When the cowardly western leaders coerced the Shah to flee Iran (in the name of peace) near the end of the Carter Administration, the Popular Front that amalgamated the entire opposition of every kind, democratic and mostly otherwise, naturally included the ever power-hungry Communists.  They all were purged after the mad Platonic Expert Scholar Ruhollah Khomeini, using force, took over.  After first purging all his non-followers, he even purified his own boot-licker organization.  If your memory is good, you may recall that his primary spokesman for years, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh  (the English-speaking business-suit wearing mouthpiece) was also executed.  Consolidating power was so perfectly Totalitarian that even Stalin would have admired his fanaticism.

If you drop back to the very beginning of Iranian ‘politics’ after the Shah but before the Khomeini coup d’etat, you may remember that, for a number of days, there were masses of Iranians parading around.  This was years before I had cable TV, CSPAN and the originally honest CNN, but PBS’s MacNeil-Lehrer Report shared some interesting news films.  I distinctly remember the description that there were 5 Grand Ayatollahs with lots of followers.  One of them had a sweet cherubic face and seemed to be a genuine rival of the Devil Incarnate, the mad Ruhollah Khomeini.

I have never encountered any ‘news’ about any of these Ayatollahs since.  Whatever happened to Shiite religious leaders other than the Devil and his sons and followers is a total mystery to me.  Did the Devil purge all the religious leaders as he did everyone in politics?  I have no idea.  Do you?