A TIME TO BETRAY (8 page)

“I am looking forward to contributing fully to the revolution,” I said.

“We are proud of brothers like you who are back from abroad to serve the country. We need your expertise desperately for the Guards. You can start right away and,
inshallah,
you will do your utmost for the revolution.”

I began work immediately and Kazem showed me the ropes. We were happy to be employed in the same place. He had the respect of insiders, and he vouched for me at every turn. Kazem believed in me, and I was proud to have his respect. I felt as though fortune had shined upon me.

But soon a shadow descended. In the early morning of November 4, 1979, two months after I’d been hired, Kazem came to my office and said, “Come on, we’re going over to the American Embassy. There is a demonstration going on in opposition to America allowing the shah into their country.”

I got up from my desk immediately. All of us were angry that President Carter had given the shah sanctuary in the U.S. under the guise of getting him the best cancer treatment. We wanted our tyrant back here so we could put him on trial. I would happily participate in this demonstration.

We drove twenty minutes northeast to the U.S. Embassy. There we found hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front chanting slogans and carrying signs. They were mostly students, though I could see some older women in black chador veils. The press was there, of course, and men with megaphones incited the crowd. Emotions escalated to the point where most of the demonstrators began
shouting, “Death to America!” Kazem joined in, lifting his fist into the air, and hollering,
“Marg bar Amrika.”

This made me uncomfortable. My years in America had been good ones and I had become quite fond of the American people. I was here to protest a policy, not call for the death of America. At the same time, though, I felt the need to express solidarity, so I chanted along with them. The chants of those near me reached a crescendo whenever news cameras were aimed in our direction.

“Reza, look!” Kazem said, pointing. I stopped shouting as I saw people climbing the walls and front gate of the embassy and dropping down inside. The only embassy guard I saw couldn’t bring himself to shoot. He chose to run inside instead. Somebody managed to break the chain on the gate, and protesters swarmed onto what was officially U.S. property. I later learned that a woman had hidden a chain cutter beneath her chador. The intruders fanned out in different directions, as if they knew exactly where they were going.

I stood next to Kazem with mouth agape. This was not a rout. It was not an act of passion. It seemed too managed for that. The people who rushed in seemed to know one another and to know what to do. Military members of the Guards arrived quickly. I wondered how they heard about the break-in so fast. Then the Komiteh, the religious police recently given official status by Khomeini, came and promised to keep order. But the only thing they kept orderly was the takeover itself. Busloads of people arrived and joined the demonstration, another sign that this gathering was not spontaneous. Within minutes, the protesters controlled the compound.

I was uneasy at the cameras filming. Wasn’t this against international law? I knew the media would display this all over the world. What if my face ended up on TV? What would Johnny and Alex think?

The protesters marched out of the embassy shouting, with their hands raised in victory signs as they brought out a blindfolded American with his hands tied. My stomach churned. I remembered
visiting this very embassy to receive my student visa. The consul general received me so well that day. He even joked with me, encouraging me to pursue my studies but also have fun. Back then, not that long ago, Iranians and Americans shared a mutual affection. Americans had treated me as one of their own while I was there.

Now, all around me, I saw hatred spewing from the mouths of revolutionaries I thought were my brothers and sisters in a good cause. This shook me to my core. We could not respond to tyranny by tyrannizing Americans. We represented liberation, not kidnapping.

This wasn’t the first extreme act I’d witnessed. Fanatics had blown up the mausoleum of the shah’s father and replaced it with a public toilet. Hundreds had been put in front of firing squads without getting the chance to defend themselves by Ayatollah Khalkhali, the chief justice of the newly formed Revolutionary Courts, in response to the Kurdistan uprising. I’d read about the execution of the shah’s military officers, even those who had surrendered honorably without firing a shot on their own people. Still, I had managed to convince myself that this was temporary mayhem after the revolution.

But witnessing this embassy takeover was a slap in the face. Here a fanatical minority was exerting its will on a reasonable majority. I had to allow myself to consider that the temporary mayhem might not be temporary at all. Radicalism seemed to be taking over. At that moment, I began to wonder if my visions for the future were nothing but illusions.

We remained outside the embassy until nightfall. Candles were passed among us. Smiling at me with his candle throwing a beatific glow on his face, Kazem told me that the whole takeover had been planned ahead of time with Khomeini’s secret approval. The leaders of the invasion had even dubbed the embassy “the den of spies” for the media.

I didn’t know how to tell Kazem what I felt about the radical actions we had just witnessed. I didn’t see why loving Iran required me to hate Americans. Fortunately, he never asked me. My guess is that
he thought I was as much of a true believer as he was. A purist like Kazem couldn’t imagine how a fellow revolutionary would feel anything but joy at this moment. “This is the power of Islam,” he said that night. “Even a superpower must kneel before it.”

My candle kept blowing out in the breeze, and Kazem kept relighting it with his. I vowed to try to hold on to my faith in the revolution even though what was happening was not Shariati’s vision for our nation. I convinced myself that Prime Minister Bazargan would not stand by and let this happen.

A couple of days later, Bazargan’s cabinet resigned en masse in protest over the hostage takeover. The prime minister ordered the hostages released, yet the government was powerless to enforce its decrees over extremists who answered only to Khomeini and called the incident “the second revolution.” Bazargan had no choice but to resign, humiliated. With his resignation, all hopes for a liberal democracy died. It was Khomeini’s country now.

Never before had a Middle East leader made a major decision without considering how the superpowers would react. Here Khomeini displayed his first sign of genius for playing the superpowers against each other. Guards insiders told me that Jimmy Carter had instructed U.S. General Robert E. Huyser to order Iranian generals not to stage a coup to reinstate the shah. Carter’s foreign policy team was worried about the Soviets taking over in Afghanistan and reasoned that nothing would hold more strongly against a Communist state in Afghanistan than an Islamist state in Iran next door. The Guards told me that Khomeini understood all this. But he wanted both capitalists and communists out, so he played to their hopes and fears, becoming the puppeteer of two superpowers. In the chess match of the Cold War, the pawn was manipulating the players under the rallying cry “We are neither capitalists nor communists. We are Islamists.” This cleric was overthrowing kings, seizing control from superpowers, and fomenting revolution in Iran simply by talking. The madness he inspired in my fellow citizens chilled my blood.

The only revolutionary force that refused to turn in their weapons
when Khomeini called for them was the Mujahedin. The People’s Mujahedin of Iran was a religious socialist group formed in 1965 to oppose the shah. The Mujahedin based many of their beliefs on Ali Shariati’s writings, including the assertion that Mohammad strove for a classless commonwealth. Naser sympathized with them as a reaction against the mullahs, and he began to spend time with students aligned with the organization. Anti-shah, anti-West, and fierce fighters, now the Mujahedin turned their violence against Khomeini, and could match him fanatic for fanatic. During the shah’s reign, they’d gone so far as to assassinate U.S. civilians and military personnel working in Iran. Now they were demanding a share of the power, since they saw themselves as having contributed to the overthrow of the shah. However, Khomeini barred Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the Mujahedin, from running in the first presidential election, Khomeini loyalists concentrated attacks against the organization, and things got progressively uglier from there. The Mujahedin organized demonstrations that turned into clashes with the new government’s forces.

The ideological split between the clerics and the socialists drove a wedge between Naser and Kazem that made our once friendly meetings a study in conflict avoidance. For a long time, they didn’t confront each other, but when we got together for our New Year in March 1980, Kazem could keep his silence no more. He said that the Mujahedin’s violence and demonstrations were desecrating the revolution. Naser countered that the heavy-handed governing of Khomeini’s clergy was a betrayal of the revolution. The argument continued to escalate.

“Political freedom and power should be shared among different political parties,” Naser argued. “That stupid referendum making Iran an Islamic Republic was a sham. They gave the people no choice whatever. What kind of choice do you really have voting either for or against it? You still get the mullahs ruling the country.”

“Imam Khomeini is leading this nation into prosperity and preserving the rights of Iranians against the interference of foreign
powers,” Kazem responded. Kazem, and other followers like him, had begun to call Ayatollah Khomeini an imam, a saintly leader. “Islam is the only way to purity, and you’re going to lose your soul if you’re not careful, Naser. Islamic values should be instilled in people, and all the decadence the shah introduced should be abolished.”

“Islamic values!” Naser protested. “What happened to the promise of freedom of dialogue? Is arresting the opposition and throwing them in prison for having different views part of Islamic values? I am sure you know about Khomeini’s henchman, Khalkhali, executing all the army officers that served under the shah. You call that value—killing people without giving them a trial?”

“They had people’s blood on their hands,” Kazem said angrily.

I tried to arbitrate, pleading that they both had good points and that the revolution needed time. Neither listened.

“This is the beginning of fascism and you’re an idiot for not seeing,” Naser said to Kazem bitterly. “You are blind, Kazem, and people like you will cause this nation to suffer more.”

My dear friend stood and headed for the front door, unable to stand my other dear friend’s presence a moment longer. Before leaving, Naser turned to say something. But rather than doing so, he waved his hand in disappointment and whispered, “Forget it.”

Then he slammed the door behind him and left.

AS KAZEM AND
I continued our work at the Revolutionary Guards base in Tehran, I became worried when he never spoke to me about that argument with Naser. I’d never seen the two of them fight like that before. They hadn’t seen each other in a month and I wanted to get them in the same room so I could explain that the core ideals of the revolution transcended our differences. We just needed to give the revolution time to unite us in our shared commitment to a just society.

But I wasn’t as certain about this as I had once been. When I traveled through the country, I saw the crack in my personal life mirrored in others. Many people were angry with their loved ones for their political beliefs. How could I have known then that this acrimony was only the barest hint of the horrors to come?

I decided to go to Kazem’s office to talk to him about getting together with Naser. It was early in the morning and he hadn’t arrived yet. I left a note for him to call me. An hour later, he rushed breathlessly into my office saying, “Reza, Reza, have you heard what happened?” He caught his breath. “The Americans have invaded!”

He said this with such joy that I wondered if I’d misheard him. Why would he be this thrilled about an American invasion? And then he told me.

“They’ve already been crushed! God created a sandstorm to defeat them! They crashed in the desert!”

“What are you talking about, Kazem? What crashed in the desert?”

“Helicopters, planes, everything. Brothers have already been dispatched to secure the area.”

He turned a chair backward and sat facing me. “They came here on a mission to rescue the embassy spies. A sandstorm came up.” Kazem took another deep breath. I thought he might hyperventilate. “The whole invasion fleet crashed in the desert.”

“My God,” I said in disbelief.

Kazem didn’t hear it that way, of course. He interpreted my exclamation as praise to God. “
Allaho Akbar.
They were struck down as they approached Tehran.”

I couldn’t tell him I agreed with most Iranians, who wanted the hostages freed. As was so often the case now, I found myself measuring my comments in his presence. I never had to do that before we joined the Guards. I realized that broaching reconciliation between Naser and him would be fruitless at this point. All he could think about right now was the “miracle” that had happened in the desert.

When I got home that night, I found my mom glued to the TV, stunned over President Carter’s attempt to sneak specially trained forces across the desert into Tehran under cover of night. I learned that the high-tech operation landed on a secret abandoned highway in the middle of the desert in Tabas, about five hundred miles east of Tehran. Immediately, a busload of poor families discovered them, driving up to stare at the helicopters and commandos with night-vision goggles. So much for sneaking into Tehran. The would-be rescuers took these forty-three Iranians hostage and searched their sparse belongings for any signs of threat.

Then the sandstorm came. Three helicopters were unable to take off because of this, forcing the soldiers to abort the operation. While refueling in order to flee, a helicopter crashed into a gigantic transport plane, igniting the ammunition and fuel in a fireworks display that rained bullets. Eight commandos died, scores more were wounded, and every vehicle received some level of damage. While Iranians slept in their beds, the weather defeated the greatest military machine in the world. The Revolutionary Guards didn’t even
know the country had been invaded until after the invasion had already failed.