Persian Mirrors: The Elusive Face of Iran by Elaine Sciolino Page B

nothing to stop the crowds. From then on, Iran was like a headless body, awaiting the arrival of the ayatollah.
     
     
    Halfway into the flight to Tehran with Khomeini, Ghotbzadeh stood on the front row of seats, faced the crowd of journalists, and told us he had some bad news. “We have received a warning over the airplane radio that the Iranian air force has orders to shoot us down,” he said. Nevertheless, he added, the plane would continue on its course and try to land.
    I had never questioned whether to get on the plane. Neither had my editors at Newsweek in New York. I did not have the responsibility of a husband or children yet and I did not think much about death in those days. Like other young foreign correspondents, I was still a vagabond, searching for the story that could be the center of my work.
    My destiny, it turned out, was the revolution. Even then, I knew I had to go. My editors at Newsweek in New York agreed, although one did suggest I think twice because I might be raped. I reminded him that men could be raped too. Actually, the danger was worse than either of us knew. Years later, I learned that a number of the Shah’s generals, including General Amir-Hosein Rabii, the commander of the air force, had devised a plan to shoot down Khomeini’s plane. (A less drastic option, included in the plan, was to divert it to a remote part of Iran where the ayatollah could be put under arrest.) The generals took the plan to Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American National Security Adviser, seeking American approval. Brzezinski brought it to President Carter. The President, Brzezinski later told me, “wouldn’t have anything to do with it.” But that didn’t mean the Carter administration rejected the idea that the Iranians do it themselves.
    Brzezinski went on: “The United States is not in the business of assassinating people. The question that is legitimate to ask is whether the U.S. is in the business of preventing other people from assassinating their own countrymen.” There was nothing to stop the Iranian officers from moving against Khomeini. But, said Brzezinski, “One of the problems with Iranians is that they often talked more than they did anything.” In the end, the Shah’s generals did nothing.
    Journalists are always being manipulated, and they sometimes wittingly or unwittingly become part of the story. In retrospect, it isn’t unreasonable to think that this was one case where our presence may have changed history. Was our presence on the plane a factor in Carter’s decision? Would the Shah’s troops have been more likely to shoot down the plane if Peter Jennings, then a correspondent for ABC in London, had not been on board? Brzezinski insisted that our presence made no difference in the American decision. “The issue simply didn’t arise,” he said. Could I really believe that? Even today, I don’t know. What really mattered is that in the end the Iranian air force did not shoot us down, and we rode the ayatollah’s plane into history.
    When morning came, I saw Damavand mountain from my window. On the ground, dozens of the Shah’s troops were waiting for us on the tarmac. The massive plane dipped and turned as it struggled to circle the airport at low altitude. Slowly, three times around. And then, without warning, after twenty-five long minutes, the plane touched down in the gray-pink haze of Tehran’s morning sky. When Khomeini awoke, he did not rush to the door. The journalists were ordered to get off first. Just in case. But there was no gunfire, only a roar of chants, shouts of joy from the crowds who had come to greet their leader.
    While we were still airborne, Jennings and the ABC crew had been allowed to the front of the plane, and Jennings had sat down next to the ayatollah. As the plane entered Iranian airspace, Jennings asked the obvious question and Ghotbzadeh dutifully did the translating: “Ayatollah, would you be so kind as to tell us how you feel about being back in