Waiting for the Ayatullah

As the national euphoria ends, the military begins to show its muscle

The joyous mood that overtook Iran after the Shah fled the country was all but over. Last week Iran faced new violence, new tests of wills, new forebodings about an uncertain future that might involve chaos, coups, civil war. Without much visible success, the government of the Shah's appointee, Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, struggled for both popularity and credibility. Led by generals fiercely loyal to the Shah, the army stayed on the alert, clashing sporadically with opponents of the monarch. At week's end, Bakhtiar made a dramatic bid to break the impasse. He offered to meet early this week with Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, the bearded, 78-year-old leader of the country's revolution, at the exiled Ayatullah's headquarters in France. Khomeini accepted, though he vowed to make no compromise with Bakhtiar on the new shape of Iran's government.

Audacity was clearly needed to defuse the tension between Bakhtiar and his opponents. Khomeini was originally scheduled to fly to Tehran last Friday, the Muslim day of prayer; 48 hours before Khomeini's departure, Bakhtiar's nervous government reversed its earlier decision to let him return. Soldiers moved into Tehran's Mehrabad Airport during the night and unplugged electric and fuel lines of Boeing 707 and 747 aircraft belonging to Iran Air, the country's commercial line. One of the 747s was to have been flown to Paris by striking pilots and crew to pick up the revolution's most important passenger. The army then surrounded the airport with tanks and closed it "until further notice." The next day troops ordered away the crew and 2,000 people who had come to the airport with Ayatullah Mahmoud Taleghani, Khomeini's spokesman in Iran, to see the plane leave for Paris. The group turned and left, chanting contemptuously, "Death to the Shah!"

At Khomeini's headquarters at Neauphle-le-Chateau, aides had set up a table under an apple tree and begun taking press reservations for seats on the jumbo jet that was to carry Khomeini home. Unfazed by news that Iran Air was grounded, the Ayatullah's entourage chartered an Air France 707. After hearing that the army had occupied all the country's major airports, a Khomeini aide, Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi, explained that the plans had to be changed and "takeoff sadly will be delayed."

Since taking office, the Prime Minister had tried to prevent, as he put it, the "historic bloodshed" that would result from a confrontation between supporters of the Ayatullah and Iran's 340,000-man armed forces. In a televised appeal for support last week, Bakhtiar outlined the reforms that his government was carrying out: releasing political prisoners, ending censorship, abolishing SAVAK, the secret police, and speeding up the corruption trials of former public officials.

Bakhtiar also wrote a remarkable letter to Khomeini offering "respects and greetings to a great warrior striving for rights." Addressing the Ayatullah as "Your Sacred Eminence," he asked Khomeini to delay his return for three weeks. The Prime Minister stressed his desire to "fulfill all the wishes of the martyrs of freedom and independence," but that "present various intrigues" made Khomeini's return difficult. "This request is made to prevent incidents which, if they occur, will be unpleasant events and will make everyone mourn eternally." As a conciliatory gesture, Bakhtiar signed his own name, leaving off the title of Prime Minister. The Ayatullah's answer was uncompromising: he refused to be part of any deal with the "illegal" government.

Frustrated by his inability to persuade Khomeini to stay in Paris, Bakhtiar abruptly changed course and threw in his lot with the military. In contravention of his promise of press freedom, seven leading editors were arrested in a predawn raid on Friday. Some of the journalists' homes were ransacked--an ugly echo of the old regime. A march through downtown Tehran had been scheduled that morning to protest the closing of the airport. As the crowds began to gather, soldiers took up positions near the Shahyad monument. Some of the troops accepted flowers from the demonstrators and shouted "Long live Khomeini!" Then, after warning the protesters to get out of the line of fire, they shot into the crowd with automatic rifles. There were reports of fighting also in Mashhad and Tabriz. In the capital alone, estimates of the dead ranged from 30 to 135. Seven more protesters were reported killed the following day in a clash between soldiers and 300,000 demonstrators in Abadan.

Bakhtiar took full responsibility for the action. His greatest fear--apart from the collapse of his government--was that the return of Khomeini at the wrong moment could trigger more bloodshed and perhaps a military coup. The danger of violence was underscored when anonymous squads of chomaq-be-dast (literally, stick wielders) roamed the streets of Tehran after the 11 p.m. curfew and began smashing the windows of cars that had Khomeini posters on them. TIME'S Parviz Raein learned that a group of at least 250 Iranians have decided to wage an underground terrorist campaign if the present constitution is forcibly overthrown. They claim to be well armed and ready "to fight it out." The elite Imperial Guard, ever faithful to the Shah, put on an imposing display of strength to show the foreign press where their loyalties lie. A pro-government rally turned out tens of thousands of people in the capital. Considering the anti-Shah mood, it was an unexpectedly large demonstration. On the other hand, it may not have been altogether spontaneous: some protesters admitted that they were soldiers or members of families of military men.

For most Iranians, there could be no turning back. Reported TIME Correspondent William McWhirter: "Tehran in many ways is as bleak and lifeless as a dead planet, but it is surprising how little four months of strikes and almost complete economic denial have affected the majority of the population. Paradoxically, the poorest seemed to be faring the best, perhaps because of their access to community food cooperatives and neighborhood organizations. When asked about the 'economic ruin' of his country, Tehran's Ayatullah Taleghani replied firmly: 'We do not mind at all that the economy is destroyed. In the West, the economy is above freedom. Here, freedom is now above the economy. After 50 years of living under the boot and heel of imperialism, we have no other purpose than achieving freedom.' "

Added McWhirter: "That is essentially why any remaining opposition miscalculates not only the momentum of the movement, but its deep and broad-based commitment to making profound social changes that will make any return to the past impossible. Observed an ex-army officer imprisoned for 15 years under the Shah: 'The people are ready to starve themselves before they give in. They've already gone so far in self-sacrifice. They are determined.' "

Until he sided with the military, most of Khomeini's supporters had no personal quarrel with Bakhtiar. He has a long and honorable record of opposition to the Shah and a reputation for honesty rare among Iranian politicians. But he was named by the Shah, and Bakhtiar's insistence on upholding the constitution is widely thought to mean that he supports the Pahlavi dynasty. Privately, Bakhtiar has acknowledged that Iran would be better off as a republic with a new constitution; he has indicated his willingness to go along with a referendum in which the country would vote on whether to declare itself a republic or not.

Western observers remain puzzled as to what Khomeini really means when he talks about turning Iran into an "Islamic republic." But in a number of interviews he has asserted that he supports a parliamentary democracy for Iran. First would come the creation of a Khomeini-named revolutionary council, which would appoint a caretaker government, call national elections for a new constituent assembly, and then hold a public referendum on a new constitution. Although Islamic law would presumably become part of the legal system, the Ayatullah's aides have said that religious strictures would not be applied as rigidly as in Saudi Arabia or Libya.

In a sermon to 1,500 followers last week, Khomeini again mentioned a constituent assembly as an early step in rebuilding the country. He promised an honest system of justice, noting that the Imam Ali had set up such a fair system in the 7th century that "even a Jew when he brought suit against the highest official in the land could make his case and win." Khomeini predicted that in the new Iran "even the minorities will be protected and will have the power to bring the most powerful person in the country to justice." During the Christian holidays he received Jewish and Armenian delegations from Iran and assured them that they would continue to be represented in Parliament and that their rights would be protected. When a group of women asked if he would try to bring back polygamy, Khomeini gave a rare smile and answered, "One wife is enough."

American experts on Iran tend to believe the Ayatullah's aides when they insist that he has no ambitions to head any new government. Expectations are that he will eventually return to his home in the holy city of Qum (pronounced, roughly, koom) and resume a life of prayer and learning. He may serve as an arbiter of last resort, leaving the details of government to professional politicians. The Shi'ite branch of Islam, to which most Iranians adhere, has no formal hierarchy. Five other Ayatullahs are deemed theoretically equal to Khomeini as spiritual leaders. They may urge him to maintain a low profile, partly for his own safety, partly, perhaps, out of rivalry. Said Ayatullah Sharietmadari last week: "Khomeini is a man who has been sitting in Paris, the land of freedom, under an apple tree. We are sitting here under the barrels of guns and tanks."

But Khomeini's voice would certainly be heard, since his words and his impressive organization have kept a revolution aflame. At once simple and complex, that organization made impressive use of tape recorders and telephones to disseminate a political message suffused with an ancient spirituality. From the start of his exile in Turkey and Iraq in 1964, Khomeini laid the groundwork for the revolution in talks with his students. Taped cassettes carried his messages back to the mosques in Iran, and to Iranian student organizations around the world.

When the time came to mount strikes and demonstrations, a whole network of mosques, Islamic schools and neighborhood associations was in place. The Ayatullah's operation never lacked money: devout Shi'ites contribute one-fifth of their earnings, and over the years wealthy Iranian bazaar merchants contributed heavily to his cause. Throughout the crisis, Khomeini issued daily Elamiehs (bulletins) from exile counseling his followers to share their grain, return to work in the oilfields, treat soldiers with kindness, and the like. These were recorded in Persian on a cassette, then played over the phone to a headquarters in Qum, reported TIME Correspondent Sandy Burton from Paris. That cassette was then transcribed by followers who mimeographed it and distributed it in the form of flyers to Shi'ites in that city. At the same time, the messages were played over telephone lines to some 9,000 mosques all over Iran, where they were similarly recorded, transcribed and distributed. So speedy was this transmission, says one person who worked on it, that "a phone call from Neauphle-le-Chateau to Qum was better than any type of computer communication system."

As Khomeini prepared to meet Bakhtiar last week, Washington was laboring to find who was responsible for the American diplomatic debacle in Iran. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in an eleven-page report, blamed just about everyone, from President Carter on down (not to mention previous Administrations) for a myopic policy that confined its view of a whole nation to the personage of one man, the Shah, and ignored the grievances that festered throughout the country. The House report stressed that "intelligence and policy failings were intertwined: intelligence collection and analysis were weak, and policymakers' confidence in the Shah in turn skewed intelligence." In fact, TIME learned that the CIA had left intelligence reporting to SAVAK in such areas as nuclear power operations, the Soviet Union and the oil situation. From his exile in Morocco, the Shah was also criticizing U.S. policy--for not giving him more support (see following story).

Just as Washington was unable to forecast accurately the events of Iran's recent past, it also appears powerless to influence the country's immediate future. The basic goal of what Administration officials concede is no more than a patchwork policy is to support Bakhtiar's efforts to restore order. The U.S. backing for the Prime Minister, these officials hasten to add, is based not on preference but simply on the fact that he is, for the moment, the legal head of government. Says a State Department specialist: "We are not trying to push Bakhtiar on the people of Iran. If they decide to select a new leader of their government, we are perfectly willing to cooperate with that choice." In anticipation of that possibility, U.S. diplomats were quietly engaged in unofficial contacts with the Ayatullah's aides, as well as direct ones with Bakhtiar and the top military leaders.

Washington's basic hope is that a more or less tranquil transition period might encourage all political elements to build a new national consensus that could eventually lead to a stable government. Bakhtiar's decision late last week to deal directly with Khomeini suggested that more death and bloodshed could possibly be averted and that Iran might conceivably begin to dream of peace and unity.

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