History - Iran - page 548

By now the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (later British Petroleum) was churning out
petro-dollars by the million and there were calls for it to be nationalised. When prime
minister Ali Razmara was assassinated in 1951, 70-year-old nationalist Dr Mohammad
Mossadegh, leader of the National Front Movement, swept into office on the back of
promises to repatriate the generated money. Mossadegh succeeded in nationalising Anglo-
Iranian as the National Iranian Oil Company, but in 1953 he was removed in a coup or-
ganised by the CIA and Britain ( Click here ) .
With Mossadegh gone, the US government encouraged the shah to press ahead with a
program of social and economic modernisation dubbed the White Revolution because it
was intended to take place without bloodshed. Many Iranians remember this period fondly
for reforms including the further emancipation of women and improved literacy. But for a
conservative, mainly rural Muslim population it was all too fast. The religious establish-
ment, the ulema, also took exception to land reforms depriving them of rights and elector-
al reforms giving votes to non-Muslims.
AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
An earnest, ruthless and intensely committed man, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is reviled and little understood in
the West but revered as a saint by many Iranians. Khomeini was a family man who lived a modest life; a religious
leader who reduced the age at which 'women' could marry to nine; a war leader who sent young men to their deaths
with the Iraqi as martyrs; and the man who proclaimed the infamous fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
Born in the village of Khomein in central Iran about 1902, Sayyed Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini followed in the
family tradition by studying theology, philosophy and law in the holy city of Qom. By the 1920s he had earned the
title of ayatollah (the highest rank of a Shiite cleric) and settled down to teach and write.
He came to public attention in 1962 when he opposed the shah's plans to reduce the clergy's property rights and
emancipate women. In 1964 he was exiled to Turkey, before moving on to Iraq and, in 1978, to Paris. When the
shah fled in 1979, Khomeini returned to take control of Iran through force of character, and remained leader until
his death in 1989 ( Click here ).
Today, Khomeini is officially known as Imam Khomeini, raising him to the level of saint, and almost every town
in the country has a street or square named after him. His portrait is everywhere, often beside and thus legitimising
that of the current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
By 1962 Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then living in Qom, had emerged as a figure-
head for opposition to the shah. In 1964 the shah approved a bill giving US soldiers in
Iran complete immunity from arrest. Khomeini responded by claiming the shah had 're-
duced the Iranian people to a level lower than that of an American dog', because if anyone