Fake Lottery Ticket

Javad Khadem* The note by Mehdi Mozaffari titled "Bakhtiar was killed but did not die" published on the Radio Farda website has received numerous and varied reactions. I knew Shapur Bakhtiar for thirty years and worked closely with him for three years. Therefore, I find it necessary and beneficial to provide explanations about this figure of contemporary Iranian history so that the youth of today and the future have a clearer picture of Bakhtiar and if one day they find a person with such characteristics, they can test their luck with him. Shapur Bakhtiar was a polite, democratic, cultured, educated, determined, law-abiding, generous, and loyal man. During World War II, he was a law student in France. However, during the occupation of France by Hitler's army, motivated by the fight against Nazism, he collaborated with the French who were secretly fighting against their occupiers. The fight against fascism was ingrained in his mentality, and for this reason, he repeatedly reminded his companions in the National Front, particularly Mr. Mehdi Bazargan, of the danger of religious fascism. As far as I know, Bakhtiar's collaboration with the French resistance against the Nazis was not such that he personally took up arms and killed anyone. He had not served in the military in Iran either because, at the end of his studies, before returning to Iran, he married a French girl, and according to the law at that time in Iran, married individuals were exempt from military service. Bakhtiar knew Iran well, every inch of its land. He was aware of the depth of ignorance and poverty among the people and worked to secure the rightful rights of workers. He was well-versed in Iranian history and knew that the clergy had caused the disintegration of Iran four times. He was familiar with Persian poetry and literature and memorized thousands of verses of Persian poetry. He was knowledgeable about Hafez and had deep studies on Iranian mysticism and Sufism. He had read the history of Iran's international relations well. However, he did not go to the mosque and did not sit at the clerics' sermons; he did not consider himself a follower of any cleric and did not observe religious rituals. During Mohammad Mossadegh's premiership, in the heat of the national movement and the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, Shapur Bakhtiar was the director-general of labor in Khuzestan. Such a sensitive responsibility is not entrusted to just anyone, especially in the center of that national struggle. During his vice-presidency in the Ministry of Labor, Bakhtiar prepared the social insurance plan for workers. He practically managed the ministry because Dr. Ebrahim Khalil Alami was often ill and absent, and Mossadegh, due to his affection for Alami, did not want to dismiss him. After the coup of August 19, due to political repression, the people of Iran had practically forgotten politics and politicians. In the years leading up to the revolution, the podium was in the hands of the religious figures because the Shah either did not feel threatened by them or considered them less dangerous to his regime than the nationalists. Nevertheless, in the years before the revolution, Shapur Bakhtiar was one of the three main leaders of the National Front and from this position, along with Karim Sanjabi and Dariush Forouhar, wrote a letter to the Shah in June 1977, calling for full adherence to the principles of democracy and the constitution. After August 19, Bakhtiar withdrew from government work and rejected offers to accept ambassadorship or ministerial positions. To maintain his loyalty to Mossadegh's ideals, he preferred to work as an international lawyer, advising foreign companies in Iran for his livelihood. His simple life was a sign of his modest income. Although Bakhtiar always believed in peaceful struggle within the framework of the law, he went to prison six times. In his last attempts to save Iran from falling into the abyss of religious government, he suggested to Karim Sanjabi to accept the premiership instead of him. Accepting the premiership in that charged atmosphere was not only not ambition, but it was considered a self-sacrifice to save Iran and prevent the dominance of religion and clerics over all aspects of people's lives. Sanjabi did not accept this offer and preferred to pledge allegiance to Khomeini. After Sanjabi's capitulation in Paris, Bakhtiar entered the fray to save the country, but he knew he would be the last person the Shah would nominate for the premiership. After Sedighi and Sanjabi refused to accept the premiership, what other option was left for the Shah? On the eve of the revolution, Sanjabi, Forouhar, and especially Mehdi Bazargan tried hard to bring Bakhtiar along with them and draw him into Khomeini's camp, but Bakhtiar did not fall for Mehdi Bazargan's deception. He was concerned about the army's confrontation with the people. An army that had been in contact with demonstrators for more than six months could not be used to suppress the revolution. Bakhtiar was worried about the army's collapse. Bakhtiar did not instruct the Shah to leave the country. The Shah had already made his decision to leave the country; otherwise, he could have accepted Gholamhossein Sedighi's condition for the premiership and stayed in the country. In Bakhtiar's view, the Shah's departure allowed for negotiations with Khomeini in a non-threatening environment, and perhaps leftist and nationalist forces could weaken Khomeini's position by separating from the Islamists, and the government could reach a compromise or agreement with Khomeini to preserve Iran's national interests, but this is nothing more than an illusion that if Bakhtiar resigned, Khomeini might have retained him in the premiership. Bakhtiar's law-abiding nature, his free-thinking, and his belief in the separation of religion from state did not allow him to seek a decree for the premiership from Khomeini. After the unsuccessful attempt to meet with Khomeini in Paris, Bakhtiar had no doubt that the little luck he had for controlling the situation had vanished, and his success in preventing the revolution depended on a miracle. Therefore, his efforts were only aimed at negotiating with Khomeini's agents in Tehran, which might yield positive results. One of the criticisms of the National Front against the Shah was his role as the gendarme of the Persian Gulf. To fulfill the demands of the National Front and leftist forces, Bakhtiar canceled the contract for purchasing F-16 aircraft, granted freedom to the press, released political prisoners, and dissolved the SAVAK (which had practically been neutralized a year before the revolution). These actions had no effect on the outcome of the revolution, but they could have helped separate nationalist and leftist forces from the Islamists. Even now, after 38 years, some nostalgically say that Bakhtiar should have ordered the plane carrying Khomeini to be shot down or killed him in some other way so that Iran would not fall into the grip of religious dictatorship. This is naive thinking. Killing Khomeini was not a solution; rather, at that time, it could have plunged Iran into the situation it faces today in Syria and, in the long run, would have intensified and strengthened the claim of religious victimization, trapping dozens of future generations. On the evening of February 11, Bakhtiar left the Prime Minister's office and went into hiding. His survival during this period of concealment was solely thanks to his family and very close friends, and not anyone else. His departure from the country marked the beginning of the second phase of his struggles. For ten years abroad, he shook the foundations of the regime. Israel helped him to leave Iran. On February 23, 1979, I will never forget the smiles of two people: Karim Sanjabi and Mehdi Bazargan, who attributed the failure of their former comrade to their own success and reminded that Bakhtiar should have listened to their advice and not accepted the Shah's premiership. But they never anticipated their own grim fate, which was written in the darkness of Khomeini's reign. Their deaths in the political scene and the killing of Bakhtiar were two symmetrical points. Defeat in victory and victory in defeat. The youth and future generations must learn from the fate of these three individuals. The judgment of history is not instantaneous. On the evening of February 11, Bakhtiar left the Prime Minister's office and went into hiding. His survival during this period of concealment was solely thanks to his family and very close friends, and not anyone else. His departure from the country marked the beginning of the second phase of his struggles. For ten years abroad, he shook the foundations of the regime. Israel helped him to leave Iran. If Bakhtiar had remained in Iran and been executed by Sheikh Sadegh Khalkhali, he could have only been one of the thousands of victims of this butcher who killed dozens and hundreds of valuable Iranian figures, leaving a memory in the minds of freedom-seekers. However, his eleven-year struggle in Europe taught future generations that to eliminate fascism, one must fight and not fear death in this struggle. Bakhtiar was not a man who would shy away from anything to destroy the enemy of the Iranian people, even from receiving foreign assistance. Which of the political left, right, and religious groups of that time in Iran did not receive foreign assistance? He openly announced receiving help from Iraq. Unlike Khomeini, Ahmad Madani, and Abolhassan Banisadr, who did not have the courage to do so. They thought they were smarter than Bakhtiar, but in today's digital world, which has turned the world into a small village, nothing remains hidden. However, receiving help from Iraq did not make Bakhtiar an accomplice or defender of Saddam Hussein. At a time when Saddam had abrogated the 1975 Algiers Agreement, Bakhtiar emphasized the validity and necessity of respecting and implementing the 1975 Algiers Agreement in all his messages, interviews, statements, and speeches, and the course of events showed that he was right. The Nojeh coup was one of the turning points in Shapur Bakhtiar's political struggles. Some link the failure of the Nojeh coup and Saddam's attack on Iran to each other, believing that the Iraqi government was aware of the coup plan and leaked it to Khomeini's government so that the army could be purged, allowing him to attack Iran. Here, I will mention two points: First, the coup plan and organization had many flaws to the extent that almost all those who claimed to have discovered the coup (specifically the Tudeh Party and Hashemi Rafsanjani's claim that one of the Air Force personnel leaked the coup to him) were likely telling the truth. Second, as far as Iraq is concerned, I can say that they knew a military movement was about to take place, but they did not know the details of the coup plan and could not have leaked it. Many people hope to win the lottery. Perhaps this analogy is not far from reality that on January 5, 1979, after 25 years of waiting, the political lottery ticket of the freedom seekers, democrats, and nationalists of Iran won, but in the turmoil and uproar of those days, not only did no one rush to cash the winning ticket, but they tore it up and hoped for another ticket that they believed shone with divine light. Now, after 37 years, no one remains who does not understand that the winning ticket was exchanged for a fake one and there is no prize. Today, after 37 years, as the legitimacy of the regime has eroded and the continuation of the government is based solely on violent repression, when widespread corruption is added to it, collapse without overthrowing is clearly visible on the near horizon, and if political elites and activists remain indifferent to this and do not have a plan for after the collapse, a dangerous future awaits Iran. The failure to declare a republic immediately after the Shah's departure, the failure to kill Khomeini, and the failure of the Nojeh coup are among the points that history must judge whether each of them could have changed the course of the Islamic revolution and shaped a different fate for Iran or not.