The Shah Takes His Leave

But his country's problems remain unresolved

The day began cool and overcast, but by early afternoon the skies were a wash of bright blue. In Tehran, the throngs were filling the streets to begin once more their daily demonstrations. If the protesters had looked upward, they would have seen a blue and white Boeing 727 swing over the city, circle once and turn away. The pilot of that plane was Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, taking a long, perhaps last look at the capital of his realm. For years he had lived under the illusion that he was a monarch beloved by his 34 million subjects; for years he had harbored the conviction that his leadership was bringing all the benefits of national wealth and well-being to a backward nation. In the end, it had come to this: he departed hated, vilified, denounced. After 37 years on the Peacock Throne, he had been ignominiously driven out of Iran. The public face he put upon it was that he was simply taking a leave. But in all likelihood, his departure means the end of monarchy in a land ruled by kings for more than 2,500 years.

It was a measure of how far he had fallen that he had to slip away. Only a few friends, aides and Iranian reporters were present at the airport farewell ceremonies when, shortly after 1 p.m., Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar rushed in to report that his new government had received a vote of confidence in Parliament. This formality completed, the weary Shah turned and made a brief statement. "As I have said before, I am going on a trip, a vacation, because I am too tired," he said. An army officer kissed his hand. Another knelt to kiss his shoe, but the Shah, his eyes brimming with tears, raised him to his feet. Then, accompanied by his wife, Empress Farah, who had spent the last two weeks choosing treasures from their palaces to take with them, the Shah boarded his plane and flew off.

Soon he was winging toward Egypt. He had asked to call on Jordan's King Hussein, but the King had begged off, explaining that the Shah's presence would create too much dissention. Saudi Arabia also rejected an overture from the Shah. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, however, agreed to receive him. The Shah and his entourage were met with all the trappings due a royal personage--a red carpet, a 21-gun salute, an embrace from Sadat--and were escorted to the Oberoi Hotel located on an island in the Nile near Aswan.

For several days the Shah, frequently in the company of Sadat, relaxed at the resort. He and the Empress walked among the rocks on the shore, toured the area by boat, and one day held conversations with former President Gerald Ford, who was visiting the Middle East with his wife. Early this week the Shah was scheduled to fly to Rabat at the invitation of Morocco's King Hassan. From there he would journey on to the U.S., where he was expected to stay at the Palm Springs estate of Walter H. Annenberg, former U.S. Ambassador to Britain.

Half an hour after the Shah had gone, his departure was announced over Tehran Radio. The news set off an orgy of exultation throughout Iran. In Tehran, people danced in the streets and hugged and kissed one another in joyous abandon. "The Shah is gone! The Shah is gone!" they shouted. They garlanded their windshield wipers with flowers that seemed to dance in the air. They toppled statues of the Shah and his father, and cut his picture from bank notes. Demonstrators and army troops embraced. Red carnations sprouted incongruously from the barrels of soldiers' rifles.

Replacing the Shah's portrait were hundreds of thousands of pictures of the man whose single-minded determination had at last succeeded in bringing down the Shah. The exiled leader, Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, had become both symbol and architect of the Iranian revolution, and presumably was weighing the appropriate moment to return to claim his due. Within hours, virtually every public square and boulevard once named for the Shah had been renamed for Khomeini.

Even Iranians in official positions of power seemed to be relieved and, in fact, often delighted. Employees at the Iranian embassy in Washington issued a statement accusing Iran's ambassador to the U.S., Ardeshir Zahedi, the Shah's closest adviser, of "conspiring against the interests and will of the Iranian nation," and vowed not to work until he was removed. A similar revolt took place at Iran's United Nations mission in New York City, where diplomats closed down their offices as a "token of solidarity with the Iranian people."

Next day the Bakhtiar government announced that it had fired nine prominent ambassadors from their posts, including U.N. Ambassador Fereydoun Hoveida, and Zahedi, though the latter said he would continue as the Shah's emissary. Not all the demonstrations, unfortunately, were peaceful--or approving. When the Shah's departure was revealed to a group of soldiers in Ahwaz, they poured into the streets, setting fire to cars and shooting wildly at crowds. At least 20 people were killed, 60 wounded.

In Neauphle-le-Chateau outside Paris, it was nearly 10 a.m. when the news reached members of Ayatullah Khomeini's entourage by shortwave radio. Cheers rang out, and the drafty rooms, devoid of furniture, warmed with laughter. Aides quickly put on their coats and crossed a snow-lined street to tell the Ayatullah. "When he heard it, he said, 'God is great,' " an assistant told reporters. But his demeanor was as stoic as ever. "He did not show any particular emotion," said one of Khomeini's relatives. "He has been fighting this battle for so many years. It is always the same, even when his son was killed."

To the jubilant shouts of supporters, Khomeini shuffled across the street to give reporters his reaction to the historic event. "The departure is not the final victory," he said. "It is the preface to our victory. I am congratulating the brave people of Iran for this victory. We must consider that this victory will not only mean the abdication of this dynasty but also the end of foreign domination, and this is more important even than the eradication of the Pahlavi dynasty."

That statement was a clear warning that Khomeini and his supporters had only begun to fight. The religious leader was determined to erase any vestige of the Shah's rule, and that included the shaky government of Prime Minister Bakhtiar and the regency council that had been set up to perpetuate the monarchy. To commemorate all the people who had died in Iran's rebellion, and to keep alive his own revolution, Khomeini asked Iranians to mark the Muslim holy day of Ar-bayeen last Friday as a day of peaceful protest. In an astounding display of affection and allegiance, throngs estimated at between 1.5 and 4 million people marched through the streets of Tehran.

It was undeniably the largest peaceful demonstration Iran had ever seen or, for that matter, was likely to see. "We are waiting for you, Khomeini," many chanted as they marched, while others held aloft portraits of him. At noon, in the downtown plaza now named Khomeini Square, hundreds of thousands prayed together and acclaimed a resolution calling for the Ayatullah to establish a government. That spectacle, said Khomeini later, was "another popular and spectacular referendum by which the Iranian people say they don't want the Shah, his dynasty, regency council or government, but want an Islamic government."

Most observers agree that Khomeini must first win the support of the military, whose leadership is still resolutely promonarchist; if the mullah succeeded in bringing down Bakhtiar, the restive generals almost certainly would attempt a coup. With that thought in mind, President Carter last week pleaded with Khomeini to give the Bakhtiar government "a chance to succeed." He was rebuffed by the religious leader, who pointed out that it was not for the U.S. to decide the legality of a foreign government. Nevertheless, Washington said that discussions were going on in Tehran among representatives of Khomeini, military leaders and members of the government.

A major element in the talks was the future role of the Revolutionary Council appointed by Khomeini a week earlier. Its purpose was to establish a transitional government that would write a new Iranian constitution. But Washington concluded that the Ayatullah, whose influence it had vastly misjudged, was now the essential factor in bringing order to Iran. Despite Carter's plea in favor of the Bakhtiar government, the Administration was seeking a workable formula that would restore stability and elicit support among the Iranian people. One theory suggested that Bakhtiar might govern on an interim basis while Khomeini's Revolutionary Council prepared parliamentary elections and supervised any changes in the constitution.

There are major questions of how Khomeini would wield his power to deal with all the crucial issues that his nation --and much of the rest of the world --must face. Khomeini was bound to link Iran closer to other Islamic nations and to meter Iran's oil shipments in a way that could well distress the U.S. and its allies. In effect, Washington could scarcely expect any longer to count on Iran as the keystone of Western power in the Middle East. In fact, the Carter Administration, anticipating the worst, has already ordered the removal of some secret surveillance operations that monitor Soviet military activities from Iran, a process that drew a sharp rebuke from Khomeini.

If Khomeini has drawn a list of priorities for the Islamic nation that he envisions, one item in particular must surely be near the top. He has promised to dismantle the estimated multibillion-dollar financial empire that the Shah and his family have created for themselves. Sources in Tehran last week, evidently now willing to discuss long secret information, disclosed something of the nature of that empire. The royal family and the Pahlavi Foundation, which the Shah created in 1958, operated 205 business firms, banks and factories in Iran. The foundation controls 96 such enterprises; the rest are either fully or partly owned by the Shah's relatives. Among other properties, these holdings comprise industrial complexes, office buildings, sports clubs, mining firms, entire villages, warehouses, interests in foreign companies, vast tracks of real estate, and import and export facilities. Whatever may be done about those, probably beyond Khomeini's reach is the array of the Shah's and his family's palatial retreats in London, Switzerland, New York City and France, not to say an island in the Seychelles and choice acreage in Beverly Hills.

Clearly, the Shah in exile will not want for comfort as he ponders his next move. The Annenberg estate, while only a temporary headquarters, would rival the opulence of, say, a Persian king. Its 200 verdant acres, surrounded by California desert, are reached by way of Frank Sinatra Drive. Electronically operated gates open onto a flower-flanked drive and the sprawling dusky pink volcanic-rock main mansion, with its five bedrooms and 6,400-sq.-ft. living room. The compound includes two five-bedroom guesthouses, a swimming pool, several lakes, and a nine-hole golf course, all maintained by some 60 servants and security guards. Last week the State Department accorded the estate diplomatic status. This enabled Washington to install special security measures, among them a coterie of Secret Service agents.

It is possible, of course, in the flush of the Shah's departure, that just as the world for too long overestimated his hold on Iran, it may now be overestimating that of Khomeini. The Ayatullah must now take into account the forces that his revolution has unleashed. With the irritant of the Shah's presence now removed, there is even the chance that a new stability could evolve with the cooperation of Iran's professional classes and elements of the army. But for now, Khomeini seems to be in charge.

"During all those years," says an Iranian official, trying to explain the Khomeini phenomenon, "you couldn't talk to anybody because you couldn't trust anybody. Khomeini was strong enough to say one thing and stand for one cause from the beginning. The people began to appreciate him, and now they glorify him. No one should rule out the possibility of chaos, but there is one element that makes me think that it can be avoided: our religion. This religion will keep people together in spite of the horrible things that have been done."

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