The first few months of the revolution were
grim. Khomeini, the undisputed leader, chose a
layman, Mehdi Bazargan, to head the provisional
Islamic government. Bazargan was an Islamic
scholar and had been an opponent of the Shah’s
authoritarian rule. Power was divided. Revolu-
tionary courts sentenced and executed generals of
the Shah’s army responsible for the repression. By
mid-March sixty-eight leading supporters of the
Shah had been executed. On 1 April Khomeini
declared the establishment of the Islamic Republic,
which had been endorsed by a referendum. Real
power lay with the Islamic Revolutionary Council,
which took its orders from Khomeini. To ‘protect
the revolution’ Khomeini sanctioned the forma-
tion of a militia, the Islamic Republican Party. The
army and civil service were purged of those who
had supported the Shah’s regime, and attempts by
Kurdish and Arab minorities to take advantage of
the turmoil in order to set out on their own path
to independence were put down. Thus was the rev-
olution made secure.
Khomeini blamed the Americans for all Iran’s
ills and for their support of the Shah’s corrupt
regime, and he aroused the masses to see in the
US the main danger to the revolution’s success
and Iran’s independence. Washington’s efforts to
establish normal relations were rejected. Bowing
to humanitarian pressures, President Carter per-
mitted the mortally sick Shah to receive medical
treatment in New York. The Iranian government
demanded his extradition to face charges in Iran.
Khomeini supported these demands, urging the
Teheran students to widen their attacks against
America and Israel. There followed in November
1979 the seizure of the American Embassy by a
revolutionary student group and the taking of the
American diplomats and secretaries as hostages.
Prime Minister Bazargan resigned and the Islamic
Revolutionary Council took charge of the govern-
ment. The US became the Great Satan. The revo-
lution was radicalised and for fourteen months the
hostages remained imprisoned. Carter’s attempt
in April 1980 to rescue them by sending a special
task force secretly to Teheran misfired when three
of the eight helicopters developed malfunctions;
the raid was aborted but unfortunately two of the
rescuing planes crashed on making ready to
return, killing eight men; the mission could not
any longer be kept secret. The impact on Carter’s
electoral chances was devastating. Khomeini had
demonstrated that Iran could safely defy the US.
Not until the day Carter left the White House
were the hostages released to fly home. By then
Iran had already been at war for four months with
its neighbour Iraq. It was the beginning of the
devastating Gulf War that lasted for almost seven
years and led to the death of a million young men
on both sides, the bloodiest conflict of the Middle
East in modern times.