How Iran, US And Israel's Closest Ally In The Middle East, Became Their Bitterest Enemy

On March 13, 1978, Iran's omnipotent monarch Mohammad Reza Cyrus Pahlavi received two visitors at his vacation residence on the island of Kish in the Persian Gulf, a few miles off the Iranian coast. These two visitors weren't just anybody. They were Uri Lubrani, the Israeli ambassador to Iran; and Reuben Morhav, the Mossad station chief in Iran. 

It was a time when germs of revolution had taken seed in Iran and the country was on the brink of a historic change. But the Shah had no way of knowing any of that. Out there on Kish, with unimaginable extravagance and hedonism for company, Pahlavi was fine. He could not perceive a threat to his government.

The Shah's guests, however, had their apprehensions. Iran was simmering. The Shah's incoherent dialogue did not make much sense to the two Israelis, who were on Kish to gauge how much of a chance the regime stood, with the political situation outside rapidly changing.

A Monarch Who Wanted Iran "More Developed Than France"

Mohammad Reza Cyrus Pahlavi had come back to power after a UK- and US-backed coup helped reinstate him on the throne of Iran. That was 1953. Pahlavi became the absolute monarch in control of Iran, with one palm locked firm in a handshake with the Americans. Pahlavi also oversaw a rapid Westernisation of Iran; and wanted the country to become a land "more developed than France". Not everyone was on board with the Shah. But no voice of opposition was tolerated. Pahlavi ensured an iron fist while dealing with his opponents.

The Shah of Iran shakes hands with Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar. Photo: Getty Images

It had been 25 years of this regime in Iran when the Israeli duo dropped by to pay Pahlavi a visit.

In these 25 years, while some in Iran were looking for someone else to turn to, there appeared one from among the religious opposition in the country. The man was Ruhollah Khomeini, from the village of Khomein in Iran, a cleric who came with the hereditary title of 'sayyid', or a descendant of Prophet Mohammed. He had also earned the highest Shiite clerical rank, that of the Grand Ayatollah. He was a well-known preacher, but had a problem: he didn't exactly possess the gift of the gab.

A Preacher With "A Message From Gabriel"

In 1962, nine years after Pahlavi was put on the throne of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini emerged from his bedchamber after a period of isolation. Khomeini, 60, was convinced that he had been visited by the Archangel Gabriel, who had told him that Allah had great things in store for him.

Khomeini's mission of achieving this great destiny that had been destined for him began with a transformation. He gave up speaking the way he did. He fell back on the power of repetition. He chose phrases and hammered them into the minds of his followers till they took on the form of a magical incantation. Among these mantras was the famous "Islam is the solution". The world became a canvas painted in black and white; where the good of Islam had to uproot the evil that the Shah manifested as.

The Ayatollah re-shaped the Shiite world. He discarded all distinction between civil and religious authority and said that the Islamic world no longer needed rulers governed by religious sages. The religious sages could themselves be rulers. Khomeini also turned death from a dreaded punishment into a desired reward. Families that lost their sons in Iran's holy war, Khomeini declared, should celebrate them as martyrs. The state was deemed toothless. Khomeini's influence rose as Shah Pahlavi wondered what was to be done with him.

The Ayatollah In Exile

In 1964, the Shah decided that he had had enough. But killing Khomeini was not an option. He couldn't risk it. So, Khomeini was exiled.

The Ayatollah went to Turkey and Iraq before moving to France, from where he continued to fight his cause.

By 1978, Khomeini, from his Paris headquarters, had flooded Iran with over 6,00,000 cassettes of his religious sermons. People listened to the Ayatollah say that the Shah of Iran was a "Jewish spy, an American snake whose head should be crushed with a stone".

While Shah Pahlavi underwent cancer treatment, the rumblings against him rose from within the public, guided by the voice of the Ayatollah from Paris. Israel and the US refused to believe that the situation in the Middle East was fast disintegrating. They believed in the Shah's omnipotence and absolute powers when it came to crushing the opposition. They did not heed any warnings from Tehran.

From his headquarters in Paris, the Ayatollah directed thousands of protesters in cities across Iran. When it became clear that there was no stopping the Ayatollah, and that without American backing the Shah wasn't going to be around forever, Pahlavi decided to leave Iran.

The Shah Leaves Iran

On the morning of January 16, 1979, Shahpour Bakhtiar was appointed the Prime Minister of Iran. He was chosen by the Shah to govern the country. 

A few hours later, Mohammad Reza Cyrus Pahlavi, tears in his eyes, along with his wife Shahbanu Farah, and a few clods of Iranian soil in a box, left the country. Iran's first couple went to exile in Egypt, never to return.

Bakhtiar dissolved SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency. The day after the Shah's exit, the Prime Minister went to new Mossad chief Eliezer Tsafrir with a request: will the Mossad please kill the Khomeini at his Paris headquarters?

A Request For The Mossad

The proposal was lucrative to Israel. Mossad debated the pros and cons. The biggest of the pros was that it would place the Shah of Iran in debt of the Israelis forever, and they would benefit from it. Killing the Khomeini would also perhaps change the course of history. But the Mossad hesitated. Killing a religious leader, that too on French soil, was a gamble they weren't willing to play.

In his book Rise and Kill First (Random House, 2018), author Ronen Bergman writes, "The benefits for Israel were obvious. The SAVAK would owe a deep debt of gratitude to the Israelis. Furthermore, it was possible that a hit would divert the course of history and prevent Khomeini, who had made his views on Israel and Jews quite clear, from seizing power in Iran. The attendees of the meeting discussed several points: Was the plan operationally feasible? Did the Ayatollah actually represent such a grave danger? If so, would Israel be prepared to take upon itself the risks of eliminating a top clerical figure, and to do so on French soil?"

The answer from Mossad, after much deliberation, was in the negative. They weren't going to kill Khomeini in Paris.

"History Might Have Taken A Better Course"

"Looking back," Bergman writes, "Alpher [Yossi Alpher, senior research analyst dealing with Iran at that meeting] would say that 'as early as a few months after that meeting, I realised what he [Khomeini] was all about', and that he was 'very sorry' about the decision. If the Mossad had killed Khomeini, according to Alpher, history might have taken a better course."

It was a course bitter for Israelis and the Americans that followed the departure of the Shah from Iran.

The Ayatollah Returns

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returns to Iran. Photo: Getty Images

On February 1, 1979, an Air France Boeing 747 was chartered from Paris to Tehran. The Ayatollah boarded the plane for the Iranian capital. The plane circled the city of Tehran three times before landing at the Mehrabad airport, where he was met with millions of supporters. Khomeini, 78, had to be airlifted on to a helicopter after his motorcade was met with a crush of enthusiastic crowds.

Khomeini was taken to Behesht-Zahra cemetery, where many martyrs of Iran's holy revolution were buried. He prayed and delivered a half-hour oration for the martyred men. It was clear who called the shots in Iran, and it wasn't going to be the government chosen by the Shah.

Bakhtiar had hoped for Khomeini a Vatican-like sanctuary in the Iranian city of Qom. Khomeini, he hoped, would be a religious leader who would let his government be.

Iran Becomes A Theocracy

In his first speech after getting back to Iran, Khomeini thundered, "I will break their teeth. I appoint the government, I appoint the government in support of this nation." Bakhtiar's government wasn't the one the Ayatollah wanted.

The US, who Khomeini called "Great Satan", and Israel, who he referred to as "Little Satan", were also mistaken in their measurement of the Ayatollah. They thought Khomeini was going to be a passing phase.

On February 11, 1979, the non-Islamist government collapsed. Bakhtiar escaped Iran in disguise, only to be assassinated in Paris in 1991. 

Iran became a theocracy. Under the reign of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran, a country with the sixth largest military force in the world and the largest arsenal in Asia, once the US' and Israel's closest ally in the Middle East, became their bitterest enemy.