STALKING THE CONSPIRATORS

An aborted coup sparks a giant man hunt and an attempted assassination

The flames of vengeance once again raged over the Islamic Republic of Iran. The government took the extraordinary step last week of closing its borders for four days as officials marshaled a gigantic man hunt for fugitives accused of involvement in a military plot to overthrow the regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. The vengeance even spread abroad as a hit squad in Paris tried to assassinate former Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, the man many Iranians believed had masterminded the July 9 coup attempt.

The attack on Bakhtiar took place Friday morning. According to French police, three armed terrorists posing as journalists tried to break into his apartment in the fashionable Paris suburb of Neuilly. They opened fire on two French police guards, killing one and wounding the other, but were unable to smash through Bakhtiar's armored door. The attackers also shot and killed a woman neighbor and exchanged gunfire with police as they tried to flee the building. The three gunmen were arrested, and police hauled in two other suspects the following day. A militant Iranian group calling itself the Guards of Islam claimed to have ordered Bakhtiar's execution. Iran's Foreign Minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, however, denied his government's involvement.

Bakhtiar, the last Prime Minister of the former Shah, allegedly figured at the center of the aborted "Zionist-Iraqi-U.S." plot. According to President Abolhassan Banisadr, the conspirators intended to occupy two Iranian airbases and bomb a number of strategic targets. Among them: Khomeini's home north of Tehran, the Tehran International Airport and Faizieh religious school in the holy city of Qum. Tehran spokesmen charged that the plotters hoped to tell Iranians over radio and television that "the patriotic army of Iran has overthrown the rotten government of the mullahs," and then invite Bakhtiar back from his Paris exile to head a ruling military council.

It was not to be. Alerted by some timely tipoffs, Islamic guards killed eight officers who were preparing to join another group and take over Nowjeh Air-base in Hamadan, 175 miles southwest of Tehran. The guards then arrested twelve pilots as they sat in their quarters awaiting the "coast-clear" signal from co-conspirators who were to have commandeered U.S.-built Phantom jets. Eleven other rebel groups, en route to the air-base in private cars and buses, somehow learned that the plot had been frustrated and went into hiding. Other insurgents in Tehran were supposed to attack the Central Committee of Islamic Militiamen simultaneously. Some were captured before firing a shot, while the rest fled--as did two air force officers who flew to Turkey in a helicopter and requested asylum.

After frustrating the coup attempt, officials hastily formed a Headquarters for Coordinating the Neutralization of the Conspiracy and launched a nationwide man hunt. The government's actions were accompanied by popular frenzy. Mobs jammed the streets to denounce the conspiracy and mourn their latest martyr: Sergeant Mohammed Esmail Ghorbani, killed by one of the accused plotters, whom he was seeking to arrest.

By week's end the roundup had netted more than 500 suspects, including two of Bakhtiar's cousins, Abbas Qoli Bakhtiar and Samsam Bakhtiar, and the Shah's former Health Minister, Anoushiravan Pouyan. The closed-door trial began on Saturday at the Military Revolutionary Tribunal in Tehran. Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, the hard-lining president of the Supreme Court, had previously announced that "the plotters are facing the death penalty." There seemed little doubt that his grim threat would be carried out with the same judicial severity that sent 42 other Iranians to their death last week on charges that ranged from sex offenses to organizing centers for the Bahai faith, a 19th century offshoot of Islam that is anathema to Iran's Shi'ite majority.

Even before his narrow escape from assassination, Bakhtiar vigorously denied charges that he had masterminded the aborted coup. He nonetheless professed full sympathy for its aims. "It is the natural right of a people, when they are deprived of freedom, of human rights, to rebel," he said. "It was an insurrection. It was not a plot. It is Khomeini himself who is pushing people to revolt." Bakhtiar, who has been an active leader of the anti-Khomeini forces among Iranian exiles in Europe, had no choice but to deny involvement. To do otherwise might jeopardize the political asylum that the French government gave him after he fled from revolutionary Iran last year. In London, however, an associate told the Financial Times that Bakhtiar had been involved in the coup attempt and that the plotting had gone on for nine months. Said the aide: "The plan was perfect. Everyone was there. But now we have lost everything and will have to start again from scratch."

Bakhtiar's implication was also affirmed in a series of dramatic televised confessions by some of the alleged conspirators, including Colonel Nader Vahdatipour and retired Brigadier General Ayatullah Mohaqqeqi. Vahdatipour said the plot had originally been based on the military's desire to save Iran from Communism. The conspirators, he added, got in touch with Bakhtiar only after forming their own clandestine organization.

The aborted coup further intensified the factional rivalry that still threatens to destroy the Khomeini government from within. Banisadr's clerical opponents seized the chance to press demands for a ruthless purge of the armed forces--a convenient means of gaining control over the military at the expense of the President, who is commander in chief of the armed forces. Denouncing what he called the mullahs' "opportunistic gestures," Banisadr pointed out that loyal military personnel had discovered the conspiracy in their own midst and had played the most important role in thwarting it.

But the clerics claimed most of the credit for their own Islamic Republic Party (I.R.P.) and accused the National Front, a rival secular party, of having had a "great role in the American coup." The Front hit back by charging that the I.R.P. "prepares the atmosphere for conspiracies." Seyyed Ahmad Madani, a ranking member of the Front and Khomeini's former Defense Minister, reminded the mullahs that "Islam and nationalism are part and parcel of the same thing. Both deserve respect." Meanwhile, clerical hard-liners were using their access to U.S. embassy files to smear their political opponents. Last week the cleric-run newspaper Sobh-e-Azadegan published an interview with U.S. Hostage Thomas Ahern. Attached to the embassy as a narcotics investigator, Ahern allegedly admitted to being a CIA agent with the code name Penguin. He named two disgraced politicians among his Iranian contacts. One of them, Khosrow Qashqai, leader of the powerful Qashqai tribe of southern Iran, has already been barred from taking his parliamentary seat for alleged association with the CIA. The other, former Deputy Prime Minister Abbas Amir Entezam, is awaiting trial on charges of espionage and "traitorous ties" with the U.S. Government.

As the factional squabbling continued, the Majlis (parliament) showed little inclination to begin deliberating the fate of the 52 U.S. hostages. Since the hostages' freedom was allegedly sought by the military conspirators, that goal might now be further retarded by a fresh wave of anti-Americanism. But at least one voice was raised in the hostages' behalf last week, and from an unexpected quarter. Theology Professor Ali Tehrani, one of Khomeini's most brilliant students, dramatically broke ranks with his fellow mullahs by accusing them in the mass-circulation Ette-la 'at of "a notorious abuse of Islam." Citing passages from the Koran to prove that Islam recognizes diplomatic immunity, he said: "The hostages must be freed as soon as possible. I am absolutely opposed to trying them." That surprising statement drew no immediate response from the clergy. Observed one clerical establishment insider: "That's how the mullahs treat critics they cannot crush. They just ignore them." qed

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.