Remembering Abolhassan Bani--Sadr

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of Iran following the 1979 revolution, died recently in Paris.

Bani-Sadr had been part of Ayatollah Khomeini's inner circle while the two were in exile in Paris, plotting the downfall of the Shah of Iran and his increasingly unpopular government. Bani-Sadr had been in Paris, exiled for protesting the Shah's government, long before Khomeini arrived.

For anyone who remembers the news of 1979-81 the three most prominent names in Iran during the early days of it's revolution and the holding of the U.S. Embassy staff as hostages was Khomeini, Bani-Sadr and, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who would later become Iran's foreign minister.

Bani-Sadr was an economist and politician, not an Islamic cleric. Although his father had been an ayatollah, and friend of Khomeini during their youth. After the Shah had been overthrown Khomeini and his retinue had returned to Iran and took power. Bani-Sadr had been foreign minister but had been removed from that position. But he was very popular and won the Iranian presidency with nearly 80% of the vote.

By the way Bani Sadr agreed with the scenario that I wrote about in the compound posting on this blog, "Investigations", section 47) RONALD REAGAN AND THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS. This is the theory that the release of the U.S. hostages had purposely been delayed until after the presidential inauguration of Reagan.

But revolutions can be treacherous. As the revolution grows and develops the early revolutionaries often fall out of favor. Many are the revolutionaries that have become victims of their own revolutions.

Few revolutions end up just as their founders envisioned. According to Abolhassan Bani-Sadr the intention of the revolution was for Iran to be a democracy, with clerics like Khomeini being spiritual guides but not actively involved in running the country. Bani-Sadr would end up, as President of Iran, trying to counter the ever-growing power of the clerics. He visited the U.S. Embassy and asked the militants to release the hostages, but was ignored.

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr would ultimately be impeached as President and would go back to exile in Paris. So he went into Paris exile for criticizing the Shah's government. He was part of the group which overthrew that government and was overwhelmingly elected as President of Iran. But he fell out of favor for trying to resist the power of the clerics in the Iranian Revolution, and ended up back in his Paris exile.

Bani-Sadr would be a prominent critic of the Iranian Revolution, and how it had turned out. He insisted that the plan, while the revolutionaries were in exile in Paris, was for Iran to be a more-or-less secular democracy, with the clerics only "advising" the nation, but then Khomeini had become intoxicated with power. Bani-Sadr would ultimately end up dying, as an elderly man, in the hospital next to the Sorbonne, the University of Paris, where he had earlier studied and then taught.

We have seen how important the Iranian Revolution was, in generally turning the world back toward religion from secularism, in the posting on this blog, "The Great Revolution Of Our Time" January 2017. But the career of Bani-Sadr shows that it was also a harbinger of the future of democracy. Most countries profess to be democracies but it is too easy to just "go through the motions", with regard to democracy, and democracy today is definitely on the decline in the world.

The mystery of Bani-Sadr, as I see it, is why his name does not seem to have been connected to the Hafte Tir Bombing. On June 21, 1981, Bani-Sadr was impeached as President by the Iranian Government, for resisting the growing power of the clerics. He was already in hiding but was still in the country.

Exactly a week later a very powerful bomb exploded during a meeting of party leaders at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party. 74 of the most important people in the Iranian Revolution were killed, although Ayatollah Khomeini was not among them. It is actually a credit to the Iranian Revolution that it survived this blast. My understanding is that a sound technician brought the bomb in, hidden in a cart, while setting up speakers for the meeting.

What intrigues me is the possible connection between Bani-Sadr and this bombing, but I have never seen his name connected with it. He commented on all else that went on in the Iranian Revolution, but I cannot see that he ever commented on this bombing which was one of the most traumatic events of the revolution. About a month after the bombing Bani-Sadr fled the country with the leader of the Mujahedin e Khalq, which is widely believed to have been responsible for the bombing.

The third prominent name from the early days of the Iranian Revolution, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, would also fall out of favor and would be executed for allegedly plotting the overthrow of Khomeini.

THE HOUSE OF THE REVOLUTION

This section is also posted as number 24) in the compound posting, "Investigations" December 2018.

Most major news agencies report that the house where Ayatollah Khomeini stayed for over three months, near Paris, just prior to returning in triumph to Iran, on February 1, 1979, has been demolished. I can see only one news report, by Reuters, that the house is still there.

Khomeini, an opponent of the Shah of Iran, was exiled in 1964 to Turkey. He later moved to the Iraqi Shiite holy city of Najaf, where he taught and wrote. In late 1978, as he became more popular back home, the Shah put pressure on Iraq and supportive Iranian exiles rented a house for him in Neauphle le Chateau, a village that is almost close enough to Paris to be considered a suburb.

It was during the more than three months that he spent there that the budding revolution really took form. Khomeini directed the revolution back in Iran by telephone and his sermons were distributed extensively on cassette tapes.

Press conferences, with the global media, took place on a regular basis in front of the house. This photo was taken in the autumn of 1978. Khomeini is in the center of the photo. The clean-shaven man immediately to Khomeini's left looks like Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, who would become Iranian Foreign Minister before being executed. In the background are two men, talking below the window shutters, the one on the left looks like Abolhassan Bani-Sadr.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini#/media/File:Imam_in_Paris.jpg

Maybe the French Government didn't want the house to become a shrine. It is listed as having been demolished but nothing can be found about when that took place.

The former site of the home is listed, but if we go there on Google Street View the surrounding scenery doesn't match that in the photo above.

The fact is that the house hasn't been demolished. It is now listed on Google Street View. It is the house that now has the blue fence and blue and white shutters. Images from Google Street View.

 

Images from Google Street View
 

Possibly the most famous ordinary passenger flight on a modern jet was the return of Khomeini in triumph to Iran on a chartered Air France plane. In the following photo, the plane's captain helps the elderly ayatollah down the steps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhollah_Khomeini%27s_return_to_Iran#/media/File:Imam_Khomeini_in_Mehrabad.jpg

THE IRAN HOSTAGE CRISIS

November 4, 1979 saw the seizure of the U.S. Embassy, and beginning of the Hostage Crisis.

The former embassy is now a museum. The first of the following scenes show the "Glass Room" in the embassy where discussions could be held securely. The clear walls were so they could be sure they were not being bugged. The rest of the scenes are of the neighborhood in Tehran today. The red brick building with two columns in the doorway and bars on the windows are the front of the building. The Great Seal of the U.S. is still there.

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.707595,51.4238617,3a,75y,106.55h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipMsHKUwUir0035CGCO4fd-izibaywRQP_Ax13Th!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipMsHKUwUir0035CGCO4fd-izibaywRQP_Ax13Th%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya267.59924-ro0-fo100!7i5376!8i2688?hl=en

At Desert One, the site of the April 1980 hostage rescue attempt, the Iranians have built a mosque and it is the site of religious pilgrimages. The green bus is the one that happened across the rescue attempt and the Iranian passengers were temporarily held. There are photos of the U.S. aircraft that were left behind.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/%D9%85%D8%B3%D8%AC%D8%AF+%D8%B4%DA%A9%D8%B1+%D8%B7%D8%A8%D8%B3%E2%80%AD/@33.0721555,55.8938985,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1sAF1QipNzEnCeuIubzO0ZnFHNqwjcIumjbTw1MymTO0Ex!2e10!3e12!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipNzEnCeuIubzO0ZnFHNqwjcIumjbTw1MymTO0Ex%3Dw129-h86-k-no!7i4928!8i3264!4m13!1m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x0!2zMzPCsDA0JzIzLjAiTiA1NcKwNTMnMzMuMCJF!3b1!8m2!3d33.073056!4d55.8925!3m4!1s0x3f09b9ac862ef935:0x4f378f9d4404010!8m2!3d33.0721555!4d55.8938992?hl=en

Does anyone remember when there were prayers across America? The Iran Hostage Crisis was not about military strength, it was a hostage situation. There were prayer meetings for them across America. After the rescue attempt failed the prayers continued, and all was not lost.

As it turned out, help would come from an unexpected direction. Neighboring Iraq, glad to be rid of the Shah of Iran, at first expressed support for the Iranian Revolution. But then Ayatollah Khomeini, the main opponent of the Shah who had spent years in exile in Iraq teaching Shiite students in Najaf, made it clear that he wanted new Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein overthrown by Iraq's majority Shiite population.

Border clashes took place between the two nations, with each side blaming the other. In September 1980, it turned into full-scale war. With Iran actually being invaded, the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution. Those who were guarding the hostages were needed at the battlefront, and the hostages were soon released.