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- "Are you talking about Qom?" - "Yes!" - "What about it?" - "Well, something is brewing. Do you think this is a consequence of our protest in November?" - "Well, I am not sure. What I've gathered from listening to BBC and talking with others in Iran is that, two days ago, an anonymous editorial was published in Ettelaat titled 'Ertejaa-e Sorkh va Siaah in Iran' ('Black and Red reaction in Iran'), almost as if it were excerpts from the Shah's book, White Revolution. But what was different was that the Ettelaat specifically attacked Ayatollah Khomeini as a foreign agent and a corrupt man, claiming that he was of Indian ancestry rather than Iranian and that he was a hedonistic poet in the disguise of a clergy.
"The riots in Qom run parallel to what we experienced when the Shah visited U.S. Remember when all Iranian opposition student groups set aside their differences and gathered under one banner and one set of slogans for the Washington, D.C. protests except MSA/PSG (Moslem Student Association/Persian Speaking Group), which refused to join us and instead held their own small and stupid protest on the eastside of the Lafayette Park close to 15th Street?" *** In summer of 1977, we had news and confirmation that the Shah would visit Washington, D.C. in mid-November. Atop of his agenda would be a request for a large volume of sophisticated American military hardware and weaponry. So, we set about organizing the largest protest possible against the Shah's visit and U.S.'s unqualified support for his regime. What we planned required that all factions within CIS as well as all other opposition groups to act in unison under one umbrella organizing committee, even if it be short-lived for that protest alone. For months, we worked hard with other groups to formulate common slogans, devise collaborative efforts, smooth out differences, plan and prepare for the protest. Long negotiations ensued with MSA/PSG and its leaders like Dr. Ebrahim Yazdi, but they were reluctant to join us and others. On November 15-17, 1977, they held their own small protest on the eastside of Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. There was a group of 200 of them, dressed in white, women in hejab and shouting slogans in Farsi, with occasional "Allah-o-Akbar" and salavaat, etc. It seemed the main concept of a protest and the purpose and cause for it was lost on them. Our goal was to expose the Shah's human rights violations, his autocratic rule and mismanagement of Iran's economy and resources, and his lack of independence. We did not need to expose the Shah to Iranians or Arabs or Moslems. We needed to expose him to American public whose elected government had staged a coup to return him to power in 1953 after the Iranian society had rejected him. We needed to win the support of the American public to influence their government to force the Shah toward democratization of Iran and a redirection of Iran's budgetary plans away from militarization and toward building a nation-wide infrastructure system of easily accessible public health, education, employment, and welfare. On 20th Shahrivar 1356, in an interview with daily Kayhan, the Shah had asked "To those who are asking for freedom, we ask, you want the freedom to do what?" It was to this question which we tried to provide a unanimous response in our protest. Thus 90% of our placards and slogans were in English and directed toward the goals as delineated in the foregoing. We had over 15,000 protestors, majority of them Iranian and with some other sympaticos
from Latin and Central America, Arab world, from Micronesia to South East Asia, and
yes even a significant number of progressive Americans and their civic organizations.
None of us could imagine that in a potential revolution and a post-Shah Iran, it
would be the small reactionary, anachronistic and not-so-very-intelligent ones protesting
quietly in Arabic and Persian who would usurp power. To us, then, they were comical,
far off from the mainstream opposition movement. November 1977 brought us more attention and support from wider expanse of groups and individuals. We had carried various political campaigns and after each we had systematically evaluated our successes and failures. Our November 1977 had reverberated through out Iran. The Shah, himself, tried to play down the great influence that our protest and our earlier efforts in the previous two years had had. On November 17,1977, in a press conference in Washington, D.C., he emphatically stated: "Demonstrations in the US had no effect on our talks with President Carter." Yet, President Carter, in those meeting and talks, had demanded serious liberalization of Iran's political and economic institutions and had tied the Shah's demand for sophisticated weaponry to serious and tangible improvement in Iran's human rights record and Iran's domestic political freedoms. So had members of U.S. Congressional Committees on Foreign Relations and Arms Sales. In Iran, large scale student disturbances and student closure of some universities immediately followed the Washington, D.C. protest leading the Shah's single ruling party, Rastaakhiz, to open a conference in Tehran titled "Analysis of Academic Inclinations," to investigate and root out democratic aspirations among the youth which the Shah had labeled as "Islamic Marxist indoctrination by leftist university professors and external forces." These student demonstrations had no Islamic or Marxist overtones and were merely demanding what is defined as inalienable rights of any citizen in any modern progressive society. None of Iranian theological seminaries did participate, cooperate, or even express sympathy for any of these outcries by Iran's secular university students for "freedom, bread, equality." The Shah's response to the demands of the university students came on 15th Azar 1356, International Human Rights Day as designated by UN (5 December 1977): "Iran has done its share in implementing the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man." This announcement was also in response to Carter's demands made while the Shah visited United States.
On 22nd Azar 1356, the Rastaakhiz daily, the organ of the Shah's single-party political rule, wrote: "The opposition is aiming at the heart of the Imperial Regime." William Sullivan in a cable to the President and his National Security advisors, provided an analysis of Iran's demographics, the heightened political awareness of Iran's aspiring middle class, and concluded that maintaining the Shah on the throne may no longer be feasible. Furthermore, he warned that plans must be drawn and steps taken to ensure that in an eventual fall of the Shah, Iran would not fall into the Soviet sphere of influence and suggested that United States must begin thinking along fostering an alternative to the Shah which would preserve American interests in the region or at minimum serve as a bulwark against any increase in Soviet influence in the region. The OPFGI bombing of Iran-America Society in Tehran on 8th Dey 1356 and the three-day long closure of Iran's universities during 15th to 18th of Dey 1356, in protest against President Carter's visit and unprecedented since Mossadegh days, gave credence to the Ambassador concerns and worries. Up to 8th Dey 1356, though OPMI -- Organization of the People's Mojahedin of Iran -- had assassinated some American military advisors in Iran, OPFGI -- the Fedayin, an avowedly Marxist-Leninist politico-military guerilla organization -- had not targeted any American or symbols of U.S. influence in Iran. Up until 17th of Dey 1356, Iran's seminaries had been silent. No one had heard from any of Iran's leading clerics both inside or outside Iran. None had expressed any support or sympathy with Iranian university students or intellectuals in their non-violent quest for democratic rights. And up to that day, the Shah's government had blamed all protests and expressions of discontent on the leftists and what he called the "Red reaction and agents of international communism." The only single reaction from the clerics against the Shah in that period had not been on political grounds but rather religious, as these clerics condemned the Shah's televised toasting of a glass of wine to President Carter during the latter's Christmas visit of Iran. But suddenly on 17th the Dey, there appeared the now infamous editorial in Kayhan against Khomeini. Iran's government-controlled press had not even bothered to mention Khomeini's name since his departure to Turkey in 1963. Without a doubt, whoever penned that article and his advisors, all knew that such a blatant attack on Khomeini would bring forth a strong response from the seminary students and that portion of clergy disaffected by the royal court. Yet, they had seen some cause and reason to pen such an article. *** As I had tried to convey to Ali that, to me, the editorial and the events that generated from it were suspect. Among other things, I suspected that these were attempts to give a religious tone to a democratic movement, which had started on secular ground and thus was apt to be easily understood and identified with by the populace of Western democracies and thus win their support and sympathy. As events moved forward in Iran, my suspicions grew and became stronger. And I was not alone in that. Other members of CIS leadership had similar doubts, apprehensions and concerns. These were much the cause of CIS's lack of strong action in support of events in Iran between Dey 1356 and Shahrivar 1356 as debates over what should be done and what strategy to follow raged within CIS.
Aside from what occurred in Iran, much also happened abroad within CIS and other
opposition groups. Describing these, their relevance and dynamic interaction and
reaction to what was occurring inside Iran as well as with decisions made within
President Carter's National Security and State Department along with U.S. consultations
with European and regional governments would itself take a chapter or two of an interesting
book. For the sake of brevity, I will skip these and fast forward to Khomeini's arrival
in France. And this will be the subject of a follow up narrative.
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Not alone
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