What You've Been Told vs What Actually Happened

The Men Who Saved Khomeini

by Iran Prism 10 min read

The SAVAK Chief Who Chose Mercy

In June 1963, Ruhollah Khomeini delivered an Ashura sermon at the Feyziyeh Seminary in Qom that compared the Shah to Yazid — the most reviled figure in Shia Islam. He called the Shah “a wretched, miserable man” and warned that “the day would come when the people would offer up thanks for his departure from the country.” Outside, a hundred thousand supporters marched past the Shah’s palace chanting “Death to the Dictator! God save you, Khomeini!”1

At three in the morning on June 5, commandos arrested Khomeini at his Qom residence. The resulting uprising — the 15 Khordad — erupted across Qom, Tehran, Mashhad, Shiraz, Kashan, and Varamin. The Shah deployed the Imperial Guard under Major General Oveissi. Martial law was declared. Machine guns fired on marchers. It took six days to restore order. Scholarly estimates place the death toll at several hundred.2

The question of what to do with Khomeini reached the highest levels. Prime Minister Asadollah Alam and SAVAK hardliners demanded execution for treason. The head of SAVAK, General Hassan Pakravan, argued against it.

Pakravan was an unusual intelligence chief — cultured, multilingual, married to the daughter of a prominent intellectual family. His argument to the Shah was pragmatic, not compassionate: executing a cleric would create a martyr. “He knew that, after all, the population of the country is not its elite,” Pakravan explained. “These are not very literate. They are simple. They are full of superstition. And even though most of the Iranians have no respect for the mullahs, they still have respect for what they represent.”3

The Shah refused three times. “No. No. No.” Pakravan persisted. Finally: “All right. But how?”

Pakravan’s solution was to approach Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari, who agreed to declare Khomeini a marja al-taqlid. This elevation — the highest rank in Shia clerical hierarchy — made execution politically untenable without creating a regime-threatening crisis among the devout.

During Khomeini’s subsequent house arrest in Tehran, from 1963 to 1964, Pakravan visited weekly for lunch. He described the man to his wife Fateme as “very handsome, someone with extraordinary presence, a power of seduction and great charisma.” They discussed religion, philosophy, and history. Pakravan found Khomeini “very, very, very ignorant” in history and philosophy. But what struck him was something else entirely: “It was his ambition. I couldn’t find out what kind of ambition, because he’s very secretive.” He paused. “It made my hair stand on end. It was frightening.”4

When Khomeini was released in April 1964, he promptly delivered another incendiary speech — this time on the Status of Forces Agreement granting American military personnel diplomatic immunity. “If someone runs over a dog belonging to an American, he will be prosecuted,” Khomeini thundered. “But if an American cook runs over the Shah, or the marja of Iran, no one will have the right to object.” The Shah exiled him to Turkey, then Iraq, where he spent thirteen years building the infrastructure that would bring him to power.5

General Pakravan was among the first Shah-era officials executed after the revolution. On April 11, 1979 — barely two months after Khomeini’s return — he was brought before a revolutionary tribunal. He was denied a lawyer. The charges were vague. A fellow inmate recalled that in the days before his death, Pakravan smiled and said: “It’s funny.”6

Shahbanou Farah would later reflect: “In those days, we thought if someone would get rid of Khomeini, he would become a martyr or someone greater.” Pakravan had understood this. He chose mercy because he thought it was strategically sound. The man he saved repaid him with a bullet.

The Grand Ayatollah Who Elevated His Destroyer

Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari was, by the 1960s, one of the most respected Shia authorities alive. Born in Tabriz in 1906, politically quietist by conviction, he believed clerics should “serve society and remain aloof from politics.” He favored reform within a constitutional monarchy framework. He encouraged peaceful demonstrations to avoid bloodshed.7

When Pakravan asked him to save Khomeini’s life, Shariatmadari agreed — and went further. He proposed the marja elevation that made Khomeini untouchable. The theological logic was sound: the Shia tradition held that a marja could not be executed. But Shariatmadari was doing more than following tradition. He was extending the most powerful protection available in Shia Islam to a junior cleric whose theological positions he found troubling.

When Khomeini’s Velayat-e Faqih lectures circulated in 1970, Shariatmadari opposed the doctrine directly. He called it “not necessarily Islamic” and warned that clerics should never assume government positions. His alternative vision was explicit: “A democratic government where the people administer their own affairs is perfectly compatible with the correct interpretation of the Leadership of the Jurists.” The direct merging of religion and government, he argued, “would be corrupting to both.”8

After the revolution, Shariatmadari refused to endorse the new constitution. He issued a fatwa against it, arguing that “no system of government can be coerced upon a people, no matter how morally correct it may be.” He warned that Khomeini was “equating his faqih to an infallible Imam” — a position that was heretical in Twelver Shi’ism, since only the twelve Imams possess infallible authority.9

The consequences were systematic. On December 5, 1979 — three days after the constitutional referendum — pro-Khomeini elements attacked Shariatmadari’s house in Qom, fatally shooting a volunteer guard. His followers in Azerbaijan mobilized; at the movement’s peak, over a million people participated in protests. The regime responded with force: forty-one killed, seventeen executed in Tabriz.10

Shariatmadari was placed under house arrest in early 1980. In April 1982, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh — Khomeini’s former media handler — was arrested for allegedly plotting a coup. Under torture, Ghotbzadeh confessed to Shariatmadari’s involvement. The accusation was fabricated. Ayatollah Montazeri later confirmed in his memoirs that “the coup plot tied to Ayatollah Shariatmadari was untrue and it was concocted for justifying his persecution.”11

Using Ghotbzadeh’s forced confession, the regime stripped Shariatmadari of his Grand Ayatollah title — an act virtually unprecedented in Shia history. His Centre for Islamic Study was closed. His pregnant daughter was arrested. He was denied medical care.

Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari died under house arrest on April 3, 1986, at the age of eighty. He was buried secretly, at night. Grand Ayatollah Golpayegani wrote to Khomeini protesting the disrespectful funeral. Grand Ayatollah Ya’sub al-Din Rastgari was arrested and imprisoned for two and a half years for the act of holding a mourning ceremony.12

The man who elevated Khomeini to marja status — the act that saved his life and ultimately enabled his rise — died stripped of his own title, under the authority of the man he had protected.

The Georgetown Man Who Believed

Sadegh Ghotbzadeh arrived at Georgetown University as a young Iranian abroad, became fluent in English and French, and dedicated his life to opposing the Shah. By the time Khomeini arrived in Paris in October 1978, Ghotbzadeh was part of the inner circle. He handled media operations, brought reporters to Khomeini, and proofread press communiqués for French journalists. He had a “father-and-son” relationship with the ayatollah.13

It was Ghotbzadeh who translated Khomeini’s most famous moment. When the chartered Air France 747 entered Iranian airspace on February 1, 1979, ABC correspondent Peter Jennings asked Khomeini what he felt returning after fifteen years of exile. Through Ghotbzadeh, Khomeini answered: “Hichi.” Nothing. His face, observers noted, was “unmoved, like stone.”14

Ghotbzadeh became Foreign Minister in the provisional government. He was one of the three Western-educated men — along with Banisadr from the Sorbonne and Yazdi from Houston — who had presented a democratic face to the world during the Paris period. Yazdi was described as “the voice of the Iranian revolution… talking about freedom, democracy and women’s rights. This was something he truly believed in and he was proven to be wrong.”15

Ghotbzadeh “realized Khomeini’s true nature only after becoming foreign minister.” Imagine dedicating your life to a cause, running its most important public campaign, believing in every word you helped craft — and then discovering that the man you served had published his real intentions nine years earlier in a book you never read, and that every democratic promise you translated for the world’s press was a calculated deception. The democratic revolution Ghotbzadeh had helped sell to the world was becoming a theocratic state. The media operation he had run with such skill — the 132 interviews, the careful messaging, the progressive image — had served a purpose he was only now beginning to understand.16

He began plotting. The details remain partially obscured, but by 1982, Ghotbzadeh was involved in a conspiracy to overthrow the regime. He was arrested in April 1982. Under torture, he confessed — and his confession was used not only against himself but against Shariatmadari, the Grand Ayatollah who had saved Khomeini’s life two decades earlier.

Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was executed by firing squad at Evin Prison on September 15, 1982. He was forty-six years old. The man who had translated “Nothing” for the world was silenced by the system he had helped create.17

The Pattern

These are not isolated stories of personal betrayal. They reveal the structural logic of a system that must consume everyone who makes it possible.

Pakravan represented the old regime’s restraint — the intelligence chief who argued for mercy over execution. The revolutionary state had no use for such nuance and no tolerance for the living memory of a time when Khomeini was a prisoner who needed saving.

Shariatmadari represented the traditional Shia establishment — the senior authority who could legitimize or delegitimize the revolutionary project. Once velayat-e faqih was constitutionalized, his opposition became existential. Stripping his title sent a message: no one, regardless of rank, was beyond the system’s reach.

Ghotbzadeh represented the cosmopolitan intermediary — the Western-educated professional who could translate between Khomeini’s vision and the outside world. Once the translation was complete, the translator was disposable.

The technique has a name in information warfare: the intermediary trap. Present a moderate face through credible spokespeople, let them make promises in good faith, then discard them once the promises have served their purpose. The spokespeople’s sincerity is what makes the deception effective — if they knew they were lying, the lie would be less convincing. Ghotbzadeh, Yazdi, and Banisadr were not co-conspirators. They were instruments.

Scholar Gilles Kepel identified the mechanism: “first exposing them to power, then sapping it away.” Each individual served a specific function in the revolution’s arc — providing clemency, providing legitimacy, providing international credibility. Once the function was fulfilled, the individual became a liability. Not because Khomeini was personally ungrateful, but because the system required it.18

The Bolsheviks took five years to begin consuming their own. Khomeini’s revolution was faster. Bazargan resigned ten months after the revolution. Banisadr was impeached within two years. Ghotbzadeh was executed within three. Shariatmadari was stripped of his title within four. By September 1982 — forty-three months after Khomeini’s return — every major non-clerical figure who had enabled the revolution was dead, imprisoned, exiled, or marginalized.19

Khomeini himself was characteristically direct about the principle. When challenged on his reversal of promises, he offered a statement that functions as the epigraph for the entire revolutionary experience: “I have said something does not mean that I should be bound by my word.”20

This article is part of The Greatest Bait-and-Switch in Modern History. For the constitutional hijacking, see The Constitution That Was Swapped. For the cassette tape network that made the revolution possible, see The Tape Network.

Footnotes

  1. Khomeini’s Ashura sermon at Feyziyeh Seminary, June 3, 1963; march details from Baqer Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (Thomas Dunne Books, 2000). ↩

  2. 15 Khordad uprising details from Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton University Press, 1982); scholarly death toll estimates. ↩

  3. Fateme Pakravan, memoirs, Harvard Iranian Oral History Project, 1998. Pakravan’s arguments and the Shah’s response corroborated by multiple Iranian officials. ↩

  4. Ibid. ↩

  5. Khomeini’s capitulations speech, delivered on the Shah’s birthday, 1964; quoted in Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. ↩

  6. Pakravan’s execution on April 11, 1979; “It’s funny” from fellow inmate testimony documented in Moin’s biography. ↩

  7. Shariatmadari’s biographical details and political philosophy from Encyclopaedia Iranica; Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (Basic Books, 1984). ↩

  8. Shariatmadari’s opposition to velayat-e faqih; May 1979 interview; constitutional objections from multiple scholarly sources. ↩

  9. Shariatmadari’s fatwa against the constitution from Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs; Hossein Bashiriyeh, The State and Revolution in Iran (Routledge, 1984). ↩

  10. December 5, 1979 attack and Azerbaijan unrest from Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs; casualty figures from multiple sources. ↩

  11. Montazeri’s memoirs confirming the coup plot fabrication. ↩

  12. Shariatmadari’s death and burial circumstances; Golpayegani’s protest; Rastgari’s imprisonment documented in clerical resistance records and multiple scholarly accounts. ↩

  13. Ghotbzadeh’s background and Paris role from Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. ↩

  14. Air France return flight and “Hichi” translation from journalist accounts including Peter Jennings’ broadcast; Moin’s biography. ↩

  15. Yazdi description widely attributed in scholarly analyses of the revolution’s intermediary figures. ↩

  16. Ghotbzadeh’s realization from biographical accounts. ↩

  17. Ghotbzadeh’s arrest, execution, and confession used against Shariatmadari documented in Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs; Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. ↩

  18. Gilles Kepel’s analysis of Khomeini’s pattern of eliminating coalition partners. ↩

  19. Consolidation timeline from Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs; Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions; Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah. ↩

  20. Khomeini’s statement documented in multiple scholarly analyses of his rhetorical evolution. ↩