Word: bazargan
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That adoring reception proved, if proof was needed, that Khomeini remains the pivotal figure in a revolution that is still taking shape and is far from under control. In fact, uncertainty about the Ayatullah's intentions had threatened the fledgling government of his hand-picked Prime Minister, Mehdi Bazargan. On the eve of Khomeini's departure from Tehran, Bazargan leveled an emotional attack on the Komiteh, an 80-member group controlled by Khomeini and made up of mullahs and other Iranians with fervent Islamic convictions...
...Komiteh, Bazargan charged, had become a parallel government that not only interfered with his struggling administration, but was tarnishing the revolution. "They persecute us, they arrest people, they issue orders, they oppose our appointments," Bazargan said, speaking with the indignation with which he formerly criticized the Shah. "They have turned my day into night." If the Komiteh is not curbed, he warned, "we would have no alternative but to resign...
...demanded that all restrictions on the radicals' participation in the government be lifted. He voiced support for the "democratically elected" workers councils that are springing up in virtually every institution from businesses to the air force. Such groups have three times forced the resignation of officers appointed by Bazargan to command the air force...
...embassy had survived. He had been spirited away from the hospital by leftists and turned over to the Komiteh, an offshoot of Ayatullah Khomeini's Islamic Revolutionary Council. Early efforts by the embassy to arrange Kraus' release were unsuccessful because the Komiteh did not inform the Bazargan government that it had him in custody. Before long, the Kraus case reached Jimmy Carter's attention. The White House pressed hard for information on Kraus, and even got the French government to bring its contacts with Khomeini to bear...
...Bazargan government was forced to negotiate Kraus' release with the Komiteh. To mask their own lack of control of events in Tehran, Bazargan aides blandly announced that Kraus had been held legitimately, on suspicion that he had killed some Iranians during the embassy assault. It was well established, however, that he had never even fired a shot...