Word: banisadr
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Bakhtiar, the last Prime Minister of the former Shah, allegedly figured at the center of the aborted "Zionist-Iraqi-U.S." plot. According to President Abolhassan Banisadr, the conspirators intended to occupy two Iranian airbases and bomb a number of strategic targets. Among them: Khomeini's home north of Tehran, the Tehran International Airport and Faizieh religious school in the holy city of Qum. Tehran spokesmen charged that the plotters hoped to tell Iranians over radio and television that "the patriotic army of Iran has overthrown the rotten government of the mullahs," and then invite Bakhtiar back from...
...aborted coup further intensified the factional rivalry that still threatens to destroy the Khomeini government from within. Banisadr's clerical opponents seized the chance to press demands for a ruthless purge of the armed forces-a convenient means of gaining control over the military at the expense of the President, who is commander in chief of the armed forces. Denouncing what he called the mullahs' "opportunistic gestures," Banisadr pointed out that loyal military personnel had discovered the conspiracy in their own midst and had played the most important role in thwarting...
What went wrong? Banisadr was apparently both a victim of circumstance and to a large extent responsible for his declining influence. His initial political ascendancy was well planned and executed. During elections to the "Assembly of Experts" that drew up Iran's constitution, he shrewdly managed to become a candidate of the Islamic Republic Party, the principal organization of Iran's orthodox mullahs. Later breaking with the I.R.P., he won a landslide presidential victory. Banisadr was also lucky enough to take office when Khomeini was suffering from a heart ailment; wary of anarchy, the Ayatullah had no choice...
...seeds of Banisadr's conflict with the orthodox mullahs were sown in the Assembly of Experts. Banisadr, as a ranking member, tried to modify the sweeping powers of the faqih, the supreme theologian who heads the government. That drew the ire of orthodox Muslims, who suspected Banisadr of trying to undercut the clergy. In the January elections to the parliament, Banisadr's supporters were soundly defeated by candidates of the Islamic Republic Party. Led by an archenemy, Ayatullah Seyyed Mohammed Beheshti, the cleric-dominated parliament now threatens to stonewall him as the outgoing Revolutionary Council did. Among other...
Meanwhile Banisadr had acquired some new enemies and problems. In an electrifying television broadcast last week, he told the nation that a military plot to overthrow his government had been foiled on the eve of a coup d'état. Seventeen officers from an armored division had already been put on trial, he said. The plot was said to have been organized at a military base near the western Iranian city of Hamadan. At week's end, there were reports that 350 more conspirators, including such high-ranking officers as the former air force commander and the chief...