Word: bazargan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Only a month ago Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini had lavishly praised Mehdi Bazargan, his choice as the first Prime Minister of postrevolutionary Iran, for his "confidence in the holy writ of Islam" and his "past record in the national and Islamic struggle." By last week, the 78-year-old Shi'ite leader's view had changed sharply. Speaking to theological students at his headquarters in the holy city of Qum, he rapped his slightly younger (71) appointee. "You are weak, mister," he thundered. He also lambasted Bazargan's 17-member Cabinet as "weak characters" who believe that "everything...
Among the more vulnerable items was clearly Bazargan, the gentle, democratic-minded engineer-politician who had been the chief adviser on oil matters to Iran's last revolutionary leader, Mohammed Mossadegh. Stung by Khomeini's diatribe, Bazargan went to Qum with an offer to resign. After some deliberation, Khomeini refused the resignation and pledged greater support for the government. But if that promise was not kept and Bazargan were to quit, authority in Iran would apparently rest solely with the Komiteh, the mullahs and other fervent Shi'ites whose grab for power has literally pulled the Persian...
With the March 30 referendum on the creation of an Islamic republic drawing near, the Ayatullah has rejected the proposed constitution written by a group of lawyers at Bazargan's request. He prefers the strongly Islamic draft constitution put together by a group of his aides. The task of reconciling the two documents has fallen to Interior Minister Haj-Sayed-Javadi. .His biggest problem areas: the role of the Iranian parliament and the status of women. While the lawyers proposed that the parliament have full legislative powers, Khomeini at first favored merely an advisory role; he now appears...
...Komiteh's militia, the so-called Islamic Guard, will be melded into a secular national guard commanded by a council headed by Deputy Prime Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, Khomeini's most ardent backer in the Bazargan government...
...period of chaos, it becomes easy to imagine, a variation of the Brinton model might start working: a strongman with an armed force imposing law where there is none. When Bakhtiar was named Prime Minister, the mind immediately said, "Ah, Kerensky." Now there seems a possibility of multiple Kerenskys: Bazargan, an Khomeini himself. In the Iranian turbulence, an ominous recollection about Russia arises: its two revolutions of 1917 were basically bloodless. Then, from 1918 to 1921, the country was torn apart by civil...