– Written in 1979 / Published in 1980
I dedicate this book to the memory of all those Iranian men and women
who have suffered and died for their country.
Part IV: THE DESTRUCTION – THE ACCURSED ALLIANCE OF THE RED AND THE BLACK
Chapter 24: THE UNITED MEDIA
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THE MASS MEDIA played an important part in the unfolding of events in my country during the last three years. I can understand this to a certain extent, which does not mean that I think their attitude has always been ethical. The competition of journalists in search of ever more sensational news has led to the most regrettable excesses.
I can see that a reporter sent to Iran as a result of slight disturbances would be tempted to exaggerate. But I cannot see how, at the beginning of a rebellion, three dead and ten wounded can have become fifty or sixty dead and hundreds of wounded. Now this is what happened, and as the situation grew worse over the months, the mass media played a deplorable part in contributing to the movement of the crowds by reporting events which had, every day, to be magnified.
The mass media campaign against Iran did not, however, begin in these recent years. It has been going on for a long time. It started as far back as 1958 at the time when Iran was trying to take control of her own oil. In fact it never ceased and became particularly virulent in 1973 and the years that followed, as a result of my attitude concerning the price of oil. I remember certain threatening and insulting remarks made by Mr Simon, the American Finance Minister of the day, when I announced the point of view of the oil-producing countries. The world press, and more particularly the Western press, was not kind to me. I was the man responsible for expensive oil, but nobody took the trouble to explain the reasons for an attitude which I have explained at length in this book.
„The Shah’s Fault“
From that moment, the press campaigns have been unending and I can well imagine the anger of the Western motorist whose petrol cost more, or for whom there was a shortage. He was told, „It’s the Shah’s fault.“ And he believed it, whilst forgetting that every increase in the
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price of petrol was a godsend to his own Inland Revenue. Higher prices enriched the oil companies, the country involved in re-selling it and the distributors.
The lack of objectivity in a certain section of the press had been obvious to me under very different circumstances.
Our country has certainly encouraged young people to study abroad, particularly in the United States. I will have occasion to refer again, later, to the attitude of our students, but I must say that, although many of them thought that we were not doing enough for them, there were very many more who were aware of the privilege they had in being able to study in well-known universities, free from financial worries.
In November 1977, I went to the United States with the Empress. At Williamsburg, where I spent a night, several hundred Iranian students gathered to express their loyalty to me. I stopped to talk to them for a moment or two, but long enough to notice a separate group of a few masked individuals standing round a red flag with a hammer and sickle, who were shouting insults. Why were they masked? Because of the Savak, wrote some newspapers, heedless of ridicule. More probably, I think, because it would have been obvious that a large number of these demonstrators were not Iranians, but professional troublemakers recruited on the spot. In any case there were about five hundred people demonstrating in my favour and not more than about fifty were hostile to me.
The following day I was amazed to see the figures reversed in certain papers who spoke of about fifty supporters of the Shah, lost in an antagonistic crowd. The same sort of reporting occurred when the Empress and I stopped in Washington. Several thousands of Iranians domiciled in the United States had gathered to greet us in the Federal capital. Several hooligans, again masked, and armed with clubs and bicycle chains, set on their compatriots. The aggressors were not pilloried by the American press. On the contrary, one paper treated the matter as follows: „Who, then, paid for the Shah’s supporters to come to America?“ On the other hand no one bothered to ask where the troublemakers came from.
It is equally true that a very active subversive campaign was aimed at our students at home and abroad. They were told that they would be heroes if they took the town by storm – like the French students in 1968. So much so that, in Iran, they contributed to just that. I am told that this subversion was largely subsidized by Libyan funds amounting to 250 million dollars.
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No less surprising was the BBC’s attitude. From the beginning of 1978 their Persian language broadcasts consisted of virulent attacks against my regime. It was as though some mysterious conductor had given the go-ahead to these attacks, I am not mentioning the attitude of certain special envoys who caused certain deplorable incidents to be magnified out of all proportion. I am tempted to say that, for some newspapers, a dead body is a godsend, and I think that some news-agents must have made a fortune out of the events in Iran.
Finally, what can I say of the indulgence with which the curses and calls to murder of the old man of Neauphle-le-Château were greeted? Many French people, I know, were surprised. When Iraq, where he had taken refuge, expelled him, I did not want to ask the French government to silence him. It mattered little that he should speak, there or elsewhere, since he was no more than a puppet in the hands of the outsiders who condemned my regime.
However, I must not generalize. A good number of journalists remained cool-headed and applied themselves to giving an objective account of the situation in which my country found itself. If at a certain moment they happened to lend their articles a sensational tone, it was none of my doing. They were obliged to do so by those who seized power in Teheran after I left.
It must be remembered, however, that whether favourable or hostile to me, any journalist could come and see what he wanted, and write what he wanted, and publish what he wanted. What would have been reported if, as is now the case, our frontiers had been closed to the press? Inside my country I was equally tolerant, for Iranian television could, without running any risks, show films of the demonstrations which were taking place in Teheran during the last weeks of my reign.
I do not want, however, to close this chapter on the media without pointing out that in some circumstances, newspapers with a respect for impartiality echoed the warnings which I thought necessary to give to the West.
A short while before my trip to the United States in November 1977, Arnaud de Borchgrave, of the American paper Newsweek, came to interview me and to ask what I thought of an imaginary set of circumstances envisaged by certain Western military academies. The circumstances were as follows: a left-wing regime is set up in Iran. Seriously threatened, Iran calls for Soviet help. The Russians launch a lightning war from the Caspian to the Persian Gulf. The Newsweek reporter asked me: „In your opinion, what would be
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the reaction of the United States given the precedents of Vietnam, Zaire, Angola, etc?“
I replied: „Many Americans, among them some politicians, seem to be unaware that an essential bilateral agreement exists between Iran and the United States. This agreement stipulates that following discussions with both countries, the American government would have to intervene in our defence if we were attacked by a communist country or controlled by communists. It would be up to the United States to decide whether or not to stand by their obligations. As far as we were concerned, we would abide by our word.“
The Newsweek journalist pressed me further: „Don’t you think that the United States would be tempted to compromise with Moscow if oil supplies to the West were not threatened?“
I answered „… At what point would the United States begin to react or go to war? It becomes less and less clear. It would depend entirely on the conception which you might have of your future interests and of the importance which you might still attach to certain principles. Would you, for instance, tolerate the overthrowing of the regime of an independent ally?“
Finally, having stated that the debt owed by developing countries amounted to nearly 250 thousand million dollars, Newsweek pointed out that Sweden, Canada, Holland, etc. had decided to wipe out about a thousand million dollars of their claim, and that the indebted nations, in general, were counting on the whole debt being annulled. I expressed my doubts on this matter, but I explained my position as follows:
„I had great hopes of the North-South dialogue, whose only result has been a flood of complaints. At the moment, the Western world is not in a position to wipe out these debts, but, if there is no ‚New Deal‘ with the underdeveloped nations before the end of the century, there will be war. It is neither moral nor logical and, in addition, it is dangerous for 10% of the world’s population to have control of 90% of the world’s riches.“
I continued to point out, for the benefit of Newsweek, the doctrine which is already well known:
„There is no question of redistributing wealth: this would not solve the problems of the next four or five years. What is needed is aid for the developing countries, so that they can create new sources of wealth. It is necessary that new sources should be created. The United States, Western Europe and Japan are obviously most able
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to do this. Even the multi-national societies which have, generally speaking, given evidence of short-sightedness by exploiting the resources of the countries where they have settled, could in future play a decisive part in the creation of wealth for underdeveloped nations.“
Furthermore, I pointed out several times that some communist countries were perfectly well able to take an important part. They too have enormous riches of every kind, as well as an advanced technology. They also export to the Third World and elsewhere, at the same price as the Americans. It seems to me that they should share the responsibility for solving the world energy problem equally with the West and Japan.
But it is dangerous to tell the truth and foolhardy to defend it.
[tbc]