Lurching Bloodily Onward

By William E. Smith

A bomb wipes out 74 of Khomeini's men and chaos continues

When the night was young, the King contemplated plunder At dawn, his body, head and crown were all asunder. --Iranian poem describing the assassination of Nader Shah, an 18th century king.

The Ayatullah Mohammed Beheshti was not a king, but he was the emerging strongman of Iranian politics. He was the nation's Chief Justice, the secretary-general of the ruling Islamic Republican Party and the chief strategist of the Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini's theocratic state. At 52, he was the chief hope of continuity for the Islamic revolution, whose terrifying politics have split Iran into bitter and contending factions.

Precisely because terror on every side has become a way of life in Iran, the I.R.P. had sought to avoid attention--and perhaps attack--by keeping secret a meeting of its leaders last week at their headquarters in south Tehran. It did not succeed. As Beheshti addressed the gathering, a massive explosion ripped apart the entire building. The roof and walls collapsed. Bodies and parts of bodies flew through the air, then were buried under tons of rubble. The noise of the blast carried for miles.

Beheshti died instantly, and 73 of the 90 people who had gathered to hear him accompanied him in death. They included four Cabinet ministers, six deputy ministers, 27 members of parliament and some of the most influential men of Iran's revolution. Seldom if ever in history had any government been so rent by a single act of terrorism, a successful plot that sent 74 political figures to their deaths. With the blast, and the vengeful events sure to follow, Iran appeared to be lurching dangerously closer to total chaos.

Learning of the clandestine meeting and acting with quick efficiency, an unidentified opposition group had planted demolition charges in the foundation of the party headquarters. According to some reports, the plotters had even managed to gain access to the hall and place a bomb in a trash basket near the podium. At 9:05 p.m. on June 28th, about 15 minutes after Beheshti had begun to speak, the charges went off simultaneously. When the dust and debris had finally settled, a stunned and at first unbelieving count of the bodies began. There were plenty of white cloths in which to bind the wounded; rescuers simply unwound their long turbans.

Despite the fury of the blast, Radio Iran did not report for three hours that an explosion at party headquarters had caused "considerable damage to life and property." Fearing that a coup d'etat might be under way, the government cut communications to the outside world.

The attack culminated weeks of mounting tension. After a yearlong power struggle, Beheshti and his clerical allies had finally engineered the firing of President Abolhassan Banisadr, the intellectual whose moderate ideas had been anathema to the mullahs. Banisadr had swiftly gone into hiding. Throughout the week there had been reports that the government had arrested and summarily executed dozens of his supporters. On Saturday, the day before the bombing of I.R.P. headquarters, a prominent aide to Khomeini, Hojjatoleslam Ali Khamene'i, was seriously injured by a bomb concealed in a tape recorder. The day after the blast, the warden of Tehran's Evin prison, the scene of countless trials and executions, was shot to death, apparently by an aide.

On Tuesday, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran, beating their chests and waving black banners in mourning for the slain politicians. "Beheshti, you were the light of the Imam!" the mourners shouted. "You were innocent!" Thousands struggled by foot to follow the motor procession to the cemetery of Behesht-e-Zahra, twelve miles south of the city. There the bodies were washed, wrapped in white shrouds and placed facing Mecca in a huge plot reserved for "martyrs of the revolution." When the Majlis (parliament) met the next day, the sounds of compulsive weeping filled the chamber. Pictures of the 27 dead members were propped up on their vacant seats, each photograph half-hidden by a mound of red roses. Six members injured in the bombing appeared in wheelchairs; one was carried in on a cot.

Despite the attendant terror and confusion, the government handled the crisis reasonably well. At its head were Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Raja'i and Majlis Speaker Akbar Rafsanjani, both of whom had left the I.R.P. meeting shortly before the deadly blast. Said one U.S. official: "The clerics moved with remarkable speed and effectiveness after the bombing to maintain control and to establish a mechanism for succession." The jobs of Beheshti and his colleagues were quickly filled, and the government proceeded with plans to hold elections late this month to replace Banisadr. Khomeini exhorted his countrymen to vote but warned them against choosing a President "like the last one."

Who was to blame for the mass murders? Only one group said it was responsible: a Turkish-based organization called the Party of National Equality, which presumes to represent the ethnic Turkish community in Iran, mainly in Azerbaijan. The claim was not taken seriously, though it served as a reminder of the ethnic tension ready to explode on the periphery of Iran if there should be a collapse at the center.

Iran's revolutionary zealots were quick to blame the "Great Satan," the U.S., and to a lesser extent Iraq, with which Iran is still at war. At one point Khomeini himself declared that "American hands came out of the sleeves of these traitors who committed the recent crime against Islam." But he also accused the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the urban guerrilla organization that had generally supported the deposed Banisadr. Khomeini called the guerrillas "blind hearts who claimed they took part in crusades for the people. You are breathing your last breath--you are going to hell."

Considered the best-organized opposition group in Iran, the Mujahedin have some 100,000 guerrillas under arms and several hundred thousand supporters. Their organization was founded in 1965 by young militants who believed that an urban guerrilla campaign, embracing the principles of both Islam and class warfare, was the best course for an Iranian revolution. During the next decade, they assassinated agents of the Shah and U.S. military advisers in Iran. After the Shah's downfall, the Mujahedin rejected overtures from the I.R.P., whose policies they considered "opportunistic, reactionary and monopolistic," and instead supported Banisadr as the best alternative to the power of the mullahs.

In their struggle against the Shah, the guerrillas customarily tried to provoke the regime into committing acts of blind repression and retaliation, thereby enlisting more public sympathy and support. They seem to be using the same tactics against Khomeini. During the past fortnight, the government executed some 90 dissidents and last week arrested 50 others for allegedly trying to destroy the parliament building.

In the meantime, using its vast network of informers and security forces, the government vowed that it would arrest Banisadr, who some observers believe is in his home area of Hamadan on the borders of Kurdistan. Indeed, at week's end a London-based magazine reported that it had interviewed the fugitive in Kurdistan shortly after his disappearance. In the interview Banisadr called on Iranians to fight "those now using illegal methods to obtain power in Iran." Claimed one of Banisadr's colleagues in Beirut, perhaps with more bravado than considered judgment: "The authorities know where he is, but they are not strong enough to arrest him. If they admitted knowing where he is, they would be acknowledging their weakness."

In messages telephoned to friends overseas last week, the deposed President accused the mullahs of meddling in military affairs and weakening the war effort against Iraq by conspiring against him. He called on the military to fight on against the Iraqis without allowing "traitorous hands to stab you in the back." He also declared that the fundamentalists in parliament represented a total of only 4 million voters, while he had been elected President in 1980 by 11 million people. Nonetheless, most experts believe that Banisadr, who lacks a strong base of his own, is not likely to re-emerge as a national leader.

As has been true since the revolution deposed the Shah 2 1/2 years ago, the country's only unifying figure remains Khomeini, who is now 81 and in frail health. His condition has apparently remained steady following his recovery from a heart attack early last year, although at times he has difficulty breathing. He lives in a two-story brick and steel building in the village of Jamaran on the mountain slopes to the north of Tehran.

Khomeini meets frequently with a few advisers, including his son Seyed Ahmad Khomeini and son-in-law Ayatullah Shahabeddin Eshraqi. But unlike his father, Seyed Ahmad does not believe that the I.R.P. necessarily represents the best vehicle for maintaining an Islamic government. According to some reports, he has been chided by the old man on occasion, especially when he leaned toward Banisadr during the former President's struggle with the powerful mullahs. Khomeini seems to be more at ease with his son-in-law Eshraqi, who played a key role in jettisoning both Banisadr and Mehdi Bazargan, the first Prime Minister of the post-Shah regime.

Khomeini still enjoys great power and prestige, though some diplomats believe he made a serious mistake when he fired Banisadr, thereby plunging into politics and aligning himself with the fortunes of one party, the Islamic Republicans. "He remains a strong man," says an Arab official in Beirut, "but he is not the superman of two years ago." Khomeini's slight decline has somewhat eased the anxieties of conservative Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia, that had feared his success would inspire revolutionary zealots in their own countries.

There are also signs of a possible slippage in the I.R.P.'s popular strength. The party's principal supporters are still the mullahs and their religious followers, but lined up against it are uncounted numbers of moderate Muslims who, like Banisadr, believe that Islam is not incompatible with modernization. Last month parliamentary elections were held in 19 constituencies, including the Turkish-speaking northwest. I.R.P. candidates won easily everywhere, as had been expected. But only one-sixth of the eligible voters chose to cast ballots. Predicts Rouhollah K. Ramazani, an Iranian professor of foreign affairs at the University of Virginia: "Without Beheshti's unifying influence on a day-to-day basis, the fissions and fractures within the party will begin to surface."

Looking ahead, Marvin Zonis, an Iran specialist at the University of Chicago, says, "When Khomeini dies, there will be no one with the same charisma to hold things together, and the whole place will be up for grabs." Conversely, Zonis believes that if Khomeini lives and continues to keep the clergy in power, "the left will grow stronger in its opposition."

Throughout the postrevolutionary period, Western experts have kept an uneasy eye on the role of the Tudeh, the tiny Communist party that is backed by Moscow. Tudeh and the I.R.P. have a tacit alliance, though each group seems to view the other with cynicism if not disdain. A Tudeh push for power seems unlikely, but one frightening if improbable scenario is that Tudeh might grab control in a period of chaos and, under the terms of a 1921 treaty between Moscow and Tehran, give the Soviets a pretext to invade Iran in support of the party.

But many Western observers question whether the Soviet Union would really care to become so deeply embroiled in Iran. Says a senior British diplomat: "A breakdown of the state is not in the interest of the Soviet Union. What the Russians want is an authoritarian, centralized regime spouting anti-American, anti-imperialistic slogans." He believes that the Soviets are very worried that a fragmentation of Iran could encourage similar separatist tendencies among Muslims on the Soviet side of the border.

As Iran stumbles toward extremism, the armed forces, which could swing the balance of power, have remained quiet. The Shah's army, of course, exists no more; the new army is led mostly by former junior officers, and its ranks are filled with recruits, revolutionary guards and a few technicians from the past. Only recently, as a result of its success in holding back the Iraqis, has the army begun to recover the cohesion and confidence it lost in the revolution. Many of its officers respected Banisadr, but as a whole the army is believed loyal to Khomeini and unlikely, at this stage, to challenge the authority of the "Supreme Interpreter of Islamic Law." In the event of a crisis, the military may disintegrate along ethnic lines, as did the Lebanese army during the 1975-77 fighting in that country.

The sad prospect, therefore, seems to be for a rising round of repression and terrorism. "The demise of Banisadr," says James Bill of the University of Texas, "has completed the destruction of the moderate center and marked the beginning of direct battle between the radical left and the extremist right." The bombing of the I.R.P. headquarters, he adds, offered extremists of the far right the excuse to launch attacks on forces "perceived to be anywhere to their left." The result, he concludes, is the start of "a dangerous new period in the revolution."

Hassan Javadi, an Iranian political scientist at the University of California, believes that the killing of Beheshti may have advanced the timetable of the civil war he feels is inevitable. Shahram Chubin of London's International Institute for Strategic Studies anticipates, at the least, a more savage form of violence. Says he: "None of the opposition groups is in a position to challenge the government in the streets, not even the armed forces. It may be that a resort to terrorism will become the only available means of expression within Iran."

Indeed, to maintain their power, the mullahs are expected by British intelligence to launch a bloody program of repression. That in turn would likely touch off more violence against the government. One thing seemed certain: the struggle for control of Iran is only just beginning. --By William E Smith. Reported by Raji Samghabadi/New York and Wilton Wynn/Beirut, with other bureaus

With reporting by Raji Samghabadi, Wilton Wynn, other bureaus

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