374 • 19 THE REASSERTION OF ISLAMIC POWERalienated to come home. Despite their protests against the shah, many stu¬
dents got financial aid for their studies from the Iranian government or
the Pahlavi Foundation. If the shah's domestic foes had any ideological
coloring, it was supposed to be red, but the old Tudeh Party was weak.
Paradoxically, Moscow backed the shah's government almost as long as
Washington did. Why did the experts ignore the "black" opposition, the
Shi'i u\ama\ When this book's first edition appeared in 1979, neither a def¬
inition of "ayatollah" nor a description of Shi'ism's clerical structure was
available. Scholars and teachers of Middle East history have blind spots;
we often follow fashionable concerns (or the media) instead of leading
and forming public opinion.
Carter's concern for human rights exposed a flaw in the shah's regime
that should have troubled earlier administrations, which had empowered
Iran to defend the Gulf through extensive arms deals. Most American
Middle East specialists tended to disregard Iran because they were preoc¬
cupied with the Arab-Israeli conflict.The Fall of the Monarchy
When 1978 began, Iran seemed to be stable and the shah's position secure,
as implied by Carter's toast. Trouble started a week later when the shah's
minister of information planted an article in Tehran's leading newspaper
attacking Khomeini. This led to a sit-in by religious students in Qom. Po¬
lice attacked them, and several were killed. From then on, riots would
break out every forty days, it being the Muslim custom to hold a memorial
service on the fortieth day after a death. All the shah did in response to the
spreading protest was to replace his SAVAK chief and his prime minister. A
fire in an Abadan theater, killing 477 people, was widely blamed on SAVAK
agents. In early September troops opened fire on a mass demonstration in
Tehran's Jaleh Square, causing between 300 and 1,000 deaths and many in¬
juries. At this time, the leading ayatollah in Tabriz, Shariat-Madari, told
the new premier that the riots would continue until he restored parlia¬
mentary government under the 1906 constitution and let Khomeini come
back from his fourteen-year exile in the Shi'i holy city of al-Najaf in Iraq.
Instead of readmitting the ayatollah, the Iranian government asked Iraq to
expel him.
This move hurt the shah, for Khomeini moved to a Paris suburb, where
other exiled opposition leaders gathered around him. Soon the ayatollah,
viewed in the West as a throwback to the Middle Ages, was spreading his
fundamentalist message by means of long-distance phone calls, tape cas¬
settes, and Western television news broadcasts. His call for a workers' strike