Entering a Dangerous Hour

Mourning begins, and so does the Shah's gravest test

The whole country is buckling up for the big bash." So warned a senior Iranian analyst in Washington last week. The Administration, like Iranians themselves, anxiously awaited the start of Muharram, the month of mourning observed by Shi'ite Muslims. Expectations were that this tense, emotional period, which began on Saturday, would almost certainly be the gravest test yet of the Shah's ability to keep control of his troubled land, one of the West's most strategic allies.

Through the week, Iranians prepared for a long siege. Automobile drivers lined up for miles at Tehran's gas stations to fill their tanks. Other queues formed at bank tellers' windows, while housewives thronged to the city's shops for food. At 6 p.m. Thursday, as the curfew hour approached, the capital's bustling bazaar lowered its shutters.

From his home in exile near Paris, Ayatullah Khomeini, the 80-year-old spiritual leader of Iran's Shi'ite Muslims called for an indefinite general strike. Khomeini, who has vowed to oust the Shah, also urged Iran's oil workers to repeat last month's two-week strike that cost the country more than $1 billion in crude-oil revenues. As the holiday began, residents of Tehran broke the curfew and crowded into the streets to see if the new moon had appeared, signaling the start of Muharram. Government troops opened fire on the chanting crowd with automatic weapons. Official sources said that nine persons had been killed and 35 wounded, but diplomats, making independent checks, pegged the number of fatalities at a score or more. Two Newsweek correspondents and a reporter for the London Daily Telegraph were beaten and briefly jailed by soldiers when they tried to cover a clash outside their hotel. An Iranian guard was killed during a conflict between protesters and security forces at the gates of the U.S. embassy.

The Muharram holiday is particularly significant to opponents of the Shah; it symbolizes the Shi'ites' struggle against an evil, corrupt leadership in the earliest years of Islam. The mourning, which culminates on Dec. 11, commemorates the death of the 7th century Imam Husain, a grandson of Muhammad who was beheaded by Sunni Muslims from Damascus intent on maintaining their rule over dissident Persians. Muharram is traditionally observed with huge processions through the streets, at which the faithful whip themselves with chains or draw blood with knives and swords in anguished enactments of Husain's suffering.

Fearing that provocateurs might incite confrontations with the Shah's troops, the government last week banned all public gatherings, except for services In mosques. Violations, warned General Gholam Reza Azhari, Premier of Iran's , military government, would be dealt with "mercilessly."

In Tehran, the Shah was trying without much success to put together a coalition government that would be acceptable to his opponents in time to defuse the crisis. Most politicians were fearful that cooperating with the Shah would cause them to lose credibility among Khomeini's followers. Shahpour Bakhtiar, acting chairman of the opposition National Front, insisted that his organization would not join a coalition government while its leader, Karim Sanjabi, is still in prison. "It's not a question of the King or of a republic," says Bakhtiar. "It is essential to have an anticorruption government. If people are convinced of that, then they will support the government."

Another leading politician, former Premier Ali Amini, believes that the Shah should become a constitutional monarch responsible to an elected parliament. Although he is an opponent of the Shah's military government, he does not fault it for imposing martial law. Says Amini: "During Muharram, even a civilian government would have had to do the same thing." Amini, in fact, advised the Shah's opponents "to be quiet" during the observance. Among intellectuals there is growing sentiment for a council of regents, with Crown Prince Reza replacing the Shah as a figurehead ruler and political power exercised by parliament. But the Shah is opposed to putting his son in such a precarious position.

The crisis atmosphere was particularly worrisome to the 40,000 Americans in the country, most of them workers on military and corporate projects. There have been no deaths and few injuries to Americans so far but many have been subjected to insults and threatening phone calls. Evacuation plans have been made, but if they had to be executed on short notice, the result, said an embassy official, would be "absolute chaos."

TIME Correspondent Dean Fischer reported from Tehran last week: "Lacking newspapers or other sources of reliable information, Iranians and foreigners alike feed on a daily diet of rumors. Americans talk endlessly among themselves about whether to evacuate the country or stay for the confrontation they are convinced is coming. It is rumored that some Americans have begun stockpiling Molotov cocktails for self-protection against the rampaging mobs they imagine will attack them if the Shah is toppled.

"The diplomats are in the dark. Most believe that only the Shah can command the allegiance of the army. But for every assurance of the loyalty of top-ranking officers, there is a whisper of widespread disaffection among middle-ranking military men. There are tales of AK-47s in the hands of Iranian Communists, but no one can swear he has seen them. One certainty is that opposition to the Shah is rising. Another is that people are being killed by soldiers some place in Iran nearly every day. Under those circumstances, it is not surprising that tension, fear and apprehension about the future are reaching panicky proportions."

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