Wave off Terror

Sabotage and execution as Khomeini calls for unity

Not even the bright lights of a religious holiday can conceal the depth of unease in Iran these days. As the country's predominantly Shi'ite Muslim population prepared to celebrate the birthday of the twelfth Imam,* shots rang out in northern Tehran. Taghi Haj Tarkani, 42, a loyal follower of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's and a leader of last year's anti-Shah demonstrations, had been shot and killed on his doorstep. The two gunmen disappeared on motorcycles moments later, after leaving leaflets attributing their deed to a terrorist group called Forqhan. On the same night, hundreds of miles away, a previously unknown group calling itself Black Wednesday blew up pipelines carrying crude oil to the huge refinery at Abadan, causing production at the refinery to drop temporarily from 550,000 to 100,000 bbl. per day.

Forqhan had gained some previous notoriety by assassinating two of Khomeini's aides this spring. Some Iranians believe that the group is made up of secular extremists who follow both the anticlerical teachings of the late Islamic sociologist Ali Shariati and the militant political views of Libyan Strongman Muammar Gaddafi. A few members of the fundamentalist clergy hold the rather convoluted view that Forqhan was invented by SAVAK, the former Shah's hated se cret police, and that its assassinations are designed to give the revolution a taint of fanaticism. Forqhan has no apparent links to Black Wednesday, a group that demands greater autonomy for the 2 million Iranian Arabs of the Khuzistan region. The latter organization takes its name from the day of a demonstration earlier this year on which several Arabs were killed in a clash with Khomeini-backed Islamic guards.

The Tehran government has been trying to clamp down on areas like Khuzistan and Kurdistan, where autonomy movements have been showing strength.

Last week in Khuzistan, a tribunal condemned to death an Iranian Arab who was accused of possessing several Soviet-made Kalashnikov rifles and grenades.

Also executed last week, on charges of prostitution, were three Tehran bordello madams best known by their nicknames:

Pari the Tall, Ashraf the Four-Eyed and Soroya the Turk. They are believed to be the first women to be put to death by the new government.

Amid these troubles, Khomeini appealed to his countrymen to give up their factional claims and to unite under the banner of Islam. He also declared a general amnesty affecting "all people who committed [political] offenses under the past regime" except those involved in murder or torture. The Ayatullah's hand-picked Premier, Mehdi Bazargan, had been trying to get Khomeini to take such a step for a long time. But an incident a few hours later demonstrated that Khomeini still feels free to overrule the government when it pleases him.

Bazargan's Defense Ministry ordered the dismissal of a senior army commander, Brigadier General Saif Amir Rahimi, who had declared publicly that there was a conspiracy in the armed forces "to discredit the Islamic Republic."

But Rahimi, a Khomeini partisan, flatly refused to be fired, insisting that nobody could dismiss him except the Ayatullah himself. Sure enough, Khomeini next day came to the general's support, and the Bazargan government quietly backed down. -

* The "Absent Imam," Muhammad al Muntazar, who lived in the 10th century, is revered as the Shi'ite Mahdi or Messiah

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