Photo thanks to Yari Ostovany
Khomeini turbulent priest who shook world
By Paul Taylor
LONDON, Jan 28 (Reuters) - A frail, white-bearded man sat cross-legged
on a Persian rug in a suburban bungalow near Paris and spoke in a faint
monotone into a cassette-recorder. And the world trembled.
Twenty years ago next week, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, an ascetic
Shi'ite Moslem clergyman, returned to Iran to a tumultuous welcome to lead
one of this century's great upheavals -- the first Islamic revolution.
Exploiting a national network of mosques, the Shi'ite cult of martyrdom
and the strange indecisiveness of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Khomeini
replaced one of the Middle East's richest U.S.-backed oil monarchies with
an austere theocratic state.
``We will end foreign domination in Iran. America cannot do anything,''
the ayatollah vowed in an interview with Reuters shortly after he settled
in the village of Neauphle-le-Chateau, near Versailles, in October 1978.
``Do not be afraid to give up your lives and your belongings in the
service of God, Islam and the Moslem nation,'' he told his followers in
one of the taped messages that sent millions of unarmed demonstrators into
the streets to brave the Shah's army.
KHOMEINI'S SYSTEM ENDURES
Unlike many revolutionary systems, the Islamic republic that Khomeini
built has endured despite a 20-year confrontation with the United States,
an eight-year war with Iraq and waves of bombings, assassinations, executions
and power struggles.
Khomeini, who became supreme leader with sweeping powers under the constitution
adopted in 1979, died in his bed a decade later, revered by most Iranians
but reviled in the West.
His mausoleum in south Tehran is a shrine for pilgrims.
While the revolution devoured many of its children in spasms of violence,
Moslem clerics still wield most power in Iran.
The complex institutional checks and balances developed by Khomeini
to guard against a coup and prevent one faction from monopolising power
provide the framework for a permanent power struggle among his heirs.
The contrast between the Shah, whose imperial family flaunted its fabulous
petrodollar wealth in gaudy ceremonies, and the ayatollah, who lived frugally
on a diet of bread, fruit, nuts and yoghurt, could hardly have been more
stark.
Twice a day, the stern old man in dark robes and a black turban indicating
descent from the Prophet Mohammed, crossed the Route de Chevreuse under
French police guard to lead prayers and deliver sermons in a blue-and-white
tent pitched in the garden of the two-storey house that served as his headquarters.
Students, businessmen, clergymen and politicians flocked to Paris from
Iran and the diaspora in Europe and the United States to talk and pray
with Khomeini after president Valery Giscard d'Estaing gave him temporary
refuge.
The ayatollah listened to moderate advice but held firm to his course,
dismissing calls for compromise to avert bloodshed.
``There will be no compromise with the Shah. Until the day an Islamic
republic is established in Iran, the struggle of our people will continue,''
Khomeini said in the interview.
The turbulent cleric had been expelled from Iraq under pressure from
the Shah, seeking to end a snowballing revolt against his rule spearheaded
by Shi'ite religious leaders, demonstrating students and striking oil workers.
He had launched his battle to drive the Shah from his ``peacock throne''
in 1962-63, condemning the monarch's White Revolution land reforms as un-Islamic
and denouncing the immunity privileges of U.S. advisers and oil companies
in Iran. He was exiled first to Turkey, then to the holy city of Najaf
in Iraq.
WESTERN-TRAINED ADVISERS ROSE AND FELL
In Neauphle-le-Chateau, Khomeini was surrounded by a circle of Western-educated
aides who went on to play key roles in the early revolutionary governments
before being sidelined by Islamic hardliners.
A large sign in English and Persian outside Khomeini's headquarters
proclaimed ``The ayatollah has no spokesman.'' But the men who assured
journalists that Iran would be a liberal Islamic democracy would qualify
nowadays as spin doctors.
Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, an economist who lived in Paris, acted as his
interpreter and secretary. He was elected the first president of the Islamic
republic in 1980 before being hounded from office by hardline mobs a year
later, fleeing for his life to the French capital.
Sadeq Qotbzadeh, a former anti-Shah student activist expelled from the
United States in 1969 and who had a Syrian passport, became head of radio
and television, then foreign minister. He resigned in 1980 and was executed
in 1982 for allegedly plotting to overthrow Khomeini.
Ebrahim Yazdi, a cancer researcher who lived in Texas, was Khomeini's
chief English-speaking aide. He sought to persuade the West that the Islamic
movement was not manipulated by the Soviet Union or bent on anarchy.
He became foreign minister in the first revolutionary government but
was forced out for trying to end the occupation of the U.S. embassy by
militant students in November 1979 after Washington admitted the deposed
Shah for medical treatment.
Yazdi today heads a small, semi-legal opposition party, the Iran Freedom
Movement, but has little influence.
Khomeini's other confidant was his second son Ahmad, a mullah (clergyman)
who was his closest aide during his decade at the helm of the Islamic republic
and the key link with the students occupying the U.S. embassy. He died
in 1995.
Khomeini's elder son, Morteza, had died during their exile in Iraq after
being visited by two Iranians suspected of being agents of the Shah's hated
SAVAK secret police.
The ayatollah's wife, Batul, accompanied him in France but played no
public role.
RETURN TO IRAN
Interviewing Khomeini was a strangely impersonal experience. Questions
were submitted in writing and Bani-Sadr translated the written replies
before the reporter was admitted for a brief meeting with the ayatollah.
There was no handshake. Khomeini stared at the carpet while speaking
rather than seeking eye-contact with the interviewer.
Some of his delphic statements required interpretation. When he said:
``We will cut off the hands of the foreign agents,'' aides hastened to
explain he meant rooting out foreign domination in Iran, not severing limbs.
As the revolution moved towards a climax, sending world oil prices soaring
to record levels, the throngs of supporters and journalists swelled at
Neauphle.
The French authorities who had initially treated Khomeini with caution,
warning him three times to refrain from political statements, gave him
VIP treatment.
Two weeks after the Shah left Iran on ``holiday'' on January 16, never
to return, the ayatollah, his entourage and several dozen journalists boarded
an Air France jumbo jet for Tehran, despite threats by the Iranian government
to shoot it down.
The volunteer crew had take on twice the normal load of fuel in case
they were forced to turn back. The plane had to circle for more than half
an hour over Tehran while final negotiations for permission to land were
conducted.
A crowd estimated at more than one million people was waiting to greet
the revolution's spiritual leader as the Air France stewards helped him
down the gangway at Mehrabad Airport.
Ten days later, the remnants of the Shah's last government under the
hapless prime minister Shahpour Bakhtiar were swept away in street battles.
The Middle East was never the same again.
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