Nation: Thrown Out Like a Dead Mouse

The Shah 's new memoirs feature bitter accusations

While he was in exile in Mexico last summer, the Shah of Iran produced a 280-page book describing the events that led to his overthrow. He was and is defiant in his insistence that events—and the U.S.—conspired against him. He was deposed, he feels, for doing the right thing. Last week, with the Shah sequestered in a Texas military hospital, his Reply to History* began appearing in the London weekly magazine Now!

The Shah writes that he was astonished when he learned last January that U.S. Air Force General Robert Huyser, then Deputy Commander in Chief of American forces in Europe, had been in Tehran for several days. "General Huyser's movements were normally laid down in advance. But this time nothing ... I questioned my generals. They, too, knew nothing. What, then, was this American general doing in Iran?"

The Shah believes that Huyser's mission was to "neutralize the Iranian army" when demonstrations turned violent. Encouraged by Huyser and U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan, the Shah went into exile. "General Huyser remained in Iran for several days after my departure. Having arranged for the generals to abandon Dr. Shahpour Bakhtiar, head of the coalition government formed to see the country through its hour of crisis, all that remained for the fulfillment of his mission was the decapitation of Iran's army.

"He was quickly to be satisfied. One by one they were executed ... Before the parody of a trial which preceded his execution, General Amir Hussein Rabii, commander in chief of the Iranian air force, was questioned about the role played by General Huyser. He replied to his judges: 'General Huyser threw the emperor out of the country like a dead mouse.' "

The Shah claims that he was the victim of the progress he made in Iran. "When I began a shock program which would enable Iran to make up in 25 years the backwardness of centuries, I realized that success would be possible only by mobilizing all its resources ... If a country is to be mobilized, it has to be driven, and, while it sets to work, defended against those who would hinder the process. To leave saboteurs to operate in freedom would certainly not have permitted realization of this program."

The Shah sees his failure as political. Every relaxation of controls was interpreted by his enemies as a sign of weakness. "There was a strange alliance between certain Tehran merchants, a feudal pseudo-theocracy and parties of the extreme left with the backing of a religious fanaticism foreign to the principles of Islam and Iranian traditions."

In developing a modern political system, writes the Shah, his father "removed from the clergy part of the privileges they had previously enjoyed. Consequently, one section of the Shi'ite clergy responded by branding all temporal power as necessarily a form of usurpation." But the Shah insists that he dealt relatively mildly with his opponents: "I am told today that I should have applied martial law more forcefully. This would have cost my country less dear than the bloody anarchy now established there. But a sovereign cannot save his throne by spilling the blood of his fellow countrymen."