A VIEW OF IRAN

...At this point the driver asked him in Persian what the conversation was all about...

...Soon another phase of land reform will begin, one which will greatly expand the program, if it is carried out...

...But however the action started, the people took to the streets with genuine grievances...

...That man speaks of helping the needy, but when he has a party he sends an airplane to Holland to bring flowers for his guests...

...Landlords who own less than an entire village—which is most of them— will have to surrender some of their land...

...The general mood of the riots was for a new deal, for genuine rather than spurious reforms, for a true revolution and not the Shah's hollow "white" one...

...the capacities of two ports, at Khurramshahr and Bandar Shahpur, have been nearly tripled...

...But most of this image of the Shah is the product of public relations, not a mirror of reality...

...he asked...

...When a foreign-built hotel, of which the Shah was reputed to own a large share, found itself in difficulties it received a large—and secret—loan from the nation's planning funds...

...six men were condemned to death on this charge while I was in Iran...

...The feeling at the university for these students is still so strong that their classroom seats are never occupied...

...In these cases the Minister of Labor steps in and usually effects a compromise whereby the men receive half or one-third what is due them...

...It is known that bulldozers were used to dig a mass grave...

...The unions are a fraud—as a commission of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions discovered recently—and their fees to the international body are secretly paid by the government...

...But his antagonism to the Shah was based also on deeper factors...

...In 1954, the oil industry was turned over to a Western consortium to operate, with half the profits going to Iran...

...But this is universally ignored, and there are instances in which the share paid to employes has been as low as fifteen cents—not per cent—for a whole year...

...Their movement is in disarray...

...The young professor I met in the taxi is only one of tens of thousands of Iranians, including many in high government posts, who have nothing but contempt for the Shah—and hostility toward the United States for supporting him...

...That man," he said, "speaks of a revolution...

...and who is embarked on a sound, non-Communist ("white," in the Shah's own term) revolution...

...It is true that his annual installments are fifteen per cent less than he paid the landlord as rent, but he is not receiving the services or credits he needs to make his operation fruitful...

...But those close to the Shah insisted on excessively profitable contracts for construction as well as shares in the new enterprises...

...He hated the Communists be-caused Russia had betrayed Mossadegh...

...And in the oil fields, Nasser's influence is mounting...

...They, too, were hailed and saluted by conservative forces in the United States, including our highest government officials...

...Some mullahs, it is said, were paid to intensify the agitation...

...I cannot recall another country in the eighty I have visited where so many government officials—once you gain their confidence— were willing to speak so forcefully against the regime...

...The Shah, like Trujillo, cuts himself and the royal family into every important Iranian business venture...

...Many of them have become turncoats and are working for the Shah...

...Foreign companies pay it scrupulously, but almost all native firms bribe government officials and pay only a small portion of what is due...

...but if he wants to dig for the truth he must be careful not to compromise the people he meets...

...In the last twelve years the Shah distributed the land of 517 villages, but turned over 419 others to his own Pahlevi Foundation, whose funds seem to end up in Switzerland more often than in Iranian charity...

...First there was inflation, then stagnation...

...of the 1953 coup, engineered largely by the U.S...

...We are against such rights," he said...

...But the cooperatives are mainly paper projects...

...Iran's parliament has been reduced to impotence...

...A few hours later another Ministry representative telephones the correspondent's hotel and announces that he is available for whatever touring and other services the correspondent feels he needs...

...the company is now booming...

...One hundred thousand people took to the streets...

...You're an American, aren't you...

...For five days there were spontaneous demonstrations in Teheran and throughout the country...

...Upon arrival at the Teheran airport, a visiting writer is met by a representative of the Ministry of Information and given the red carpet treatment...

...National Front leaders claim the number was 3,000 to 10,000...

...I visited one such community on the southern fringe of Teheran...

...On the contrary, tens of thousands of landless peasants, are moving to the outskirts of towns, building mud shacks, and vegetating in joblessness...

...Every statement of fact in this article has been confirmed by such officials...

...In one group of twelve such huts there were children suffering from severe malnutrition, with the usual distended stomachs, others with faces scarred from smallpox, two with eyes inflamed with trachoma...

...Theoretically these functions are now in the hands of 2,800 cooperatives, which the peasants are required to join...

...Do you write for some paper or magazine...

...But the forces of discontent are growing so insistently that leadership will eventually be found...

...The hotel clerk is likely to be a Savak agent, as is the taxi driver who speaks English...

...It was spurred partly by the American embassy, which is anxious that the Shah look progressive to the rest of the world, and partly by his own alertness to self-serving opportunity...

...There are six and seven-year-old children in Iran weaving carpets for twenty-five cents and thirty cents a day...

...The Trujillos, too, remained in power for many years by the use of police state methods...

...his appointments are carefully arranged and kept...

...I didn't try to answer...

...He said that 3,000 had died and thousands had been arrested...

...In the American press the ruler of this nation of twenty-two million people, inhabiting 50,000 villages in an area four times that of California, is pictured as a great humanitarian who distributes the land of hundreds of villages to impoverished peasants...

...When I arrived at the Park Hotel, my wife was sitting in the lobby reading an old Dominican Republic brochure on Rafael Trujillo...

...It does not jail everyone who hates the Shah because that would mean putting a large majority of the intellectual class and millions of others behind bars...

...They lack staff and agronomists, and are not operating in any functional sense...

...But its selective repression is also reminiscent of the wily Trujillo, who faced much the same problem decades ago...

...The Shah has profited handsomely from his "gifts...

...No, he was a democratic socialist...

...Had the mobs been organized they might have seized power...

...The National Front seems to be too visionary for serious revolution...

...It was an uprising which held no hopes of victory against the overwhelming odds of American-trained secret police, and American-supplied tanks and machine guns...

...Instead I asked the professor if he were a Communist...

...He's not giving anything away, just altering his means of livelihood...

...Whether Khomaini was sincere, whether the Savak played the decisive role in getting the people into the streets, once they were there the people shouted for freedom...

...Thousands — including the royal family — made fortunes this way, as evidenced by the luxurious new homes in Teheran's suburban Shemiran, the fancy restaurants, miniature golf courses, and night clubs...

...Khomaini refused to take the Shah's reforms seriously...

...But in the end, their dictatorship fell of its own weight because it had no support except in the greedy inner circle...

...In the late 1950's it appeared the Iranian planning commission would be able to play an independent role and perhaps build a sound base for launching true economic growth...

...They are overwhelmingly opposed to the regime and periodically circulate secret letters by Mossadegh, who is held under arrest in his village, Ahmad Abad...

...Everyone in Teheran knows thousands were killed, but the government instructed correspondents to say "eighty-six"—and no impartial body has made an investigation...

...A planning commission officer told me that from one-third to one-half the sums allotted to planning now go for the normal expenses of government, for increased wages and emoluments to the secret police and army officials, and for paying some of the Shah's debts...

...The professor told me about the "revolution of 1963...

...Yet the oil workers are the aristocracy of Iranian labor, far better paid than anyone else...

...Foreign diplomats in Iran put the number of dead at 1,000 to 2,000...

...It is against this background of corruption, greed, and persistent poverty that the riots of June, 1963, took place...

...For an hour he told me about himself, the university, and the National Front (the former Premier Mohammed Mossadegh's movement) of which he is a member...

...Maybe he can kill a few thousand people, but do you think he can kill the 'mind' of Mossadegh...

...The only source of support for the family of five was the oldest daughter, who worked in a glass factory from six a.m...

...Now all these safeguards are gone...

...who uses most of Iran's annual income of $450 million from oil to develop his nation...

...Such "public relations" camouflage the true situation of Iran and the true purposes of the Shah...

...It arrests opponents of the Shah with impunity, some of whom disappear and are never heard of again...

...He suggested that we dismiss the taxi and walk...

...The Communists are not in a position to take over nationally...

...The Azerba-jainians remember the "old days" when schools were built, rents reduced, and economic conditions were on the rise...

...Look at what's happening in the Congo now...

...This arrangement greatly increased production...

...It was by all descriptions a monstrous event, rivaling in brutality the Soviet-backed slaughter in the streets of Budapest in 1956...

...The 40,000 unorganized oil workers recently received their first raise in years...

...I left the young man...

...The people shouted for freedom...

...More recently there was another wave of arrests at the school when students planned a demonstration to commemorate three former students murdered by the police a decade ago...

...Although millions of Iranians live in abysmal poverty, there have been many improvements in Iran since the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953, chiefly financed by the increased millions of dollars in oil revenue that now flow into government coffers...

...In one hut, ten by eight feet, with no furniture, lived a widow with four children...

...Strikes are illegal, although there are occasional wildcat ones, particularly when employers fall five weeks or more behind in wage payments...

...Central Intelligence Agency...

...Few people believe, however, that the wide land reform program will result in any substantial gains for those at the bottom of the economy...

...What we need is free elections...

...But he is the richest man in the country...

...I said I did...

...Then, in response to my question, he told me he taught science at Iran's only university...

...Those who do find work—university graduates especially—are frustrated at every turn...

...There was a packet of them on an end table, a memento of another day in another hemisphere, but not inappropriate in Iran...

...A six or seven-year-old child was lying on the dirt floor with a burning fever, but the twenty-seven cents that the mother needed for a doctor and the fifty-five cents for medicine were beyond her ability to pay...

...Since then the population of the province has increased by one-third, but its economy is stagnant...

...Your press," he said, "pictured it as a reactionary affair, called by the mullahs [religious leaders] and landlords to protest land reform and votes for women...

...Agency for International Development was politely requested by the agency to go home because he was suspected of leaking the information...

...Yet it evoked nothing but a passing reference in the Western press and no action at all on the part of the United States or European nations...

...Numbers of Savak agents were seen in the crowds, in Teheran and in other cities...

...Only one-tenth of the peasants have received land...

...They were joined by many students, of high school and college age, young men with serious grievances of their own...

...He disparaged voting rights for women...

...Workers who presumed they were entitled to hospital care often find the hospital door closed to them when they become ill...

...But it was a real revolution...

...What is the sense of voting rights for women when there are no real voting privileges for men...

...The government itself hints at this: "On the basis of available statistics," said an official statement, "it is not possible to say whether real wages have decreased or increased . . . The important point, however, is that . . . wage rates have increased less than profit rates, i.e., the distribution of income has changed in favor of those who are able to save"—in other words, the rich...

...The Savak invades and breaks up religious meetings...

...But they were unorganized, and they were slaughtered...

...The West killed Lumumba, but his 'mind' continues to work...

...A few years ago a man could double his money in land speculation within six months...

...There is little doubt that he was worried about the possible loss of church lands during the land reform...

...In fact, you conspired with him to hide the facts from the people of the world...

...But the economic lot of the poor shows no improvement—it may even have worsened...

...A similar lack of popular support is evident in Iran...

...The government responded by shooting volley after volley into unarmed groups until the streets were drenched in blood...

...The professor translated the question for me and commented that the driver might be an agent of the Savak, Iran's secret police...

...The occupant was a handsome young man in his late twenties who spoke English moderately well, and was obviously eager to talk...

...As a result of a seven-year plan, and now a five-year plan, three great dams have been erected, to provide for the eventual irrigation of 320,000 acres of land, and the generation of more than a half-million kilowatts of electricity...

...He spoke with intensity and passion...

...I had heard much of what he had to say from other sources—from civil servants in high positions, from an American friend in Iran, and from an older Iranian who once was a minister in the government...

...Recently, when his tile plant was in deep financial trouble, the municipality of Teheran ordered sidewalks repaired exclusively with tiles from the king's factory...

...It was nearly ten per cent, but this was smothered by a price rise of eighteen per cent in the same period...

...One of the six planks in the Shah's "white revolution" is supposed to provide workers a twenty per cent share of the profits of management...

...guards surrounded the cemetery with mounted machine-guns, and ambulance after ambulance discharged corpses into a common grave...

...They were shot down by the Savak and the army, using American guns and tanks...

...The average worker earns sixty cents a day—and his real wages, according to an American living in Iran, have fallen...

...Yes...

...Make sure you write that Iran is a police state," he said gravely...

...The average work week is sixty-nine hours...

...He rides around in great automobiles and he and his family enrich themselves in a hundred business undertakings, but the people of Iran are hungry...

...A year ago he had to leave his university post, following the riots of June, 1963, and go into hiding for three months...

...Our good king," a cynical Iranian official told me, "is shifting from landlordism to capitalism...

...Indeed he would...

...in transport, seventy-two hours, and in personal services, eighty-eight hours...

...Why do you Americans support the Shah...

...But it cannot hide them entirely...

...Tens of thousands of students are graduated from school each year but can find no jobs...

...He translated my instructions to the driver to take me to Teheran's Park Hotel...

...There is also supposed to be a health and welfare program, financed by a fourteen per cent tax on management...

...More than 3,000 miles of main and secondary roads have been built...

...Nor is it accompanied by a parallel program designed to create more jobs in the city...

...Four times, in a city that has 15,000 cabs, I got the same English-speaking driver...

...for forty cents a day...

...You never asked for a United Nations' investigation, and never broke relations with the Shah...

...Two years ago, he claimed, the secret police invaded the university, beat many students, blinded one man, raped some of the girls, and arrested a number of professors, some of whom were still being held without trial...

...He had been in jail for a couple of weeks only recently and seven of his friends were still confined...

...He owns, in whole or in part, eight or ten hotels, plus cement, sugar, tile, shipping, air, pharmaceutical, construction, bus, asphalt, and other companies...

...Iran's land reform is in part genuine, but in large part fraud— much like the "land reform" of Chile or Guatemala...

...Most landlords whose land was bought by the state received payment based on their understated valuations for tax purposes, but the Shah was given full value and more for the village lands he owned—most of it in cash, rather than bonds...

...to five p.m...

...His articles have appeared in major publications in this country and abroad...

...A special pass is provided for visits to palaces and museums...

...Textile production has gone up by three times, cement production by fifteen times, water systems have been introduced in 300 towns and cities, malaria has been virtually eradicated, and education has been expanded so that illiteracy is now only seventy instead of eighty per cent...

...A recent visitor to Azerbaijan (a northern province where there was a Communist regime for a short time after the war) reported that the Communists are again growing rapidly in influence...

...Next morning the same man presented himself to me as a Ministry of Agriculture expert and took me to some outlying villages...

...In recent years the planning commission has become simply a political boondoggle, supervised by the prime minister and the Shah...

...In the Kurdish areas there are periodic tribal revolts...

...He is the author of a number of books on national and world affairs...

...Furthermore, the land is not given to the peasant but sold to him on a ten to fifteen year installment plan...

...In the last Iranian balloting for the Majlis, the lower house of Parliament, there was a single slate...

...It is not clear how the riots started...

...When one of Mossadegh's cabinet members, in the last days of the premier's regime, urged him to put the Shah under court martial and have him executed, Mossadegh rejected the plan...

...Some who have pipelines to the Savak say they were deliberately provoked by the secret police to teach an uneasy people a lesson...

...From 1955 to about 1960 there was an economic boom, as increasing amounts of oil revenue filtered into the economy...

...A government official informed me that since the land reform of two years ago, the state has paid out 500 million rials (seventy-five rials to the dollar) to the landlords who yielded about 5,000 villages, while the Shah received ninety million rials for only 187 of his villages...

...many millions are still landless...

...It was instituted because this is a time when money can be made more easily in real estate speculation and selected industrial ventures than in a stagnant agriculture...

...the most recent one is "The Futile Crusade: Anti-Communism as American Credo...

...So far the land reform program has been less than a striking success...

...The old landlord was greedy, but at least he would oversee the repair of common water systems, and he made loans for seed and other purposes...

...Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi, as did Trujillo, runs a tight police state, with a 12,000-man American-trained secret police, the Savak, which is the real law in the land...

...Eleven years ago under Mossadegh, there were opposition parties, strikes, a few legitimate unions, and a degree of democratic law and order...

...You Americans," a former Iranian diplomat told me, "shed tears of anguish over Hungary, but you haven't a word to say about those who died in our revolution last year...

...The motives of the chief mullah, Rouhollah Khomaini, were confused...

...he asked me...

...People were living in caves dug into an abandoned quarry and in mud huts...

...For four months preceding the June revolt he had preached one sermon after another against the Iranian monarch, whom he called "that man...

...One night, when I passed by the Hilton Hotel, I noticed a stocky man commanding twenty policemen who were guarding the Crown Prince...

...The Soviet Union might have saved him by repaying thirty tons of gold it owed Iran, and so relieve the severe economic stress, but chose instead to give the gold to Mossadegh's successor, Zahedi, who was installed as a result SIDNEY LENS recently returned from a globe-circling trip gathering material for a series of articles in The Progressive...

...My wife greeted me with the observation that the late Trujillo would have felt at home here...

...he insisted that the monarch must have his day in civil courts under due process of law...

...Since then, however, there has been depression...

...When a traveling American journalist recently hinted at the true story of Iran, an employe of the U.S...

...The Shah continues to appear a benevolent monarch in the face of all this because of his careful public relations—sometimes assisted by the United States...