[Firestarter]

US support for Khomeini

Henry Precht, one of the diplomats involved in Iran, described the missions to get rid of the Shah:

To ensure access to Iran’s new political elite and establish a pro-American regime in Iran.

This Islamic opposition was led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who was living in Najaf, Iraq. In Iraq he was already visited by Americans. CIA operative Richard Cottam, who had led the 1953 coup against Mossadeq, discussed with Khomeini for the US government.

In 1978, Saddam Hussein expelled Khomeini and moved to Neauphle le Chateau (a suburb of Paris). In October of 1978, Khomeini and the Carter administration reached an official agreement on how the Shah would be toppled and the future Iran-US cooperation.

US president Jimmy Carter sent General Robert Huyser to Iran to ensure support for the revolution amongst Iranian generals. On 4 January 1979, Huyser arrived in Iran to instruct Iranian generals that they should support Khomeini’s revolution, through not interfering.
Within the Carter cabinet, national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski pushed for the “revolution”. Huyser wrote in his memoir:

Brzezinski wanted to convey to the Iranian military a green light to stage a military coup, and considered that it did so. President Carter intended it to convey such a meaning only as a last resort.

On 18 March 1979, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan reported:

At the last moment, the United States have explicitly asked the leaders of the army and the generals to take this position, and the American State Department urged its ambassador to convince, as soon as possible, the most prominent generals to not intervene and declare their neutrality in case of political conflicts.

The Shah wasn’t informed on Huyser’s mission, while the previous time the general had come to Tehran his visits were scheduled “well in advance”.
The Shah later commented:

Huyser succeeded in winning over my last chief of staff, General Ghara-Baghi, whose later behaviour leads me to believe that he was a traitor. He asked Ghara-Baghi to arrange a meeting for him with Mehdi Bazargan, the human rights lawyer who became Khomeini’s First Prime Minister. The General informed me of Huyser’s request before I left, but I have no idea of what ensued.
I do know that Ghara-Baghi used his authority to prevent military action against Khomeini. He alone knows what decisions were made and the price paid. It is perhaps significant that although all my generals were executed, only General Ghara-Baghi was spared. His saviour was Behdi Bazargan.

On 14 January 1979, US ambassador William H. Sullivan organised a meeting between Ebrahim Yazedi, an assistant of Khomeini, and a representatives from the US State Department.
See Sullivan secretly meeting representatives of Khomeini.


Since 1961, Yazedi had lived in exile in the US because he opposed the Shah. Here he became close to the CIA and the US State Department and became a US national. Warren Zimmerman told Yazedi to inform Khomeini to wait with his return to Iran until Huyser had made the necessary arrangements.
On 26 January, American diplomat Ramsey Clark met Khomeini in Neauphle le Chateau. After the meeting Clark told reporters on the coming “revolution”:

I have a great hope that this revolution will bring social justice to the Iranian people.

The Shah had already left Iran, never to return.

On 4 February 1979, Khomeini took control of Iran and appointed an interim-government. To lead this government he chose Mehdi Bazargan.
In 1978, Bazargan was an American informant. On behalf of the US government John Stempel, Henry Precht, Warren Zimmerman and Richard Cottam had meetings with the Iranian Freedom Movement, led by Bazargan.
On 14 February Bazargan, appointed the members of his cabinet. The important posts of second prime-minister and foreign minister went to Abbas Amir-Entezam and Karim Sanjabi. No less than 5 people in this cabinet held dual Iranian-US citizenship.
Amir-Entezam had lived in the USA for 20 years. He had already been an informer for the CIA in the 1953 coup against Mossadeq (which brought the Shah to power).
Sanjabi had been a regular contact of the US embassy in Tehran.

President Carter said about Bazargan’s government:

He and his predominantly Western-educated cabinet members cooperated with us. They protected our embassy, provided safe travel for General Philip C. Gast, who had replaced Huyser, and sent us a series of friendly messages. Bazargan announced publicly his eagerness to have good relations with the United States, and said that Iran would soon resume normal oil shipments to all its customers.

At the end of 1979, it was clear that Khomeini’s revolution wasn’t a complete succes and in need of a new push.
On 1 November 1979, Bazargan met President Carter’s head of the National Security Agency (NSA), Zbigniew Brzezinski, in Algiers. Then the US gave the Shah permission to travel to the US for medical treatment. The Iranian media claimed that the American “Satan” was trying to put the Shah back in power. In response, Iranian students took the American embassy personnel in Tehran hostage on 4 November.

On 5 November, Ayatollahs Khomeini, Behesti and Montazeri all expressed support for the occupation.
On 6 November, Bazargan resigned as prime-minister.

In January 1980, Iran elected Abul Hassan Bani Sadr for prime-minister. Bani Sadr had met the Americans since Khomeini’s stay in Paris. His CIA contact was Guy Rutherford.
Years later, Bani Sadr admitted that the Iranian hostage crisis had been part of a plan to strengthen Khomeini’s position domestically: https://5pillarsuk.com/2014/03/31/us-ira...evolution/
(archived here: http://archive.is/eYUlE)


In 1978, the last full year the Shah regined in Iran, the average Iranian earned $2,540, compared to $160 in 1953 (when he was brought to power in Operation Ajax). The national currency was stable for 15 years.
According to the Shah:

In 1973 we succeeded in putting a stop, irrevocably, to sixty years of foreign exploitation of Iranian oil-resources...
In 1974, Iran at last took over the management of the entire oil-industry, including the refineries at Abadan and so on...
I am quite convinced that it was from this moment that some very powerful, international interests identified, within Iran, the collusive elements, which they could use to encompass my downfall.

It appears that deposing the Shah was planned from 1974 in the National Security Council in Washington, led by Henry Kissinger, whom the Shah thought of as “friend". It took until the beginning of the Carter administration that the decision was made to take action.

William Sullivan was chosen for U.S. Ambassador to urge the Shah to get out.
In December 1977, CFR member, Bilderberger, and banker with Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb and "authority on Iran", George Ball, was sent to deliver the Shah the same message.
The Shah commented that he “knew that Ball was no friend".

The Shah had suddenly become the target of a slandering campaign in the Western press. According to the US media, the Shah was suddenly "a despot, an oppressor, a tyrant". For Western TV cameras, protestors in Teheran carried empty coffins, claiming these were "victims of SAVAK".
The Kennedy family financed a committee for the “defense of liberties and rights” in Teheran, which was really a headquarters for revolution.
When Carter visited Iran at the end of 1977, the press reported that his departure to Teheran International Airport was through empty streets, because the city was "all locked up and emptied of people, by order of the SAVAK". What the media “forgot” to mention is that Carter departed at 6 a.m., when the streets were naturally empty!
In November 1977, when the Shah toured Virginia, about 500 Iranian students showed up, enthusiastically cheering for the Shah. Only the 50 Western protestors, who couldn’t even speak Persian, were shown in the US media.

On 19 August 1978, a fire allegedly started intentionally by Khomeini supporters at the Rex Cinema in Abadan, killed 477 people. Blocked exits prevented escape. The international press blamed it on the Shah and his "SAVAK".
On September 8, thousands of demonstrators in Teheran were ordered to disperse by an army unit. Rooftop snipers then sprayed the crowd, killing 121 demonstrators and 70 soldiers and cops. Again the Western press blamed the Shah for the massacre.

In 1960, Colonel Michael Goleniewski, second-in-command of Soviet counter-intelligence in Poland, defected to the West. He exposed many communist agents, including Henry Kissinger (?) and Ayatollah Khomeini.

Around the villa in Neauphle le Chateau occupied by Khomeini, there was a coming and going of the world's secret services, including CIA, MI6, KGB and SDECE. The CIA had even rented the house next door. Libya, Iraq and Russia were providing money.
Members of the Tudeh (communist) Party formed Khomeini's secretariat in France. In cooperation with the French Communist Party they provided couriers to pass his orders and tapes to Iran. Most of the witness-statements claim that the East Germans were in charge of the radio-transmissions; and at least 8000 cassettes of the Ayatollah's speeches were sent directly to Teheran. The BBC (British Brainwashing Corporation) became Khomeini's propaganda organ.
Nahavandi affirms that in Iran:

the Voice of America, the Voice of Israel and, especially, the BBC virtually became the voice of the revolution, moving from criticism, to overt incitement of revolt, and from biased reporting, to outright disinformation.

Khomeini gave 132 interviews in 112 days to the large amounts of journalists coming to Neauphle-le-Château.

General Robert Huyser pressured Iran's generals to giving in without a fight.
The Shah wrote:

Huyser directly threatened the military with a break in diplomatic relations and a cutoff of arms if they moved to support their monarch. It was therefore necessary, to neutralize the Iranian army. It was clearly for this reason that General Huyser had come to Teheran.

On 1 February 1979, with US officials joining the welcoming committee, Ayatollah Khomeini arrived in Iran amid media fanfare.
Although counter-demonstrations, some as large as 300,000 people, erupted in Iran, the Western press barely mentioned them.

The Shah, took the invitation of Mexican President Lopes Portillo.
His “friend” David Rockefeller sent a trendy doctor to examine the Shah, who convinced him to fly to New York for treatment in October 1979. On 4 November 1979, Iranians took 52 hostages from the US embassy in Teheran. According to Nahavandi, assisted by Soviet special services.
Mexico didn’t allow the Shah to return and because he couldn’t stay in the US was forced to go to Panama, where he and his wife would be placed under virtual house arrest. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat then sent a jet to Panama, to take the Shah and wife to Egypt, where the Shah died on 27 July 1980, reportedly of “cancer”.
Anwar Sadat was assassinated the next year.

It´s claimed that more Iranians were killed during Khomeini's first month in power than in the Shah's 37-year reign: https://www.thenewamerican.com/component...y-happened
(archived here: http://archive.is/TDlOF)