The Shah Is Ill

But his cancer could be cured

God willing, reports of the deposed shah's affliction with cancer are true.'' So said Iran's Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini, with his customary generosity to a fallen foe. The reports were indeed correct. Last week Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, 60, flew from his lavish, well-guarded home in exile at Cuernavaca, Mexico, to New York City's LaGuardia Airport on a chartered jet that airline officials had first been told would only be carrying a ''valuable shipment'' from the Bank of Mexico. Weak and frail-looking, the Shah shuffled into a limousine and was then whisked away under tight security to a $300-a-day room in New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center on Manhattan's East Side.

Two days later, during a 21/2-hour operation, doctors removed the Shah's gall bladder after finding gallstones both there and in the bile duct; the blockage had caused the Shah to turn yellow from jaundice. The surgeons also took lymph nodes from his neck and a slice from his liver, and afterward made a more serious announcement: the Shah was suffering from histiocytic lymphoma, a form of cancer of the lymphatic system. The disease also involved his spleen, but, said the hospital's physician in chief, Dr. Hibbard Williams, ''some potential for cure exists.'' He added that the Shah would remain at the hospital for six weeks and might require as much as 18 months of outpatient chemotherapy.

The Shah first displayed symptoms of lymphoma about six yearsago--a fact that was long kept secret in ''the best interests'' of Iran, explained a spokesman.

To combat his illness, he had been undergoing drug treatments supervised by a team of French doctors.

Two months ago the Shah began suffering chills, fever, weight loss and jaundice. As his health deteriorated, the State Department gave him a temporary (one year) visa to enter the U.S., on condition that he refrain from any political activity and not seek permanent asylum. ''We are certainly not going to hound a sick man,'' said State Department Spokesman David Passage.

By allowing the Shah to remain in the U.S. for the full term of chemotherapy, the Carter Administration runs the risk of offending the stern new rulers of Iran, who have neither forgotten nor forgiven the excesses of the Shah's regime.

Indeed, the Ayatullah's Foreign Ministry announced it would send a doctor to New York to monitor the Shah's illness, and angry Iranian students picketed the hospital with signs demanding DEATH TO THE SHAH. Meanwhile, more than 2,000 people, including Henry Kissinger,' sent get-well telegrams to the ailing ex-monarch.

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