Happy New Year, April Fools!
By Mike Evans


President Barack Obama spoke directly to the Iranian people Friday, March 20, in an endeavor to engage that country in direct talks. He wished Iran and its leaders a Happy New Year at the start of the Persian holiday Nowruz. It marked the beginning of Spring and the Iranian new year. Obama’s greeting came after three decades of strained relations between the two countries. It was the first “Happy New Year” speech made by any president since Jimmy Carter delivered his greeting to the Shah of Iran On December 21, 1977. In fact, while at the home of Farah Pahlavi, the wife of the late Shah, while visiting with her outside Washington, D.C., I noticed on her coffee table, a beautiful Persian album. She opened it to the page where Jimmy Carter had written a New Year’s greeting more than thirty years ago.

President Obama offered the Iranian people greater opportunities for “partnership and commerce” and said, “We know that you are a great civilization, and your accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world.”

Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenie rejected Obama’s offer. He demanded the U.S. revamp it foreign policy which, he reiterated, would include terminating "unconditional support" for Israel and a cessation of claims that Iran seeks nuclear arms. Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful energy purposes.
Khamenei challenged the president, “Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials?” While the Ayatollah delivered his scathing rhetoric in the northeastern city of Mashhad, the crowd gathered around him chanted "Death to America."
On April 1, 1979 "Death to America” chants were also heard from the crowds surrounding the American Embassy in Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, responsible for the rise of the Islamic revolution, declared it the “first day of the government of God.” It was to become the birthday of radical Islam. That inauspicious day thirty years ago has become the great crisis of the twenty-first century.

How could it happen that a little-known, exiled cleric could take the world by storm? One answer could center in the fact that a CIA memo from 1972 revealed: “While in Iraq, Khomeini began working closely with the Islamic Terrorist Group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (the People’s Strugglers). In late 1972 Khomeini issued a religious declaration, or Fatwa, that enjoined faithful Shia to support the Mujahedeen and called for the devout to provide funds for their use. The money was raised from the ulema (Muslim scholars trained in Islamic law) and in the bazaars and funneled to Khomeini, who in turn gave it to the terrorists.”

The Carter administration failed to pinpoint Khomeini as a possible source of turmoil in the Middle East. After all, he was revered as a holy man. “U.S. Ambassador William Sullivan even compared Khomeini to Mahatma Gandhi, and Andrew Young termed the radical cleric a ‘twentieth-century saint.’” Surely a religious man could do little harm in political circles in the Persian Gulf region.

Khomeini decided in October 1978 to leave Najaf, Iraq for the greener pastures of Neauphle-le-Chateau just outside Paris. It was in France, that most cosmopolitan of countries, that Khomeini received the make-over of all time. Dominique Lorenz, a journalist for the French Libération, wrote that “having picked Khomeini to overthrow the Shah, [the Americans] had to get him out of Iraq, clothe him with respectability, and set him up in Paris; a succession of events which could not have occurred if the leadership in France had been against it.”

In November of 1978 former diplomat and Johnson Administration Undersecretary of State George Ball was engaged to do an independent and classified study on the Shah and make recommendations to the Carter administration. Among the suggestions in the Ball Report was the need to “…open a disavowable channel of communication with [Khomeini] or his entourage” and a recommendation that “The Shah must announce unequivocally that he is transferring all civil power to a civilian government coalition.”

The opening days of 1979 found three world leaders in a meeting on the island of Guadeloupe. Although Carter prompted the meeting, ostensibly for him “and the leaders of Britain, France, and West Germany to talk informally about strategic and economic problems,” the invitations were issued by French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing to West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and British Prime Minister James Callaghan.

During the meeting of the three European heads of state, President d’Estaing was amazed to hear Jimmy Carter’s announcement that “…the United States had decided not to support the régime of the Shah anymore. Without that support, that régime is now lost.”

In my interview with the former French president, he described Carter as “a bastard of conscience, a moralist, who treats with total lightness the fact of abandoning a man that we had supported together.”

In France, Khomeini’s visitors totaled more than one thousand per day, all of whom the French blessed or, at the very least, turned a blind eye. Two of Khomeini’s visitors in France were Farouk Kaddoumi, PLO department head, and a Libyan representative of Muammar al-Qaddafi. Khomeini tendered arms and money in support of the revolution. Soon after, Radio Tripoli broadcast messages in Persian to Khomeini backers in Iran, and PLO terrorists were dispatched to Tehran.

The Ayatollah’s compound was reportedly surrounded by representatives of covert agencies from the major powers: the CIA, Britain’s MI-6, Russia’s KGB, and the French intelligence organization, SDECE.

On February 1, 1979, a jumbo jet was chartered from Air France for the mere pittance of $3 million dollars plus an undisclosed sum to cover the insurance premium for the aircraft. The crew that manned the Tehran-bound airliner was comprised totally of volunteers. On the plane with Khomeini was a young ABC reporter, Peter Jennings. During the flight Jennings is said to have asked the Imam, “What do you feel [about returning to Iran]?” Khomeini replied, “Nothing.”

In his attempt to reach out to the Islamic Republic, President Barack Obama called for Iran to take its rightful place among the nations. To the fanatical leaders in the former Persian nation, Iran’s “rightful place” is at the head of a worldwide caliphate with every individual bowing a knee to Islam.

Mr. Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Jimmy Carter who, too, recognized the Islamic Republic with catastrophic results. President Ronald Reagan made a similar error in judgment in 1986. He sent a key-shaped chocolate cake, a Bible with a personal inscription, and an offer to supply millions in military hardware to the crafty cleric. What signal does this send? Radical Islamic terrorists worldwide will surely interpret this as a sign of fear and weakness on the part of our new commander-in-chief. It could embolden them to strike America yet again.

 

 

 

Iran’s Supreme Leader Dismisses Obama’s Overtures, ABC News, March 22, 2009’ http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=7138814&page=2. (Accessed March 22,2009)
CIA intelligence memorandum, January 19, 1979, entitled “Iran: Khomeini’s Prospects and Views.”

Dinesh D’Souza, “Giving Radical Islam its Start”; Townhall.com, January 29, 2007; http://townhall.com/Columnists/DineshDSouza/2007/01/29/giving_radical_islam_its_start. (Accessed December 2007.)
] “Une Guerre,” (“One War”), Ėditions des Arénes, Paris, 1997.
] George W. Ball, “Issues and Implications of the Iranian Crisis,” Declassified December 12, 1984; Princeton University Library, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton, NJ.
Jim Hoagland, “Carter Set to Tell European Allies He Fully Backs Shah,” The Washington Post, January 5, 1979, p. A5.
Extract from Le Pouvoir et le Vie, Part 3, Chapter 6, V. Giscard d’ Estaing, 2006; translated in Paris for Dr. Evans with permission from Mr. d’Estaing in May 2008; and personal interview with Giscard d’Estaing, May 2008.
Extract from Le Pouvoir et le Vie, Part 3, Chapter 6, V. Giscard d’ Estaing, 2006; translated in Paris for Dr. Evans with permission from Mr. d’Estaing in May 2008; and personal interview with Giscard d’Estaing, May 2008.
Samuel Segev interview, Jerusalem, Israel, May 15, 2008.
Mohamad Heikal, pp.191

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