Following the success of their first
terrorist act at Abadan’s Cinema Rex on 17th August 1978, Khomeini’s
gang realized a change of tactics was necessary if they were to topple Iran’s
Imperial government. Jaleh Square or what came to be known as the Black Friday
was their next evil terrorist plot.
The fanatic clergies understood that the
Shah would not order the security forces to fire on demonstrators. Therefore,
to demoralize the police and the army, women and children were placed at the
front of the marching demonstrators. In the past months, occasional violence had
erupted during demonstrations with some casualties, and the Islamist agitators
had only sufficed to destroy public properties, burning down hotels and
cinemas, vandalizing liquor stores and restaurants, ransacking charity
organizations or whatever they considered as a Western influence. Nevertheless,
the Shah’s policy of refraining from live ammunition had
kept casualties relatively low.
For almost two decades, the opposition
to the monarchy had portrayed the Shah – particularly on the international
scene, as a blood-sucking dictator. When the government, however, launched its
liberalization program in 1976 and declared its intention to hold a free
election for the summer of 1979, demonstrations and riots against the Shah
suddenly began. According to Andrew Scott Cooper, the Shah did not mind the
disturbances and he even considered them as a way for the Iranian society to
"let off
steam".[i]
Iranian opposition to the Shah;
however, were by no means feeding on democratic ideologies. Although the free
world kept bashing the Iranian government for its treatment of the opposition,
these opponents were simply none other than terrorists who bombed public
places, vandalized public properties, attacked Iran's representative offices in
democratic countries and assassinated and kidnapped the officials. Hard-line
Communists and Islamic fanatics - what the Shah referred to as the Red and the
Back reactionaries, together with the militia groups whose ethos were anything
but democratic saw the Shah’s liberalization policies as a threat to their
dogmatic aspirations. These groups who struggled for power could only ensure
their stay in power by enforcing cruel and dictatorial force; Islamists who
finally triumphed proved their point.
The so-called Iranian National Front,
whose party's essence was founded on a constitutional monarchy and had been
opposing the Shah’s autocratic ways of governing, refused to collaborate with
the government in building that democratic future for the country. Khomeini’s gang
on the other hand, had no interest in Western ideologies or in building a
democratic Iran. He had made it very clear in his writings and sermons, the
type of government his Velayat Faqih would be. Just like Hitler, Khomeini too, in
his book and speeches had spelled out his intentions and the form of government
he wished for Iran.
In their next act - to discredit the
Shah’s liberalization policies, which ultimately would have disarmed the
oppositions and unmasked their true undemocratic identities, the religious and
spiritual class of Iranian society mastered their second major evil act. What a better way to tarnish the government’s attempt in driving the country towards
democracy than making it appear as an authoritarian regime who has no fear of
shedding the blood of its own citizens.
Khomeini’s men, some of whom had
trained by Palestinian terrorists in their camps in Lebanon and Libya, went in
action for their next blood bath. The mullahs had realized that the Shah would
not save his throne at the cost of his subjects’ lives. Hence, the
revolutionaries planned to portray exactly the opposite and build on people’s
emotions that were still very high and in mourning and shock, since Abadan’s
Cinema Rex.
Cooper writes “… the Coalition of
Islamic Societies had decided to mass their followers in Jaleh Square on Friday
morning [8th September 1978] and stage a march to the Majlis. Once
there they planned to force their way in, seize the prime minister and members
of parliament, and declare an Islamic republic.”[ii]
Later in the day, the government announced martial law in twelve major cities.
Cooper continues, “Jaleh Square was a misleading name for the modest traffic
circle that joined Farahabad Road with Jaleh Road, a narrow carriageway that
passed the American Community School in a westerly direction toward the Majlis.
Overlooking the roundabout, which could be entered from several sides, were
low-slung flat-roofed buildings containing apartments and small businesses. On
Friday morning several thousand people converged on a space too congested to
accommodate everyone. They ignored warnings from the police and army officers
to disperse and listened to a fiery speech by Ayatollah Nouri, who led them in
chants for Khomeini and an Islamic republic and against the Pahlavi Dynasty and
the monarchy. The mostly male crowd was comprised of Khomeini supporters,
students, and leftists, but also a contingent of PLO-trained Mujahedin
guerrillas, who regularly used big crowds as a cover to stage provocations and
take control of the streets. A second, less visible armed group was at the
scene. They were battle-hardened veterans of seven clandestine militias that
reported directly to Khomeini’s agents in Najaf and Qom. Their presence exposed
the fallacy of Khomeini’s public claim that he supported a nonviolent approach
to street protests. The Khomeini movement followed its usual practice of
placing women, children, and young people at the head of the demonstration to
intimidate the security forces and provide cover for their gunmen.”[iii]
Cooper’s book is a chilling account of
coming together of underground terrorist organizations that had no respect for
democracy, human rights, or for any sort of social or political freedom. All
they were after was power, which ultimately placed one of the richest countries
in the world at their disposal and ever since has created havoc in the Middle
East and beyond.
“According to witnesses, the troops
ordered the demonstrators to abandon the demonstration several times, then
fired overhead and shot tear gas into the crowd.” reported Washington
Post’s William Branigan. Cooper writes, “At Jaleh Square, there were people
among the crowd who used guns,” admitted Ali Hossein, one of close contacts
with Khomeini’s inner circle, “One probability is that both sides shot into
each other.” [iv]
While the nation was still perplexed by
the charcoaled images shown on television and newspapers from young and old,
men, women, and children who perished in Cinema Rex tragedy a few weeks earlier,
Jaleh Square was a perfect opportunity to strike a government that was already
on the defensive.
Palestinian terrorists brought into the
country through illegal channels were used to start the shootings in order to
create havoc among demonstrators, which would consequently believe they were
being shot at by the army. Manouchehr Ganji in his book states on behalf of a
former revolutionary who had since defected to the West: "The window of my
apartment opened on the Jaleh Square. I was contacted by a group of 'Islamic
Marxists' who sent two armed Palestinians to my apartment. From the window of
my apartment, they opened fire not only on the soldiers but also on the crowd.
Other Palestinian sharpshooters had been stationed on the rooftops of other
buildings or behind other windows and were doing the same."[v]
“Estimate of casualties for that
Friday ranges from fewer than 100 to many thousands. The post-revolutionary
Martyr Foundation could identify only 79 dead, while the coroner's office
counted 82 and Tehran's main cemetery, Beheshte-e Zahra, registered only
40."[vi]
‘The real number,’ Cooper writes, ‘they
insisted, was at least two thousand and most likely three thousand killed.
Blared a headline in Britain’s Guardian, “3,000 DEATHS IN IRAN SAY SHAH’S
OPPONENETS.” which makes one wonder how inaccurately and on purpose, Western
media flamed the anti-Shah propaganda. Cooper continues, ‘The newspaper’s
correspondent dismissed the government death toll as “a gross underestimate”
and repeated unproven allegations that the registry at Tehran’s Beheshtzahra Cemetery
showed three thousand bodies buried in a “mass grave.” In fact, a drive to the
cemetery’ Cooper writes, ‘would have revealed there was no burial site and that
the registry showed just forty new bodies.’
Lies and misinformation against Pahlavi
Iran was not only pouring into world media through baseless news bulletins and
articles; from Human Rights organizations to Western communist groups all had
joined anti-Iran’s Imperial government bandwagon, together with Islamic
fanatics who based the foundation and reasons for their revolt on fabricated
stories.
‘Many years later, the Islamic
Republic’s Martyr’s Foundation confirmed a death toll of eighty-eight to
sixty-four in the square and twenty-four in surrounding streets - or two higher
than the original estimate provided by the Shah’s government. By then, of
course, the damage had been done, and the Shah was given the moniker “Butcher
of Jaleh Square.”[vii]
The responsibility of what has since
been introduced throughout the world as Islamic terrorism, is partly on the
shoulders of Western journalists and media for their non-investigative attitude
towards their profession and for spreading years of fabricated stories based on
well-orchestrated rumors and lies.
[i] Cooper A.S. (2016) The Fall of Heaven
– The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran. P.38
[ii] Cooper A.S. (2016) The Fall of Heaven
– The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran. p.398
[iii] Cooper A.S. (2016) The Fall of Heaven
– The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran. p.399
[iv] Cooper A.S. (2016) The Fall of Heaven
– The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran. P.401
[v] Gangi M. (2002) Defying the Iranian
Revolution: From a Minister to the Shah to a Leader of Resistance. p.14
[vii]
Cooper A.S. (2016) The Fall of Heaven –
The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran. P.403
No comments:
Post a Comment