Word: bakhtiar
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Iran after the Shah fled the country was all but over. Last week Iran faced new violence, new tests of wills, new forebodings about an uncertain future that might involve chaos, coups, civil war. Without much visible success, the government of the Shah's appointee, Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar, struggled for both popularity and credibility. Led by generals fiercely loyal to the Shah, the army stayed on the alert, clashing sporadically with opponents of the monarch. At week's end, Bakhtiar made a dramatic bid to break the impasse. He offered to meet early this week with Ayatullah...
Audacity was clearly needed to defuse the tension between Bakhtiar and his opponents. Khomeini was originally scheduled to fly to Tehran last Friday, the Muslim day of prayer; 48 hours before Khomeini's departure, Bakhtiar's nervous government reversed its earlier decision to let him return. Soldiers moved into Tehran's Mehrabad Airport during the night and unplugged electric and fuel lines of Boeing 707 and 747 aircraft belonging to Iran Air, the country's commercial line. One of the 747s was to have been flown to Paris by striking pilots and crew to pick...
Since taking office, the Prime Minister had tried to prevent, as he put it, the "historic bloodshed" that would result from a confrontation between supporters of the Ayatullah and Iran's 340,000-man armed forces. In a televised appeal for support last week, Bakhtiar outlined the reforms that his government was carrying out: releasing political prisoners, ending censorship, abolishing SAVAK, the secret police, and speeding up the corruption trials of former public officials...
Until he sided with the military, most of Khomeini's supporters had no personal quarrel with Bakhtiar. He has a long and honorable record of opposition to the Shah and a reputation for honesty rare among Iranian politicians. But he was named by the Shah, and Bakhtiar's insistence on upholding the constitution is widely thought to mean that he supports the Pahlavi dynasty. Privately, Bakhtiar has acknowledged that Iran would be better off as a republic with a new constitution; he has indicated his willingness to go along with a referendum in which the country would vote...
Khomeini's spokesman replied "that as long as Bakhtiar does not resign there will be no meeting...