government on October 6, encouraged the oil workers’ strike and other protests, which
escalated in the last two months of 1978. During this period, President Carter con-
tinued to express backing for the shah. His statements of support reportedly were
encouraged, at least in part, by CIA assessments that the shah ultimately would weather
the challenges to his authority.
After the initial crackdown on demonstrations failed, the shah turned increasingly
to appeasement to quell the protests, even granting amnesty to Khomeini. In a final
desperate move to calm the situation, on December 29, 1978, the shah turned to a
leading opposition politician, Shapour Bakhtiar, as prime minister. The Carter admin-
istration also attempted to intervene, sending a senior U.S. general, Robert Huyser, to
Tehran in early January 1979 with the hope of mobilizing the Iranian military into a
takeover of the government. This effort failed, as the military began to abandon its
allegiance to the crown. The shah left Iran on January 16, 1979, and headed to Egypt,
announcing that he was on “vacation.” He never returned, but a triumphant Kho-
meini did, on February 1, and promptly declared Bakhtiar’s government “illegal.” Ten
days later, the government fell, and Bakhtiar went into exile. Khomeini appointed a
“provisional” government that on March 30–31 sponsored a referendum on a Kho-
meini plan to establish an Islamic republic. More than 97 percent of Iranians voted
in favor, the only option offered on the ballot. Even before all the votes were counted,
Khomeini proclaimed the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran on April 1,
- He described the republic in almost utopian terms, asserting that it would pro-
vide “a government under which all the nation’s strata enjoy equality and the light of
God’s justice shines equally on everyone... .”
The Islamic republic was based, and continues to be based, on a novel concept
outlined by Khomeini in a 1971 collection of sermons, Velayat-e-Faqih: Hukumat-e
Islami(loosely translated, “government of the Islamic jurist”). The basic element is
that all government must derive from the teachings of Islam as interpreted by learned
members of the clergy. Since the days of the Prophet Muhammad, there had existed
a close relationship between religion and state in most Islamic lands. Khomeini took
this a step further, however, by arguing that all aspects of national as well as personal
life should be governed by the teachings of the Quran. A senior religious figure, or
perhaps a group of them, would guide the nation according to those teachings.
At Khomeini’s behest, the provisional government drafted a new constitution, but
it omitted key provisions establishing the preeminent role of the faqih,the Islamic
jurist who would serve as the country’s supreme leader, the first of whom would be
Khomeini. As a result, Khomeini arranged for the popular election of the Assembly of
Experts—clergy members with the authority to amend the constitution to make it con-
form to Khomeini’s vision of Islamic government. The assembly did so, for example,
giving the faqihthe power to decide all important matters of state, including declar-
ing war and appointing military commanders and leading judges. Voters approved the
constitution in a plebiscite in December 1979 during the early stages of the long stand-
off between Iran and the United States resulting from the occupation of the U.S.
embassy in Tehran by young militants. Khomeini and his allies used the embassy
takeover and hostage crisis to maintain public support for the new regime (Iranian
Hostage Crisis, p. 383).
In 1985, Khomeini selected Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri as his eventual suc-
cessor, establishing a process of succession left uncertain by the constitution. Montaz-
380 IRAN