Inside Khomeini's Iran
December, 1980
Dr. No
My man sadegh, the guy in charge of throwing the foreign press out, turned to me and asked, out of the blue, if I wanted to see the imam.
Well, that was wild. I had not asked to see the Ayatollah or any other officials. I came here to fast and pray for the safe resolution of the hostage crisis. But this was really wild, to be on my way to see the Man--without even asking.
Then, like something out of a James Bond flick, the car made a sudden turn, cut up an alley, passing sandbag barricades and soldiers in green fatigues. Wouldn't think somebody so important would be guarded by just a half dozen guys. A boy-scout troop could have run through here. These guards can't be here for security alone--maybe they're here for crowd control.
The imam, victim of a recent heart attack, was living in a borrowed house in Tehran to be near the hospital. Natch, I was not surprised to see an ambulance parked out front. (Before I left Iran, the Ayatollah returned to his home in northern Tehran, so I assume he got better.)
We walked into the yard, were searched by the guard, entered the house and took our shoes off. On the first floor, we encountered a lot of people eating on a tablecloth on the floor. There were no tables or chairs in the room, just people squatting around the tablecloth. Folks do a lot of squatting over here.
In one corner, a group of religious leaders were meeting with Ahmad, the imam's 35-year-old son. Ahmad rose to power as chief aide after his older brother Mustafa died mysteriously in 1977. It's believed that Mustafa, a cleric in his mid-40s, was poisoned by the shah's secret police, SAVAK. His death sparked an outburst of rioting, with the students really shooting up the place.
Sadegh asked the appointment secretary if I could see the Ayatollah. The secretary said the imam hadn't seen anyone other than the revolutionary council in the past several months. The secretary said he'd let me know if I could see the Man.
The next day was Wednesday. I hadn't eaten for 12 days, but that day I drank some juice. I wanted to be strong. Sadegh called early--the imam would see me. We returned to the house, but that time we weren't searched. The guard looked at Sadegh, said something in Farsi and waved us in. (I later found out the guard said, "Oh, you're with the little black fellow.") Once inside, we spent a half hour waiting for the imam's appointment secretary to get us. Sadegh was nervous, and I was trying to figure out what to call this man: Mr. Ayatollah? Just then, the guy nodded and we entered this huge room with nothing in it but a couch--and the Ayatollah.
What a sight! The imam was on the couch with his feet out on a huge stool. A blanket covered him from chest to feet, leaving only the turbaned head and beard exposed. Sadegh was perspiring--he had never met the imam before. And to most Iranians, the Ayatollah is a personage akin to Jesus Christ.
The Ayatollah appeared intractable and uncompromising. But this is what the Iranians want him to be. He is the complete antithesis of the shah, who had been too accommodating. The monarch allowed the nation to be bled by the leeches of the superpowers; foreigners were allowed to exploit and raid the resources of the country, regardless of the needs of the Iranian people. Even the agricultural base of the nation was deliberately destroyed to turn Iran into an export market for others.
Between 1972 and 1976, the U. S. sold more than ten billion dollars' worth of arms to Iran--maybe ten percent of the Iranian G.N.P. This arms game, just part of the transformation that made Iran the U. S. policeman in the Middle East, drained the nation of resources needed to improve education, housing, health services and urbanization. Ironically, many of the arms bought were so complex that the Iranians couldn't use them.
When you look at the Ayatollah, that tiny man with the black turban, you know with all certainty that the superpowers will never regain control of Iran without a fight to the death. The Ayatollah hates the Soviets and would align with them only if we pushed him into their camp. He is powerful, not because he represents the most radical point of view but because he first said no to the shah and, therefore, can say no to everyone else who is considered to be anti-Iran. Iranians aren't afraid he'll give their country to the superpowers. They know he'll just sit there on his rug and say no. And after all that's been ripped off, the Iranians want a Dr. No.
Partially because of the imam's health, the plan I had presented to the Iranian government for the release of the hostages was not discussed at my first meeting with him. After all, its purpose was ceremonial--just to get acquainted. Phase one of the plan called for the immediate release of the hostages who could not be considered spies, as a show of good faith in continuing negotiations with the U. S. Phase two called for the U. S. to return an estimated eight billion dollars in Iranian funds frozen in American banks. The money would be matched by other nations to establish a world food bank, with the shah's palace serving as headquarters. Phase three would necessitate the gathering of the world press in Iran to check out what really went on under the shah. The plan was announced in the local newspapers in a three-part series. One day I hope the Ayatollah will let me know what he thought of it.
I didn't mention the return of the shah in the plan. He was never ours to return. There are many indications that the Iranians are ready to resolve this crisis. They are tired of it. I was told that the joy of making the superpowers squirm is becoming insignificant. Besides, this crisis is hurting poor people not only in Iran and America but in the rest of the world as well. Iran has had to increase its defense budget at the expense of domestic services to the poor. And America is in the same fix.
I thanked the imam for seeing me and told him that millions of people across the world had followed the struggle here, a struggle I hoped would give strength and courage to oppressed people everywhere. However, I said, I felt it wouldn't be as easy for the oppressed to rise up elsewhere, because of one important ingredient--fear. Sadegh translated that and for a split second, the imam held his head down a bit, like he didn't feel well. Then Sadegh said we should leave.
Downstairs again, I put my shoes back on. A big newspaper publisher here told me the imam had stopped having his picture taken with people. Something had embarrassed him. Maybe it was like the something that embarrassed Rosalynn Carter after she had her picture taken with mass murderer John Gacy.
As I left, I saw Ahmad hurrying away. His grandmother had just died.
The Rescue Mission
Attended a prayer meeting at Tehran University today. My buddy, Sadegh, was showing me how to bend down on this rock to ask forgiveness. The army chief of staff and the defense minister were worshiping nearby. The service was interrupted by an announcement--later proved erroneous--that two American planes had been shot down over Iran. Like most people here, I thought it was an attack--that this was finally it, the start of World War Three.
Well, I hit the rock and really began praying for forgiveness. Thought they were going to try to bomb this town off the face of the earth. But, in a sense, I felt a rush of real peace. Momma would be proud of me. I bet she always thought I was going to die in one of those Chicago taverns I used to hang out in. But now I was going to die at a prayer meeting. I left the service and got caught up in a crowd of some 400,000 people heading toward the U. S. embassy.
In America, everybody would run inside and hide if they thought they were under attack. Here, the people run out into the streets. As I stood in front of the 24-acre embassy complex in the heart of the city, it was easy to see why initially nobody thought this was a rescue mission. It looked like an impossible mission to pull off without killing the hostages. This was just the type of thing I was fasting about, and praying would never happen. Lord, help us all, if Carter tries any more "rescue missions." Next day's headline: "Carter willing to commit any crime for re-election"
The Rally
The day I met with the imam, one of his doctors asked me to speak at a rally in place of Ali Agah, the former Iranian chargé d'affaires to the United States, who was in Africa. I told the physician that my purpose here was not political and attempted to decline the invitation. I was told, however, that I would be speaking to the poorest people in the city. Poverty in southern Tehran is worse than anything seen in U. S. ghettos. Three fourths of the people in Iran live on one fourth of the land. Although I did see some low-income-housing construction, it's nothing to see ten people to a room here. But it is clean. No dogs, rats or roaches.
This same section of town has a horrible drug problem. Iran is known to have probably the worst heroin problem in the world, with some 200,000 registered addicts and about 2,000,000 users. Some believe the addiction problem is part of a conspiracy to retard the revolutionary spirit of the people--a theory not unlike the explanation of the introduction of heroin to the inner cities of America, or the strategy that moved the then-Rhodesian government to give the blacks free beer on the weekend. Some say the heroin was sent to Iran by the CIA or by Western European or SAVAK agents who had escaped to Britain or France during the revolution. It's dirt-cheap. Heroin that should sell for eight dollars goes for 50 cents.
Many Iranian officials believe that drastic measures must be taken to stem this addiction before the people start having opium wars. Consequently, one of the penalties for pushing dope is execution. On June third, a man and a woman were killed. But that's nothing--on another day, 20 pushers were executed. In one celebrated case, a man was sentenced to death on charges that he turned an eight-year-old girl into an addict and then raped her. You know he saw the firing squad. But the government is kind to the addicts. Recently, it took the shah's summer resort, complete with his $226,000,000 air-conditioned palace, and turned it into an addiction center. Going through the palace, I saw that the shah must have laid the place out. His stereo system was bad. He had tape decks all over the place. I found a tape of Aretha Franklin in his John.
I spoke for two hours at the rally, basically relating how poverty can become a state of mind you can't outgrow. About 700 young people were in the audience, women on one side, men on the other. I told how American blacks had come out of slavery and made moves away from poverty because of a profound belief in God. I told them a story about two blind men, both of whom roamed the streets, looking for help. One beggar cried, "He is helped whom God helps." The other beggar cried, "He is helped whom the king helps." The king heard that and was flattered. He baked with a bar of gold in it a loaf of bread and sent it to the man who had flattered him. Thinking the bread was heavy and unfit to eat, he sold it for a few pennies to the man with faith in God. He took it home, found the treasure and thus had to beg no more. The other beggar was still crying, "He is helped whom the king helps." The king sent for him and asked him what had happened to the bread he had sent. The beggar said that it had seemed heavy and poorly baked, so he had sold it to a friend. Said the king, "Truly, he is helped whom God helps."
In a place that had just had a shah who was supposed to be greater than God, that story really went over. They clapped and carried on. Then they passed about 100 questions up to me: They wanted to know what I thought about Muhammad Ali and they had a lot of questions about the Black Muslims. I told them Ali was the most important and influential human being on the planet, because of his visibility. Regarding the Black Muslims, I told them I never understood the great job Elijah Muhammad had done until I came to a Moslem country. The Black Muslims don't smoke, don't eat pork, don't drink and don't have a drug problem. Elijah Muhammad took Christians, black Americans, who were raised on pork, and converted them. You have to respect the man.
After the speech, a religious man walked toward me. He made me nervous at first, because I thought he was going to say I had talked too long. Instead, he thanked me for speaking and gave me an autographed picture of the Ayatollah. As I left the podium, the revolutionary guards pulled out their guns and waved them in the air to show they liked my speech. They escorted me back to my hotel, the Semiramis.
When I got back to the hotel, the English-speaking desk clerk told me I was a hero. The imam had mentioned me on the radio, saying I was fasting for peace and had lost about 50 pounds.
The Students
The embassy take-over was a surprise, not only to the United States but to the students themselves. They didn't have a take-over in mind when they marched toward the embassy, shouting death slogans against the shah and President Carter. They were enraged by the U. S.' allowing the shah into a New York hospital. The students did not believe the monarch was ill. If he were, they protested, why did the U. S. refuse to let the Iranian doctors examine him? Were the Americans trying to harbor the shah in order to restore him to the throne, as was done by the CIA in 1953?
The students felt they had to do something to show their outrage, and the hated embassy was as good a place as any. They actually hated the American embassy even more than the shah's palace. They had always believed the embassy was Iran's true seat of power.
During the march to the embassy, some students decided to jump over the wall and go as far into the compound as they could before they were shot down or killed. Few things are as sacred to Iranians as martyrdom--to them, that's greater than the Nobel Peace Prize. Custom dictates that the bodies of martyrs be wrapped in white shrouds and paraded around the city.
Once at the embassy gates, the students cut the heavy chain and swelled inside. Meeting no armed resistance from the Iranian guards, they kept going. They shouted to those inside that they did not want to hurt anyone, only to stage a sit-in. It was at that point that they expected the Marines to open up with automatic fire and blow them away. When that failed to happen, the students became bolder, and from then on, their plans developed on the spot--beginning with their seizure of weapons from the embassy arsenal. The students said they had only a few handguns when they entered the complex; they were no match for the automatics wielded by the Marine guards. But not a single shot was fired and the students ended up with the embassy--something they hadn't anticipated, hadn't wanted and really didn't know quite what to do with once they had it.
Whatever their intentions, the students showed me a State Department document, dated August 1, 1979, warning Washington that such a take-over could happen if the shah were admitted to the United States: "No moves should be made toward admitting the shah until a new and substantially effective guard force is obtained for the embassy."
The document went on to say: "When [a] decision is made to admit the shah, we should quietly assign additional American security guards to the embassy to provide protection for key personnel until the danger is considered over." It was stamped, Secret & Sensitive. It should have been stamped, Ignore.
I met with the students once for two hours. I got the call at the hotel, which is across Taleghqani Street from the captured embassy, and walked over there to be met by Mary--the lady in the chador who got all the television coverage, was educated in America and speaks (continued on page 288)Inside Khomeini's Iran(continued from page 162) perfect English. She apologized that there weren't more students to greet me; they were in the other cities where the hostages had been taken after the rescue raid. If they were hiding some of them in the embassy, you couldn't prove it by me. The place was so huge you could have lost the White House in it.
We talked in the library, which looked like a classroom. The walls were covered with pictures of people tortured during the shah's regime. The photos, some in black and white, others in color, were all taken at the morgue; eyes bulging, brains exposed, testicles cut, holes in bodies. Horrible sights. I was told that was done by the American-trained SAVAK, which was used to prop up the shah after his popular support declined. They showed me documents indicating that between 1961 and 1973 American taxpayers provided more than $1,700,000 in training and equipment for 179 high-ranking Iranian police officers. And for more than six years, 400 members of SAVAK were trained at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.
We discussed my hostage plan, and Sadegh was surprised that the students were so cordial. It was apparently the first time anyone had told them what to do with the hostages. I never felt the hostages were in any danger from the students, who exhibited no hostility toward their captives. But the students sure seemed to want to zap Carter, the CIA and the U. S. Government.
There is a picture in the embassy of Jimmy Carter as a rat, talking to the shah, also depicted as a rat, standing on a dead body. The Carter rat is grinning and saying, "You're on the right path; continue." This refers to Black Friday--the day hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed when government troops opened fire on anti-shah demonstrators. Shortly after the carnage, Carter called the shah and indicated that he backed him 100 percent. Nothing could have shocked the students more than that call. Carter had talked so much about human rights the students thought things had changed.
It was like blacks' not being disappointed by anything Nixon did but being extremely hurt by Carter because they believed in him. To Iranians, human rights were like L.B.J.'s Great Society was to blacks. But at no time did L.B.J. let blacks down like Carter let the masses of Iranians down.
The students didn't give the impression that they wanted revenge in taking the hostages. They just wanted to show the world--including the Vatican, which had remained silent--how the Iranian people had been hurt.
Sanctions
In November 1979, U. S. longshoremen began holding up food shipments to Iran, and in April 1980, President Carter called for an embargo on most shipments to Iran. Well, even though I read that when I was back home, most made -- in-U. S. products were in abundance when I got here April 20. Winstons, Marlboros, Pepsis are as available here as in the States. Supermarket shelves are jammed with Sara Lee cakes, frozen pizzas, Pillsbury fudge-brownie mix, Carnation milk, Gerber's baby food--as well as instant grits, a popular item around Jimmy Carter's White House. Laundry detergents, such as Tide, are hard to find, so people line up to get them like wealthy Americans might queue up for Havana cigars or caviar.
From where I sit, it's no small wonder our European allies didn't want to cooperate with Carter's call for an embargo. Everybody knew the U. S. was shipping to Iran through middlemen in third countries, such as Greece and Dubai. Iranian government officials told me that banned computer parts and some 66,000 tons of rice from America have reached these shores through Dubai.
Iranians thought that whole exercise was a joke. An official told me, "We wish the sanctions would work. We'd like to get rid of the Western influence without making our women mad. We'd love to see the lipstick and the short skirts disappear, as well as the sex novels in the bookstores. Too bad it's not working."
The Common Market countries did agree not to enter into any new contracts with Iran, but were not willing to abort projects in the works prior to the embassy take-over in November 1979. Iran is undergoing a massive building program, doing the things it couldn't do when the shah was draining the treasury for military hardware. Everybody had been trying to get a piece of the action: The Italians have contracts worth three billion dollars to build a gulf port; the West Germans are selling steel and digging copper mines to help divert the economy from its dependence on oil, which will someday run out; and the Japanese contractors are building a 3.4-billion-dollar petrochemical plant. Bids are coming in from many countries to construct low-income prefabricated housing. The British auto firm Talbot, formerly a Chrysler subsidiary, has a $300,000,000 order for car kits.
But the U. S. had its own economic plan for Iran, as outlined in embassy documents dated June 3, 1979. The report said the first priority was to build a strong market position, which called for "considerable and imaginative assistance by embassy staff to individual American businessmen." In addition to normal service, the businessmen could receive advance work, appointment scheduling and translation services. Iranians always stress the U. S. contribution to the demise of their agricultural base. The documents stated that U. S. agribusiness would now begin to rebuild the Iranian base it had helped destroy. It would also supply low-income housing, as well as air conditioning.
So after we screw up their economy, we want to grow richer fixing it up. The U. S. still thinks it will be business as usual. In some areas, such as the military, that may be the case. But the Iranians are left with the choice of turning to the U. S. or going to the Soviet Union to straighten out the things the U. S. helped mess up.
The Military
The shah and the U. S. had a great hustle going. He frittered away billions of dollars in oil income on fancy military gadgets, many of them unnecessary. Washington encouraged this because of its need to recoup the cost of imported Iranian oil and to further transform Iran into its deputy sheriff in the Middle East.
State Department documents, given to me by the students, said, "The F-14 Tomcat and the four Spruance Class 963 destroyers ordered by Iran are more sophisticated than the versions currently used in the U. S. They will be of no use to the Iranians for another decade, and by then they might be obsolete."
The Spruance destroyers were ordered with automated air-defense radar systems far more advanced than those installed in similar U. S. Navy versions. Iran agreed to pay $796,100,000 for four of them in 1978. The F-14 Tomcat fighter, with U. S. radar-guided Phoenix missiles and computerized firing controls, can maneuver at more than twice the speed of sound and can destroy six targets within a 100-mile radius at one time.
Iran doesn't have enough technicians who know how to use that junk. Their army is desperate for spare parts, which the U. S. is now not selling them. What does the army do then? It goes to Russia or the other Communist countries to order new equipment. Sounds like we're nudging Iran into the Communist camp.
Before the embassy take-over, the Iranian defense minister proposed selling the weapons back to the U. S., or at least calling on some of our military experts to train the Iranian technicians. With the U. S. record in Iran, I shudder to think what our response would have been.
Arms make strange bedfellows, don't they?
Labor Pangs
Question: If my family took over Chicago--which I now paint as a town totally stacked against us, as Iran was under the shah--would we want the same judges, police and administrators running our new government? Probably not. We'd want to get rid of the people who were feared and hated, such as the K.K.K. and the Nazi Party. So it was with all the executions of SAVAK people and others after the revolution. I can't say I agree with everything I see, but it's a lot easier to understand by being here.
Remember the black-pride thing in the Sixties? We looked around and found we didn't control our neighborhoods. The majority of the businesses were white, as was the police department. The only things that we controlled were the negatives, such as alcohol and drugs, to drag our race down. It's the same here. This country was always controlled by the superpowers, who took everything out. The people looked around and saw that all they had was an abundance of things that went against Iran.
What they seem to be doing is breaking a lot of dishes to get their new house in order. Some things are looked at as weird, and Westerners think this society is disintegrating. But we are actually witnessing the birth of a new baby. The baby might grow into Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or into the Mafia. It's too early to say.
Outside my window, about 30,000 people were throwing rocks at one another. It seemed like hundreds were firing weapons into the air. About 300 people were injured by bricks and bullets from Iranian army troops, who were supposed to be firing above the heads of the crowd. Maybe some of those folks were flying.
The injuries in this fracas between the Shiite and the Sunni Moslem factions were few compared with the 700 injured earlier in fighting between leftist students and right-wing Moslems at Shiraz University. Some people want to compare this to the riots in Miami--to anarchy that will bring down the system. But these are just religious groups fighting among themselves, somewhat like the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland.
We look for logic in the new Islamic state, when we can't make sense of our own religious differences, and we've had a 200-year start as a nation. We have churches in America that have a symbol of a Jew on the cross but won't even admit a Jew into the Church. If Jesus were alive, he would have to leave the Church, because some people are comfortable only with a dead Jew hanging on the cross. Jimmy Carter's Christian church in Plains made more world-wide news by turning a black Christian away than did the religious riots in Iran. I'd say the Iranians have their problems, but we have ours, too.
This Moslem fighting may go on until the new Iran takes shape. Often it reminds me of a wedding where people are throwing bricks instead of rice. But, like at a wedding, nobody is ducking, as if the bricks don't hurt. I just don't understand that, but a lot of people didn't understand why thousands of people would walk up to the shah and say, "Shoot me," either.
That's because Westerners don't understand the reverence for martyrdom.
My man sadegh
I met Sadegh when I got here. In his role as deputy general of the foreign press and minister of foreign guidance, he had arranged the visas for me, the Reverend Charles A. Moore from Houston and Rock Newman from Washington. I suppose he got those gigs because of the 15 years he spent in the States. You know, he worked on Indian reservations in South Dakota. To me, that just shows how really hip he is.
I went to his house once, met his pregnant wife and his two-and-a-half-year-old son. We talked about the possibility of a war between our countries. They said they knew they could all be blown up in two minutes but were prepared to die. (Back to this martyrdom thing again. I really don't think the Western mind has looked at it seriously enough. These folks are for real.)
Sadegh and I went everywhere together; to meet the imam, to meet the students holding the hostages, up to the mountains and even to the Behesht'e' Zahra Cemetery. This cemetery looks like a Broadway play letting out, there are so many people coming to visit.
We used to go up into the Demavend Mountains to pray. Sadegh really got a kick out of the idea that I fasted, because they do a lot of that over here, too. We used to watch the moon and the stars, and laugh at the traffic below. Here, you can go through a red light as long as nothing is coming. Pedestrians don't wait for lights, they just walk out into the street. But I always stay on the curb. I can't speak Farsi, so I might end up in the hospital, telling them to take my liver out, when it was my ankle that needed attention. We'd talk about other differences between our two countries, the people, the things, the prices. Gas is only 30 cents a gallon over here.
We used to go to the movies. Saw one flick about how the CIA engineered the fall of Chile's Salvador Allende. The movie was one of those banned by the shah. It's really wild, though; these people are watching old films showing cowboys killing Indians, whites killing slaves, the Mafia waging war. The masses of Iranians don't understand that a lot of that stuff happened a long time ago.
Ramsey and pride
If we succeed in toppling him one day, he will be judged by what he has done against, my people's economy and cultural expression. The whole world will know of his crimes.--Ayatollah Khomeini, May 9, 1976
Ramsey Clark and I thought about what the imam had said in Le Monde some four years earlier, while still in exile. Wasn't that prophetic? Ramsey and the American delegation to the Iranian-sponsored international conference on U. S. involvement in Iran are all sitting in my hotel room and staring out the window at the U. S. embassy. Clark basically repeated to me what he had said at the conference, that America should be big enough to apologize for its actions in support of the shah, who caused the death of so many.
I really think the U. S. needs a revolution of its own--a spiritual revolution. We are too proud. Pride leads to vanity, which makes us forget God. We must learn humility, but that does not mean we have to take a weak position. It means that in the eyes of God, we don't have to be overbearing. America doesn't have that problem by herself. Through fasting for more than 60 days in this room, I discovered that I have it, too. But I'm going to do something about my pride-and-vanity thing.
Our pride reminds me of this story: During the Revolutionary War, a group of Colonial soldiers were piling lumber. The work was heavy and the squad was shorthanded. Supervising the work, but not moving, was a sergeant. A plainly dressed officer went up and asked the sergeant why he was not helping the men. "Why, I am the sergeant," he replied proudly. The other man took off his coat and began to help the men with the lumber. When the work was done, he put on his coat and started to leave. The sergeant stopped him and asked, "Who are you? What is your name?"
The man then stiffened into a salute and said, "General George Washington."
Ol' stupid, the one with all the pride, looked ridiculous, and he was. Proud and vain nations are like proud and vain people. They always look ridiculous. Soldiers never become saints. Let's first look for peace. Pride goes before the fall, and the voice of the cannon is the voice of God condemning vanity and pride.
The New Iran
Many Westerners have pointed to the decline in oil production as a sign of a breakdown of Iranian society. Yet that is actually one of the end products of the new Islamic state. During the first half of 1980, Iran exported only 5.4 billion dollars' worth of oil, as compared with some 15 billion dollars' worth for all of 1979. The only reason to keep exports high is to bank the money for the interest--and, as an Islamic state, Iran does not believe in interest. On Sunday, January 14, 1979, the Ayatollah said on CBS' Face the Nation: "As for banks, as you know, the interest is forbidden in Islam, and it is against the interest of the human being. We accept the banks, the banking system, but not the usury and interest."
Iran is two, maybe three or four societies side by side, and they all clash. What is Persian and what is Islam, what is Iranian and what is Western? All that clashing creates some strange results: A beautiful $30,000,000 race track was closed down by the revolution, even after a court ruled that it was not against Islamic law to wager on horses. On the streets, women are wearing Western dresses and Western hair styles. Next to them are women covered in the traditional chador.
Casinos, prostitution and all other night life have been banned. The wineries have switched from making wine to making grape juice. Yet others say a bottle of the best Scotch can be bought on the street for $100. When Khomeini closed the country's liquor distilleries, he created about 1000 white-lightnin' basement stills, reminiscent of our Prohibition days.
Before the music ban, the streets were filled with music from car radios--ballads, instrumental and rock. The Ayatollah banned much of it, saying, "We want music that lifts the spirit, as in marches, music that makes our youth move instead of paralyzing them, music that helps them care about their country." On the streets now, one hears revolutionary marches; but behind closed doors, some still dance and sing the old Persian songs.
In such a strict Islamic society, I was surprised by how many people were standing on the street, smoking cigarettes. The Black Muslims I know back in the States don't drink or smoke. They have been turned from their drug habits.
In building a new Iran, a committee has been set up to change the names of streets, schools and colleges to Islamic names. For example, before the revolution, many of the stores carried English names, often misspelled, such as "Eye-balloptic" and "General Shook Absorbers." All of that will be wiped away by the cultural revolution. There have been proposals to close the schools for two years until they can remove harmful, evil Western influences and improve teaching standards. A medical plan is also taking shape. It would require all Iranian doctors to provide free care to the poor one day a week, as well as volunteer their services in an underdeveloped area of the country one month a year.
Black people should have no trouble understanding the new Iran or the Islamic society. There have always been sanctified folk in the black communities. The Holy Rollers didn't smoke, dance, drink, wear lipstick or listen to rock-'n'-roll music. The women didn't wear pants or jewelry. We always thought they were crazy, but I recently went home to St. Louis, and the "crazy ol' Holy Rollers" were the only ones still making it. They didn't suffer from lung cancer, liver disease or drug addiction.
If America had listened to Malcolm X, we would all understand Iran. What Iran is saying about controlling itself is what Malcolm was saying about controlling our neighborhoods. He said Western society had been vicious to blacks, and Iran is saying it has been vicious to Iranians.
In any event, Iran seems to me like Rip van Winkle rising from a 20-year sleep. It doesn't know which direction it's facing--all it knows is it sees the sun. If it is facing East, the sun is rising and things are getting brighter. If it is facing West, the sun is setting and things are getting darker. We will know which it is in a few minutes.
"For more than six years, 400 members of SAVAK trained at CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia".
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