Unspoken Events of the 1979 Revolution‎

Rooz ®: What was the connection between the Guadeloupe Conference (1) and the ‎Shah’s departure from Iran, and also the subsequent surrender – or cooperation – of the ‎military with the new regime?‎

Ibrahim Yazdi (IY): The Shah’s trip to leave Iran had been planned before the ‎Guadeloupe meeting and apparently there was no connection between the two.‎

R: Apparently? The decision to hold the meeting did not emerge in a single day. ‎Preparations were in the making for months prior to it. Could the Shah have been ‎unaware of what went on at the meeting? Did the events at the meeting not have an effect ‎on his morale?‎

IY: The decision to hold a conference and the preparations for it are not necessarily ‎connected with the deliberations by the participants at the forum or the final decisions. At ‎Guadeloupe the participating countries reached an agreement on Iran. This does not mean ‎that before the meeting the United States had one view and changed its view at the ‎conference. If one looks at available resources such as books published by Cyrus Vance ‎and Zbigniew Brzezinski it becomes clear that there were differences among officials ‎from the State Department and senior National Security Council members from many ‎months earlier regarding the continuation of the Shah’s regime. Germany, Britain and ‎France had reached the conclusion much earlier than the United States that supporting the ‎Shah was a waste of time.‎

R: What was the conclusion?‎

IY: During the Cold War the West and particularly the United States believed that ‎national governments would not survive and that communists would take those countries ‎over. At least this was the justification for opposing independent national governments in ‎the Third World. They had the same concern regarding the Iranian revolution. Finally, ‎when they could not contain the revolution they sought a solution in the partnership ‎between the clerics and the military. This was because both of them were against the ‎communists. The US believed that if the military did not confront the revolution and ‎instead cooperated with it - which would preserve it in its form - it would be possible to ‎enter the field after the fire of the revolution subsided. This was Heiser’s principal ‎mission. What later happened in the Philippines was in the framework of this policy. The ‎success of this policy depended on the cooperation between the clergy and the military. ‎In Carter’s message to Mr. Khomeini after Guadeloupe there was a request or an offer for ‎a meeting and discussion between the two. The clerics and the Revolution Council ‎accepted this because they believed in the final victory of the revolution through the least ‎costs.‎

R: Were the governments that participated at Guadeloupe in contact with ayatollah ‎Khomeini? If they were, what were the channels?‎

IY: The French government was in contact with ayatollah Khomeini. After the ‎Guadeloupe, the US too established contacts with the ayatollah. I had no role in the ‎conference. Prior to it however a representative of the French president contacted me and ‎said that the president desired to know of the opinion of the leader of the revolution about ‎Iran directly prior to participating in the gathering.‎

R: Was Guadeloupe not the final shot at the Shah’s regime? Or was it the final blow to ‎the Shah’s remaining dying morale?‎

IY: By that time, the Shah had already lost his morale for months. By the end of 1977, ‎there was a discussion about the Shah’s abdication in favor of his son, rather than ‎changing the government from Hoveyda’s hands to Amuzegar’s. I have described these ‎events in my book, the Last Attempts in the Last Days. The participants at Guadeloupe ‎except the US had reached the same conclusion months earlier. At the conference the US ‎joined the others.‎

R: It appears that the French government began treating Mr. Khomeini as the head of the ‎next leader of Iran. Was that a good decision? If so, why?‎

IY: The French government changed its attitude towards Mr. Khomeini after the huge ‎rally in Iran on the religious days of Tasooa and Ashoora, before the victory of the ‎revolution. This was clear in the talks between the French representative with him. I shall ‎soon publish the details of those talks. But the short summary is that at the meeting that ‎the representative of the French president and the French foreign minister had with Mr. ‎Khomeini on December 31, 1978, while acknowledging the influence of Mr. Khomeini’s ‎leadership in Iran and the French readiness to cooperate with Iran on some issues, a ‎number of other questions were raised. For example they wanted to know the type of ‎government that the new regime in Iran would have.‎

R: Is the world in a condition where another Guadeloupe could take place?‎

IY: Any meaningful change in Iran must come from inside the country. Democracy is not ‎a commodity that can be exported from one country to another or imported as such. In the ‎Foreign powers had a decisive influence in the Shah’s regime, and so a meeting of the ‎type that was held in Guadeloupe could impact foreign policy issues. But the current ‎regime in Iran does not have that kind of a relationship with the world. Foreign impact on ‎Iran’s is limited. Only those policies that impact change and developments inside Iran ‎will be effective. ‎

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‎(1)‎ Prior to the fall of the Shah in 1979, heads of major Western powers met in ‎Guadeloupe, a French group of islands in East Caribbean, and, as various sources ‎indicate, agreed that supporting the Shah from then on was futile.‎