Iranian Oral History Project | Harvard University Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Khodadad Farmanfarmaian
Plan Organization Director
Transcript 12 of 16
Narrator: Dr. Khodadad Farmanfarmaian
Date: January 5, 1983
Place: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Interviewer: Habib Ladjevardi
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Q. I'd like to ask you to describe for us your memoirs regarding the beginning of the revolution, as you saw it coming: when did it occur; what thoughts crossed your mind; what did you try to do to play a role, perhaps, in preventing it; and anything else in this regard that you'd like to say.
A. Well, it's extremely difficult to pinpoint a time that one begins to feel something's happening. At best I can be vague about this. I remember even in 1976, '77 -- certainly in '77 -- when I moved around town, around Tehran, I felt the atmosphere was extremely tense. You felt electricity in the air, you sensed imminent danger.
You must remember, if I may just refer to some physical phenomena, the pollution had increased to a maximum. The streets, the streets were extremely crowded. The traffic was impossible. I remember the traffic lines from Teheran to Shemiran, let's say from my own office (which was located at the corner of Takht-e-Jamshid and Sepahbod Zahedi which is fairly central but in the northern part of the town) to my own home, which was in Elahieyeh-- I suppose it was about six miles altogether. Very often during the evening rush-hour, when we were going home, extended to the end, that is, the town side of the Jordan Boulevard.
Often, as I sat there waiting for the traffic line to move, I looked at the faces of other people in the cars waiting and I saw a tremendous amount of tension. I suppose at some point I noted a departure from what was before. All this was cumulative anyway. I sensed a great deal of, how shall I put it, protest in the very eyes of the quiet people who were sitting impatiently behind their wheels and waiting for the traffic to move. You saw incidents such as people screaming at each other, people cursing, insulting each other when somebody was trying to move in front of them or something -- very regularly.
I remember I was talking to someone, saying, "It seems to me the government has stopped functioning." Because letters would go to the government, but even when you were writing the letters, you weren't expecting an answer from the government, you knew an answer would not come. Significantly enough, you may remember that later on, when Amouzegar was prime minister, he sent a circular to government departments that all letters must be answered within ten days maximum or something of this sort. It was true.
Nobody cared, or the burden of the duties and the problems, if you wish, on the administration and the bureaucracy was so heavy that it had come to a chaotic position altogether. It was impossible to expect decisions from the government. People had problems, and I'm talking about industrialists, bankers, merchants, Bazaaris, shopkeepers, all of them -- and after all, I was a banker and I knew what was going on. We had problems. You wanted these problems to be solved, you wanted clear policies, you wanted to be able to move, you wanted to.... After all, our economy, our society was ridden with bottlenecks and you needed decisions for these matters; but those decisions were not forthcoming.
I felt this personally, let me tell you. I've never claimed to have predicted the revolution. I have not known anybody, among my own friends, some of the best minds of Persia, who ever predicted the coming of the revolution and the form it took. But we all had -- I did at least -- a sense that something was wrong and that there was the imminence of a catastrophe, you know, about, around. You sensed in the air that there was something like this, as early as late '76 even, in my judgment.
I found Hoveida in '76 an extremely jittery person. He wasn't like that before. Hoveida was calm with a great sense of humor. I noticed him -- I shouldn't say these things, he's dead -- but in the parties he would drink a great deal and he would let go. It had come to a point that when you looked at him, you knew he was a tired man, you knew he was not his usual bright and manipulative self. You knew he was at the end of his wits, I certainly sensed it because I knew the man so well. I sensed he was at the end of his wits. He must have sensed it too, he must have sensed that there's something wrong, basically. But nobody would dare to talk about that to him, because he still kept faith, he still... the minute you would begin to criticize, it was as if he has had too much of it, he would immediately react to you and burst into an irrational hortatory tirade denouncing you as one who wishes to bring about a "republic" to Iran.
And yes, in '77, '76, at at least two occasions that I remember distinctly when I was talking to Hoveida; for example, once about the Ministry of Finance, saying, "My God, it's time that you did something about the Ministry of Finance. Fiscal and tax reforms are needed, they are important instruments of government policy. The fact that you have money is not sufficient. The fact that you have money may give you the opportunity to take time now to bring about reforms in the Ministry of Finance." And I said to him, "I'm not talking about starting to collect heavy taxes," because that always was a problem, you know, "I'm simply talking about tax identity files, for example, in the ministry." -- which did not exist in spite of the largest and most complicated computer that they owned, you know. They had the computers and so on, they thought that in itself was a reform. But in effect, they didn't even have identities of individual tax payers. I said, "This is the time to do it. You have the money, you can afford to do it."
And when I talk about reforms, I'm not saying that you increase taxes, I'm saying you rationalize taxes and it may mean that you make things much easier on people instead of much harder, in fact. You cut off the hands of the agents of the Ministry of Finance from so many parts of the lives of the people and you rationalize your taxes. You begin a whole series of really basic reforms in the Ministry of Finance, which had remained the bastion of corruption and the bastion of inefficiency, if you wish.
The same, by the way, was true of the Ministry of Justice. This is what is interesting. The Ministry of Justice, and please remember this, that when we go back -- and I've been reading a great deal lately about the constitutional revolution and the events that lead to constitutional revolution -- people, at the turn of the century, were screaming, "We want Cedalat khanehD." CEdalat khanehD means, as you know, "the house of justice." They wanted a resort, a refuge at that time. They didn't understand the European-type constitution. They didn't understand democracy as we are talking about it, but surely even then they understood justice and they wanted justice. And as it were, one of the biggest and the most important areas that needed reform and really needed some basic action was the Ministry of Justice. And I raised these points with Hoveida. His reaction was -- and people were standing around; it was in my own home, this was the summer of, just that summer before he went on his vacation and came back and resigned, then Amouzegar, that was '77, I guess, wasn't it?
Q. Sure.
A. Hoveida suddenly became like a fighting tiger in front of everybody; and I was his host and I was talking very gently, very politely with great respect and deference to him (as I always did). I never wanted to make him look bad in front of others, and others who were standing around understood this. He suddenly said, "Are you suggesting," and I remember this distinctly, he said "are you suggesting that this country should become a republic?" You know that was the use of a terrible, ugly weapon...
Q. It was equivalent to treason.
A. Yes, he was almost accusing me of treason. That's right. I was shocked. Hoveida had always had a great balance, Hoveida could take criticism, yes he did. And I would forever say this, in his earlier years, he listened very well. Now he couldn't listen anymore. He had become like the Shah himself. The Shah then couldn't listen anymore, either. They'd had too much, there was too much of a burden. Indeed it was time that he left office altogether. That was time that the whole group of ministers and generals should have left, in my judgment.
I went to an old man. I remember I had a great pain in my back -- this all relates to my sense of the situation being terrible and my sense of something wrong is happening. This old man was very close (I don't want to name his name, simply because then the whole question of credence of my evidence will be destroyed), extremely close, to the Shah. I went to his home. He was sitting with other people around. I begged him to come out. He walked out, we stood in his garden. I said, "Will you go to the Shah and tell him..." -- this is time, now I'm talking again about '76, this is an evidence of how I was feeling at that time, how I felt that there was imminent danger within our society, imminent catastrophe -- I said, "Go to the Shah now and tell him to change this whole setup, for God's sake."
I remember him turning around asking me, "Are you suggesting that you want to become prime minister?" I said, "Far, far from it, I'm the last person they should appoint as prime minister. This situation requires some other types altogether, that's what I'm saying. That's why I'm saying that this whole present group who are leading the government, including the army, should be changed. All this business of, they've gone mad with their activities and purchases and so on. And inflation is eating away at the very heart of this economy and society. It's time that something basic was done. No tricks, no little tricks will do."
You must remember at the end they were using every trick, all the quick fixes, a whole cornucopia of quick fixes which were too late and didn't affect anything. But in '76 I said to this man, "For God's sake...," and to be honest with you, I felt that I couldn't do this myself, that is go to the Shah and tell him, "look"; whereas I felt that the Shah would trust this old man, would talk to this old man.
Dr. Amini was another person that about this time I would visit and would talk to him about these things. I didn't tell the old man that, for example, this is the time now that Dr. Amini should come, should become Prime Minister, but in my heart... The old man asked me, he said, "who, who should become Prime Minister?" I said, "Look, the Shah has ruled this country for over thirty-four years, thirty-five years (at that time); certainly his information about individuals is far greater and far better than mine. He knows what type of individual he needs at this difficult time. This present group has done its duty."
And I really meant it, it wasn't the job of the technocrats anymore. We all felt a part of the technocracy, technocracy, you know, because we were all engaged in the economic development of the country and the technical managerial aspect of our society, to be sure. But now we wanted a political mechanism, if you wish. We wanted, we needed a sort of political group. And I had in mind Dr. Amini, to be very honest, because personally I couldn't think of another one who was ready to take over, another one who was well known enough. And I still believe that if, at that time, the Shah made that type of decision, the revolution may have been delayed or may not have taken place. But certainly even if that change would have meant that the powers of the Shah would have become limited, it would have meant that the Shah would have lasted and his son probably would have been on the throne, and we would have begun to develop some kind of democratic system. Maybe, maybe. You know, in social theory these predictions are very uncertain, it's impossible, it's very difficult to make these predictions.
The old man hated Dr. Amini. I knew that, that's why I didn't tell him because if I had said that to him, he would never have even listened to my appeal. Subsequently, I kept on after the old man, asking him whether he told the Shah or not. Finally he said he's scared to death of the Shah, and would not dare to present my suggestions to him.
And then there was a general who used to come to my office. Now this general knew my father, apparently; the general was already some seventy-five years old and he was a member of the imperial inspectorate that later on came to the limelight so much because it started to investigate ministries and present their criticism on television. And I knew that this man would report his conversations with me and I couldn't quite understand why lately he had become enamored of me and he was visiting me so often in the bank. He would come, for example, to me and say, "I want to ask you what do you think of 'X' and 'Y' and 'Z' because they are being considered for Central Bank." "What do you think is going on in the Plan Organization?" Or, "What do you think is happening in the Ministry of Finance?" The man used to come to my office in the Bank Sanaye asking me these questions, which was quite proper considering my background in the Central Bank and the Plan Organization.
But why suddenly this man would appear? I knew of him, but I was never close to him, I'd never had any relationship with the man. But he was known as a general with a clean background, a decent person. He wasn't one of the generals who were pointed out as, you know, corrupt, the type that we may have disliked. He had a good name and I didn't mind talking to him. To him I said the same things, more or less. Not in the way that I talked to this old man, because I wasn't worried about the old man; the old man liked me and wouldn't have gone to the Shah and said, "This Khodadad has got schemes and he is this and that." But with the general, I was far more reserved of course and I still would say the same thing. I'd say, "General, this group cannot do the job, is not doing the job. You need different types of people in government."
Now, I've described these events to illustrate to you how we all felt at this time. Another incident that perhaps is relevant which took place as early as '72 and is very significant, and later on it took place again. Actually, if you really want to know when we had the first sign of real protest in Persia, after Khomeini's first uprising in 1963, it was in Dezfoul. In Dezfoul, the minister of agriculture was taking back the land which was distributed under land reform on the grounds that they needed all of this land and they couldn't leave individuals there owning little plots, since they had to level large pieces of land for agro-business purposes, for agro-industrial purposes. They paid the small farmers and force-purchased their land, kicked them out of the land to level the land and to bring water and to do this and that.
Well, these people had apparently spent the money and had gone off to Mashhad, had got another wife -- I don't know, as we say -- they bought radios and so on, consumer goods and suddenly they were penniless and landless and came back. So they would collect in the city of Dezfoul and they began to make noises and demonstrate against the government. I know for a fact -- and this was kept extremely quiet...
Q. I was going to say, I had never heard about this.
A. Oh, yes. This was kept extremely quiet. The CLondon EconomistD wrote about this, oddly enough. It was kept extremely quiet and they used, I think, Savak and the army jointly and they cleared the place of opposition, so to speak. They used guns, they put them to the sword. A hundred, a hundred some odd people were killed. Many people were arrested. There was a very controlled, very well-operated type of thing which bore very little resemblance to what happened in Qom and Tabriz later on.
Well, as the situation unfolded, as the Qom incident took place, as Amouzegar came into the government.... And I'd like to say a few words about Amouzegar, I must say a few words about him. I never doubted this man's personal, technical, managerial competence. I had watched this man for years. This individual was an extremely well-trained, alas, as an engineer and he did think like one. But now slowly, slowly he had learned about economics also and I assure you that he was better in understanding economics than ninety percent of the economists I knew in Iran. I want to say this certainly as a credit to the man, because he had great intelligence. He does have great intelligence.
But never, because in fact of the type of training he had received in these years and because in fact he had lasted as long as he had in the government setup, I think he was totally callous to the real politics of Iran. Not callous in the sense that he didn't want to know or that he did not care, no. He had never specialized in it, he had never understood it. He had dealt night and day -- as he was a very hard worker also, night and day -- with totally other types of problems rather than with hard political problems and processes.
He hadn't really ever even done something that I would have done within even that setup and that's to develop over the, let's say, nearly thirty years of his background in government to develop a real group that were faithful to him, like Dr. Amini had. He never had a group around him. Maybe he knew if he did, the Shah would not have favored him very well. But there wasn't a group of believers around Amouzegar, so to speak, as Dr. Amini from the very beginning, always. Whether you liked Dr. Amini or not, but the man was a political animal, you see. This was the difference between the two guys.
And the circumstances called not for a technocrat, not for a Ph.D. from Cornell (as Dr. Amouzegar has), necessarily, not for a man who has served all his life in the technocracy of that country or in the development of that country -- and I do give him all this type of credit -- but, by God, it called for a man of political savvy, of political know-how and he didn't have it.
The Rex Cinema is my best example. Whatever was the cause is still being debated. We still don't know, at least I don't know. And I would swear, by everything I believe in, that Dr. Amouzegar was just as surprised about it as anyone else. In other words, there are those who say it was a government plot. Although I could not swear that such a plot was beyond Savak's doing, I would swear that Dr. Amouzegar could not have known about it even if Savak was involved. The reason I swear is because one of my own men, who worked with me for years in the Plan Organization, was the governor of Khouzestan at the time and investigated the Cinema Rex event as closely as anyone and regularly maintained contact with Prime Minister Amouzegar, would also swear that Amouzegar as well as his government were taken by complete surprise and knew nothing about it. I am sure, if Amouzegar knew about this bloody affair in advance, he would have resigned before it happened.
Q. Who was this governor?
A. Bagher Namazi. Bagher was one of the bright men in the Plan Organization. I'd brought him in the earlier days to the Plan and then subsequently Dr. Amouzegar, when he was Minister of the Interior, had taken him and then appointed him to the governorship of Khouzestan, after Salehi.
Bagher Namazi, who was the governor at that time, I talked to him extensively. He certainly didn't have the slightest notion about what's going on, he was right there. And from the substance of all of his discussions, it was impossible for Amouzegar to have known what happened. But the way he handled the thing, it was very unpolitician-like -- and I use the word politician here not in any derogatory way. He just sat around. Hoveida would have immediately jumped and declared that day a day of national mourning. He would have taken the whole of the cabinet down there. He would have sat there with the whole of the cabinet and all the Savak people and the governor of the province and everybody until he found what was going on, what was behind this whole matter. Amouzegar didn't do this. He just sort of wavered for three or four days and then resigned, of course. You remember, he went out a few days after Cinema Rex. And I certainly would have liked to see a different treatment, even if he was about to resign, even if the circumstances for his resignation were unrelated to Rex Cinema.
By the way, I heard at that time and afterwards that he had tried to resign two or three times, which I don't understand. Of course, when one decides to resign, one should really resign. Resignation is a final act of faith, of protest. Trying to resign, I don't understand it. Maybe he had simply gone and told the Shah, "Sir, if you don't have any confidence in me anymore, I better leave," or "The circumstances are such that I better leave," and the Shah would say, "No, stay on a little more. We shall see what happens," etc. Now that's not resignation in my judgment. He should have resigned much earlier in sharp protest against existing policies. Because I think when he resigned it was too late, the situation was out of hand.
Q. Wasn't it said that people in the latter years of the regime could not resign and they would just be discharged and the act of resignation didn't really exist? Is that true?
A. Look, at least in my own case, when you say latter years, I don't understand, I wasn't hurt. Well, I was hurt in a way that, I suppose I lost all my chances of entering into the government a year later, but I had no other worries. Nobody hurt me when I resigned, nobody put me to jail when I resigned. As a matter of fact, I was able to go and become chairman of a bank; and you know the businessmen were very concerned not to put somebody in there that the Shah or the government did not like. Nothing happened to me <when> I resigned. But of course prime minister is a different story.
I'm not saying that my resignation was the same as a prime minister's resignation; a prime minister's resignation has many consequences, whereas resignation of a member of the government does not have the same consequences. You just go out and they put in somebody else -- I understand that aspect. I'm not saying Amouzegar could as easily have resigned as I did. But the circumstances called, in my judgment, for his resignation in the sense that they should have all walked out -- this whole group should have all walked out, a whole new group should have come and he should have done it much earlier, if he had any political sense about the situation. He should have done it as a necessary sacrifice.
I am not one of those people who is overly critical, overly harsh about the very people I worked with, certainly. I really want to say, in retrospect, with the help of hindsight, I see it that way. Maybe Amouzegar himself sees it now that way, I haven't seen him, I haven't talked to him since the revolution. Perhaps if he had recognized that the situation was bad, that it was beyond his power to control and he was the prime minister -- I still keep on repeating -- he should have stopped, he should have quit. I think he would have made a better name for himself in history. And the way he continued, in a sense his government, his whole government was a lame duck type of government, you know, the way it turned out. They were unable to do anything.
They never had a chance to carry out any reform programs that they wanted to do. Right shortly after Amouzegar took over and, apparently, certain signals were reaching the Shah regarding the situation in the country, this inspectorate was set up and they were, instead of spending their time in front of the parliament pushing for reform measures, they were spending their time in front of the television -- hours after hours after hours -- which was like a circus, you remember. And these poor ministers were called constantly to appear and to answer questions raised by the inspectorate. They were our friends, we knew them, we visited them. They were constantly preparing their briefs or reviewing their briefs to go and sit before the imperial inspectorate on television and answer to the questions that were raised by these generals and colonels, and so on, who had investigated projects and so forth. My god, the whole thing was a real circus.
There wasn't the slightest amount of real political gain for anyone. What was interesting, as far as the people who were watching, was that here is a government that the Shah has appointed himself and now he's bringing his own appointees before the public and showing how incompetent and possibly corrupt they are. There was a real conflict there. It was a meaningless thing, senseless thing.
Amouzegar should have resigned at least when the inspectorate was set up and when he learned about the purpose of the inspectorate. He was prime minister, even at the cost of having his head chopped off. Easily said, I know, I know, but he was prime minister.
Well, anyway, Cinema Rex and before that, of course, Qom and Tabriz, were very clear indications of what was happening in the country and indication of the sense that the government didn't have any more competence or control. The government was not anymore in charge. There was a great deal of debate going on already in connection with Tabriz, I happened to learn later on, as to what ought to be done and what could be done. The government was torn, the Shah could not resolve the issue quickly and in a balanced way within the government and the security forces. And the thing, of course, exploded the way it did, totally mishandled. Again, with hindsight I say it.
I'm not sure how I would have behaved if I were under those circumstances. I really want to repeat this so that posterity won't think that this is unconsidered criticism. Only I can say that with the help of hindsight. I don't know how I would have done, what I would have done if I were under those circumstances. I suppose the only thing I would have done is just walked out. I don't know if I found that I was bound to bear responsibility for the chaos, the bloodshed and the ultimate takeover by a group of clergy from the dark ages <that> at the end, I would have certainly walked out or helped a more popular or acceptable group to take over my government.
Q. Were you meeting with anyone discussing these issues which you are discussing now, with friends, associates?
A. There were generally two groups -- not groups. One was people like, let's say, Dr. Amini that I would go to. His home was close enough to mine, I'd just walk in, sit down and talk to him. He was very busy those days -- I would go to him at odd times, at lunch or sometimes late in the afternoon and so on -- because lots of people were coming to his home.
Q. Even at that time?
A. Yes. But now I'm talking about the period close to the end of Amouzegar, during the Sharif-Emami period. Dr. Amini was very active in this period.
The other group was a sort of group of people that I felt were liberal intellectuals of the country, you know. I would invite them to my home, they would come in groups of, let's say, five, six, ten --or we would meet in somebody else's home sometimes -- just to discuss and try to analyze what's going on, develop scenarios and speculate. These discussions continued right from about the last days of Amouzegar through Sharif-Emami, Azhari and by the time it reached Bakhtiar's period, the group did not meet anymore. The situation was already out of control.
What is interesting and should be recorded (and perhaps it's a very sad phenomenon) is that, in my judgment, some of the brightest people in the country, some of them in charge of important official posts and some out of the government, would meet and we would develop scenarios as to what happened. Not a one person, not a one scenario came out to be anywhere near the truth, near to reality, near to what actually took place when the revolution came. If anybody told you that they could foresee the situation as early as all that do not believe him. Oh yes, we foresaw or we discussed possibilities of severe changes, we even discussed the Shah's departure -- but none of us could conceive the present situation, could perceive the present situation, that is what happened subsequently, namely, this total takeover by a man like Khomeini and the total takeover by the fundamentalists of the political apparatus of the government. Nobody could anticipate how easily they could take over the establishment. None of us.
We never believed that the army would act the way it did. We never believed that they would just go back into their barracks and wait until somebody comes and takes them to the guillotine. We thought groups of them, artillery divisions, certainly the guard, the imperial guard would put up a fight. If we had any indications, we were feeling that there will be a takeover by some military groups.
None of us believed that Bazargan will come and take over and, you know, the whole thing will be all right and that Khomeini will come and go to Qom. But on the other hand, we never saw that there will be a situation that Khomeini will come and take such total power over the affairs and the mullahs will take such complete charge of the management of the country, as in fact they did. None of these bright people could foresee this. We operated within our boxes, within our molds of thought. We didn't consider {?}these possibilities. It was far from our minds that Iran, the way it was, could be taken over and operated by a bunch of mullahs who had no notion about the world; that certainly Iran could not be operated without some kind of modern management, but then we have seen what happened.
It goes to show you that when you are too close, you often only see the trees and you fail to see the whole of the forest, you know. We discussed individuals, we discussed institutions, we discussed the Shah. We discussed Khomeini as a character, as an actor, to be sure. We discussed Amini as an actor, we discussed Bazargan as an actor. But we couldn't see the total situation. We couldn't predict the total situation. Nobody did, nobody did. If anybody told you, "I saw the whole thing," it's just a story.
Q. What was the purpose of this group? Were you going to report to somebody or was it for your own self-edification or what?
A. No, the purpose was we were interested citizens collecting around each other. We saw what has gone wrong. What has happened. What is happening. What will happen to Iran. We were concerned citizens. We were worried about our own future and the future of the country.
Q. But that was quite unusual for Iran for this kind of a group to take place.
A. Oh, it was taking place, a lot of group meetings were happening at that time, you know, lots of them. I mean, after all, lots of other groups were meeting. Don't forget, this is the time when various parties, various writers were writing openly. Various parties were coming into being. We never talked among us that we should set up a political party, but we were just as interested to find out what collective action we should follow. Sometimes, of course, a discussion would deteriorate to fixing blames and this type of thing -- sometimes, no, very often. But there were good analyses of the past during these meetings.
And then we discussed the question of the position of Iran and the relationship of powers, of the superpowers, to Iran. We discussed what would America do under certain circumstances, what would Russia do under certain circumstances.
Q. Did you have any official sanction for these meetings?
A. None whatsoever. None whatsoever.
Q. Weren't you concerned that the usual, the previous concerns of reports being given to Savak and...
A. Not in the slightest. Not in the slightest. Because this is the time of Sharif-Emami who, you know, and it had gone beyond that anymore, beyond that fear anymore. Nasiri was out, and Iraj Moghadam, as the head of Savak, had developed a very liberal approach to these things, was trying to at least, the poor man.
By the way, I had seen him once or twice, Moghadam, in the earlier years. I found him to be something like Pakravan, for whom I had great respect, great respect as an intellectual, as (Pakravan I'm saying), as an intellectual, as a decent man, although he was the head of Savak. But I think Pakravan, after Taymour Bakhtiar, made Savak almost popular. It was after Nasiri that again Savak went back to the practices of Bakhtiar and the approaches of Bakhtiar to things. Pakravan was a highly westernized intellectual, decent, non-violent type of an individual. He was a general, to be sure, but this was his nature, he was an historian, mathematician. Moghadam was of his school. In fact, that's one reason why after Pakravan, he went into the shadows to such a great extent. It was only later on that Moghadam was slowly coming back to the limelight and ultimately became the head. Sabeti was young, I think to a great extent an egoist, a great egoist. Moghadam was calmer, experienced, a more decent type.
Q. They represented two different schools...
A. I believed that, I believe there was a great conflict between the two in the Savak.
Q. So for a time they were both in the Savak?
A. And I think the Shah had no choice but to appoint Moghadam. In a way his hands were forced by the circumstances, not by any one individual, to appoint the man who would quiet things down rather than continue the repressive practices. Maybe he was wrong altogether. Maybe at that time he should have appointed another Nasiri to start cleaning up the whole situation. It's amazing how history has twists. Or again, perhaps Moghadam should have been appointed three years before that date, you know, to calm the whole situation, to begin to give more freedoms, to begin to... These things have to come gradually, these things cannot be done overnight.
Q. Could you comment on the rumors that for a while there was a conflict within the Savak and perhaps this conflict was reflecting itself in some of the disturbances and so on that were taking place? Do you have any sort of direct knowledge?
A. I had no contact with either Moghadam or Sabeti -- don't forget, I was out of the government. The reason I knew Moghadam in '70 was because I was in government at that time and there was no doubt that we would come across each other. Moghadam from the earlier years, but Sabeti all during the time I was in the Plan Organization was in charge of government offices. After all, every agency had a security officer and we had to clear people with Savak for appointments and so forth. And we had our run-in with Savak all the time regarding individual's appointments. Bright young individuals with student federation backgrounds coming from the United States, you know, and Savak would oppose their appointments. Often I had to write back to Savak and accept full responsibility for the behavior of individuals I personally had investigated and knew well. I had such occasions many times. Now I was out of the government. What I heard, however, was from people who would, in fact, visit them and ask them for advice, what they're supposed to do -- such as industrialists, bankers, and so on.
Well, the story I heard was that Sabeti had made a proposal to the Shah to prevent the Tabriz incident before it broke out. Savak knew completely about it, Savak knew it will happen, had gone to the Shah, had proposed to give them a week and allow them to arrest some people, not shooting and so on. But it's a sad commentary on lack of coordination even at the security level in our country and perhaps in the way you're referring to the conflict. The story I heard was that the Shah had said, "All right, go ahead." And within the mosque, in Tabriz, there were some three thousand security people with guns, in civilian clothes of course, with hidden guns -- this is the story I get. And Savak had requested the Shah to keep the army out, to order the army, keep the army out. And they would handle things in that manner from within and they prepared for it.
As it were, the minute the demonstrations got started in the mosque and so on, either the governor ordered and took responsibility -- by the way an uncle of Amouzegar -- or the army generals just got too excited about the whole situation, started to shoot at the crowd, including the security agents who were among the people. Many were killed at that time. This is what's very interesting. Some of the security agents within the group were shot dead, just by mistake, you know, because they looked like any other civilian to the army people.
There was a great deal of this type of thing and that is why, I suppose, Sabeti very early in the game quit and left Iran. He knew that his day had ended and saved his neck that way. Nasiri and Moghadam's necks were not saved, they were both shot dead by the revolutionaries.
You know, when we talk about conflicts of this sort, I wish there was, I wish I could say the situation was always a clear case of a serious policy debate. If not necessarily always that, very often this is mixed with personal jealousies and personal relationships, one goes against another just because he wants to oppose the other, just because he doesn't like the other, or very often it's just because of lack of proper management and coordination. Even when there has been agreement, the parties may make mistakes, like in the case of Tabriz, and mess up the whole situation.
You know, we always in our mind, especially when we teach, especially at these universities, we talk about policies as if these policies were always properly discussed and went through a process, and they were well-rooted and understood by everybody, and the policy was clearly stated and properly circulated among all the related agencies or agents, so that the policies could be correctly implemented in good time. Very often, policy is just a nomenclature, it's just an empty word, an empty box. There were six policies, there were seven policies being carried out; whether by mistake or by intent or purpose, a man would decide to do something, you know, unaware. Unaware of what was the policy at the center.
Even as late as '78, the Iranian government had not successfully developed a proper process of policy proposal, discussion, formulation, implementation. Not only in connection with economics and economic development of the country (about which we talked earlier), even in connection with security which was so important, presumably, to the heart of the establishment and to the heart of the elite, power elite. Even in connection with the defense of the country, in spite of all the money we spent, I am not certain we had an efficient policy process.
The personal jealousies among the generals who headed the army, the navy, the air force, often encouraged by the Shah, prevented smooth coordination of the forces. There really wasn't a proper, impersonal and systematic approach to policy-making, it was sort of a personal approach; and the Shah, it seems, either liked it that way or didn't know any other way of doing things. I think it was a combination: he both liked this personal approach where every general would run to him -- and this meant to the colonel level, or a very low level of command -- and ask him, "Your Majesty, what shall I do?" And he would tell him something and he would carry that out because the words of the Shah were supposed to be the final words, the law and, as a result there were many conflicts. I'm sure, for example, the man in charge of Tabriz, the commander of Tabriz ...
Q. Commander of the army?
A. Of the army in Tabriz -- had direct resort to call the Shah at his palace and say, "Your Majesty, give me my orders. This is what's happening here, what shall I do?" He will exaggerate the situation some, the Shah would say, "All right, go get them." In spite of the fact that a week earlier he had approved another policy, for all I know, he may have even forgotten that. These are not recorded, these are not.... You know, this was this tragedy of the situation. There was no proper policy formulation, coordination and implementation. Quite aside from intents to sabotage, by the way, quite aside from that I'm saying -- no real process of policy.
Copyright © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard University)
Dr. Habib Ladjevardi
Iranian Oral History Project
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Harvard University
1430 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
ladjevar@fas.harvard.edu
617.495.4232 (tel)