The Shah’s decision to expel Ayatollah Khomeini to a more distant location from Iran failed as international, mostly western, journalists flocked to the cleric’s home in France for interviews, generating a great amount of good publicity for the ayatollah and the revolution in his homeland, and bad publicity for Shah Mohammad Reza Pavlavi and the Iranian government. Ayatollah Khomeini’s staid, numinous demeanor impressed upon the western press of an “Eastern mystic”, further enhancing the cleric’s religious stature. In Iran, the ayatollah took on a semi-divine status, and on the night of November 27, 1978, thousands of people went into frenzied celebration after believing to have seen the cleric’s face in the light of the moon. Also in November 1978, Karim Sanjabi, general secretary of the National Front, an outlawed secular Iranian political party, met with the exiled cleric in Paris; they subsequently forged an alliance that united their forces, a symbolic act as liberals, nationalists, communists, and other secular groups were already joining the religion-fueled mass actions. However, Ayatollah Khomeini’s belief in the incompatibility between western-styled democracy and Islam would later play out in shaping the government of post-revolutionary Iran.
(Taken from Iranian Revolution – Wars of the 20th Century – Volume 4)
Revolution In October 1977, protests broke out. Many political factions had long opposed the Shah, e.g. liberals, democrats, communists, each motivated by diverse reasons but suppressed by SAVAK and other security units. By the mid-1970s, only the Shah’s official Rastakhiz Party functioned, as multi-party politics was outlawed, reinforcing the notion that Iran was an autocracy. By then, to many Iranians, the Shah had become a cold, distant figure. Rumors and reports of corruption and extravagance by the monarch, royal family, and government were prevalent. Moreover, economic growth mostly benefited only the ruling few, widening the gap between rich and poor, and the vast majority experienced little, if any, improvement in their daily lives.
During his reign, the Shah made certain that the country was secure from foreign and internal threats, particularly from the Soviet Union and Iranian communists. Suppression of dissent was severe to the extent that although the government refrained from interfering with clerical matters (because of the clergy’s power and influence among the people), the Shah and his security forces were favorite alibis for the cause of supposedly “mysterious” deaths among the clergy and political activists. Thus, the deaths of the popular religious intellectual, Ali Shariati, in June 1977, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s son, the cleric Mostafa Khomeini, in October 1977, were blamed on the government.
Another factor that contributed to the rise of the opposition came from an unexpected source: the United States. President Jimmy Carter, who became U.S. head of state in January 1977 with human rights as his major foreign policy initiative, put pressure on the Shah to tone down government-sponsored repression in Iran. Because of the ongoing Cold War, however, President Carter continued to actively support the Shah, even making a state visit to Iran in December 1977 and expressing high regard for the monarch at a state dinner. But President Carter’s (initial) reproof and the Shah’s releasing over 300 political prisoners in February 1978 encouraged the opposition, believing that the Shah’s support from his staunchest ally was weakening.
The year 1978 became the critical period, as it marked the start of the revolution where the various anti-Shah political, economic, social, and religious factors united into a powerful opposition. Ayatollah Khomeini, still in exile, urged Iranians to overthrow the Shah. Then on January 7 of that year, an article in a major national newspaper made scathing personal and religious attacks on Ayatollah Khomeini. The article, which was written under an alias that later was identified as belonging to a high-ranking government official, stated that the ayatollah had questionable clerical credentials, was of part Indian (and thus not purely Iranian) descent, was acting on British interests (i.e. he was a “British agent”), and had personal and political ambitions. On hindsight, the government erred by publishing the article, as the cleric was by now largely forgotten in Iran but which now allowed the ayatollah to re-enter the people’s consciousness. At Qom, the exiled cleric’s hometown in southern Iran, outraged seminary students broke out in protest at the newspaper article, leading to clashes with security forces that resulted in four students being killed (Ayatollah Khomeini gave a much higher number of fatalities and called the dead students “martyrs”).
Then on February 18, 1978, more protests broke out in many towns and cities to commemorate the Qom deaths, as per Arbayeen, a Shiite tradition of holding memorial services forty days after a person’s death. A riot ensued in Tabriz, with protesters attacking and destroying movie theaters, night clubs, and other infrastructures deemed an abomination to Islam. Six protesters were killed, although the opposition declared that hundreds were “martyred”. Then on March 29, 1978, forty days later, to commemorate the Tabriz deaths, more demonstrations were carried out, which once more degenerated into deadly confrontations. Again forty days later, on May 10, in another memorial service observing Abayeen, anti-Shah factions launched more demonstrations in towns and cities.
These protests, and especially the deadly violence that ensued, shocked the Shah who implemented changes to his government: SAVAK was restructured, with a moderate military officer appointed as its head, and government officials with tainted records (as determined by the Shah) were dismissed. The government also made efforts to win over moderate sectors of the clergy. These measures appeared to work, as opposition activity abated during mid-1978. At the urging of Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari, a leading cleric, a protest action scheduled on June 17, 1978 was carried out in mosques and not on the streets. The government, as well as the CIA which, by this time, also had taken notice of the growing unrest, were convinced that the turbulence had been contained (which turned out to be a gross miscalculation).
On August 19, 1978, in Abadan, a city in southwestern Iran, a fire broke out that destroyed Cinema Rex, a movie theater, leaving 422 people killed. Dozens of movie houses had been destroyed during earlier periods of unrest, but the large number of casualties at Cinema Rex prompted tens of thousands of people to take to the streets in anger, believing that the government, specifically SAVAK, had caused the fire. Anti-Shah activities now intensified, with protests of hundreds of thousands of people taking place all across the country, which would lead to the final phase of the revolution. In Isfahan, martial law was declared when protesters went on a rampage and destroyed West-oriented private properties. Jamshid Amouzegar, the Prime Minister, resigned, and the Shah replaced him with Jafar Sharif-Emami.
The new Prime Minister yielded even more political, security, and social concessions: elections were proposed, multi-party politics was allowed, and the Rastakhan Party was abolished; SAVAK’s powers were curtailed and political prisoners freed; press censorship was lifted as were restrictions on the right to assembly; the Islamic calendar was reinstated and western-oriented symbols and infrastructures deemed offensive to Islam were removed or shut down. These concessions were in vain, however.
By early September 1978, mass protest actions were occurring almost daily with crowds containing up to 500,000 people. Calls for the return of Ayatollah Khomeini and formation of an Islamic state also grew. On September 8, 1978, the government declared martial law in Tehran and other urban centers, banned mass assemblies, and declared an overnight curfew. On that same day, a street demonstration in Tehran involving thousands of people ended in a bloody incident in Jaleh Square, where army units, which consisted of new recruits eager to enforce the ban on mass assembly, opened fire on the crowd. With other bloody incidents taking place throughout the day, the total number of fatalities reached 88 (a figure that was later determined after the revolution). The government casualty figure given at the time was 86. Ayatollah Khomeini’s figure of 4,000 dead, however, was widely accepted by most people. Other contemporary news media placed the number of killed ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand to even as high as 15,000.
At any rate, this incident, known as Black Friday, became the crucial point of the revolution, invariably turning moderate opposition and neutral sectors of society against the Shah. The scale of the violence likewise cowed the government into inaction, and the military thereafter was hesitant to enforce martial law with any real effect. By mid-September 1978, the labor sector had sided openly with the opposition, and private and public workers’ strikes were breaking out in all major towns and cities. By late October 1978, a full-blown industry-wide general strike (notably involving the oil sector that was crucial to the government’s survival) had brought the country’s economy into a stand-still, threatening a financial collapse. Protest actions also had become much more violent, e.g. looting and destroying banks, stores, western-oriented buildings, the foreign embassies of Britain and the United States, etc.
During this time, Iran and Iraq were experiencing rapprochement in their otherwise long-standing hostile relationship, with Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, presenting to the Shah two options on how to deal with Ayatollah Khomeini (still exiled in Najaf, Iraq): assassinate, or expel the cleric from Iraq. The Shah, after deliberating with his Cabinet, deemed that the cleric’s death would generate even greater tumult and decided on expulsion. On October 3, 1978, Ayatollah Khomeini was expelled from Iraq and after being stopped from entering neighboring Kuwait, was granted entry in France, where he set up residence in Neauphle-le-Château located outside Paris, in a house that was rented out for him by Iranian émigrés.
The Shah’s decision to expel the ayatollah from Iraq to a more distant location from Iran failed, however, as international, mostly western, journalists flocked to the cleric’s home for interviews, generating a great amount of good publicity for the ayatollah and the revolution in his homeland, and bad publicity for the Shah and the Iranian government. Ayatollah Khomeini’s staid, numinous demeanor impressed upon the western press of an “Eastern mystic”, further enhancing the cleric’s religious stature. In Iran, the ayatollah took on a semi-divine status, and on the night of November 27, 1978, thousands of people went into frenzied celebration after believing to have seen the cleric’s face in the light of the moon. Also in November 1978, Karim Sanjabi, general secretary of the National Front, an outlawed secular Iranian political party, met with the exiled cleric in Paris; they subsequently forged an alliance that united their forces, a symbolic act as liberals, nationalists, communists, and other secular groups were already joining the religion-fueled mass actions. However, Ayatollah Khomeini’s belief in the incompatibility between western-styled democracy and Islam would later play out in shaping the government of post-revolutionary Iran.
On November 5, 1978, in a television broadcast to his people, the Shah acknowledged that he recognized the revolution but said he disapproved of it, and promised to make amends for his mistakes and work to restore democracy. The following day, he dismissed Prime Minister Sharif-Emami, replacing him with General Gholam Reza Azhari, a moderate military officer. The Shah also arrested and jailed 80 former government officials whom he believed had failed the country and ultimately were responsible for the current unrest; the loss of his staunchest supporters, however, further isolated the Shah. Simultaneously, he also released hundreds of opposition political prisoners.