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party was formed at the shars instance, all legal parties and trade unions had to be merged into it. soon after membership in the party became mandatory. in one of his speeches, the shah noted all people are required to join the party if they want to show their good faith to the throne, otherwise they have to leave the country, and if they don't leave the country, they will be sent to prison. the regime announced that passports would be issued for those not interested in the party. mahmoud zafaryan, the vice president of rastoki's party, who was once involved in communist activities, said it doesn't make any difference to be leftist or rightest if you're going to be disloyal to your country. shaw seemed to be reasonably in control. he had started new political system there called is a resurgence of party. the idea was you have one party, but different views could be expressed in the party. "the revolution was still in its early

stages and the authorities attacked religious and secular opponents on every occasion, but taking down the opposition groups got the regime really in trouble. show is mensaly unpopular within the irani." in uh within iran uh, he was sick, he was dying of cancer, he wasn't at the end of he didn't have perhaps all his faculties, the way he governed was flaught with everything centralized control, so if anything happened to him the government was paralyzed to do anything, uh, i think i think he was he had serious problems no matter what happened, his his son was uh was in no shape to take over after him, nor did the iranian people really in want that, i think, i think it was a popular revolt. uh, i've read professor zonas's book

and i, i think it's a fascinating psychological portrait, uh, but i've also talked to number of people who dealt with the shaw, uh, iranians and american government officials. and their experience was of a an extremely arrogant figure who uh simply did not brook any kind of opposition uh whatsoever uh and was in control of uh every meeting that he walked into uh and so um i don't have to reconcile these images and it's certainly possible that this forceful uh proud uh uh presentation might have crumbled in the face of unprecedented popular unrest, in the face of his own illness, of course, having been diagnosed with cancer. in

november 1977, the shah made visit to the united states. the police had to use tear gas to disperse. anti-shah protesters during president carter's speech in front of the white house. the media captured the shah and the president shedding tears, a scene many revolutionary groups liked. during the visit, carter fully supported the shah, and the shah announced his agreement on fixing the price of oil. to make decisions himself based on no knowledge of anything, uh, how serious he was. uh and what would that have actually happened, have happened, it's hard to say. it's clear that he uh, he was not friendly toward the shah, in fact we refused him in mission to the united states even to seek medical treatment. uh, and whether the us

would have ceased arm sales to any dictatorship, probably would not have happened since there are so many, and they depend on, the u.s. depends heavily on arm sales uh, but who knows? as brizinski, well that will be very, we have to announce it on the air so it doesn't look peculiar. your majesty, are you being sold weapons in the united states in part so that you can uh defend our point of view? well, i can't uh really uh see ' what that means? but if you say that we are allies, i can say yes, we are allies. in his official visit to iran, president carter of the united states said, the military alliance between iran and

america is indestructible. just a week later, ital art newspaper published insult to ayatalah khumaini an article by ahmed rashidi mutlah. the article hurt public feelings and rocked the country, the epicenter was the city of com. one of the most staggering things to me about

the revolution and the american attitude to the revolution was the failure of american policymakers to understand just how weak the shah of iran was. i'm not talking about weak. militarily or weak in the sense of not having a good police force, i'm talking about weak in terms of a character structure. let me give you an example, so jimmy carter is the president of the united states and jimmy carter thinks that the shavaran is really tough guy, and so how are we going to deal with this really tough guy? i mean, how do you deal with guy who was working around these medals right? how do you deal with tough guy? well, the united states has this ambassador in the philippines. and this ambassador of the philippines william sullivan, he's been dealing with marcos and he's been doing a great job and everybody knows marcus is really tough dude, so let's send sullivan from the philippines to tehran, because he knows how to handle tough guys, we

don't have anybody else who's as good with tough guys, so sullivan, who doesn't know anything about the middle east, who doesn't know anything about iran, and he admits this, he wrote a book, and he says this in his book, didn't know anything about iran, he had never served in the middle. had always been out there in asia, he shows up in terron. now what was the style with which american ambassadors deal with the show? this was the style, american ambassador would go to see the show. once a week, there was always a fixed time for a meeting, and the show would welcome him and the show, and they'd chat a little bit of small talk, and then the show would say, i have come up with this brilliant plan for the future of my country, we are going to build a super highway from terron to mashad all the way across northern tehen, and it's going to cost us such and such and it'll take so long to build this, and that's what's going to happen, and the american ambassador would say something like, your majesty, this is a brilliant plan, only you could have thought up the strategy for pros making your... prosperous, it's going to be great, but i have one slight suggestion, maybe

instead of building the super highway, you should pay some roads from the villages to the main road so that farmers could get their crops out to market, and that would increase the income of the poor villagers and the show would say exactly what i was thinking, this was what i was going to do, that's it, and so then the shaw would go out and make some roads from the villages to the main roads, well that was... way the americans tried to influence the shah's behavior, and everybody understood, this was excellevant comes to terron, and he tells this in his book, and he sits down with the shah for the first interview, and the shah says, ambassador sullivan, this is what i think i'm going to do, and he gives this whole thing, and ambassador selvin looks at him and he says, your majesty, you're the shah, whatever you think is right, that's what you should do. the shaw was stunned, what do you think the shah heard when ambassador sullivan said, "you're a shah, whatever you want to do is you should do. sulovan was being honest, he didn't know what the hell to do in iran,

because he hadn't didn't know anything about iran, and he figured the shaw is tough guy, he had been there for a long time, if that's what shagh though was right, that's what he should do, the shah didn't hear that, what the shah heard was, you should do whatever you want to do, meaning the government of the united states doesn't care what you do, we don't give a damn, what, you do whatever you want to do, meaning we don't care about you anymore was devastated." opinion is divided as to whether the shah was conscious of his illness, but one thing is for sure, during the last years of his reign, the shah was always in two minds:

prison went a hunger strike. as the new iranian year of 1357 came in, ayatullah komeini issued a proclamation, paying tribute to tabris martters and attacking the united states of america. he said, the us is the root cause of the hardship were suffering, because it supports the despotic shah. the shah had kept his cancer secret even from his nearest and dearest, but the symptoms of the disease were undeniable. the shah's inability to make decisions was one. the shah was ill,

we did not know the shah was ill, in fact i've got a a thing going with gary sick, i learned from very good source that the the americans didn't learn about it until october. now sick who was the white house national security council person says that no they never didn't hear about it till then they didn't hear. about it to almost six months later, clearly, if we had known the shah was ill, we would have seen the problem not as one of political adjustment, but of regime survival, and we would have everybody would have behaved differently in that case. there were rumors that the shaw was not well, but even after he left the country, he, he had pictures of him playing tennis, he he was a man who was very fit uh, and uh he's he gave the impression of being in perfectly good health and truly uh we didn't know about

it and uh there are lots of people who say oh you must have known, well we didn't, it actually would have made huge difference and the fact is the shaw fully understood that if people knew that he had cancer they would change their policy toward iran because they would know that he wasn't going to be there a few years so they would change their policy. and uh they and it's true, but in fact this the cia formally concluded in august of 1978. that the shaw of iran was in no serious trouble and that he would be around for many years to come for the next five to 10 years. if we had known something about his condition, we could have gone to him and said, look, we're talking about regime survival here, do you want your son to be slaughtered in the streets after you're gone? well, then maybe we better, so i told charlie noss, i could even write that set at

talking points, and you mention, but nobody, nobody. thought the unthinkable until it was too late, you know, absolutely committed to the shot, at least through the jaile square riots, either in my book or in one of the other stories about the time is that that the jolly the shaw before the shaw moved against the jallai square riders, he wanted to know if it was all right with the american, if it was okay with the americans, and brezinski told him on the telephone, it's a it's a problem of order, of course we would be behind you if you do that, and then i learned from iranian. friends later some said, well lashad didn't really believe him, he says, yeah, yeah, we'll go around and kill him and then we'll take the heat later, buse marvin zonas says, he had no balls. on april 14th, 1978, asadullah alam died from cancer in new york city. the shah lost his chief advisor.

remember that the pillar of the regime, the really tough guy who really helped the... to be strong and as tough as he needed to be, and i think we have to be very sympathetic here. it was not easy to be the shah of iran, and the shaw was a weak character, found it especially difficult to be the shah of aran, which is what's wrong with hereditary monarchies. i mean, his father was a real tough guy, the show wasn't a tough guy, so who was the guy that made him tough? asadola alam, his boy at friend, the guy who was prime minister when i first arrived in iran, and homini was arrested and the shot. didn't know what to do and alam said to the share go out and shoot these guys and you'll stay in power, and he did it. alan died of cancer before, just before the iranian revolution began, so the shah lost a tremendously important advisor. revolution gained momentum

in iran, the shah blamed the us for withdrawing its support, having no idea how influential the clurgy were in leading the revolution. meanwhile, henry kissinger, the us secretary of state came to iran to meet with the shah, but neither the americans nor the shah's men had finger on the pulse of the revolution. barking on the wrong tree, they had been focusing their attention just on leftest forces from. for several years,

there is no doubt that ayatalah khumaini was successful in extending his influence over the whole middle. and not just iran. as an iranian religious scholar and political leader, he managed to make his country the world's first islamic republic. being an outspoken critic of the regime, ayatollah komeini used to denounce the shah's programs. in a proclamation issued by him and undersigned by eight senior islamic scholars, the ayatullah specified the shah's violations the iranian constitution and condemned him for corrupting public morals and towing to the us and israel. on the dawn of november 4th, 1964, the shah's commandos surrounded ayatullah komeini's house in kom. they arrested him and took him directly to mehrabad airport in tehran. soon after he was flown out of iran to turkey. out of sight,

out of mind. that was the rational behind his exile. the stay in turkey was not congenial. for turkish law didn't allow ayat komeini to wear the cloak and turbin of the muslim scholar. on september 5th, 1965, he left turkey for najaf in iraq, where he would stay for 13 years. on october 23rd, 1977, mustafa homeini, the ayatollah's son, passed away in najaf. defending national indep. orders in 1978 mass protests were organized to support ayata khumeini, the regime as

usual responded with iron fist, alarm bells had started to ring, i don't think on the part of official washington there ever was a much understanding of the ayatollah, there were some few... academics who had tracked his sermons were aware of his his views from uh for those years he he was in exile in iraq and then that sudden appearance in the paris suburbs uh it didn't really penetrate official thinking in washington who he was what what he was i mean the shah knew him as an enemy and that was, i think that was it, black and white enemy was in the neighboring country of iraq and it was too close for comfort. at the shars instance, the iraqi

regime asked the ayatullah to give up his political activities, otherwise he had to leave the country. in october 1978 flew from iraq to new exile in a suburb of paris. by that time, ayatollah had developed an international reputation as the spiritual and political leader of the iranian revolution. being thousands of kilometers away from his homeland, ayatollah khumeini set the course the revolution, urging iranians not to compromise and ordering work stoppages against the regime. during the last few months of his exile, the ayatollah received a constant stream of reporters, supporters and notable personalities, all eager to hear the leader of the revolution speak,

was a journalist during the revolution, they said, oh, the ayatollah is coming to paris. it's a very old story, 41 years ago, i arrive here, he just told me like a grandfather, you know, the the the interesting part of the story is not me, i'm not the one important, what is important is to continue what you have done in iran, someone called me telling me you should come to paris quickly, because the imam formeni is going back to terran and we want you to be in the place. imam homani during the flight was sleeping upstairs, when the imam arrived from paris with a special plane, the first stop he made was here and it

was a way to say, now i am in charge, it's finished, the time of of the shoh is over, imagine something could happen in in. in iran, nobody, beginning of 78, i decided to to try to go to iran, but then after my first trip i came back from iran, everybody laugh at me because i was full to imagine something would happen in a country like iran, you know, sometimes you never know, you know, you have something in your mind and um, well... when really everything started, it was end at the end of august. my pictures were publish everywhere. the rest of the world started to

think something is going to happen. who is michelle? it's me.

"we must not become part of south africa's problem. we must remain part of their solution. we must not aim to impose ourselves our solutions. our favorites in south africa. damn it, we have favorites in south africa. the favorites in south africa are the people who are being repressed by that ugly white regime. we have favorites. i also want to say a word about the situation in israel. the more we learned about the attack, the more horrifying it becomes. more than 1ous..." 1,0

innocent lives lost including at least 27 americans, these guys make, they make al-qaeda look pure, they're pure, they're pure evil, i said from the beginning, the united states make no mistake about it, stands with israel, united states stands with israel. this is my land and my country, it is not

only the 1948 or 1967 borders from the sea to the river. i am not ready to let go of a centimeter. israel is here like any for by the support of the europe, by the support of the united states. that's why they separate the land. well, i was at the babel shams protest last week, and i myself had a my head banged against a bus by soldier. illegally on illegal stolen land and they are arresting us, the palestinians, this is historical palestine.

israel continues to target hospitals housing thousands of displaced palestinians in southern gaza as death tool for regime's campaign of genocide nears 27,600. leader of yemenza movement says the sun will intensify attacks on israel linked ships that regime does not stop its onslot on gaza. any rock's prime minister once.