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Why is there an Islamic Republic of Iran at all? Because of one man: Jimmy Carter.
A strong ally of the United States, the Shah of Iran met President Jimmy Carter for the first time in Washington on November 15, 1977. Police dispersed anti-Shah demonstrators with tear gas, which the wind carried to the White House’s South Lawn, where the Shah and Carter were standing with their wives, Queen Farah and Rosalyn Carter. Photos of the four wiping tears from their eyes were featured in the international media, and widely taken as an omen. Queen Farah was outraged, certain that there was “a desire on the part of the new administration to embarrass us.”
In the months ahead, Carter would give her numerous reasons to think so.
As The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Iran explains, in January 1978, seminarians in Qom rioted over a newspaper article that had criticized Khomeini; police killed several of the students, although exactly how many was a matter of dispute. Forty days later, as mosques all over Iran held memorial services for the students who had been killed, demonstrations against the government began. In Tabriz, the demonstration became a riot and some of the protesters were killed. When memorial services were held for them forty days later on March 29, more demonstrations were held and more protesters killed, with the cycle repeating itself yet again forty days later.
In response, the Shah decided that concessions, rather than repression, would calm the protests, and promised freedom of speech and free elections for the Majlis in 1979. He fired officials whom he deemed responsible for the deaths in the riots and even replaced the head of SAVAK with a general who had a gentler reputation. The situation seemed to have been pacified, but only briefly. In the Iranian city of Abadan on August 19, 1978, at least 470 people were killed at a movie theater when the doors were barred and fires set. Khomeini blamed the Shah, sparking massive protests against him; only long after the Islamic Revolution did it come to light that Islamic jihadists, not the Shah’s men, set the fire, hoping to ignite the opposition to his regime. And it worked.
Protests and riots in which people were killed increased all over Iran. The Shah tried more concessions, appointing a reformist prime minister, legalizing opposition political parties, cracking down on corruption among government officials, allowing for freedom of the press, and releasing political prisoners. To appease the Shi’ite hardliners, he abolished the hated Cyrus the Great calendar and closed nightclubs, which they regarded as dens of iniquity.
It was too late. In early September, hundreds of thousands of protesters demonstrated against the Shah in Tehran. Finally, on Friday, September 8, 1978, the Shah imposed martial law in Tehran and other key cities and banned all street demonstrations. Defying the order, thousands of protesters showed up in Tehran’s Zhaleh Square. Police ordered them to disperse; when they did not do so, the police fired into the crowd, killing fifty-eight people in what became known as Black Friday. Most Iranians blamed the Shah, but he was just as horrified as everyone else. One of his government ministers later recalled, “Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was emotionally wrecked, if not psychologically broken, by the events of Black Friday.”
As all these events unfolded, Jimmy Carter offered no help to his ostensible ally the Shah. Instead, he dithered, his administration riven by disagreement between those who wanted the United States to act to keep the Shah in power and those who, like U.S. Ambassador to Iran William Sullivan, preferred to make some accord with Khomeini in hopes that he would consent to becoming the figurehead leader of a secular constitutional republic.
Confusion reigned. Ultimately, the Carter White House abandoned the Shah to his fate, in part because neither the president nor any of his staff could decide exactly what to do instead—but mostly because many in the Carter administration admired the Ayatollah Khomeini, and didn’t want to do anything to harm him or his movement.
Andrew Young, the U.S. ambassador to United Nations, said, “Khomeini will eventually be hailed as a saint.”
Ambassador William Sullivan saw him as a man of peace: “Khomeini is a Gandhi-like figure.”
Carter adviser James Bill declared the ayatollah a “holy man” of “impeccable integrity and honesty.”
This naivete and myopia bequeathed to us the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
