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Epilogue: Muharram 1400/1979 To American eyes, everything that goes on in Iran is a bit strange. It appears to be like an Oz with minarets where the only hope for not being devoured or otherwise zeroed out by the wicked ayatollah of the west is to be saved by the good ayatollah of the east. - Nicholas von Hoffman, 25 December 1979 M UHARRAM 1400/1979 perhaps should have been a celebration of deliverance from the shah and shifting to an active mood of construction rather than protest. Instead, the shah's entry into the United States for medical treatment virtually on the eve of Muharram, as the crisis over the constitutional referendum was building, reactivated the Karbala paradigm and touched off a symbolic protest drama involving the entire world through diplomacy, economics, and the media. The coincidental seizure of the Kaaba in Mecca by armed Saudi fundamentalists on the first day of the new Islamic century was incorporated into the Iranian drama: Khomeyni used it in his repeated assertion that the Iranian revolution was not a nationalist one, but an Islamic one, which respected neither the political boundaries drawn by Western colonialism in an attempt to divide the Islamic world nor the tyrannical puppet regimes imposed on long-suffering Muslims. The drama ended the period of dual sovereignty and inaugurated a bid by young Islamic leftist militants to negotiate with the Revolutionary Council and with Khomeyni for a greater voice in policy-making. Using world preoccupation with the Iranian crisis as a cover, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, thereby raising the geopolitical stakes in Iran. 1 The Muharram Drama On October 22, 1979, the deposed shah was flown from his refuge in Mexico to New York City for treatment of gallstones, a blocked bile duct, jaundice, and lymphoma cancer.2 Both the U.S. State Department and the Iranian government had repeatedly warned against allowing the shah to enter the United States; former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller, however, argued that the countr~ should 232 Epilogue 233 offer refuge to a man who had been a loyal friend. The Carter administration cited medical humanitarianism, ignoring the issue of moral honor invoked' by Kissinger and the moral indictment by the revolutionaries that entry of the shah was harboring a criminal of the order of an Adolph Eichmann (a puppet of others, in this case, American and Western imperialists). The Carter administration was naive and once again demonstrated insensitivity to the rhythm of the revolutionary process (the crisis over the constitution), its symbolic structure (the approach of Muharram), and the depth of Iranian paranoia about the intentions of the United States (the suspicion that the shah was not ill; that a counterrevolutionary restoration was being plotted by the financial and political directors of Western imperialism; and that foreign press coverage of internal domestic problems was part of a strategy to destabilize the nascent Islamic republic). For Iranians the admission of the shah was a symbolic insult similar to Carter's much publicized praise of the shah, in Tehran, on the eve of the revolution (January 1978) and telephoned support at the time of the Jaleh Square massacre. Khomeyni would drive the symbolism home in a speech on the eve of Muharram. On previous Muharrams , he thundered, Iranians had faced only the offspring of the mother of corruption (the shah); this Muharram they faced the mother of corruption herself (the United States). The symbolism was used to mobilize support for the Khomeyni forces in the constitutional referendum. Objections to the new constitution were being voiced from various quarters. And there were other signs of discontent: the October and November demonstrations of the unemployed ; clashes in Bandar Enzeli and Rasht on October 16 and 17 between fishermen and revolutionary guards over the revocation of rights to fish caviar in favor of a government monopoly, leaving ten to thirteen dead and forty to fifty injured; clashes in Baluchistan, Kurdistan, and Khuzistan (where in one early October week alone nine bombs exploded leaving thirteen dead and many injured); the shooting of two students by revolutionary guards in Tabriz during a demonstration at a vocational school demanding upgraded diplomas; the breaking up with chains and clubs by pro-Khomeyni toughs (or possibly by Islamic leftists) of a teachers' rally addressed by Ehsan Shariati, son of Dr. Ali Shariati. Shariati had been complaining about irresponsible clerics. Khomeyni's speeches at the beginning of November were filled with injunctions to "break the pens and tongues...

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