1 The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign ...

immodesty of women, and changes in the law of inheritance. Land reform affected the
Waqf, the giving of bequests of land to the religious establishments. The reforms were
contrary to the normal laws of inheritance. The National Front was opposed to land
reform because they believed that land distribution should be based on cadastral surveys;
on first determining what were viable pieces of land, and how could you create land
holdings large enough for individuals to survive under the new circumstances. That was
the Mossadeq point of view.
In Qom a number of the clerics made speeches against one recent law that had been
forced through the majlis by the shah, which the United States wanted, which was the socalled
Status of Forces Agreement. The nationalists generally opposed this law because it
was understood to be a “concession”, an abridgement of Iranian sovereignty, and the
religious people took this sensitive nationalist issue up as a cause along with the others.
The shah, after hearing that sermons had been given in the mosques and Qom, sent down
paratroopers, and killed, brutally, a number of the mullahs in the mosques, in one instance
bashing their brains out against the walls of the mosques. The paratrooper attack was an
atrocity. So a jihad (holy war) was declared. There was a march from Qom of the
religious, dressed in white shrouds. They really were profoundly affected on a deeply felt
jihad. No one expected this. The nationalists had no idea that this issue would create such
a huge popular uprising. Tens of thousands, came from Qom, hundreds of thousands
gathered when they came into Tehran, and in the end many hundreds of thousands rioted.
The shah sent the troops into battle, in American tanks of course, and killed about six
thousand people, six thousand on their approach to Tehran and then the battle in Tehran
itself. I was in the midst of some of these battles, observing, and I was almost killed in
one case, around the university.
Q: What happened?
MILLER: Well, the Shah’s troops were machine-gunning at the people in the streets.
Q: Was there much opposition?
MILLER: Yes, everyone.
Q: Well, I mean opposition in that these were armed people shooting at soldiers or was
this pretty much …
MILLER: No, they were unarmed. They had no weapons. They were being shot down.
They were just pressing forward in their frenzied lunatic way. Bullets were firing
everywhere, and the mob came very close to where I was standing and there were bullets
firing very close to me. So Khomeini emerges for the first time. I reported this, at this
time, about this unknown clerical leader. Khomeini was taken prisoner and sentenced into
exile. The importance of the uprising was that in the absence of anything else, that is the
nationalist opposition, the religious people had this force to bring the populace into the
60