WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Irans Khomeini Was a Russophile, Former KGB

Resident in Tehran Says

Paul Goble

Helsinki, April 1 Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Iranian revolution whose
regime was formally inauguarated30 years ago today, was a committed Russophile,
according to the retired KGB officer who served as that organizations resident in
Tehran before and during that time.
In an interview published in this weeks Voenno-promyshlenniy kuryer, Leonid
Shebarshin, who retired from the Soviet intelligence service as a much-decorated
lieutenant general and who now heads his own company, talks about his years of
service in Iran, 1979-1983 (www.vpk-
news.ru/article.asp?pr_sign=archive.2009.278.articles.conception_01).
Shebarshin, 74, says that the KGBs first chief directorate in which he served had
regularly predicted the fall of the shah, unlike the Americans and the Chinese who,
the retired KGB officer recalls, were impressed until nearly the end by the
outward trappings of the shahs regime. We did not make this mistake.
In May 1979, just before he departed for Tehran, Shebarshin says that he was told
by KGB chief and future CPSU leader Yury Andropov that left progressive forces
[in Iran] had no chance of coming to power and that many years would be required
for Iranians to become disappointed in the theocracy.
The former resident also describes the very different ways in which the Iranians
treated the US and Soviet embassies, invading both in the course of November
1979 but not seizing any of the Soviet diplomats, and about the way in which
specialists on the USSR who were working in the shahs intelligence service
survived while those working on other questions did not.
Moreover, he discusses the extremely negative impact of the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in December 1979 on Iranian attitudes and also the adverse
consequences for Moscow of Iraqi use of Soviet airplanes and weapon systems
during Baghdads attack on Iran at the behest of the Americans.
And Shebarshin describes what he says were the intelligent and pragmatic
qualities of the Iranian leaders who maintained their economic relations with the
Soviet Union and did not force out most Soviet workers in the country, although
Tehran did force all Americans and most Europeans to do so.
But perhaps the most important comments in the current context are Shebarshins
description of the pro-Russian attitudes of Ayatalloh Khomeini. Although the
former KGB officer acknowledges that he unfortunately did not have direct
personal ties with the leader of the revolution, he provides a remarkable vignette
into the thinking of the Islamic leader.
At the end of December 1979, after Moscow had sent its forces into Afghanistan,
the Soviet ambassador in Tehran travelled to Khomeinis residence in Qum to
explain why Moscow had taken the decision to intervene and to discuss the
possible consequences of that action for Soviet-Iranian relations.
The imam attentively listened to [the Soviet diplomat] and then said: You are
making a big error! And in general, [the Iranian leader] turned out to be right,
Shebarshin acknowledges. But then the former KGB officer makes the following
declaration: Imam Khomeini was a Russophile, however strange this may seem to
those who do not know the history of Iran.
Of course, the ayatollah was an opponent of godless socialism, but [he was also] a
man who had great respect for northern neighbor and belonged to an [Iranian]
Russophile family. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century,
Shebarshin explains, Iranian society was approximately equally divided between
Anglophiles and Russophiles.
And it turned out that already his upbringing in childhood and youth led Ruholla
al-Musavi al-Khomini to relate to Russia with respect, a background Moscow and
its KGB clearly recognized, valued, and exploited but one that many people
elsewhere not only did not know but considered absolutely impossible.