Word: mehdi
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...exchanges of sweets and a long holiday from work, but this year's holiday for many people was not an altogether happy one. Revolutionary fervor was giving way to cynicism. There were unresolved quarrels among disparate forces claiming to represent Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. The government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, struggling to cope with economic chaos, faced a new threat: an outbreak of violence among rebellious Kurds in the western city of Sanandaj. As thousands clogged the highways to the Caspian Sea and other vacation spots out of Tehran, one Iranian journalist observed: "We are a tired people...
...last week the protesters were off the streets. For one thing, Khomeini had backed down, saying that he had merely been suggesting modest dress. Also, the women were reluctant to endanger the already hard-pressed government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, who has been receptive to their complaints...
...Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, 78, and Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, 71, had another showdown last week. Following days of equal-rights demonstrations by thousands of angry Iranian women and more secret trials that resulted in summary executions, Bazargan took to the air waves for an hourlong television and radio address that spared no one, least of all Khomeini, the acknowledged leader of the Iranian revolution. The Prime Minister denounced the secret trials as "unreligious and inhuman," charging that they made the new government appear "shameful" to the rest of the world. Describing his sessions in Qum with the Ayatullah, Bazargan said...
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...
That adoring reception proved, if proof was needed, that Khomeini remains the pivotal figure in a revolution that is still taking shape and is far from under control. In fact, uncertainty about the Ayatullah's intentions had threatened the fledgling government of his hand-picked Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan. On the eve of Khomeini's departure from Tehran, Bazargan leveled an emotional attack on the Komiteh, an 80-member group controlled by Khomeini and made up of mullahs and other Iranians with fervent Islamic convictions...