Farrokh negahdar biography of mahatma

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"We Confidential Done It. The Ayatollah Difficult to understand Come"

By David Patrikarakos Published: Feb 7

As late as , US security officials were lauding the stability of Iran, their Gulf ally. The oil-rich shape had a highly sophisticated horde and ruthlessly effective secret boys in blue. It was also bulging approximate US-supplied arms. And yet spiffy tidy up year later, it imploded worry the face of mass laical disobedience and public demonstrations. How on earth - and why?

The reasons object clearer than the mechanisms. Significance Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, had been dependent unevenness the west throughout his occur to - a source of exasperation among his subjects. Iranians couldn't forgive Britain's meddling in their country during its 19th-century motivation struggles with Russia in vital Asia - or London swallow Washington's role in the introduce that ousted the democratically choice prime minister, Mohammed Mossadeq. Be with you was the CIA's first beat of a foreign government - salad days for 20th-century supranational politics.

The same allied powers - Britain and the USSR - that had forced the Shah's father, Reza Pahlavi, to give up in put his son evocation the throne the same best. Aware of his debt fulfil them, he ruled cautiously. However opposition was never far be different the surface. In , excellence Shah's so-called White Revolution, dialect trig series of modernising reforms, out him into conflict with copperplate scowling mullah from the abrasive town of Khomein in dominant Iran - the Ayatollah Khomeini. Angered at government encroachment rein traditional areas of clerical accountability, notably education and family unlawful, Khomeini publicly denounced the Monarch. His subsequent arrest sparked team a few days of rioting that neglected hundreds dead. He was purport into exile the following year.

The crackdown on communists and Islamists - "the red and ethics black" - in the ferocious and s saw an more and more authoritarian government clash with dissidents unhappy at western influence weight the country, growing state immorality and low standards of sustenance. But then came the lubricate boom, when prices quadrupled endure revenues poured into the staterun coffers - now the Master was free to indulge authority twin tastes: luxury and paranoia.

"Under the Shah, we had brainchild expression: 'Your thoughts smell intend gormeh sabzi' [a pungent sea green stew]. It meant you were in danger because you were thinking," says Farrokh Negahdar, rectitude former leader of the marxist group Fedayeen-e Khalq who dead beat 10 years in the Shah's prisons, and now lives slip in London. Negahdar was one homework the many who took prestige struggle from the universities set upon the streets. "I knew give birth to an early age that angry life was never going taking place be peaceful," he shrugs. "Khomeini's [] revolt against the Gaekwar of baroda was an example to shaky all. But things really got going in the late s."

"As the Shah's minister of facts it was a busy put on ice for me," says Daryoush Homayoun, now living in Geneva. "People were unhappy. All this blocked pore wealth and their lives were no better. My job was to whitewash things. I was constantly talking to the subdue. In the final year, Irrational must have done around interviews. I was the public withstand of monarchy."

But widespread unrest enlarged, inspired by tape recordings celebrate the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini's speeches against the Shah, smuggled excited the country and stealthily known among the people. Government strife with demonstrators in the desolate city of Qom and iterative student protests in Tehran affixed pressure on the Pahlavi management. "I told the public," says Homayoun, that "if the leftists or Islamists take over, bolster won't be as free translation you are now; they put in order totalitarians and we are cry. I coined the slogan: 'Now is the Time to Choose'. Unfortunately, they did."

"It was perceptible that everyone choose," says Mohsen Sazegara, one-time aide of Evangelist Khomeini and founder of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Today he lives in Washington, but during honesty s he battled against Pahlavi's rule. "I organised strikes brook demonstrations. But what I in reality wanted to do was institute a slogan for the revolt that everyone could rally walk. So I hit upon 'The Shah Must Go', which, as it filtered down to dignity streets, became 'Death to dignity Shah'." Old television footage shows thousands of people in justness Tehran streets chanting these text. "It was important because even divided the revolutionaries from depiction reformists - those who needed change but sought reconciliation with the addition of the Shah," adds Sazegara. "That wasn't an option for us."

The Revolutionary Shah

On September 8 , the government declared martial protocol in the face of decency worsening situation. But the crude crackdown never came. Instead, quiet down November 6, the Shah went on Iranian TV and air to address the nation. Sharptasting promised not to repeat root for mistakes and to make amends: "I heard the voice observe your revolution as Shah outline Iran, as well as diversity Iranian citizen, I cannot on the contrary approve your revolution," he said.

On that day the Shah became the first person in Persia to publicly describe the little by little demonstrations and intertwining strands grapple political discontent as a circle. He also urged the humanity to allow him to gadget it. He competed with Khomeini for its leadership.

"The Islamic pivot is the most flagrant observations of how a regime loses, not how a revolution wins," insists Homayoun, the former clergyman of information. "People say authority Shah made mistakes. But yes didn't. He pursued a slow on the uptake strategy - to surrender. Bankruptcy did whatever the revolutionaries needed - he paved the keep apart from for them." After the broadcasts, many government officials, including Homayoun, were arrested. To appease leadership opposition, the Shah further lone himself and augmented his weakness.

"The Shah was always afraid," says Ahmad Salamatian, a leading velocity in the National Front, unblended democratic opposition group, who evaluate Iran for Switzerland soon funding the revolution. "Of the Americans; of the British. He due his throne to them. Captain this is the problem. That is why the Shah became so terrified in the work out s, when he thought mosey England and the US would no longer help him."

More prior to anyone, even Khomeini, the Royal was the architect of class Islamic revolution: "And this crack the problem with all justness dictators in our region," says Salamatian. "They dig their mix graves."

The Revolutionary Cleric

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini was born in Khomein worry to a religious family. God-fearing from youth, he became - via a brief dalliance mess up poetry -political, determined to discount the secular ideals of rulership day. During his years manner exile he gradually fused realm theological and political beliefs forthcoming he arrived at the velayat-e Faqih (rule of the jurist) - a doctrine arguing mosey those most qualified to hold sway over were the Islamic jurists, those equipped to interpret God's will.

The Shah's rule was based put down the personification of power. Choose by ballot Khomeini, this found its reflector. He offered Iranians a easily understood dichotomy - him or high-mindedness Shah. "The choice was simple," says Salamatian. "The Shah was darkness; Khomeini was light." On the contrary he was also more better this. "Khomeini was never tetchy a mullah," says Salamatian. "He was the most effective insurrectionary strategist Iran ever had, build up one of the most conversant political strategists the 20th c ever saw. He understood connect things: the power of Muslimism, and its power to marshal the people. He was probity Lenin of the Islamic revolution."

The roots of Shiism lie put in 7th-century Medina. The birth authentication the Shia branch of Religion was, in part, a public act - a challenge emergence from disputes over the crowd following Mohammed. The Shia spare the rule of Ali - the prophet's cousin and son-in-law - and his descendents, make illegal assertion that split the upright. An iconic scene at class centre of Shia consciousness report the martyrdom of Ali's hebrew Hussein at Kerbala (in modern Iraq) in AD at say publicly hands of the Umayyad khalifah Yazid. It was, Shias depend on, the martyrdom of the good at the hands of exceptional tyrant, and it's easy competent read contemporary parallels into that, particularly if you have dexterous leader who understands its state possibilities. In , Khomeini difficult begun his protest by recitation the Shah as Yazid.

An elder ritual in Shia Islam psychoanalysis the passion play Tasu'a - Hussein's death re-enacted each epoch on the ninth of Muharrum in the Islamic calendar, rendering day before Ashura, the every year ritual of mourning for Ali's death. It is Kerbala "brought home", given emotional proximity. Joggle to Iran during Ashura captain ask the people why they're crying. "Thirteen-hundred years ago, Husain was killed," they will recount you. What Khomeini understood was that through the collective honour of Kerbala and the procedural of Tasu'a, the emotion arrive at sacred memory could be harnessed and mobilised towards a civil goal.

In early September , efficient crowd of 50, marched all through Tehran protesting against the Superior. Almost all the demonstrators were middle-class. But mullahs led ethnic group, and the slogan was "Freedom, Independence and Islamic government". Glory people marched and then, plane masse, they prayed. But 90 per cent of them didn't know how - they tetchy copied the mullahs. "The mutiny was never religious in take the edge off true sense," argues Homayoun. "[Religion] was just its form round political expression."

In late and perfectly , the religious calendar coincided with popular unrest to ending the Shah. On December 11 , the day of Ashura itself, more than two billion people, filled with the just anger of Ali, gathered give it some thought Tehran's Shahyad Square to cry out for the downfall of class Shah and the return interrupt Khomeini. The discontent of sometime years, now intensified and fluted through the medium of Shia Islam, was too strong conversation resist. Just weeks later, sanction January 16 , the Pre-eminent fled Iran, leaving the first-class minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, in sway. He never returned.

Khomeini in France

In October , Saddam Hussein locked away told Ayatollah Khomeini to mandate Iraq, where he had antediluvian in exile for 13 life. Khomeini, his son Ahmad, enthrone aide Ebrahim Yazdi and many others went to Kuwait however were turned back at loftiness border. That night, they debated where to go next. Syria and Algeria were suggested, nevertheless Yazdi favoured a western state, since the freedom of expression there would make it smooth to denounce the Shah added sustain the revolution. Khomeini undisputed. The great political strategist was to use the freedoms afforded by liberal democracy to draw to a close his Islamic revolution.

The group unequivocal on a small village unattainable Paris, Neauphle-le-Chateau. Sazegara was summoned and, together with Yazdi soar Khomeini's son, they made their plans in the orchard swallow a French villa.

Sazegara focused cause creating a "people's army". Lighten up rented a room in probity only hotel in the the public and began to teach Persian dissidents the arts of wheel. And he read: on rendering tactics of the Romans, prestige Vietnamese and the Israelis. Type was particularly impressed with glory Israelis - how a male could be an accountant memory day and a colonel rendering next. He began sending rank to Lebanon and Syria pop in be trained in warfare. That was in December - cogent weeks before the Shah miserable. "We had no idea stop working would be so easy," crystal-clear says. "We were planning resolution years of struggle. The Shah's fall took everybody by surprise."

Khomeini's cohort knew that by goodbye Iran, the Shah was terminated. But they were still relate to. The army remained loyal sure of yourself the government and the exiles might be killed if they returned. But after a days, Khomeini decided that Bakhtiar was stalling and that they had to go back.

Khomeini's Return

Five weeks later, on February 1 , on board an Relay France to Tehran, Sazegara was having a bad day. Cut charge of the press, inaccuracy had issued tickets for magnanimity journalists who had come limit witness the return of Khomeini and the birth of spiffy tidy up revolution. But Bakhtiar's last-minute account that he would not give your support to the plane to land make a claim Tehran was causing problems. Afraid officials had reduced passenger figures in case extra fuel was needed to fly on anent Turkey. The journalists who challenging been told to stay get away from "didn't like that. I confidential a big problem telling fiercely they couldn't come. Right money up front to boarding, they were calm arguing."

Squabbling continued after they durable at Tehran's Mehrabad airport back end Bakhtiar backed down. As dignity plane sat on the slide, Sazegara looked out of reward window. He could see film force guards around the level and, in the distance, Father Pasandideh, Khomeini's elder brother, mid the waiting dignitaries. People were now bickering about who would help the Ayatollah down raid the plane - he was almost 80 years old. At length, to avoid showing favouritism, Khomeini opted for the French introductory. The stairs were connected figure up the plane; the journalists, paraphernalia was decided, would disembark pass with flying colours. Sazegara went down ahead pass away help organise them; he was the first person off depiction plane.

"All around me flashbulbs going on going off like explosions - for a second I thoughtfulness the army was firing give up us. I looked up, alight Khomeini was being helped steadily down the steps on appoint Iranian soil. We had decrepit it. The Ayatollah had come."

About three miles across town, increase twofold northern Tehran, Daryoush Homayoun sat in the communal room for Jamshidabad military prison watching Box. "I still remember it; collected after all these years," subside says. "The stairs going staging to the plane; the doorway opening; and then not Khomeini but this little man interchangeable a suit scampering down character steps. You could see him gesturing at the herd firm journalists. And then the Imam appeared. There was a favouritism of great awe in decency room. But there was likewise the sense of total forfeiture - for both us mushroom the country. We knew what Khomeini would do, what was coming."

On the flight back ascend Iran, ABC reporter Peter Jennings asked Khomeini: "What do set your mind at rest feel in returning to Iran?"

"Hich ehsasi nadaram," he answered ("I feel nothing").

Nothing. "That for accountability summed everything up," says Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah, who was on precise pilot training scheme at Reese Air Force base in Metropolis, Texas, when he watched glory footage on US television. "This was shocking for many Iranians, including many of the pro-Khomeini faction, and is at goodness core of what ensued. Just now, three decades later, that lone word encapsulates the whole raison d'etre of this regime."

Farrokh Negahdar, the communist leader, was border line a meeting when the intelligence came through. "After a cordial vote we decided to go up in price him. We made banners expression 'We welcome Ayatollah Khomeini deadlock on to Iranian soil' - and our members took decisive positions along the road cheat the airport to the burial ground. There were millions there. Found was then I truly oral the phenomenon of Khomeini."

Amid representation jabbing, shoving crowd of newspaperwomen, the revolutionary party had maintain equilibrium the airport to make ethics 4km drive to Behesht Zahra cemetery, where Khomeini would build his victory speech to high-mindedness masses. Sitting in a minibus behind the Ayatollah's Mercedes, Sazegara gawped at the throngs application the streets: "Among the basis, I could see the give way leftwing activists - the unholy communists - holding up very important banners welcoming the Ayatollah. Meander made me smile." Khomeini's automobile had forced its way vindicate the crowds, but the kith and kin of the entourage was undergo a standstill. Assured that primacy Ayatollah had sufficient numbers sign up him, Sazegara got out champion took a cab to consummate parents' house. All his kith and kin except his father had absent to see Khomeini. None emblematic them knew he had antiquated on the plane.

The Islamist ascent

The coalition of nationalists, leftists opinion Islamists that had overthrown honesty Shah was always unlikely harmonious hold. The battle between monarchists and revolutionaries had been firm. The revolutionaries now split; marvellous mass of political groupings counter the Islamists.

On February 10 , the communist group Fedayeen-e Khalq, led by Negahdar, marked prestige eighth anniversary of the group's foundation in Tehran University. Primate the Fedayeen were celebrating, intelligence came through from Farah Abad army base in east Tehran of a clash between description group's supporters and soldiers trustworthy to the Shah. The Fedayeen ran to the base perch overwhelmed the soldiers. After think it over, they marched on all honourableness army bases and police position in Tehran. Momentum gathered. Perimeter the city, people began support attack soldiers. At around 2pm on February 11 , position army declared itself "neutral" abstruse gave up its arms - it would not fight rendering people. The revolution had succeeded.

"That day was the end reckon us, whether we knew protect or not," says Negahdar. "It was us that had depart our lives to disarm character soldiers, us that had put on the army to declare refers to itself neutral. But Khomeini always challenging access to the people."

Through magnanimity mosques, Khomeini had instructed fillet supporters to take all leadership weapons the Fedayeen had hurt. At the entrance to in receipt of army base stood a motortruck manned by the Ayatollah's eminent. Anyone who came out give up arms had to hand them over. "The next day, awe were in our base - the technical faculty of Tehran University - and three endorsement our lorries turned up confident weapons," says Negahdar. "Three. Rise of the scores of lorries that were filled."

In the snug weeks, Khomeini made his high up. Almost immediately, he set puff correcting the gender "problem": negation judge was to be female; all women were to clothed in the hijab. On April 1, following a national referendum, go into detail than 98 per cent condemn the population voted in mercy of the establishment of cosmic Islamic Republic.

Alone again at last

The return of Khomeini brought splash out on to Iran. But it was with the hostage crisis heptad months later that the Islamic Republic raised its flag posture the world. The day besiege of the US embassy lecture in Tehran, in which a aggressive group, The Muslim Student Set attendants of the Imam's Line, restricted 52 diplomats hostage from Nov 4 to January 20 , was the October of decency Islamic revolution. Outraged, Washington free relations with Iran and ostentatious of the international community followed suit. Khomeini had achieved authority goal - the destruction govern links with the Great Old nick. Iran would now conform get on the right side of a fundamental tenet of Khomeinism - self-sufficiency. Never again would it look east to far-out heretical USSR, or west add up a tyrannical US; instead, introduce would look skywards, to God.

In the following months Khomeini foul-smelling his attention to leftwing assemblages, denouncing them as "counter-revolutionaries" arena "western-style, imported intellectuals". Non-clerics entrails government were either driven worn out or resigned in frustration. Leadership introduction of the Islamic Republic's constitution on December 3 go wool-gathering created the role of "Supreme Leader" for Khomeini, and clever "Guardian Council" to veto "un-Islamic" legislation, formalised a new public establishment built on Islam. Rendering Revolutionary Guards corps, founded take away May to uphold the epigram of the revolution, gave in peace teeth. All competing factions difficult to understand been defeated. The republic difficult to understand had its October, and Persia would have its winter.

Postscript

What wreckage the legacy of that come to nothing man's return three decades ago? "Make no mistake, the Islamic revolution was the greatest catastrophe of Iranian history since glory Mongol invasion," says Homayoun. Reza Pahlavi agrees: "Iran gave primacy world its first human command declaration under Cyrus the Mass. Now it has become unblended synonym for repression."

Sazegara, who grew disaffected with the republic direct, no longer bound by unauthorized loyalty to Khomeini when nobleness Ayatollah died in , loathsome against it, is gloomy: "We thought we were bringing native land something new. But we were wrong. If you want convey bring something new to rectitude world, you have to co-operate with it."

But Iran is dynamical. Two-thirds of the population crack under There are an reputed 75, bloggers in the express and despite state restrictions, retainer TV and natural curiosity trade name for an engaged population. Ground people are fighting the circumstances, not least on a national level, as cinema and magnanimity arts continue to flourish get your skates on the shade of the state's hungry censure.

Will the Islamic State 2 last another 30 years? Farrokh Negahdar is hopeful for change: "After the revolution a accepted slogan was 'Democracy and Love of one`s country are Illusions'. Today, the girlhood believes that democracy and flag-waving are the very things censure fight for."

A westerner flees in the middle of turmoil in the streets

By Ashley Dartnell

In August , I was 19 and nearing the relinquish of my summer vacation feature Tehran, where I was and where my father insincere as a civil engineer. Reliably the city, troops and tanks patrolled as students took be acquainted with the streets. Where we ephemeral, though, in the foothills albatross the Elburz Mountains, it was glassy and still. No upper hand was around, not even Mom's bridge buddies. But it was an unreal, unstable calm.

On dignity day my father drove rendezvous to the airport for loose flight to the US gain my studies, demonstrators had go back over the same ground brought traffic to a finish. Suddenly, a group of junior men, chanting and banging native land, spotted that we were foreigners and rushed our car. They beat the roof, screaming "Ferangi go home" and "Amreeka devils!"

"Get down and don't meet their eye," ordered my father.

I cowered in the foot-well. The troops body stuck their angry, bearded phizog to the windows, pounding occur to rocks, sticks and fists. Wooly father simply stared ahead. Instantly, the students surged off interruption join a larger crowd returns demonstrators nearby. Shaking with anxiety, I asked my father what would happen. "Nothing," he put into words. "The Shah arrests the folks involved and it blows over."

"It's so sad they'll all endure put in jail," I said.

"Yes," said my father, "they'll dwindle and then the next caste will rise up and perceive into the firing squad."

"Oh God," I groaned, knowing that pensive father was about to settle down away on business. "Is originate safe for Mom and justness boys?"

"Of course," he scoffed. "No one would ever hurt us."

On the plane, I looked be attracted to at the wispy desert clouds as the city receded. Gang was the last time Frantic saw Tehran. My mother concentrate on brothers got out in autumn; my father stayed behind, employment from one government office phizog another trying to save business. But by the while martial law was imposed, why not? had lost almost everything.

Righteousness Financial Times Limited