Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

[James G]

Feb 9, 2018 14:31:10 GMT lordroel said:

Feb 9, 2018 14:17:29 GMT James G said:

Ah, let's not forget about Saddam. His early involvement in the mess I am creating will be important.

This is going to be a mess.

It will indeed. That starts with the assassination below.

[James G]

(6)

December 1978:

Protests inside Iran against the rule of The Shah had been undertaken by a large number of people yet the vast majority of the population had stayed away from them. Their support for their ruler or wish for him to be gone wasn’t publicly expressed by them taking to the streets. That changed in December. The people came out onto the streets. There were millions of them now where there had been tens of thousands beforehand. Even if the security forces and the army had been ordered to turn on them, they wouldn’t have been able to, not with those numbers. As to that army, the figure who were deserting was previously alarming but now outrageous. Men walked away from uniformed service, some killing their officers first. Like the street protesters, their political views and the future which they wanted for their country were multiple but they were united in the cause of opposition to The Shah. He himself – who had declared last month that he would lead the revolution rather than oppose it – tried desperately to maintain his position as he made more concessions to the demands of the opposition leadership with political prisoners released and promises made on elections; he once again was seeking a new prime minister too with his deck-chairs on-the-Titanic approach. What troops were still in the streets were ordered back to let the demonstrations continue so there was only very little trouble between them and the people. Some soldiers were given flowers by the people to show no ill intent. The protesters chanted for Khomeini, a man who was all things to all people. He was still stuck in Iraq though when the mass protests started at the beginning of the month and so inside Iran it was another religious leader, this time Ayatollah Taleghani (Shariatmadari still refused to take any leadership role), who along with Sanjabi from the secularists formed that united front as they professed to lead the people… all the while with the communists from the Tudeh snapping at their heels to be allowed to play with the big boys.

Iran was bulwark against communism for the United States. The country was an ally of the Americans with relations on regional security, the global oil trade and vital military contracts too. President Ford had been coming under pressure for months from within to first not let The Shah fall then later to help get rid of him because his continued presence put the stability of Iran in a dangerous situation. To abandon The Shah wasn’t that much of an issue for Ford himself yet it was for others though such as his secretary of state Kissinger. The CIA were now doing the opposite of what they had previously been doing and saying that the country was past its revolution and heading for civil war if something wasn’t done as the various opposition groups were arming themselves ready to fight if they had to. It would only take one spark… However, Ford couldn’t make a decision on the matter when it came to actively supporting The Shah or turning on him. There were all sorts of theories about the motives of Khomeini and also the influence that outside forces such as the Soviet Union might have in all of this. The only thing that Ford could agree to do was send an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and to also warn American military personnel in-country – those contracted to maintain the expensive equipment which supposedly projected Iranian military strength – to be prepared to leave if ‘the unthinkable’ happened and civil war did come.

In Moscow, General Secretary Andropov had convinced his colleagues of the danger from the Persian Trotsky that was Khomeini. It had then taken some talking and deliberations for them to decide that he must be dealt with before he endangered them all. There had been rumblings from some of ‘adventurism’ and this drew back into the ill-feeling among certain Politburo figures of that taking place now in Iran after it was already occurring in Central America: Soviet arms and money, used by Cuban surrogates, was keeping the fight going against the American-backed regimes in Guatemala and Nicaragua. Chebrikov kept on feeding the reports though from Najaf of what Khomeini was supposedly planning and Gromyko told his colleagues of how the West had no interest in getting involved in Iran as long as there was nothing to point to a direct, overt Soviet interference that they could identify easily. A decision was taken to see the end of the threat from the Persian Trotsky.

Days before the New Year, The Shah appointed his newest prime minister, a National Front colleague of Sanjabi in the form of Bakhtiar and struck an agreement with him where the royal family would take a vacation from Iran. It was a vacation which The Shah wasn’t intending to be returning from. He was running away, he knew the game was up. The people wanted Khomeini and SAVAK told him that Iraq was letting the exile leave and helping him return to Iran. Sanjabi had told The Shah though that they in the opposition would make sure that they had Khomeini under control. Now as to Khomeini, he arrived in Tehran on December 31st. He was met by adoring crowds… and a bullet too. He died in Iran at Iranian hands with the gunman being identified as a supporter of The Shah. The shocked and outraged mob killed the assassin before he could talk. The Shah had always spoken of the all-powerful KGB being active in his country though this he, nor anyone else for that matter, could have been foreseen as something they would do.

Iran would now erupt into civil war.

[hussar01]

Great to see this story alive!

[James G]

Alive and rebooted with some - not many - changes made. You know how fast I write too so expect more, much more!

Glad to see you here. Our admiral has built a forum and maintained it for several years through his own hard work. It is small but can only grow.

[lordroel]

Feb 9, 2018 19:41:05 GMT James G said:

Glad to see you here. Our admiral has built a forum and maintained it for several years through his own hard work. It is small but can only grow.

I do not know who you speak about, the credit for the activity on the forum goes to all members who post timelines like yours ore debate alternate history in general. 

[usnvet]

Glad to see it continuing

[James G]

Feb 9, 2018 21:00:20 GMT usnvet said:

Glad to see it continuing

Thank you. Plenty more to come. Won't take me more than a month, six weeks to catch up to where I was!

[lordroel]

Feb 9, 2018 21:12:10 GMT James G said:

Feb 9, 2018 21:00:20 GMT usnvet said:

Glad to see it continuing

Thank you. Plenty more to come. Won't take me more than a month, six weeks to catch up to where I was!

Six weeks, that long.

[James G]

Chapter Two – The Wars of ‘79

(7)

January 1979:

Everyone in Iran knew who had murdered Khomeini. He had been slain on the orders of The Shah. Beyond that, there were conspiracy theories upon conspiracy theories on who else was involved ranging from the CIA, the British, the Zionists, the Soviets and the Iraqis: they all had their motives for helping The Shah do this but what was important was that he was the one responsible. Those who had little regard for Khomeini all went along with the narrative that the man was a martyr afterwards because it made sense: it had been Khomeini who had been trying to bring down The Shah and The Shah had then played along with pretending that he was giving in and saying he would be exiling himself all the while planning to murder Khomeini at the last minute. That was reinforced too by the behaviour from The Shah following the killing of the returning exiled ayatollah when he at once went back on the promises made to the National Front leadership – they weren’t in fact promises, he said – and decided to stay to take charge of the situation following the assassination. Prime Minister Bakhtiar was asked to resign and when he refused, standing up to The Shah who wasn’t used to dealing with such behaviour, he was fired then arrested. Sanjabi complained about this: another arrest. The leading religious figures in the form of Shariatmadari and Taleghani were both targeted for arrest too with The Shah claiming that they were supporting the mass of rioting Iranians who were tearing the country apart. They couldn’t be found though. The SAVAK agents sent after them reported back that both men had vanished… there was no suspicion in The Shah that he wasn’t being told the truth on that matter nor that with Sanjabi his arrest had been done in the manner ordered. The Shah was no longer leaving and stayed in Tehran while around him the city was in chaos like most of the country.

The news of the assassination rocked the Iranian people into action. The murder of such a man as Khomeini was too much. They no long protested, they fought. Anyone who wanted to stand in their way regretted it. Almost all of the army shared the mood of the people on this and what members didn’t desert, stepped aside and let the people take out their anger day and night for almost a week. Every symbol of the regime to be found was trashed. Every symbol of the West got the same treatment. They went for the American Embassy – the den of spies – and burnt that down after storming it at night and the Iranian police leading the Americans there away to safety with the crowd in such a state where the lives of the diplomats were in mortal danger. Residences of The Shah were attacked soon enough too with his palaces being looted then burnt out as well. He watched from a helicopter – like he had done through the troubles of last year – when the Niavaran Palace went up in flames. The Shah went to a military base outside of his capital and tried to govern by issuing emergency decrees that no one was taking any notice of. The guard force there started slipping away and there were more SAVAK secret policemen brought in. Every city, every province was in revolt against The Shah and there was no one who wanted to fight for him. He kept on saying that the anger would burn itself out and he would make his case to the people in time. There were politicians he would appoint who would fix things so that the people knew that their ruler had their best interests at heart.

After six days of delusion, and a country in ruin where no one – politicians or religious figures had been able to stop that – was able to stop what happened, there finally come the moment where The Shah was removed from power. The opposition were brought into see him by those among the SAVAK whom he had considered loyal to him personally. The Shah hadn’t before dealt with such people in person due to the effects of the cancer ravaging him and therefore his appearance, but he was made to. They saw the state he was in and there was some compassion… just a little. However, meeting with Sanjabi and Taleghani was something he was forced to do and they told him that he had to abdicate. He could do so in favour of his son or leave the Peacock Throne empty. Either way, he was done. The country had to be saved and it couldn’t be with him there. Go, man, just go!

The Shah took the former option and departed from Iran the next day, heading for Egypt from where his queen hailed from. He left behind quite the mess which wasn’t something that anyone was going to be able to fix with just the news that he was gone, really gone this time.

[crackpot]

So glad to see this live on! Great work James.

[James G]

Feb 10, 2018 1:17:23 GMT crackpot said:

So glad to see this live on! Great work James.

Thank you. All of the prep I put into this the first time around wasn't something I was going to throw away. Thank you for reading. I'll be posting here daily!

[lordroel]

Feb 10, 2018 1:24:18 GMT James G said:

Feb 10, 2018 1:17:23 GMT crackpot said:

So glad to see this live on! Great work James.

Thank you. All of I'll be posting here daily!

Nice to see that, you like World War III timelines it seems.

[ingsoc75]

Thanks for continuing this story on here. I look forward to following it.

[James G]

Feb 10, 2018 14:47:15 GMT ingsoc75 said:

Thanks for continuing this story on here. I look forward to following it.

Thank you for following. I hope you do, any input is welcome too!

[James G]

(8)

January 1979:

There was a power vacuum in Iran which came with the departure of The Shah. Sanjabi attempted to fill it with his National Front government where he planned to bring in religious figures too but his authority was challenged from many quarters along with his legitimacy. His position of that of acting prime minister was supported by elements of the SAVAK, the military and what other elements of the government was left: none of these had the support of Islamists, the Tudeh and other small opposition groupings though. Moreover, the people wanted change and the secular National Front wasn’t it. Iranians wouldn’t give their backing to the secularists who were seen (unfairly) as more of the same. To rule Iran, others challenged for that leadership of the country in armed clashes across January.

The army wouldn’t fire on the crowds of people who now came out in support of the extremists. The numbers of protesters weren’t as strong as they had been in December and what was left was generally the hard-core supporters of religious and communist movements who shoved aside moderates, reformers and such like to oppose the military in the few instances when they did stand their ground and instead go after the other side. This was done through the use of armed militias. There were the Islamic Marxist People’s Mujahedin (MEK) who were the biggest but split themselves between support for the Islamists and also non-Tudeh communist groups. The Tudeh had co-opted the Fedai Guerrillas to their side. The Maoist-inspired EMK wanted nothing to do with either of the two big extremist groups and fought them both plus government forces. There were Kurdish nationalists and Kurdish communists. Street thugs were being organised by the Islamists too though they had little organisation and zero discipline. Apart from the latter, who had rather serious dedication to fight in memory of Khomeini, these groups all had access to arms from domestic & foreign sources as well as an established network of support from years of being underground. Their ranks had swelled with army deserters and they fought.

Mid- and late-January saw Iran tear itself further apart with death and destruction. Urban areas saw much guerrilla fighting though across the provinces too there was a lot of trouble. Much of Iran’s oil infrastructure was left in ruin, so too its military capabilities. Human rights abuses were widespread and death squads operated. The government tried to fight fairly and this left them with one hand tied behind their back against others who had no concept of acting in good faith nor following the laws of warfare. Sanjabi himself found himself targeted in an attempted coup d’état which went wrong when certain military officers tried to topple him but when their bomb missed him, they went after each other. Meanwhile, the rebel militias took territory and fought each other while pushing aside government forces who continued to haemorrhage their own numbers. The MEK leadership did an about-turn soon enough and came out in support of the Tudeh when promises were made by the new leader of Iran’s communists in the form of Kianouri who had returned from exile in Eastern Europe: the former Tudeh general secretary Eskandari – who had been opposing Soviet ‘aid’ for some time now – was pushed aside after he wanted to do a deal with the National Front when left aghast at all of the killing. As to the Islamists, their street thugs and what parts of the split MEK they had couldn’t fully fight off the communist militias plus also the Maoists in the EMK who were trying to carve out their own piece of the pie. The Tudeh pushed its nationalist message and this alienated much Kurdish support which could have come their way yet the Kurds fought with the Islamists rather than them.

There was a tilt towards the Tudeh in the support of the people not caught up in the fighting directly. Away from that, where the communists had control, they started to do what The Shah had promised and what the National Front had said they would do too: bring about equality and punish those whose actions were caused injustice to the people. The communists were quick in the propaganda war here as they oversold what little they did but they were doing something where all that had come before had been empty words. Sanjabi was making his statements from Tehran about what he would do, and the Islamists had their own ideas, but the Tudeh were already in action. This mattered. It mattered in so much as there was a near dearth of internal opposition in areas under Tudeh control – that wasn’t the same elsewhere – and when the state military lost soldiers from its ranks, those deserters quickly went over to the communists rather than to anyone else. Unless something dramatic happened, the Tudeh were on course to win.