Bakhtiar; 4- 'Dagger of Betrayal' of the National Front or 'Ambition' of Bakhtiar?

(In previous parts - part one, part two, part three - we saw that the Shah decided to appoint a Prime Minister from the National Front to control the protests of 1978. His negotiations with Gholamhossein Sedighi and Karim Sanjabi did not yield results. The next main option was Shapur Bakhtiar.) The appearance of the matter is as follows: Gholamhossein Sedighi refused the premiership because he had strict conditions for the Shah, and the Shah did not concede. Karim Sanjabi also demanded his premiership to be approved by Ayatollah Khomeini, which was again unacceptable to the Shah. When the lot fell to Shapur Bakhtiar after these two, it seemed that everything was ready for his rise to power, and the Shah was willing to accept all the conditions of this veteran National Front activist. However, the details of what happened during Bakhtiar's acceptance of the premiership and the National Front's stance on this matter are not only not that simple but also have undisclosed complexities that remain unanswered amid heated discussions and accusations from both sides. The main dispute is between Karim Sanjabi and Shapur Bakhtiar. Their narratives of what happened in the fall of 1978 have key differences. However, both shared a common point in their narratives expressed years later in exile: both Sanjabi and Bakhtiar accused each other of ambition, believing that the opposing side's objection was not based on political principles but rather on who would become Prime Minister. Two Narratives In Bakhtiar's narrative, the Shah invited him and accepted all his conditions; conditions such as leaving Iran, adhering to the fundamental freedoms of the nation, dissolving the SAVAK, fully implementing the constitutional law, and handing over complete power to the Prime Minister, which were all considered a tremendous political victory for the National Front. However, in Sanjabi's narrative, recounted in his book 'Hopes and Disappointments' and resulting from an interview he conducted with Harvard's Oral History Project, Bakhtiar lied after negotiating with the Shah in a meeting attended by all the leaders of the National Front. Sanjabi claims that Bakhtiar completely concealed the offer of the premiership made to him by the Shah from the National Front. In this interview, Sanjabi states that after meeting with the Shah, he requested a meeting of the National Front leaders and, in the presence of senior members of the National Front, said about the content of his negotiations with the Shah: 'Bakhtiar said they came and took me to His Majesty, and he asked me what conditions would allow the National Front government to be formed? Dr. Bakhtiar did not even mention his own government in this meeting. He said I told him that the conditions I am presenting to you are the same ones that Mr. Dr. Sanjabi presented to you a while ago. His Majesty said the main problem at that time was my being in Iran and my traveling abroad, and with the thoughts I have, both for the treatments I need and for rest, I am ready to go abroad, and this obstacle has been removed. We were all pleased. I told him, and the friends all confirmed that then the problem from the Shah's side has been resolved. We need to resolve the problem from Mr. Khomeini's side. In my opinion, for this, it is necessary that immediately today or tomorrow, I, one or two of our friends, for example, Dariush Forouhar, even though he was not in that meeting, go to Paris and talk to Mr. Khomeini and also gain his approval so that we do not face protests and opposition from the clergy and their provocations, and a government acceptable to all comes to power. In addition, I told him to ask through that intermediary for the Shah to summon me tonight and speak with me personally. He also agreed.' Sanjabi states that his initiative was to end the street protests of the opposition and strikes by garnering the support of Ayatollah Khomeini and to form an effective government. According to Sanjabi, less than 24 hours after this meeting, while he was preparing to communicate with Ayatollah Khomeini, news agencies announced Bakhtiar's premiership. He says that upon hearing the news, he called Bakhtiar. Sanjabi describes the details of this phone conversation as follows: 'I immediately called Bakhtiar and said the French news agency is reporting your premiership. He said, well, what’s the problem? I said the issue is not whether you are there or not; the issue is that until we have prepared the ground, such an action will be tantamount to suicide for us.' The Dispute Over the Premiership However, the narrative from the other side does not resemble Sanjabi's account. Cyrus Amouzgar, a university professor and a writer who was a friend of Shapur Bakhtiar and later held two positions as Minister of State and head of the Ministry of Information in his cabinet, was present with Bakhtiar during these hours. He says that some of Bakhtiar's close friends had known about the possibility of his premiership for several days, and at the time of this phone conversation, Bakhtiar was preparing to select his cabinet members. Amouzgar states that when Sanjabi called Bakhtiar, he was near Bakhtiar and accidentally overheard this conversation. He says: 'I was sitting right next to Dr. Bakhtiar, and Mr. Ebrahimzadeh and Mr. Dr. Madani were sitting across from us. At that moment, as soon as the BBC announced Bakhtiar's premiership, the phone rang, and Mr. Bakhtiar picked it up. Not that I wanted to eavesdrop, but I accidentally heard Mr. Dr. Sanjabi speaking in a sharp and scolding tone to Mr. Dr. Bakhtiar, saying that now that His Majesty has agreed to our conditions, I should be Prime Minister, not you. He used exactly those words. But we knew that His Majesty had offered the premiership to Mr. Sanjabi, and he had absurdly conditioned the acceptance of the premiership on Mr. Khomeini's approval. But after he said that I should be Prime Minister, not you, Dr. Bakhtiar became agitated and said, it is not too late; you come and form the cabinet, and I will do whatever I can.' A day after this phone conversation, the leaders of the National Front gathered again and discussed Bakhtiar's premiership in the presence of Shapur Bakhtiar. Sanjabi recounts what happened in this meeting: 'The next morning, we gathered again at Mr. Jahangir Haqshenas's house, and I presented the matter. Immediately, all three or four friends present there attacked and protested against him [Bakhtiar], and he said, yes, I have accepted responsibility, and I see no problem in this. Especially Haqshenas spoke extremely organized and reasoned and told him, dear sir, what you are doing is destroying all our efforts. It is destroying the entire history of the National Front and discrediting all our struggles. Zareh stood up against him and pointed with his hand and said, first you will disgrace yourself, and then all of us. When Bakhtiar saw that all the friends present unanimously rejected his opinion and said that what you said yesterday contradicts what you are saying today, he became angry and red-faced and left through the door, slamming it behind him, saying I have made my decision, and I will do what I am going to do, and you can do whatever you want.' Twenty-four hours after this meeting, the leaders of the National Front held a meeting without Bakhtiar and unanimously expelled him from the National Front. Religion and State Thus, if the main idea was that the government be handed over to the opposition to make the protesters relent and silence the protests and break the strikes, it seemed that this idea had failed at the very first step. With Bakhtiar's expulsion from the National Front and the deepening of his differences with Mossadegh's companions, the collaboration of well-known names from this political group with Bakhtiar was practically ruled out. From here, in the duality of the Shah and the revolution, the National Front took a completely different path, and Bakhtiar also went on a different path. These days mark the historical turning point that is now easy to judge because the results of the actions and decisions of each of these individuals and groups have become clear. Sanjabi, after meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini in France, insisted that the National Front did not participate in an alliance with this beloved Ayatollah. However, in practice, what happened was the collaboration of this political group with a Shia cleric who wanted to abolish the constitutional monarchy and establish an Islamic Republic. The issue of clerical interference in politics and the resistance of the intellectuals of the National Front against this issue was not new for this political group. Many leaders of the National Front in 1978, including Karim Sanjabi himself, remembered the experience of Mossadegh's government and his disagreements with Ayatollah Abolqasem Kashani. It was due to these very disagreements that Ayatollah Kashani sided with those who were described as 'coup plotters' by the National Front on August 19. Now, after 25 years, what had changed that Sanjabi and his like-minded colleagues took a completely opposing stance against another Ayatollah, contrary to the fundamental beliefs of the National Front regarding the separation of religion and politics? Abbas Milani, head of the Iranian Studies Group at Stanford University, believes that at this juncture, they miscalculated, but Bakhtiar and Sedighi correctly feared the future under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini. He says: 'All the documents related to the meetings where they made these strange decisions have not yet been published. But it seems that they - specifically Sanjabi and Forouhar - thought that in the future government that Mr. Khomeini would form, they could have an important share. They thought the Shah was going to leave, and they thought what Sedighi and Bakhtiar were doing was a wrong gamble. They particularly did not think that Khomeini could seize power. They thought that Mr. Khomeini needed to keep the National Front in power. The documents clearly show that Mr. Khomeini knew he needed the National Front to present it as a transitional government to the Americans to say that a radical government would not come to power and convince the army not to stage a coup.' In Abbas Milani's view, this indicates the insight of politicians like Shapur Bakhtiar and Gholamhossein Sedighi, who understood that if Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, he would not tolerate the liberal and educated politicians of the National Front and 'in Bakhtiar's words, at the first opportunity, he would replace the dictatorship of the slippers with the dictatorship of the boots.' This may be the most important argument of Bakhtiar's supporters and admirers in explaining why he accepted the premiership. Many of Bakhtiar's close associates, some of whom participated in his short-lived cabinet, believe that he accepted this position not out of a thirst for power and the allure of a post like the premiership but out of courage and a principled belief in the injustice of clerical interference in politics. Among them is Manouchehr Razmara, a physician who had been friends with Bakhtiar since the 1960s and joined his cabinet as Minister of Health in 1978. He says: 'What Bakhtiar really did not expect was this dagger of betrayal that he received from his friends like Sanjabi, Forouhar, and Bazargan. These individuals, out of ambition and opportunism, came when they saw which way the wind was blowing and committed that historical betrayal and expelled Bakhtiar from the National Front. Bakhtiar's failure had various reasons, but at that very first step, this blow he received from his friends in the National Front left him no chance of success.' On December 12, 1978, Shapur Bakhtiar, no longer seeing his former allies in the National Front beside him, explained in a famous radio message to the Iranian nation under what conditions and for what purpose he accepted the premiership. In this message, he swore to release all political prisoners, abolish martial law, end press censorship, allow all political parties to operate, and console the survivors of those killed during the protests. He concluded the message by stating that aware of the current crisis, he accepted this responsibility, and no threat could deter him. Bakhtiar ended this message with a couplet: 'I am a storm bird; I do not think of the storm / I am a wave, not the wave that flees from the sea.'