In September 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran was only six months old. It had been formed after the Islamic Revolution, which overthrew the pro-Western Shah and his authoritarian regime, a regime of persecution and torture.
Since 1953, when with the help of the Americans and the British, he had overthrown in a coup, the Iranian Prime Minister Mossadegh, the Shah was its absolute ruler.
On February 1, 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini returned from Paris, where he was in exile, to and established the Islamic Republic of Iran. Six months later, the authoritarian theocratic regime of the mullahs was established: crackdown on dissent, mass executions, public flogging of “infidels”, a return to medieval practices, from the obligatory chador for women, to the segregation of men and women in public places, the ban on music, alcohol.
Khomeini, however, understood the importance of projecting the new Islamic regime to the press of the hated West. That is why he agreed to grant an interview to the Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci.
The choice was not accidental, Fallaci had interviewed the Shah in 1973 and criticized him for his brutal regime.
In September 1979, on behalf of the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, Fallaci traveled throughout Iran before meeting Khomeini in Qom, the holy city of Shiite Islam.
Their conversation lasted two hours. Shortly before the end of the interview, Khomeini’s first to a female journalist, Fallaci, enraged, removed the Islamic headscarf she was wearing, a symbol of women’s oppression, from her head.
On the occasion of the American-Israeli attack on Iran, Corriere della Sera republished the interview and the related report. In the excerpts that follow, Oriana Falatsi, – who loved Greece because of her relationship with Alekos Panagoulis – teaches journalism classes.
Oriana Fallaci: Imam Khomeini, the whole country is in your hands; your every decision is an order. Many say that there is no freedom in Iran, that the revolution did not bring freedom.
Ruhollah Khomeini: Iran is not in my hands; Iran is in the hands of the people, because it was the people who handed over the country to the one who serves them and seeks their good.
Let me insist, explain better what I mean. Today in Persia many call you a dictator. What do you answer? That this saddens you or leaves you indifferent?
On the one hand it saddens me because it is unfair and inhuman to call me a dictator. But on the other hand, I don’t care at all, because I know that such vices come from our enemies. The Shah’s mercenaries say many things: even that Khomeini ordered women’s breasts cut off. Tell me, did you find that Khomeini committed such an atrocity?
No, I didn’t find that. But you are causing fear in the world. Just as the crowd that invokes you causes fear. How does it feel when you hear them shout like that, day and night, knowing that they stand there for hours, just to catch a glimpse of you and cheer you on?
I enjoy it. For they are the same who rose up to drive out the enemies within and without, because their applause is the continuation of the shout with which they drove out the usurper, because it is good that they continue to seethe like this. Our enemies have not disappeared. And then what they feel is love, intelligent love. One cannot help but enjoy it.
Is it love or fanaticism? To me it reminds me of the most dangerous fanaticism, fascism. Many in Iran today see a fascist threat.
No, fascism has nothing to do with it. They shout like that because they love me, because they feel that I want their good, that I act for their good, to implement the commandments of Islam. Islam is justice; in Islam dictatorship is the greatest sin: fascism and Islamism are incompatible concepts. Fascism occurs in you, in the West, not in the peoples of Islamic culture.
Perhaps we do not understand the meaning of the word fascism. I am talking about fascism as a popular phenomenon, as in Italy, when the crowds applauded Mussolini, as here they applaud you. And they obeyed him, as here they obey you.
No, this is not the case, because our people are Muslims, educated by the clergy, by people who preach spirituality and goodness. Fascism here would only be possible if the Shah returned — which is impossible — or if Communism came. If they shout for me, it means they love freedom and democracy.
So let’s talk about freedom and democracy. You had said that the new Islamic government would guarantee freedom of thought and expression to all, including communists and ethnic minorities. Now you call the communists “children of Satan”, and the leaders of the ethnic minorities who rebel, “Evil on Earth”.
First you make claims and then you demand that I explain your claims! You would even expect me to allow the conspiracies of those who want to lead the country to anarchy and corruption — as if it were freedom of thought and expression, freedom of conspiracy and corruption. So I answer you: for more than five months I tolerated, we tolerated, those who did not think like us. They were absolutely free to do whatever they wanted. I even invited the communists to be elected with us. But when we realized that they were taking advantage of our tolerance to sabotage us, we decided to stop them.
You closed the opposition newspapers. You said that to be modern is to shape people who have the right to criticize. But the liberal newspaper Ajadegan was closed. Like all left-wing newspapers.
The Ajadegan newspaper had relations with the Zionists, it accepted suggestions from them to hurt the homeland and the country. The same applies to all newspapers that the General Prosecutor of the Revolution deemed subversive and closed. Newspapers aimed at restoring the old regime and serving foreign interests. We silenced them so that it would be known who they were and what they were after. This is not against freedom. It happens everywhere.
No, imam. How do you characterize those who fought against him, who were persecuted, imprisoned and tortured by him as “nostalgic for the Shah”? What do you call enemies, how do you deny the right to exist to the Left that fought and suffered so much?
None of them fought or suffered. On the contrary, they exploited, for their own purposes, the pain of the people who were fighting and suffering. You are misinformed: much of the Left you refer to was abroad during the imperial regime and only returned after the people had ousted the Shah. Another group was here, hidden in their homes, and only after the people gave their blood did they come out to benefit from that blood.
Excuse me, I want to make sure I understood correctly. You say that the Left had nothing to do with the ousting of the Shah. Not even the Left who was imprisoned, who was tortured, who was murdered? That neither the living nor the dead of the Left have any value?
They didn’t contribute anything. They did not serve the revolution. Some fought, but only for their ideas, only for their interests. They did not affect the victory at all, they did not contribute to it. They had nothing to do with our movement which was always Islamic, and the left forces were always against it.
I would like to ask you more, many more. For the “chandor”, for example, which I was put on to come to you, and which you impose on women. Why do you force women to hide under an uncomfortable and unreasonable garment, in which you can neither work nor move? Women have proven that they are equal to men. Like men, they fought, so women also fought, were imprisoned, tortured, made the revolution.
The women who made the revolution were women in Islamic dress, not elegant and painted like you, going around uncovered. By showing their bodies, women distract men and make them nervous. They also distract and disturb other women.
It’s not true. I am referring to what the chador represents, the separation between women and men that you imposed after the revolution. The fact that women cannot study at university with men or work with men, or swim in the sea. How can one swim with a chador?
Our morals are none of your business. If you don’t like Islamic dress, you don’t have to wear it. Because Islamic clothing is for young and dignified women.
Very kind of you. If you say so, I’m pulling out this stupid medieval rag right away. There you go. But tell me: a woman who, like me, has lived among men, who has gone to war and slept on the front with the soldiers, do you consider her to be an immoral, old, wasted woman?
Your conscience knows this. I cannot know whether your life is moral or immoral, whether you behaved well or not, to the soldiers in the war. But I know that if it were not for this garment, women could not work in a useful and healthy way. Neither do men.
