Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran`s spiritual leader and the linchpin of the resurgence of Islamic militancy, died Sunday, 12 days after he underwent surgery for bleeding in his digestive system, the official Iranian news agency reported. He was 86.
”The leader of the Islamic revolution and founder of the Islamic republic, Imam Khomeini, passed away at a Tehran hospital,” the Islamic Republic News Agency said.
A terse announcement by Tehran Radio did not disclose the immediate cause of Khomeini`s death. The radio announcer choked with emotion as he said at 7 a.m. Sunday, ”Imam Khomeini has passed away.”
Khomeini underwent surgery last month for bleeding in his digestive system. He had been reported recuperating, but on Saturday Iran`s state-run radio and television stations said complications had developed and his health was deteriorating.
Of all the important revolutionary leaders of the 20th Century, few produced the dramatic upheaval in international relations caused by Khomeini. Little known outside his own country and already far advanced into old age, Khomeini burst unsuspecting on the world stage in 1978 and in three short years overthrew the Shah of Iran, transformed the country into an Islamic republic, humiliated the United States, helped drive its president from office and unleashed a menacing tide of religious and political ferment in the Islamic world.
For much of the Western world, Khomeini almost overnight came to be regarded as the personification of evil, a hate-filled, stubborn old man driven by a consuming, ruthless vengefulness to turn his country away from its traditional ties with the West and to rule by terror and repression.
Along with Libya`s Moammar Gadhafi, he became the man Americans most loved to hate, particularly after his regime held American diplomats hostage in Tehran for more than a year.
The success of his revolution deprived the U.S. of an important ally in one of the most sensitive areas of the world, the oil-rich Persian Gulf. One especially damaging consequence of the revolution for the U.S. was that it was forced to dismantle intelligence listening posts along the Iranian border with the Soviet Union.
At Khomeini`s death, Iran had been seriously weakened economically and militarily by eight years of war with Iraq that exacted more than a million casualties. Its prestige had been eroded by losing confrontations with the U.S. in the Persian Gulf.
When the war ended with a United Nations-sponsored cease-fire last August, there was speculation that Khomeini would support less extremist members of the Iranian regime in their efforts to rebuild the war-ravaged nation of 51 million people.
His radicalism re-emerged in February, however, when he reignited global indignation with a call for the death of British author Salman Rushdie for his irreverent portrayal of Islam in his novel ”The Satanic Verses.”
And in March, Khomeini summarily ousted his designated heir, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, 64, who had been considered a relative moderate and had openly criticized policies of the Islamic regime.
To the end, Khomeini exerted a powerful magnetism over his nation and many of his fellow Moslems elsewhere. He was seen by his supporters as the man who removed from Iran the yoke of foreign tutelage and gave voice to a religious revival that promised a restoration of the power Islam had enjoyed in early centuries.
A scowling and bearded man, tall and spindly with spider-like movements and a voice that rarely rose much above a hoarse whisper, Khomeini hardly looked the part of a dynamic revolutionary. But his early successes were due above all to his single-minded determination and refusal to compromise with his enemies.
He led his revolution to triumph not with guns but with prayer books and recording tape. His speeches, taped and smuggled into Iran, inspired his followers to maintain pressure on the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and to hurl themselves unarmed against the Shah`s powerful armed forces.
Although he seems not to have proceeded from any grand design, the tactic worked; the slaughter of hundreds of their fellow citizens left the armed forces deeply divided and demoralized, and their leaders capitulated rather than plunge the country into an even more sanguinary civil war. The shah died in exile and Khomeini, at the age of 77, reigned supreme.
He was the central figure in the hostage crisis with the U.S. in 1979-81 that contributed significantly to the defeat of President Jimmy Carter in his bid for re-election. For Khomeini, the U.S. was ”the great Satan,” the focus of much of the bitterness that motivated him as a political leader.
Although few people outside Iran knew his name before the outbreak of revolution in 1978, Khomeini had been a leading opponent of the government for years and it had correctly estimated his appeal to the masses, exiling him in 1964.
Like all other ayatollahs-religious leaders in the Shia branch of Islam-Khomeini took his surname from the place where he was born. The village of Khomein is 180 miles south of Tehran. Both his father and grandfather had been religious scholars, and he received a largely religious primary education in Khomein.
His youth coincided with the rise of Reza Shah-father of the ruler he later overthrew. Reza Shah set out to modernize Iran by adopting European-style law codes and taking various actions to weaken the authority of the clergy, which is much greater in Shia countries such as Iran than it is in the vast majority of Islamic countries that adhere to the Sunni branch of the religion.
Reza Shah`s reforms met determined clerical opposition and he repeatedly imprisoned or exiled his religious opponents. Shortly after he abdicated in 1941, Khomeini attacked the regime in a book called ”The Unveiling of Secrets.”
Khomeini avoided direct involvement in politics in the 1940s and early 1950s, but he re-entered the fray after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi embarked in 1962 on a reform program he called the ”White Revolution.” To Khomeini, the new shah`s program was yet another attempt to erode the place of religion in society.
Khomeini`s opposition reached a climax on June 3, 1963, when he addressed a huge crowd in Qom, calling the Shah ”you unfortunate wretch” and accusing the Pahlavis of seeking to destroy Islam. Two days later, he was arrested and taken to a military prison in Tehran. The arrest touched off three days of rioting around the country that left several hundred people dead.
Khomeini was released in April, 1964, and allowed to return to Qom. The government said he had purchased his freedom by agreeing to stay out of politics, but he denied that. He resumed his criticism of the Shah, was arrested and quietly banished to Turkey. A year later, he was allowed to transfer to the Shia shrine city of Najaf, in Iraq, where he spent the next 13 years.
Khomeini was released in April, 1964, and allowed to return to Qom. The government said he had purchased his freedom by agreeing to stay out of politics, but he denied that and resumed his criticism of the Shah.
Khomeini and the government came to another showdown in 1964, after Parliament had adopted a bill to extend immunity from trial in Iran to the personnel of American military missions, their staffs and their families.
Even many of the Shah`s hand-picked parliamentarians had balked at approving this law, and when it was adopted Khomeini called on the army to rise up and bring down the government. He was arrested and quietly banished to Turkey. A year later, he was allowed to transfer to the Shia shrine city of Najaf, in Iraq, where he spent the next 13 years.
Tapes of Khomeini`s declarations against the government began to be smuggled into Iran within weeks of his exile. He condemned the imprisonment of religious figures, the ”medieval torture” and execution of opponents of the regime and the suppression of basic freedoms. He was convinced the Shah was selling the country to foreigners and denounced in particular the sale of oil to the U.S. for what he regarded as unneeded American arms.
After 1970, Khomeini reached a turning point in his own outlook. He began to attack not merely the Shah in person but the institution of the monarchy, and to urge not just adherence to Islamic law but the establishment of an Islamic state.
The outbreak of widespread demonstrations against the Shah in 1978-the beginning of the revolution-caught Khomeini by surprise. But he saw a golden opportunity to achieve his life`s ambition and he stepped up his attacks on the government.
The Iraqi government, probably under pressure from Iran, tried to silence him, but when he refused to stop his activities, it ordered him to leave the country in October 1978. He tried to go to Kuwait but was refused entry. One of his aides persuaded him to move to Paris, and that was one of the key developments of the revolution.
Paris gave him exposure to the world`s press and thus helped establish his leading role in the revolution. Paris, with its telecommunications links with Iran, also permitted closer coordination with the revolutionaries inside the country.
Through months of growing turmoil, Khomeini became the figure around whom various opposition groups coalesced. Some were secular, some religious; some authoritarian, others liberal and sympathetic to the West. Several of these groups hoped to use Khomeini, then displace him after the revolution came to power, but they were eventually crushed by him and his clerical followers.
Opposition to the Shah reached such a pitch that he was forced to leave Iran on ”vacation” on Jan. 16, 1979. Khomeini returned in triumph on Jan. 31 and the monarchy fell Feb. 11.
Khomeini took no government position but assumed the role of supreme guide and arbiter in the Islamic state.
The Shah was fatally ill with lymphatic cancer when he left Iran, and President Carter`s decision later that year to admit him to the U.S. for medical treatment provoked an unprecedented crisis in Iranian-American relations.
On Nov. 4, 1979, revolutionary youths calling themselves ”students following the Imam`s line” occupied the American Embassy in Tehran and took most of the staff hostage.
The hostage crisis, which continued for more than a year, was a deep national humiliation for the U.S., culminating in a failed rescue mission authorized by Carter in April, 1980, that led to the destruction of two American aircraft in the Iranian desert and the death of eight U.S. servicemen.
The success of the Iranian revolution fed the flames of religious fundamentalism throughout the Islamic world. This led to anti-American demonstrations in many countries, the taking of hostages by Shiite fanatics in Lebanon and the formation of extremist groups dedicated to the overthrow of governments in a number of Moslem countries.
But the repressive nature of the Khomeini regime, and its failure to achieve military victory over Iraq, took some of the sheen off the revolution. At Khomeini`s death, no fundamentalist movement had succeeded in taking power outside Iran and his dream of establishing Islam throughout the world seemed unattainable. But fundamentalism remained a powerful force in many Islamic countries.
