A Search for New Faces

And for ways to get the Shah to accept reduced powers

In the northern Iranian town of Tabriz, a group of soldiers suddenly found themselves confronting a large but peaceful group of anti-Shah demonstrators in the local bazaar. As the chanting marchers approached, one soldier said he was going to join them. He was immediately shot by one of his comrades, who in turn was attacked by the angry crowd. The soldier who had fired was saved by the quick intervention of a colonel, who took off his own pistol and offered it to the demonstrators, shouting: "We are the same people. Why do we kill each other?" After that, most of his soldiers stacked their arms in a truck and joined the marchers. The protesters urged the soldiers to participate in the chant of "Death to the Shah," but they refused. Some wept.

The incident in Tabriz last week was but one of a number of symptoms of a growing restiveness within the Shah's army as its small-scale clashes with the citizenry continue. In Najafabad, located near the industrial city of Isfahan, security forces were reported to have gone on a rampage against political dissidents. In the holy city of Qum, soldiers fired on a group of marchers. In the northeastern town of Mashhad, troops and police burst into a hospital and beat up the staff for having tended injured protesters.

At the same time, the government of Premier Gholam Reza Azhari, who is also the army chief of staff, was using tough methods to break a nationwide oil strike. In Ahwaz, workers were given their choice of going back to their jobs or being fired; by week's end most of the country's 37,000 oil and refinery employees were back at work, and production rose to roughly half the normal output of 6 million bbl. per day.

As the relative calm continued, a palace adviser confided, "The Shah's mood is much, much better." He was said to be putting in 15-hour days and even to be working on Friday, the Muslim day of rest. Neither he nor his wife, the Empress Farah, had made any public appearances for two weeks, although the Empress slipped away one day to go skiing in the nearby Elburz Mountains. The Shah was staying out of sight, according to a spokesman, both for security reasons and because he did not "want to resurrect the impression that he runs the country."

Apparently this curious comment meant simply that the Shah wanted to keep out of public view while he attempted to end Iran's political crisis by putting together a civilian government to replace the two-month-old military regime. This was no small task, since most opposition leaders were calling for his ouster.

The Shah last week sounded out Gholam Hussein Sadighi, 73, a onetime Interior Minister, on the possibility of forming a "government of new faces." Sadighi, a professor of sociology at the University of Tehran, had been jailed five times for his opposition to the Shah. His response to the Shah's invitation was to offer several preconditions: there must be an end to martial law and the troops must go back to their barracks; the prosecution of officials on corruption charges must be speeded up; and a regency council must run Iran while the Shah takes a "rest."

In Sadighi's view, this would be a first step in the Shah's evolution to a constitutional monarch. Such a status was envisioned by Iran's 1906 constitution, which was adapted from the Belgian constitution but has been largely ignored since the Pahlavi dynasty was founded 5 years ago by the Shah's father.

Sadighi has many of the qualities the Shah is seeking. He is widely respected, has no previous links with the current regime, and is not connected with the recent corruption scandals. Whether he can form a Cabinet is another question. He has no chance of winning the support of such powerful religious leaders as the exiled Ayatullah Khomeini, who will accept nothing less than the Shah's ouster. In an interview at his refuge near Paris, Khomeini explained to TIME Correspondent Benjamin Cate: "The Shah is the source of the trouble and chaos. He is not seeking a solution to the problem; he is looking to escape from the situation in order to come back with more power. So negotiations are meaningless."

Nor would Sadighi get any help from Karim Sanjabi, head of the opposition National Front, of which Sadighi is also a member. After learning that Sadighi had been conferring with the Shah, Sanjabi expelled him from the organization. There are a few moderate politicians who are less hostile to Sadighi's attempts to form a government. One is Ahmad Baniahmad, 46, an opposition M.P. "We reserve judgment until Sadighi has published a program and named a Cabinet," says Baniahmad. "Sadighi is the Shah's solution, not the people's and not the Ayatullahs'. But he is not tainted with corruption."

All opposition leaders agree on one thing: the Shah must make a major concession. "The minimum is that the Shah must be eclipsed," says Baniahmad. "Perhaps he could go on a long voyage." While the Shah is reportedly ready to accept some of Sadighi's conditions, he has so far balked at the idea of being replaced by a regency council that would rule in the name of his 18-year-old son, Crown Prince Reza. Snaps a palace adviser: "There is no discussion of a regency council, and there will be none."

The Shah's determination to hold on puts him at odds with some of Washington's present thinking on the subject. For decades the U.S. has supported the Shah as a defense against Soviet expansion in a region of strategic importance. There are firm reports that Foreign Service officers based in Iran have long been prevented by Washington from building close contacts with Iranian opposition leaders, lest this offend the Shah. President Carter still says publicly that the Shah deserves full American support, but there are signs that the Administration's emphasis, as a ranking U.S. diplomat puts it, is shifting to one of "helping the Shah to see the reality of his position." On the advice of former Under Secretary of State George Ball, who has just completed a crash study on Iranian policy for the Carter Administration, the U.S. is urging the Shah to modify his absolute rule in order to restore stability in Iran and the Persian Gulf. The increase of Soviet influence in the region (see map), most recently in Afghanistan, worries the U.S. The Administration is also concerned about the effects of Iran's instability on such other monarchies as Jordan and the king of petropowers, Saudi Arabia.

The Ball view, which is generally seconded by the State Department, is that the Shah is incapable of ending the unrest through military force. Says one U.S. expert: "Even if his army shot 5,000 people and imprisoned another 50,000, the Shah's fate would be sealed. The Shah's best hope, if he wishes to retain any symbolic position of esteem, is to make a dramatic declaration turning over his powers to an interim ruling group of elder statesmen. Otherwise, he faces the slow disintegration of his army and, eventually, his entire country." As of last week, this was one bit of U.S. advice that the Shah did not seem anxious to take.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.