IRAN: The Shah's Fight for Survival

The tone was contrite. The words were conciliatory. The old imperial arrogance was gone. "Your revolutionary message has been heard," said Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. "I am aware of everything you have given your lives for. I commit myself to make up for past mistakes, to fight corruption and injustice, and to form a national government to carry out free elections."

The speech was unprecedented for Iran's proud autocrat. It reminded some history-conscious observers of the last days of Imperial Russia's Czar Nicholas II in 1917, or France's King Louis XVI trying to stem the revolutionary fervor that was eventually to sweep him from his throne in 1792. In a televised address to his rebellious country, the Shah announced that he was placing strife-and strike-torn Iran under temporary military rule. Simultaneously, however, he pledged to meet virtually all the demands of his regime's opposition—all, that is, except for his own abdication from the Peacock Throne.

The Shah's decision to call in the military came after a weekend of savage rioting in the capital, Tehran. The violence followed a period of frantic but unsuccessful efforts by the Shah to put together a coalition government that would include members of the opposition National Front, an alignment of moderate political groups as well as the two leading Muslim religious leaders, the Ayatullahs Khomeini and Sharietmadari (see box). On Saturday night, students at the University of Tehran tore down a statue of the Shah that stood at the entrance to their campus. Iranian soldiers, who had been under orders to use restraint since the "Black Friday" demonstrations on Sept. 8 that left hundreds dead, suddenly turned tough and fired into the crowd, killing eight and wounding 82.

Next day thousands of students who had gathered at the university to mourn the dead surged through its gates into downtown Tehran. They burned buildings, sacked hotels, trashed cinemas, bars, liquor stores and airline offices, which have come to be reviled by both leftists and religious rightists as detested symbols of Western economic domination. This time the troops did nothing. The Shah decided it was time to act. He asked for the resignation of Premier Jaafar Sharif-Emami and his ten-week-old government. On Sunday evening, the Shah named General Gholam Reza Azhari, 61, a career officer who has been Chief of Staff of the armed forces since 1971, as Premier and head of a new Cabinet composed of nine military leaders and twelve civilians.