I
n March 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini settled with his close
advisors in Qom, the center of Islamic teaching where he had
taught for many years before his exile. Local leaders from across
the country journeyed to Qom to pay their respects to the
ayatollah and declare their support. He greeted them, often with
the cold, unsmiling demeanor that characterized him. Still, the
significant thing was that he, unlike the shah, was accessible.
Dilip Hiro reported that “he made himself available to ordinary
Iranians who daily thronged to his unpretentious house, situated
on a side street, in their hundreds. He received them in groups,
listening to their problems and addressing them in return.”^33
But he had far more important concerns than meeting his
public. He set about quickly defining the basis for the new
Islamic Republic of Iran in no uncertain terms. He recognized
the outlawed Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) of Yasir
Arafat and, as everyone expected, broke off all relations with
Israel. Interestingly, he vowed to uphold the rights of the Jews—
as many as thirty thousand—who lived in Iran.
Revolutionary forces had succeeded in uniting a majority of
Iran’s people to tumble Shah Pahlavi from power. Unity quickly
evaporated, however, as their idealism settled into the reality of
a nation fraught with problems. The factions and classes who
had come together to oust the shah and force the return of the
ayatollah were not of one mind. In fact, some—like the Tudeh
Communists—were quite distant from Khomeini’s Islamic-
centered concept of government.
Khomeini’s position was unique in history. A passionately
popular religious leader returned from a long exile, he oversaw
the revolution from a strange vantage point. He had effected
a successful coup against his country’s government, yet he
was wholly unlike coup leaders in other troubled nations. They
typically were military officers who, after wresting power, enjoyed
a brief term as dictatorial head of state. Soon enough, they
themselves were toppled—often in bloody fashion. Khomeini,
by contrast, was no ambitious military man with a fleeting
future. He was firmly fixed atop Iran’s powerful Islamic religious
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