Israel, the prosperity of the entire world would rise. The people of Iran, as do people elsewhere, deserve to be free of the shackles of dictatorship dressed up in clerical garb.
