The phone rings in the main office of the Presidential Palace in Baghdad. Newly “appointed” president, Saddam Hussein, answers it.
“Hello”?
“Salaam Saddam, it’s me”.
Saddam instantly recognizes the soft spoken voice, and tries to conceal his annoyance.
“What can I do for you, Mohammad Reza”?
Iran and Iraq had been in strained relations throughout the sixties and seventies, largely over disputed claims regarding the Arvand Rud/Shatt al-Arab waterway. The two had strategically backed armed insurgent groups against each other, with Iran supporting the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraq supporting Arab separatists in the Iranian province of Khuzestan. Saddam personally met with the Shah in Algiers to sign a diplomatic treaty to end informal hostilities, and now the two now have ostensibly a more amicable relationship. Yet in secret, Saddam has not taken his eyes off the “Persian menace”.
The Shah answers.
“You’ve probably seen the news the past few months. Thing are getting worse here, and for the first time, I’m not sure if I have the ability to control the demonstrations breaking out across the country. They’re all chanting for that bearded rat Khomeini! I know he’s there in Najaf making his seditious speeches about me”.
Saddam senses where this conversation is headed.
“Can you get rid of him for me, Saddam”?
“You want him dead”?
The Shah suddenly hesitates. Initially, he meant for Saddam to exile him out of Iraq. Somewhere far away, where he wouldn’t be as much a nuisance. But now he begins to consider the thought of having him dead entirely. If he kills him, he’ll likely turn Khomeini into a martyr, a new Imam Hussain to his treacherous and corrupt Yazid, and may only inflame the revolutionary agitation inside his country. But if he doesn’t, there’s the chance that Khomeini may one day return to Iran and seize power for himself and his Velayat-e Faqih. The Shah takes the plunge.
“Yes. Can you make it happen”?
Saddam believes the final days of the Shah’s regime are counting down, and that he’ll pick up the pieces from a crumbling Iran.
“Of course, I’ll send a Republican Guard agent to terminate that man from Qom, once and for all”.
So what happens next? If the Shah is still forced to flee Iran by early 1979, who takes power afterward? Does the more democratic Bakhtiar government established as a caretaker regime for the Shah hold onto power without being pressured by Khomeini, or does it too collapse under the weight of internal pressures? Do the revolutionary, theocratic minded clerics like Ayatollah Beheshti and Montazeri come out on top in place of Khomeini, or do the Islamic liberals and secular nationalists like Mehdi Bazargan and Karim Sanjabi prevail in forming a largely secular, democratic republic?