68. Terror in Tehran (Part 2)

In October 2024, I published a blog post (58) about my early visits to Iran in 1965.  This was followed, 4 weeks ago, by another post (66 – Terror in Tehran – Part 1), in which I wrote about my visit in 1981, my flight with Iran Air and my arrival in Tehran for business meetings with Iranian officials.

The Australian Chargé d’Affaires had met me at the airport and taken me to my hotel. I had then attended the planned meetings, including one with an Iranian minister and, after this particular meeting, had had dinner on my own and gone to bed early. Having taken sleeping tablets, I slept well and woke up rested and refreshed. In this post I will try to describe what happened to me on my second day in Tehran.

After having showered and dressed I had taken the hotel lift down to have breakfast. I remember that it was very quiet in the dining room. No other guests seemed to be seated at the tables. The waiters were just standing around and kept looking at me as if there was something wrong with me. It made me feel uneasy.

After breakfast I went back to my room and from that point onwards, everything seemed to be happening at once. One of the young men, who I had met the day before, phoned me in my room and asked if I was alright. I said yes, thank you, and told him that I had slept well. He then asked if I had heard the sirens and all the noise in the streets. No, I said, I had not heard anything. I had slept solidly. He then informed me that there had been big explosions in the city and that many people had been killed. He thought that it was no longer safe for me to stay in the hotel and offered to pick me up and take me to his own house.

Next, Kevin from the Australian Embassy phoned. He confirmed that there had been an explosion and that there had been casualties and he gave me the unwelcome news that he thought that the reaction of the people in the city would be unpredictable. He said that it would probably be better for me to try to leave the country immediately.

The target of the attack had been the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party. Many government people had been killed. The situation in Tehran was now tense and volatile. He said that he would send a car to the hotel and asked if I could be packed and in the lobby within an hour. He advised me to go to the airport and, as I had a confirmed airline ticket for later in the week, to try to get a seat on any flight out of the country.

What I did not know at the time was that 72 people had been assassinated and that the government minister I had met the previous afternoon was one of them. Several other ministers were killed, as well as the Chief Justice, Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, who was the second most powerful figure in Iran after Ayatollah Khomeini.

Kevin’s phone call obviously startled me and shook me up. I tossed my clothes into my suitcase, gathered my papers and checked out of the hotel in a hurry. To my relief he embassy car arrived promptly at the hotel entrance with a driver who I think was a Sikh, because he was bearded and wore a dastār (turban). Despite the circumstances, he gave me a big smile when he saw me waiting in the hotel lobby and he told me straightaway that it could well turn out to be a difficult trip to the airport. That we should expect roadblocks, possibly men toting guns and many “Revolutionary Guards”.

He was right! It did take us a long time. We were stopped several times and each time I felt “on edge” because of the realisation that I was a foreigner who had just arrived the previous day and who was now in a hurry to get to the airport and out of the country.  I thought that this might look suspicious to them after the upheaval during the night. The men who stopped us did not speak English and I was half expecting that I would be detained by them for questioning. Each time it was my driver who did all the talking with the men who stopped us and, luckily, he was able to convince them to let us through. I think I heard him saying: “diplomatic, diplomatic”, but that may have been my imagination, which was in overdrive.

At the airport there was great confusion all around. Many people were prevented from entering the departure hall. I was stopped, once more, by men who searched me and my suitcase. They appeared suspicious about the purpose of my visit, and, of the papers I was carrying. They did look at the documents, but I think that they could not fully understand the English text, so other people were brought in. I was asked why I was in Iran and why I was leaving in such a hurry.  I explained to them that I was there for business purposes. By then I was getting quite worried that I might be detained, which would not have been a pleasant experience. Anything could have happened to me.

Fortunately, and to my great relief, they allowed me to go inside the airport building and I was able to proceed to the check-in counter, which was still operational and where, luckily, they gave me a seat on an Iran Air flight, leaving for Frankfurt in Germany later in the day. I received a boarding card and made my way – very slowly – through security, immigration and customs and past more men who I thought were revolutionary guards. They were everywhere in the airport and, almost certainly because of the bomb attack during the night, they were checking and double checking everyone trying to leave the country. It took many hours and people appeared to be very anxious.

When the flight was called, we had to walk outside the terminal building to the aircraft and climb up the aircraft stairs. Even at that point some people were being taken away by men in civilian clothes. It was heartbreaking to see. I can remember well a woman who screamed as she was dragged away. This was after we had passed all the other customs, immigration and security checks.

The plane I boarded was again a 747. This time I was allowed to take the seat which corresponded with the number printed on my boarding pass, but it was still an all-economy flight. We finally took off. I remember that it remained silent in the cabin for the first half hour or so, but after that people began to relax. I can still picture a woman sitting in front of me getting out a whole string of credit cards and displaying them for us all to see. I don’t remember much else of the flight, but we safely arrived in Frankfurt, and a more normal world.

In Frankfurt, I was able to get a flight, leaving the same day, to Singapore where I spent a few days in the company’s local office and from where I could phone Sue and tell her a little about my “adventure”. I eventually arrived back home on 4 July 1981. The huge bomb blast on 28 June 1981 became world news and is now recorded in the history books as the “Hafte Tir Bombing”.

Aftermath

In Part 1 of this story, I mentioned the BBC’s newsflash in 2019 which stated that the European Union had imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian Intelligence over their alleged assassination plots.

The newsflash stated that, according to the then Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister, two Iranian refugees had been “liquidated” in The Netherlands a few years earlier.  One of the two was a Mr Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, who had been living, with his wife and his teenage son, in Almere, in Holland, under an assumed identity. Men, dressed head-to-toe in black, had opened fire and killed him in front of his house.

Mr Samadi was the person accused of having been involved in the attack in Tehran described in my story. He had been sentenced to death in absentia by an Iranian judge but had apparently fled to The Netherlands and been given a permit to stay. He worked as an electrician (electro-monteur) for a Dutch company, in the field of “energy”. The newsflash stated that, in the past, Iran had used the militant group Hezbollah to assassinate people. I also read that a well-known Dutch crime reporter thought that Hezbollah had recruited criminals from the Dutch drug scene to carry out this killing.

Final comment

In 1983 I met up with the Iranians again in Vienna and, in 1984, I went back to Tehran with a delegation from our company’s London office. This last visit was uneventful. The discussions were civilised and took place over several days.

In more recent times, I have had further discussions with Iranian people in Australia, on completely unrelated matters, and I have always felt relaxed and positive towards them during these encounters.

A new generation has emerged in Iran. They are the younger people who did not experience the original (1979) revolution. I do wish them well in these uncertain times.

O.P.

P.S. On Sunday, the 30^th of May, Sue will publish “A Tribute to the America I loved”, a heart-felt story of her teenage years in Connecticut.