Costume and pageantry is important to charm the masses, but they only display authority. Real authority is born out of force and the willingness to use it. The Shah was not determined to open fire on rioters and Islamists to save his crown.
You can't just put a crown on a man's head and make him king, at least not a real one. The Shah, like the Arab monarchs, was made weak by political exposure to America and England. And his son, well, . . .let's just say the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
By all accounts the Shah's twin sister had a stronger personality and was much tougher than him. If Iran had been ruled by a Queen there wouldn't be an Islamic Republic today. Every rebellious Mullah would have been killed, starting with Khomeini.
The next morning Zahedi met in secrecy with a delegation of senior courtiers, generals, senators, and parliamentarians, who begged him to assume a leadership role. "They recalled the crisis in 1963 and how they took their orders from Alam and not the Shah," said one participant." They were looking desperately for a civilian to step in and tell them what to do. They were waiting for the Shah to act, and they wanted someone who was a hundred percent loyal to him." Zahedi also paid a quiet visit to southern Tehran to meet sympathetic clergy, who were prepared to support an army putsch to prevent Khomeini from seizing power.
Out of these meetings emerged Operation Kach, a top secret plan for a military coup d'état to overthrow Sharif-Emami's flailing government and smash Khomeini's rebellion. Named after a small town deep in Iran's desert interior, Operation Kach relied on the commanders of the three branches of the armed forces to take leadership positions. In phase one of the operation, the Shah and his family would retire to Kish Island, while the army, navy, and air force arrested moderate opposition leaders and detained them at the naval base on Kharg Island. Anyone who came out onto the streets to defy martial law would be rounded up and held in Tehran's Olympic stadium. "The police would have a list and the arrests would be made at the same time," said Zahedi. "We made sure the facilities had enough food, showers and toilets for a long stay." Religious extremists and Mujahedin and Fedayeen guerrilla fighters would be flown to holding pens at Kach, deep in the province of Baluchistan, near the border with Pakistan. The coup planners studied how to keep Iran's cities supplied with food and powered with electricity if workers went out on strike. Strict discipline would be imposed on the army. "Being tough, you have to look to your army," observed Zahedi. "But you have to keep your army off the streets to stop fraternization and not let the soldiers get infected by protests." Once order was restored, only after a suitable cooling-off period would the ruling junta implement far-reaching political reforms to return power to parliament, stamp out corruption, and hold free and fair general elections. The Shah's role would be reduced to that of a constitutional figurehead.
The coup plotters were overtaken by events when on Wednesday, September 6, Mujahedin commandos staged a daring early morning raid on a police barracks in Tehran. Armed with submachine guns, they killed the officer on duty and fled the scene, leaving behind a car bomb that failed to detonate. Fearing the assault was the prelude to an armed uprising, the government announced an immediate ban on all unauthorized rallies. The Islamists responded by staging a show of strength after dark, massing twenty thousand people at the southern end of Pahlavi Avenue and announcing plans to hold a second big rally, at Qeitariyeh field, on Thursday morning. In Shemiran, a Mujahedin terror cell tossed a pipe bomb under a bus taking eighteen British aerospace workers home. Though there were no iniuries, news of the ambush spread fear throughout the foreign community. Everyone sensed events were rushing to a climax.
On Thursday morning, September 7, for the second time in three days tens of thousands of Khomeini supporters filled Tehran streets in a defiant show of force. This time they left the flowers at home and came in anger. The men wore white to signify their willingness to die, and the women marched in separate columns clad in black to proclaim their chastity and modesty. They chanted in support of an Islamic republic and cried "Death to the Shah!" The surging crowds alarmed Iranians and Americans alike. Across the road from the Tehran American School, where more than three and a half thousand American children went to class, high school senior Jonathan Kirkendall was taking a nap in his family's apartment when he began "dreaming of an ocean, the murmur of the waves driving themselves onto a sandy beach." He slowly awakened to hear "excited, noisy voices in the living room" and assumed his father, James, had returned home. He was very much mistaken when he realized that "in the distance came another noise. It sounded like the ocean that I had heard in my dreams, a low, ever present murmur, but louder and more rhythmic than the ocean. I got up from bed and went out onto the porch. I could make out a chant. It wasn't an ocean of water, but an ocean of people, and as I was later to see and hear carrying banners and chanting "Death to the Shah!" His mother, Libby, looked out the window at the flood of people surging past their home and shook her head in dismay. "The ball has started rolling," she told her son. "Not even the Shah will be able to stop it now."
The Shah stuck to his schedule and held a working lunch with Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda of Japan as though nothing were wrong. In private, however, the reports of mobs out on the streets left him "visibly shaken," reported Newsweek. "Obviously things had gone too far." In the afternoon he received a delegation of senior generals "who argued that the demonstrations were surely eroding his authority---and in turn the army's---and must be stopped. To press home their point the officers raised the specter of civil war. "We told the Shah, as Lincoln once said a house divided cannot stand," said one participant. One of his fellow generals bluntly told the Shah that he faced an insurrection if he refused to take action: "It is against our military honor to stand the present situation."
. . .While Tehran shook, Princess Ashraf boarded a flight from Alma-Ata, the capital of Soviet Kazakhstan, where she had attended a meeting of the World Health Organization. After hearing of the latest unrest she decided to defy her brother's admonition to stay outside the country. On arrival at Mehrebad, the Princess learned that roads to the north were blocked by demonstrations and that Saadabad Palace could be reached only by helicopter. "As I flew over the Shahyad Monument, I saw that one corner was completely dark," she recalled. "A moment later I realized this black mass was a mass of Iranian women, women who had achieved one of the highest levels of emancipation in the Middle East. Here they were in the mournful black chador their grandmothers had worn. My God, I thought, is this how it ends? To me it was a little like seeing a child you had nurtured suddenly sicken and die." Her private secretary noticed the stricken look on her face. "Why aren't we doing anything about it?" she asked him. As soon as they landed she went straight to see her brother, who assured her everything was under control.
Court conservatives were relieved to hear that the Shah's feisty twin sister, who had played an important role in defeating Mossadeq twenty five years earlier, was back in town. Anxious to gain her support for Operation Kach, a small group came in the evening to Ashraf's residence and petitioned her to support their plan for a crackdown. The men in the room included the commander of the Imperial Guard, General Badrei; courtiers; and an industrialist who offered to raise funds and another who promised to turn out the crowds. Ashraf expressed shock when the plotters suggested her brother should retire to Kish Island and let them get the job done. "His Majesty is in control," she reassured them---he had told her so himself. The men in the room vehemently disagreed "The situation is getting out of hand," they told her. The conspirators left the Princess without obtaining a firm commitment of support.
Shortly before seven oclock, Iranian guests attending the Japanese prime minister's cocktail reception froze when Hushang Nahavandi, the only government minister in attendance, was handed a note and abruptly excused himself without explanation. Clutching the piece of paper, he rushed to his car and drove to an emergency meeting of national security advisers who included the prime minister, the cabinet, and generals. Nahavandi arrived to find the group learning details of a plot by Khomeini's agents to seize power in a coup. Apparently emboldened by their show of force on the streets, the Coalition of Islamic Societies had decided to mass their followers in Jaleh Square on Friday morning and stage a march to the Majlew. Once there they planned to force their way in, seize the prime minister and members of parliament, and declare an Islamic republic. In the debate that followed, Sharif-Emami sided with conservatives who supported an immediate declaration of martial law in twelve cities. The Shah was dining with Queen Farah and Ardeshir Zahedi when he received a call from the prime minister to ask his opinion. He expressed ambivalence about putting inexperienced army conscripts on the streets---the sight of young soldiers accepting flowers from the crowds on Eid-e Fetr had raised questions in his mind about their preparedness to open fire on civilians. He asked his dinner companions what they thought. Ardeshir Zahedi made clear that he had no confidence in Sharif-Emami regardless of the decision. The Queen worried that there was not enough time to issue alerts over radio and television to ensure that people did not venture out before the curfew was lifted. The Shah was loath to challenge his prime minister and generals and reluctantly approved the martial law decree.
