No regrets
Sir: 'Edward Mortimer must surely wish that the ground would open up every time he recalls the article in which he greeted the coming to power of Khomeini with Charles James Fox's words on the fall of the Bastille' (John Gross, book review, 30 April).
Surprisingly enough, no I don't. What I wrote was: 'Fox's words on the fall of the Bastille seem entirely apposite when one sits with a household in south Tehran listening to revolutionary songs broadcast for the first time on Iranian National Radio, cap- tured only an hour or so earlier by "the people" from the disintegrating remains of the Shah's armed forces.' Yes, those words did seem apposite to me, on that day and in that place, as they did to Fox in July 1789. How apposite they were, in either case, is for historians to decide. But it was part of my task, as a journalist, to try to convey to the Spectator's readers the mood of Tehran during those extraordinary days, and the quotation seemed ready-made for that pur- pose.
I don't know whether Mr Gross read the rest of the article in question. There are statements in it, such as that 'religious populism is certainly not fascism', about which I should be a lot more hesitant now. But it does also contain references to the disturbingly uncritical nature of the cult of Khomeini's leadership, and to the fact that many whole-hearted supporters of the revolution, while accepting Khomeini as its rightful leader, were 'suspicious of the religious movement's intentions and hostile to the idea of a Shiite theocracy'.
My conclusion was that the revolution was directed essentially against levels of oil production, and patterns of public con- sumption, dictated by Western rather than Iranian interest. (Contrary to Mr Gross's belief, the West never 'surrendered to OPEC'.) 'Iran may yet botch it,' I wrote, `as under Mossadeq it botched the attempt to nationalise its oil resources. But that did not stop the example being followed later by other countries, and it would not necessarily do so this time either.' This con- clusion is still relevant today.
Edward Mortimer
The Times,
200 Gray's Inn Road, London WCI
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