Appeasement of the Mullahs, Like Father, Like Son?!

General Hassan Pakravan, the second chief of the Shah's secret police, SAVAK, had all the pedigrees needed to be regarded as an Iranian silver spoon fed aristocrat. His father was the governor of Khorasan province, amongst his many other titles and his mother, partly of European descent, was related to the Habsburg rulers of the Austro-Hungar empire. Pakravan studied most of his childhood and youth, studying abroad and finally graduated from the artillery school in Poitiers, France, and the Ecole d’Application d’Artillerie in Fontainebleau.

Pakravan was appointed as the second chief of the Shah's secret police, better known by its acronym, SAVAK, after its first appointed chief, Teimour Bakhtiar, was removed when he became too ambitious and wanted to rule Iran himself.

Pakravan's soft and compassionate nature was hardly suitable for someone who was supposed to lead a secret police organisation, he would have been more at home had he been appointed as the director of an art gallery or the national opera.

It was during Pakravan's time as the chief of SAVAK, that Khomeini was arrested. Orders had come from the then Prime Minister, Assadollah Alam, to arrest Khomeini for instigating a bloody riot that opposed the Shah's progressive reforms such as replacing the feudal land ownership and granting universal suffrage to women and the religious minorities of Iran.

During the time Khomeini was under house arrest in Tehran, General Pakravan visited him every week for lunch. According to Pakravan's wife, this was something Khomeini looked forward to and would say: "Timsar [General], I count the days to our lunches together." Pakravan, on the other hand, was literally petrified of Khomeini and totally awestruck by this stern puritan Shia cleric. "He makes my hair stand on end. It is frightening," Pakravan told his wife about his impression of Khomeini.

When Khomeini was sentenced to death, General Pakravan, became upset and felt sorry for his weekly luncheon companion and missed their conversations about religion and philosophy. The Shah's General and head of the "bad, bad brutal" SAVAK decided he had to save his "friend". Perhaps he was hoping that by continuing his luncheon dialogues, he would change the Ayatollah's behaviour!

Pakravan contacted the moderate, also soft natured, Grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari and asked for his help. Ayatollah Shariatmadari issued a decree that promoted Khomeini to an Ayatollah and Pakravan then convinced the Shah that he should not have an Ayatollah executed. Pakravan thus saved Khomeini's life and furthermore asked Turkey to grant asylum to Khomeini.

Not that Khomeini showed any gratitude either to Pakravan or to Ayatollah Shariatmadari after he seized power. General Pakravan was amongst the first of the Shah's officials to be executed after the 1979 revolution had triumphed. Ayatollah Shariatmadari was also eventually put under house arrest and denied medical care, until he died in miserable conditions on 3rd April, 1986.

The fruit has not fallen far from the tree as it appears that General Pakravan's son, Dr. Karim Pakravan, is now continuing the same futile path of appeasement of the mullahs in Iran and has become a key fundraiser and advisor to NIAC, the lobby organisation that advocates appeasement with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Lets hope Karim Pakravan does not end up having the same fate as his father or help more extremists come to power like his father did!

Khomeini's Damnation of Mossadegh

What happens when the management of a company choose bad advisors? Well usually bad advise leads to undesirable consequences and the company suffers, but when the management is the US administration that appoints bad foreign advisors, then the undesirable consequences become global catastrophic calamities!

I am still so infuriated about Obama apologising to the mullahs in Iran for the toppling of Mossadegh in 1953. It shows that none of the things we talked about or wrote about after Madeline Albright made the same mistake,  including articles written by the likes of Ray Takeyh, are reaching the US administration which is more hell bent on listening to advice on Iran from their NIAC advisors, considered by many as a lobby group for the Islamic Republic. 

So it is with little hope that I am writing this post, except that this is not my opinion or that of a learned person's accurate recount of what really happened in 1953. This is Khomeini's damnation of Mossadegh in his own words. Perhaps by watching this, the future US administrations will learn that they need not apologise to the mullahs for the events of 1953 in Iran or consider it a reason to justify the actions by the mullahs today!

Perhaps Ayatollah Khomeini's damnation of Mossadegh will make the US administration realise that they really are listening to very bad advise!

"right from the beginning when Ayatollah Kashani saw that they [Mossadegh supporters] are misbehaving and spoke against them, what they [Mossadegh supporters] did was to put a pair of glasses on a dog and named it Ayatollah [audience cries]..this was at a time when his [Mossadegh] supporters speak so proudly of him, Mossadegh was not a Muslim either. That day I was in the house of one of Tehran's high ranking clerics, when I heard the news that they have put a pair of glasses on a dog and are walking him in the streets calling the dog, Ayatollah. I told that high ranking cleric that I was with at that time, this is now no longer a matter of personal animosity with Mossadegh, he will be slapped for this, and it wasn't long before he was slapped, and had he [Mossadegh]  remained in power, he would have slapped Islam"

When Shevardnadze Met Khomeini

Eduardo Shevardndze's demise today, reminded me of when he met Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989.
Khomeini had written a letter to Gorbachev, warning him of the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and had called him to embrace Islam instead of Communism.

The Soviets with enormous benefits in keeping good relations with the Islamic Republic had decided to maintain a conciliatory and diplomatic response. In fact thousands of Iranian Communists were being executed in the Islamic Republic jails at this time and the Soviet Union was totally indifferent to the slaughter of thousands of young misled Iranians who looked at the USSR as the utopia of the working class masses! 

In this video, Shevardnadze starts with some over the top diplomatic flattery of Khomeini and then states  "your letter contained some in-depth philosophical context; all the soviet officials have read your letter; and without a doubt we agree with many fundamental issues but with some (of the issues) we can disagree"

Khomeini then replies "...but tell him that I wanted to open a bigger space in front of you". The translator however must have though what the hell is the Ayatollah on about and translates differently by saying "Thank you for your message, tell him that I would like to talk to him more about general matters."

While the conversation is still going on (interpreter is translating), Khomeini suddenly stands up to leave. Shevardnadze wants to continue with the conversation but  poor Shevardnadze and his delegation get totally confused as what to do, they stand up, Shevardnadze makes a sheepish bow and tries to at least offer a handshake, but Khomeini ignores him and places his hands behind his back, then makes a point of turning round and walking through the delegation without any customary pleasantries, not even an eye contact :))

The moral of the story is flattery and boot licking gets you nowhere with the Islamic Republic.

Khomeini’s Grand-daughter Shuts Down her Facebook Page After Vulgar Joke about War Martyrs

Khomeini’s grand-daughter, Naeimeh Eshraghi, shut down her Facebook page, after a vulgar joke by her about Iran war martyrs, caused an uproar on the Iranian cyber space, notably amongst the children of war martyrs.

Two of Khomeini’s famous sayings during the war were:
“Revolutionary Guards should marry the widows of their fallen comrades, so as they were not left without guardianship” and “I wish I was a revolutionary guard”.

Word quickly spread that Naeemeh has left a comment via her Facebook account, saying 'sometimes we used to joke with our grand-father by combining the two statements “Revolutionary guards should marry the widows of their fallen comrades, so as they were not left without guardianship. I wish, I was a revolutionary guard” ‘

Son of Ibrahim Hemat, a distinguished war martyr, wrote “when the children of this country were being blown to bits with bullets, bombs and mortars, the leader of the country for whom many had sacrificed their lives, was making vulgar jokes..”

Faced with such a strong backlash and grasping at straws, Naeimeh Eshraghi, denied the comment was from her and claimed her Facebook account had been hacked. Those who had spotted her comment, before her Facebook page was closed, were adamant however that they had checked several times and it was definitely from her Facebook account.

Previously Naeimeh had got in trouble for photoshopping her daughter’s picture and exaggerating the award she had won. More recently Naeimeh had posted a picture posing with her red boots, saying how much her grand-father liked happy colours and hated the colour black, encouraging all the girls in the family to wear brighter colour dresses.