The Shah of Iran and Pakistan’s Turmoils

As an attempt to provide a framework from which to analyze the various players and vectors at play in Pakistan, here is a look back at an article written during Iran’s turmoils when the Shan was deposed and went into forced exile.

It was hardly an auspicious 59th birthday last week for the Shah of Iran. Under mounting opposition from critics of his regime, the Shah has been forced into a radical reassessment of his priorities. In recent weeks, strikes by workers angered over the country’s inflation rate (currently 50%) have paralyzed the nationalized oil refineries, postal service, airline, and copper and steel industries. The nation’s balance of payments deficit exceeds $5.5 billion. To pay for an across-the-board wage increase for at least 1 million workers, and for subsidized housing and other social projects, the Shah has canceled $7 billion worth of American and European military orders, including the controversial U.S. AWAC airborne warning system. He is also scrapping plans to build 20 nuclear plants, a modern railroad and a subway system for Tehran.

Despite such spartan measures, there is increasing doubt among both knowledgeable Iranians and Western diplomats that the Shah will be able to survive as ruler of the 57-year-old Pahlavi dynasty. In recent days. 64 members of the royal family, including the Shah’s brothers and sisters and in-laws, have fled the country.

On the eve of his birthday, the Shah released 1,451 prisoners, including 1,126 political detainees. Still, demonstrations and rioting continued; 1,200 people, by conservative estimates, have died in clashes with military troops since August. The Shah remains committed to political reforms that will lead to parliamentary elections next June. He has also indicated a willingness to give up some of his absolute powers in favor of a constitutional monarchy. Nonetheless, he now privately admits that if the turmoil continues, he may be forced to leave the country.

The question of the Shah’s future role is one on which his opponents are divided. Many people in Iran would like to see him remain as a figurehead but removed from politics; others insist that his rule must end. One of the most vigorous advocates of the Shah’s removal is Ayatullah Khomeini, the 76-year-old mullah who is now the undisputed spiritual and political leader of Iran’s 32 million Shi’ite Muslims, who comprise 93% of the population. A longtime opponent of the Shah, Khomeini was exiled in 1963 following violent demonstrations against the Shah’s land reforms. Two weeks ago, he was expelled from Iraq, where he had kept his headquarters and served as a catalyst to the opposition against the Shah. He is now temporarily residing in France.

A specialist in Islamic philosophy and law, Khomeini lives the typically ascetic life of a mullah and hardly looks like a political leader who could galvanize a nation. Yet no less a personage than Ardeshir Zahedi, Iranian Ambassador to the U.S., tried to pay a call on Khomeini in France. The reported purpose of the visit was to persuade Khomeini to return to Iran and help defuse the crisis. But Khomeini refused to see the ambassador. He will not return to Iran, he insists, until the Shah’s rule has ended. Last week TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis interviewed Khomeini at a guarded farmhouse in Pontchartrain. Excerpts from the interview:

LINK to the second page of the Times article

This ties in directly with what I was telling Neo when her Sanity squad brought up the topic of Mushie in Pakistan.

The reports are out that Mushareff has put the Supreme Court under house arrest. A very merciful approach to neutralizing those people, whereas execution would be far more permanent and efficient. The Left, characteristically, wishes to undermine Mushareff in order to replace him with the Left’s puppet. This is also known as a popular grassroots revolution. My comments on what Pakistan has to deal with can be read in the Sanity Squad audio cast. I recommend you also listen to them while you read. Feel free to continue reading here after the SS cast.

Neo spoke about tough measures, or desperate measures, being necessary in desperate situations. I agree. Pat, or Dr. Sanity, seems far more reluctant about Mushareff and the actions he has taken. For a classical liberal, for any classical liberal, such actions are always tough to stomach. The study of war, however, brings to light that regardless of how distasteful certain actions are, you still must undertake them or there will be no light to face the darkness. Iran is the perfect example of that.

As background documents, you might be interested in this release of Foreign Relations during the Lyndon Johnson admistration towards Iran

I also found, on the same google page, this  rather interesting gutting of Carter.

by Chuck Morse

As if a light were switched off, the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, portrayed for 20 years as a progressive modern ruler by Islamic standards, was suddenly, in 1977-1978, turned into this foaming at the mouth monster by the international left media. Soon after becoming President in 1977, Jimmy Carter launched a deliberate campaign to undermine the Shah. The Soviets and their left-wing apparatchiks would coordinate with Carter by smearing the Shah in a campaign of lies meant to topple his throne. The result would be the establishment of a Marxist/Islamic state in Iran headed by the tyrannical Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. The Iranian revolution, besides enthroning one of the world’s most oppressive regimes, would greatly contribute to the creation of the Marxist/Islamic terror network challenging the free world today.

At the time, a senior Iranian diplomat in Washington observed, “President Carter betrayed the Shah and helped create the vacuum that will soon be filled by Soviet-trained agents and religious fanatics who hate America.” Under the guise of promoting” human rights,” Carter made demands on the Shah while blackmailing him with the threat that if the demands weren’t fulfilled, vital military aid and training would be withheld. This strange policy, carried out against a staunch, 20 year Middle East ally, was a repeat of similar policies applied in the past by US governments to other allies such as pre Mao China and pre Castro Cuba.

Carter started by pressuring the Shah to release “political prisoners” including known terrorists and to put an end to military tribunals. The newly released terrorists would be tried under civil jurisdiction with the Marxist/Islamists using these trials as a platform for agitation and propaganda. This is a standard tactic of the left then and now. The free world operates at a distinct dis-advantage to Marxist and Islamic nations in this regard as in those countries, trials are staged to “show” the political faith of the ruling elite. Fair trials, an independent judiciary, and a search for justice is considered to be a western bourgeois prejudice.

Carter pressured Iran to allow for “free assembly” which meant that groups would be able to meet and agitate for the overthrow of the government. It goes without saying that such rights didn’t exist in any Marxist or Islamic nation. The planned and predictable result of these policies was an escalation of opposition to the Shah, which would be viewed by his enemies as a weakness. A well-situated internal apparatus in Iran receiving its marching orders from the Kremlin egged on this growing opposition.

Harsh words for a even harsher enemy of humanity, Jimmy Carter.

Let’s jump to the future.

Americans watched the events of the crisis played out on television. Yellow ribbons were tied around tree trunks throughout the country in commemoration of the hostages. President Carter responded by freezing billions of dollars in Iranian assets, both in the United States and abroad, and by instituting an embargo on Iranian oil. Still, the Iranians refused to release the hostages, demanding the Shah’s extradition to Iran.

Now let us go back to the past when the Ayatollah was interviewed before the fall of Iran.

On infiltration of his movement by leftists: Ours is a movement of the entire Iranian nation. It is an honest struggle with Islamic motivation. It obeys God and his laws. It is the Shah who, through his paid agents, deliberately tries to tell the world that our struggle is leftist.

On U.S. and Soviet influence in Iran: The Shah has given oil to America; natural gas to the Soviet Union; land, forests and some oil to England and other countries. We want all these foreign influences and pressures out of our country.

On changing to a constitutional monarchy: Everything represented by the Shah and his system must disappear from Iranian life. I am not the Shah’s enemy. Our struggle is to convince him that his authority is finished. Already the pressure is cutting into his throat.

The Ayatollah is not the Shah’s enemy, he says. So why are they demanding the Shah’s extradition to Iran, famous for summary executions of men and women, when the Shah isn’t the enemy if he was removed from Iran’s life? Execution is the best and most efficient method of removing someone from your life. That is why.

The Shah didn’t have the stomach to execute the Ayatollah when the Shah crushed his first aborted attempt at revolution. The Germans also didn’t execute Hitler when Hitler first tried his power play. If people still wonder why I favor executions as much as I do, all they have to do is to look at these types of examples. They happen much more often than you might think.
Don’t even get me started on Diem’s assassination in South Vietnam. As I said to Neo, the Left has too much blood on their hands ever to wipe it clean.

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