Iran’s Islamic revolution is dead?
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaks on the 31st anniversary of the Isalmic Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of government supporters have massed in central Tehran to mark the anniversary of the revolution that created Iran’s Islamic republic.
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Glimpse of Islamic Revolution of Iran
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Quotes from just after the Islamic Revolution in 1979:
“The mullahs are going to rule now. We are going to have ten thousand years of the Islamic republic. The Marxists are going to go on with their Lenin. We are going to go on in the way of Khomeini.” Ayatollah Khalkhali
“What he [Stalin] did in Russia we have to do in Iran. We, too, have to do a lot of killing. A lot.” Behzad, Iranian interpreter for Western journalist V.S. Naipaul
“I inform the proud Muslim people of the world that the author of the Satanic Verses book which is against Islam, the Prophet and the Koran, and all involved in its publication who were aware of its content, are sentenced to death.”Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini FATWA issued February, 1989 against Salman Rushdie
“The mullahs are going to rule now. We are going to have ten thousand years of the Islamic republic. The Marxists are going to go on with their Lenin. We are going to go on in the way of Khomeini.”
Ayatollah Khalkhali
“What he [Stalin] did in Russia we have to do in Iran. We, too, have to do a lot of killing. A lot.” Behzad, Iranian interpreter for Western journalist V.S. Naipaul
“There is no room for play in Islam… It is deadly serious about everything.” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini Speech at Qum, reported in Timemagazine January 7, 1980
Ayatollah revives the death fatwa on Salman Rushdie
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article414681.ece
A FATWA against the author Salman Rushdie was reaffirmed by Iran’s spiritual leader last night in a message to Muslim pilgrims. British officials anxiously played down comments after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, told Muslims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca that Rushdie was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam, according to the Iranian media.
Iranian academic sentenced to death
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2415751.stm
A liberal journalist and academic, Hashem Aghajari, has been sentenced to death for apostasy – the renunciation of his belief – according to Iranian reports. He was arrested in August after a speech in which he called for reform within the Islamic clerical establishment.
27 Oct 02 Middle East
Eyewitness: Execution in Tehran
19 Jul 02 Middle East
Iranian rapist faces death fall
16 Aug 01 Middle East
Three men publicly hanged in Iran
15 Aug 01 Middle East
Row over public floggings in Iran
23 Jul 01 Middle East
Iranian minister condemns floggings
12 Jul 01 Middle East
Iranian adulteress stoned to death
11 Jun 01 Middle East
Poll boosts Khatami reform bid
11 Mar 01 Middle East
Khatami: Iran must have democracy
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2365751.stm
Iran: Harsh Sentences Condemned
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2001/01/16/iran-harsh-sentences-condemned
Another accused participant in the Berlin conference, Hojatoleslam Hassan Youssefi Eshkevari, remains in prison awaiting sentencing by a Special Court for the Clergy on charges of apostasy, which may carry the death penalty. Two other writers, Changiz Pahlevan and Kazem Kardavani, have not returned to Iran from Germany, having been informed that charges have been prepared against them also.
Iran considering death penalty for web-related crimes Agencies Published: July 02, 2008, 18:03
http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iran/10225472.html
Tehran: A law that could see the death penalty imposed for cyber crimes is set to be debated in Iran’s parliament, reports said on Wednesday. Under the draft bill, those found guilty of promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy on the internet may face the death penalty. The bill aims to “toughen punishment for harming mental security in society,” Iran’s ISNA news agency said.
Iran: End Persecution of Nobel Laureate
The Iranian government should end immediately its escalating persecution of Dr. Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel peace laureate and a leading human rights defender, Human Rights Watch and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said today. “We are extremely worried for Shirin Ebadi’s safety and her ability to continue her important human rights work,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Documents Unlawfully Seized at Rights Activist Shirin Ebadi’s Office
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/12/30/iran-end-persecution-nobel-laureate
Iran: Trial for Conference Attendees November 1, 2000
In an open letter sent to Iran’s chief judicial official, Human Rights Watch called for an end to the prosecution of prominent independent and reformist figures who attended an international conference last April. Human Rights Watch sent the open letter to the Head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi. At least twelve activists and writers now face charges of “engaging in propaganda against the national security of Iran.” They are being tried in secret before the Revolutionary Court in Tehran, where procedures have in the past fallen far short of international standards for fair trial. “Iran should immediately halt the prosecution of these individuals and all charges against them should be dropped,” said Hanny Megally, the Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division. “Those who have remained outside of Iran since the Berlin conference for fear of prosecution should be assured they will not be subject to reprisals upon their return.”
Iran: Enforced closure of human rights centre an ominous development
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/180/2008/en
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE13/180/2008/en
The British and Americans finally settled on the virtually powerless son of Reza Khan, Mohammad Reza Shah, to be the new ruler of Iran. At first the young Shah turned down the offers made to him by the conspirators, even after visits from American Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf on August 1, 1953, and a later meeting with Kermit Roosevelt. Dorril writes that, “The Shah finally agreed to support the plan only ‘after official US and British involvement had been confirmed through a special radio broadcast.'” BBC Persia was used to convey a pre-arranged coded message over the airwaves for the ears of the Shah in order to satisfy his doubts.
To prepare for the coup the Americans funded Ayatollah Bihbani and the British gave a group led by Ayatollah Qanatabadi $100,000 to stir up unrest against Mossadegh. Ayatollah Kashani was given $10,000 by the CIA and his followers played a role in the demonstrations in central Tehran. Another group of fundamentalist agitators was led by Tayyeb Hsaj-Reza’i, a figure who later became a supporter of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
The most noteworthy success of the Islamic movement during this time was of course the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the installation of the Ayatollah Khomeini as the Islamic dictator. British Intelligence had used their contacts with Iran’s mullahs and ayatollahs to help overthrow Mossadegh and install the Shah back in 1953, and these contacts were maintained and used again to overthrow the Shah when his regime fell out of favor.
The Establishment history of Iran’s Islamic Revolution is that Khomeini’s revolt was spontaneous and populist, and that it overthrew a repressive dictatorship that was hated by the people but supported wholeheartedly by the United States. It is true that the Shah’s government was not a democracy and that his secret service, trained by the CIA, was one of the most effective intelligence organizations in the world. But what is not reported is that prior to the British-sponsored massive public relations campaign on behalf of the Ayatollah the government of the Shah was loved by the vast majority of the population.
After taking over from Mossadegh the Shah began to push forward a number of nationalist policies that increased his popularity at home but, in some cases, worried the Anglo-American Establishment. First, he signed petroleum agreements with ENI, the Italian oil company. Then in 1963 he pushed forward on a series of popular reforms that became known as the White Revolution. The Shah evolved into a nationalist whose path paralleled that of Nasser far too much for the Establishment’s liking:
– He bought land from the upper classes and, along with the crown’s own land, sold it back cheaply to tenant farmers, allowing over one a half million people to become land owners and ending the old feudal system.
– He allowed women the right to vote, and brought an end to the wearing of the veil, which were “Westernizing” moves unwelcomed by the religious sector.
– He pushed forward on a $90 billion nuclear power program.
– He moved to shut down the lucrative opium industry that had been created during the days of British Empire control that had been running for a hundred years.
In 1973 The Economist magazine featured Iran on the front cover with the caption: “Iran the Next Japan of the Middle East?” Iran’s economy had grown at a rate of 7-8% each year from 1965-1973 and was becoming an example for the developing nations of the world to follow. As far as the Anglo-American Establishment was concerned this could not be allowed to continue. Establishment goals were focused on world de-population and de-industrialization as formulated by policy makers like Lord Bertrand Russell and as advocated by establishment lackeys such as Kissinger, Zibigniew Brzezinski and Robert McNamara (the head of the World Bank), as well as by the British elites who controlled the World Wildlife Fund and other environmental front groups. Iran had to be brought down.
The attack on the Shah’s government came through the Muslim Brotherhood and through the mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran, supported and manipulated by British Intelligence. Dr. John Coleman, a former British Intelligence agent and author of a number of books and monographs detailing the Establishment’s plan for a socialist world government, states in his report on Iran’s Islamic Revolution (11) that the Muslim Brotherhood was created by “the great names of British Middle East intelligence, T.E. Lawrence, E.G. Browne, Arnold Toynbee. St. John Philby and Bertrand Russell,” and that their mission was to “keep the Middle East backward so that its natural resource, oil, could continue to be looted…”
Dr. Coleman writes that in 1980 the broadcasts of Radio Free Iran divided the enemies of the Shah into four categories:
1. Iranian politicians bought by the Israeli Shin Bet,
2. The CIA’s network of agents,
3. The feudal landowners,
4. The Freemasons and the Muslim Brotherhood (viewed as the same enemy).
In his report Dr. Coleman writes that in Iran, “At one time there was even a joke about the mullahs being stamped ‘made in Britain.'” When the Shah introduced his plan for modernization in 1963 the Ayatollah Khomeini emerged as the leader of the religious opposition. Up until his exile from Iran in 1964, Khomeini was based at the religious city of Qom. Dr. Coleman relates that Radio Free Iran claimed that while at Qom Khomeini received a “monthly stipend from the British, and he is in constant contact with his masters, the British.”
Khomeini was kicked out of Iran and settled in Iraq. He lived there for a number of years until he was arrested by the Iraqi government and deported in 1978. French President D’Estang was then pressured to offer Khomeini refuge in France to continue his “Islamic studies.” While in France he became a Western celebrity and the symbol of the anti-Shah Islamic revolution. Coleman writes, “Once Khomeini was installed at the Chateau Neauphle, he began to receive a constant stream of visitors, many of them from the BBC, the CIA and British intelligence.”
At the same time Amnesty International was continuing its intense campaign against the Shah’s government, accusing it of torture and other terrible human rights abuses. The international press picked up on this theme and carried it around the world.
The BBC then became the Ayatollah’s main promoter. Dr. Coleman writes, “It was the BBC, which prepared and distributed to the mullahs in Iran all of the cassette tapes of Khomeini’s speeches, which inflamed the peasants. Then the BBC began to beam accounts of torture by the Shah’s SAVAK to all corners of the world… In September and October 1978 the BBC began to beam Khomeini’s inflammatory ravings direct to Iran in Farsi. The Washington Post said, ‘the BBC is Iran’s public enemy number one.'”
The BBC Persian Service came to be nicknamed in Iran the “Ayatollah BBC” for its non-stop coverage of everything that Khomeini wanted to say (12). Soon a large segment of the Iranian public, most of them impressionable young students, became convinced that the Shah truly was evil and that a return to pure shi’ite Islam under the Ayatollah’s leadership was the only way to save their country. The Carter Administration, manipulated by British lackey Zbigniew Brzezinski, then collaborated with the British to topple the Shah and install Khomeini.
Dr. Coleman relates that Carter appointed Trilateralist George Ball to head a commission on U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf. Ball’s recommendation was that the U.S. should withdraw its support for the Shah’s regime. Dr. Coleman quotes from the Shah’s own memoirs to confirm the American stance, the reality that is contrary to the mass-marketed Establishment line that the U.S. supported the Shah to the end,
“I did not know it then, perhaps I did not want to know – but it is clear to me now, the Americans wanted me out. What was I to make of the sudden appointment of Ball to the White House as an advisor to Iran? I knew that Ball was no friend of Iran. I understood that Ball was working on a special report on Iran. But no one ever informed me what areas the report was to cover, let alone its conclusions. I read them months later when I was in exile, and my worst fears were confirmed. Ball was among those Americans who wanted to abandon me, and ultimately my country.”
After the Shah stepped down in 1979 and fled the country his “firm ally,” the United States, even refused to allow him asylum forcing him to move with his family to Egypt. During the subsequent takeover of the American embassy when supporters of the Ayatollah kept Americans hostage for 444 days it became crystal clear to the entire world that the anti-democratic, anti-Israel Islamic movement was also very anti-West. Nonetheless the Anglo-American Establishment continued to support and promote radical Islam.
MI6 : Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service (Hardcover) by Stephen Dorril
What Really Happened In Iran, Dr. John Coleman
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Grand Ayatollah Mussa Sadr:
The Iranian born leader of the Lebanese Shia was revered and respected above all others in the Shia world. He re- fused to accept Ruhollah Khomeini as an ayatollah and with the influence Mussa Sadr enjoyed, he became an insurmountable obstacle to Khomeini’s political plans, and of those who supported the over- throw of the Shah and needed a despot like Khomeini to be their cat’s paw.
Grand Ayatollah Sadr’s mysterious disappearance in Libya – his body was never found – opened the way for Khomeini to “invade” Iran, which accurately describes the action of a foreign national taking over a country in which he was neither born nor had any Persian blood in his veins at all, paternally or maternally. While one devout Iranian in California speaks of Khomeini reverently as a “great man, similar to Hitler”, other less friendly Persians liken him to an invader like Genghis Khan, the Mongol scourge.
Unable to strike at the hardliners on an uneven playing field, the “reformers” have now begun an all-out assault on their former clerical allies. The cornerstone and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, from which the present leaders draw their legitimacy to govern, was Khomeini and the structure, which he put in place. How- ever, there is compelling evidence that Ruhollah Khomeini was never an Iranian in the first place and had no right to inflict his policies on the Iranian people. Nor was his elevation to the title of ayatollah anything more than a political, face-saving expediency to prevent his being hanged for treason in 1964.
Considerable effort was made in 1979 to eradicate evidence of any record of either Khomeini’s Non-Iranian origins and the source of his use of the title of ayatollah, and one of the first actions which Khomeini took, within hours of his return to Iran after the Shah left, was to execute two prominent men who were living proof of his origin and also of his false ayatollah status. One of these was Gen. Hassan Pakravan, Head of SAVAK, the Imperial Iranian national intelligence and security organization.
Furthermore he immediately tried to assassinate the highly respected Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who, with Ayatollah Golpayegani, had in 1964 granted Khomeini the false title. They had agreed to allow Khomeini —then literally awaiting death on charges of treason — to be called an ayatollah to save his life: it was forbidden to execute an ayatollah. This took place in 1964 at the urging of the British Ambassador to Iran and Gen. Pakravan, when a face-saving legal reason had to be found not to hang Khomeini for treason. It is known that Pakravan had fought hard to avoid Khomeini’s execu- tion at that time.
Later, when the 1979 assassination attempt failed against Shariatmadari, Shariatmadari, far higher in the religious hierarchy than Khomeini, was placed, in- communicado and under house arrest, without the right to preach or receive visitors other than a handful of close relatives, whose anti-Khomeini statements could be easily impugned as biased.
Recent reports from Tehran showed the death fatwa (religious edict or opinion) issued against British author Salman Rushdi by Khomeini for writing an “anti-Islamic” book and cancelled a few years ago, had been reinstated to warn journalists or writers the clerics cannot directly control, that they risked death at the hands of devout Moslem fanatics if they uttered a word against the rulers in Iran or weakened their standing by revealing the illegitimate provenance of their power and thus contest their right to impose their theocratic despotism on a reluctant people.
Few contest that Khomeini’s mother was a Kashmiri Indian, but even fewer Iranians or otherwise know his father’s origins or his real name. The late Iranian Senator Moussavi, who represented Khuzestan Province in Southern Iran, at the time of the monarchy, knew Khomeini’s father and his four sons well, looked after their needs, used his influence to obtain their Iranian identity cards with fictitious dates and places of birth to avoid military service. Sen. Moussavi died for this help, on Khomeini’s personal orders, immediately on this mullah’s return from France after the 1979 coup.
SAVAK chief Gen. Pakravan, the man who saved Khomeini’s life in 1964, was taken that same night onto the roof of his house and shot to death for having compiled a complete background file on Khomeini. The SAVAK background file still exists, as a senior SAVAK official who defected and joined SAVAMA (the clerics’ equivalent of the SAVAK) took possession of it. This same man was reportedly head of SAVAMA in the US for quite some time, and sources indicate that he has kept the file “for a rainy day”.
Why did Khomeini return to Iran with such a bloodthirsty mind set? It seems clear that it was to exact the revenge which he said he would have. Prior to his return to Iran in 1979, Khomeini openly stated that he would kill as many Iranians he considered everyone in Iran guilty in advance as there were hairs on the head of his son, killed in a car accident, but in his mind killed by Iranian authorities.
Unable to provide an acceptable paternal background for Khomeini, a story was concocted to link his paternal heritage to that of his Kashmiri Indian mother and introduced an Indian-born father (also from Kashmir) but of Iranian heritage. In fact, no such person existed. But someone with similar and misleading characteristics certainly did, which could lend credence to this fiction of an Indian father.
Khomeini’s real father, William Richard Williamson, was born in Bristol, England, in 1872 of British parents and lineage. This detail is based on first-hand evidence from a former Iranian employee of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum: BP), who worked with and met the key players of this saga. This fact was supported by the lack of a denial in 1979 by Col. Archie Chisholm, a BP political officer and former editor at The Financial Times, when interviewed on the subject at his home in County Cork, Ireland, by a British newspaper.
The then-78-year old Chisholm stated: “I knew Haji [as Williamson was later known] well; he worked for me. He certainly went native – but whether he is Khomeini’s father I could not say.”
Would not an outright, ridiculing denial have been the natural response, were there no truth to the British paternity? From Someone Who Knew Haji And Thus The Truth Well?
Chisholm obviously wished to avoid a statement leading to political controversy or possible personal retribution in the very year Khomeini took over in Iran. Nor as a former, experienced political officer himself would he be willing to drag Britain into the new Middle East conflict. But neither was he prepared to provide an outright lie instead of his “no comment”.
How it all happened: A stocky, handsome, dark-haired Bristol boy, Richard Williamson ran away to sea at the age of 13 as a cabin boy, on a ship bound for Australia. However, he jumped ship before he got there. Little is known about him until he showed up, at the age of 20, in Aden at the Southern end of the Arabian Peninsula in South Yemen, where he joined the local police force.
His good looks soon had Sultan Fazl bin-Ali, ruler of Lahej, persuading him to quit the police force to live with him. Richard later left him for another Sheikh, Youssef Ebrahim, a relative of the Al- Sabah family, which rules Kuwait today.
A few points should be remembered about the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula area at that time.
Regional countries like Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and so forth did not exist as sovereign entities and were artificially created about 70 years ago by the British and French governments when they partitioned the area. Iran, or Persia as it was called, was soon to be controlled by Russian Cossacks in the North and the British Army in the South, although technically it remained an independent monarchy under the largely absentee Qajar dynasty.
British military presence in Iran was under Lt.-Col. Sykes (later Sir Percy Sykes), based in Shiraz, but politically con- trolled by Sir Arnold Wilson in Khorramshahr (then called Moham-mareh) with assistance from E. Elkington in Masjid-Suleiman and Dr Young, based in Ahwaz. All three were cities in Khuzestan Province, which was later rep- resented by Senator Moussavi. Col. T.E. Lawrence, who gained fame as “Lawrence of Arabia”, operated out of Basra in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Khorramshahr during this same period.
Oilfields, far beyond the technological capability of the Arab tribes (or Persia) to develop or appreciate as a valuable commodity, were being discovered and ex- ploited by the British, including via the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, formed to siphon off oil from Khuzestan Province in Southern Iran.
Kuwait, on the other side of the Persian Gulf was still not a country at the time. As the major player in the Middle East oil industry, Britain had to exert influence and control through its political and oil personnel. Haji Abdollah Williamson became one of these in 1924 when he joined British Petroleum as political officer. He retired under that same name in 1937, at the age of 65.
Earlier, in what is now Kuwait, Richard Williamson had very quickly converted to Islam and adopted the first name of Abdollah. Family names were still unusual and “son of the son of ” or “son of a type of worker or craftsman” was still commonly used to identify people. For 14 years he had lived among the Bedouin tribes on the Arabian Peninsula and in 1895 and 1898 he went on pilgrimages to Mecca, took on the rightful title of Haji and took on his first benefactor’s name of Fazl, adding Zobeiri to it as a distinguisher. Thus William Richard Williamson became Haji Abdollah Fazl Zobeiri.
During his service with British Petroleum in the Persian Gulf, Haji Abdollah took his vacations in Indian Kashmir, to rest from the relentless Gulf heat and in this timeframe married at least seven times — to Arab and Indian women — each under Muslim marriage rituals. He sired 13 children of whom seven were boys and the rest girls with most of the children dying in early childhood.
His repeated Kashmir excursions and Indian wives and use of the name Abdollah Fazl Zobeiri probably give rise to the “Kashmir Indian” father misconception. With dark-haired Haji Abdollah a fanatically devout Muslim, a characteristic he imposed on his children, this fervent religious attitude and Arab nomenclature would not normally be an expected combination for a foreigner, especially an Englishman.
He insisted his four surviving sons attend religious school in Najaf (in Iraq) under the tutelage of Ayatollahs Yazdi (meaning of the city of Yazd) and Shirazi (of the city of Shiraz). Two of them, Hindizadeh (meaning Indian born) and Passandideh (meaning pleasing or approved) studied well and eventually became ayatollahs in their own right.
The third boy, a troublesome young man, failed to make his mark in Najaf and went to the Iranian holy city of Qom, where he studied under Ayatollah Boroujerdi. When family names became a requirement by law under His Majesty Reza Shah, the young man chose the city of his residence — Khomein — as the designator and took on the name Khomeini (meaning “of Khomein”).
The fourth son hated theology and went across the Persian Gulf to Kuwait and opened up two gas (petrol) stations using the paternal family name of Haji Ali Williamson, though it is unclear if he ever performed the Haj pilgrimage. This in itself links Khomeini — through that brother — with Haji Williamson. Why, otherwise, would Rouhallah Khomeini’s undisputed brother use the Williamson family name?
The patriarch of this brood, Haji Abdollah Fazl Zobeiri (aka Haji Abdollah Williamson in BP), was thrown out of Iran by Reza Shah along with three other British political officers for anti-Iranian activity and joined his son in Kuwait. Here he took on the duties of Oil Distribution for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
With his longstanding contacts in the Arab world and his Muslim religion, he forced a 50/50 agreement between US oil interests in Kuwait and the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company as well as in 1932 pursuing the exclusive exploration rights for British Petroleum in Abu Dhabi.
His lack of a formal education forced British Petroleum to send out Archie H. T. Chisholm, a senior executive, to conclude the Abu Dhabi contract and together with Haji Abdollah’s political influence they overcame competition from Major Frank Holmes, Sheikh Hussein and Mohammad Yateen to successfully land the exclusive contract. Chisholm, as he said, got to know Khomeini’s father well.
Back in Iran again in 1960, Khomeini saw an opportunity to exact revenge for his father having been thrown out of Iran and to impose his Islamic fundamentalist philosophy onto an Iran struggling with budget problems, caused mostly by its oil being in the control of foreign oil companies, which decided — not Iran — how much oil the country was allowed to produce and at what price it had to be sold.
With his own and his family’s theological background, he began to foment an anti-monarchy revolt through the mosques, which by 1964 resulted in imposition of martial law and finally with his arrest and his being sentenced to death by hanging. And consequently being given the life-saving ayatollah title, which he had not earned.
After formally being exiled to Turkey, he ended up in Iraq where he wrote some philosophical and social behavior dissertations, which were so bizarre by religious standards that, where possible, the tracts were bought up and destroyed by the Iranian Government when he took over in 1979. The most damning were in Arabic language versions and then later, “cleaner” texts appeared as edited translations in Farsi.
Some linguists, who studied his public speeches in 1979 and 1980, concluded his Farsi vocabulary to be less than 200 words, so not only did he not have Persian blood, he did not even speak the language. With the number of Iranians who have died be- cause of him and his successors over the past 25 years going into the hundreds of thousands, if not well over a million if the death toll from the eight-year Iran-Iraq war is included, this Anglo-Indian with Arab Sunni Muslim theological and philosophical roots may have had no love or compassion for Iranians either.
In the Iran Air aircraft flying Khomeini back from France to Tehran in early 1979, with cameras rolling, a journalist asked: “What do you feel about returning to Iran?” He replied: “Nothing!” The question was repeated, and again he replied: “Nothing!”
Reference:
Khomeini’s real father, William Richard Williamson’s life story has also been written and published in the early 1950s by Stanton Hope, a British Journalist and writer who had met Williamson in his home near Basra in the late 1940s. The book Title is – – Arabian Adventurer: the Story of Haji Williamson
Khomeini in Paris, France.
Isn’t is strange that exile of Khomeini to Iraq [Ruled by Pro Western Baathist] Turkey [Ruled by Pro Western Government] and France [do you need a comment about the Non-Islamic Society of France where the so-called Islamic Revlutionary Khomeini (spiritual brother of Satanic Mullah Mawdoodi of Satanic Jamat-e-Islami]
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Khomeini spent more than 14 years in exile, mostly in the holy Shia city of Najaf, Iraq. Initially he was sent to Turkey on 4 November 1964 where he stayed in the city of Bursa for less than a year. He was hosted by a colonel in Turkish Military Intelligence named Ali Cetiner in his own residence, who couldn’t find another accommodation alternative for his stay at the time. Later in October 1965 he was allowed to move to Najaf, Iraq, where he stayed until being forced to leave in 1978, after then-Vice President Saddam Hussein forced him out (the two countries would fight a bitter eight year war 1980-1988 only a year after the two reached power in 1979) after which he went to Neauphle-le-Château in France on a tourist visa, apparently not seeking political asylum, where he stayed for four months.
Read more in
Khomeini Life of the Ayatollah. By Baqer Moin. 355 pp. New York: Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Press.
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Ayatollah Khomeini, US Central Intelligence and SAVAK [Iranian Intelligence Agency]:
SAVAK was the accronym for the Iranian Shah (King) Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s feared security service, which routinely tortured and assassinated dissidents, and spied on everybody. It had been created by the CIA after the CIA installed the shah in power in a 1953 coup d’état.
In 1979, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini — who as a dissident leader had been denouncing SAVAK — came to power after the revolutionary forces deposed the shah. The next year, the Washington Post wrote an interesting article with the title: “Khomeini Is Reported to Have a SAVAK of His Own.”[1a] And what was Khomeini’s own SAVAK like? It was none other than SAVAK itself. Here is what the Washington Post writes :
“Though it came to power denouncing the shah’s dreaded SAVAK secret service, the government of Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini has created a new internal security and intelligence operation, apparently with a similar organizational structure and some of the same faces as its predecessor.
The new organization is called SAVAMA. It is run, according to U.S. sources and Iranian exile sources here and in Paris, by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and a friend from boyhood of the deposed monarch.
…‘SAVAK is alive and kicking’ in the form of SAVAMA, claims Ali Tabatabai, former press counselor at the Iranian Embassy in Washington under the shah… now president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda [Maryland, near Washington D.C.]… ‘There are large numbers of former SAVAK people’ in the new organization, he says. ‘In fact, with the exception of the bureau chiefs [who ran the individual sections of SAVAK] the whole organization seems to be intact.’
In Paris, a French lawyer who specializes in representing Iranian exiles told Washington Post correspondent Ronald Koven that ‘SAVAMA is SAVAK without any change in structure. They just replaced some of the chiefs…
…Tabatabai, who claims he has good sources on the situation in Tehran, says that SAVAMA’s organization ‘is almost a carbon copy’ of SAVAK’s, with nine bureaus. These, he said, cover personnel, collection of foreign intelligence, collection of domestic intelligence, surveillance of its own agents and security of its own agents and security of government buildings, communications, finances, analysis of collected intelligence, counterintelligence, and recruitment and training.”
What Tabatabai is describing above is the security apparatus of a totalitarian police state: the nine bureaus of SAVAK/SAVAMA were spying on ordinary Iranians and even on SAVAK/SAVAMA itself. They were also torturing and murdering ordinary Iranians, as they judged it necessary: “SAVAK used torture systematically as a tool of internal repression.” The Ayatollah Khomeini, of course, installed a totalitarian police state, so from this point of view swallowing SAVAK — which had a great deal of experience running the shah’s totalitarian police state — was convenient. But it was still a perfectly absurd thing for Khomeini to do if he was really an enemy of the US ruling elite, because it was this ruling elite’s CIA that had installed Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in power and created SAVAK for him, and therefore only an ally of the US ruling elite would welcome the “very close ties that SAVAK, under the shah, [had] maintained with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.”
Of course, US officials were very busy telling everybody that the Ayatollah Khomeini (whom they would soon start arming to the teeth, in secret, for the entire duration of the Iran-Iraq war was supposedly their enemy, so they rushed to deny that there was really that much SAVAK in SAVAMA. As reported in the same article:
“In Washington, however, U.S. government analysts offer a more subdued assessment.
‘It may be tempting to look at SAVAMA as SAVAK reborn,’ one source said, ‘but that is too fanciful for the facts.’ …U.S. sources say that some vestiges of the previous system could be useful [to new regime]. So, some former SAVAK functionaries — described as ‘lower level’ — who were able to function for the shah without being tainted now work for Khomeini.”
But as you can see from one of the quotes above, the one thing that both US and Iranian exile sources were definitely agreeing on was that “SAVAMA…is run…by Gen. Hossein Fardoust, who was deputy chief of SAVAK under the former shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi…”
Not only that:
“Fardoust…[was] a longtime friend, classmate and confidant of the shah. Fardoust, Tabatabai says, was also head of a special SAVAK bureau that summarized all intelligence information. Fardoust delivered it personally to the shah daily.”
This Fardoust was not exactly “lower level,” was he? Nor was he merely “tainted”: Fardoust had been running Iran for the shah. It also turns out that “Fardoust’s deputy at SAVAMA is said to be Gen. Ali Mohammed Kaveh, formerly the head of the SAVAK bureau dealing with analysis of collected intelligence.” This Kaveh was not exactly “lower level” either. Finally, “In three former bureaus dealing with personnel organization and summation of intelligence, Tabatabai claims, every member who worked for Fardoust when he was deputy chief of SAVAK still works for him as chief of SAVAMA.”
The US ruling elite did not support Ali Tabatabai’s Iran Freedom Foundation, which wanted to topple Khomeini, and it was awkward for the US ruling elite that Ali Tabatabai was explaining out loud how the Ayatollah was running Iran with the CIA’s SAVAK, just like the shah had before him. It is possible that Tabatabai’s assassination in his Bethesda, Maryland home, shortly after he made the above statements to the press, was unrelated to the CIA. However, it does seem significant that,
“Only Tabatabai was willing to let his name be attached publicly to the foundation. Only Tabatabai was eager to go before television cameras and radio microphones to discuss the positions of the foundation. In the end, said one of the original 10 [founders] who asked that his name not be used, their fears for the safety of their families and themselves were borne out by what happened to Tabatabai. …‘Our object was primarily to expose the true nature of Khomeini,’ he said.
…Tabatabai was president of the foundation as well as its spokesman. Because of his prominent public profile, the Iran Freedom FOUNDATION (IFF) became in turn the most widely known of nine anti-Khomeini groups in the United States.
…In all cases, it was Tabatabai who took the public stage. … He appeared on talk shows, both radio and television, locally, nationally and in Canada. He helped organize a major anti-Khomeini demonstration in Los Angeles earlier this month, designed to bring together the different anti-Khomeini groups.”
In other words, Tabatai had a big mouth, and he was the only person that needed shutting up — everybody else had already gotten the message. With Tabatabai out of the picture, problem solved. And indeed, I was unable to find mention of the SAVAK/SAVAMA identity in newspaper articles since. On the contrary: the next year, The New York Times ‘informed’ the public in a headline that “[SAVAMA] Isn’t Like Savak Under Sha,” stating in the body of the text that “Savak [was] disbanded after the 1979 revolution.” An article in The Christian Science Monitor, the same year, did say that “Savama [was] the name given [to] the reconstituted Savak secret police organization, so long a weapon of terror and torture in the late Shah’s hands,” but it rushed to assure its readers that the reason “many Savak members gladly serve in Savama” was “to save their own skins.”
Notes:
1- “HOW THE UNITED STATES DESTROYED DEMOCRACY IN IRAN IN 1953: Re-print of 16 April 2000 New York Times article”; with an introduction by Francisco Gil-White; Historical and Investigative Research, 5 January 2006;
2- Khomeini Is Reported to Have a SAVAK of His Own; Khomeini Reported to Have Own SAVAK-Style Agency, The Washington Post, June 7, 1980, Saturday, Final Edition, First Section; A1, 1706 words, By Michael Getler, Washington Post Staff Writer
3- Exiles plan assault on Iran, Christian Science Monitor (Boston, MA), June 19, 1980, Thursday, Midwestern Edition, The News Briefly; Pg. 2, 206 words, WITH ANALYSIS
FROM MONITOR CORRESPONDENTS AROUND THE WORLD, EDITED BY DEBRA K. PIOT, Washington
4- “Terrorism came to Washington once again yesterday. The chaos and violence of world events crystallized in an instant in a Bethesda home as a gunman pumped bullets into the stomach of Ali Akbar Tabatabai.”
SOURCE: New Case of International Terrorism; Reminder of Vulnerability, The Washington Post, July 23, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A14, 917 words, By Phil McCombs, Washington Post Staff Writer
5- Victim Led in Forming Anti-Khomeini Group, The Washington Post, July 23, 1980, Wednesday, Final Edition, First Section; A12, 654 words, By Donnel Nunes, Washington Post Staff Writer
6- AROUND THE WORLD; Iranian Says Secret Agency Isn’t Like Savak Under Shah, The New York Times, June 1, 1981, Monday, Late City Final Edition, Section A; Page 5, Column 2; Foreign Desk, 183 words, Reuters, TEHERAN, Iran, May 31