The shah welcomed 600 guests – including the US vice-president Agnew, the Soviet president Podgorny, Hussein of Jordan, Prince Philip and his daughter Princess Anne, and Emperor Haile Selassie – to Persepolis, where they stayed in a specially built Golden City of luxurious circular tents, marked with the insignia of the Cyrus Cylinder and lined with Persian carpets woven with the face of each potentate. As 50,000 specially imported songbirds trilled, the guests of honour ate a feast, prepared by Maxim’s of Paris and featuring paon à l’impériale (imperial peacock) and 330 pounds of caviar, off Limoges plates, at a 230-foot table, lubricated by 2,500 bottles of Dom Pérignon champagne, 1,000 bottles of Bordeaux and 1,000 bottles of Burgundy, then they watched thousands of Iranian troops dressed in newly fashioned uniforms play Iranian heroes from Darius and Khosrow to Qajars and Pahlavis.
Yet there was disquiet: the songbirds dropped out of the sky, dead from the heat, there was a fight between French and Swiss waiters, Princess Anne murmured that she never wanted to eat peacock again. Farah hated ‘these ghastly celebrations’, later admitting the party had outraged religious Iranians ‘without our being really aware of it’. ‘Should I serve heads of state bread and radishes instead?’ asked the shah. In his Iraqi exile, Ayatollah Khomeini raged against that ‘Satanic feast’.
The shah had been spoiled by success. ‘For twenty-seven years, I’ve been at the centre of international affairs,’ he told Alam; ‘it’s hardly surprising I should be blessed with foresight.’ He still had a sense of humour, teasing his mother about her sex life with Reza Shah.
Yet Alam ‘noticed alarming changes’: rigidity and arrogance. ‘The Iranian people love me,’ he said ‘and will never forsake me.’ In February 1971, the shah made the self-congratulatory declaration that ‘Iran’s leadership of the Middle East is acknowledged across the world.’ Unsurprisingly he functioned in a conspiratorial world, convinced America was run by ‘an organization working in secret powerful enough to dispose of the Kennedys and anyone else who gets in its way’. He believed he was protected by a murderous providence: ‘I’ve learned by experience a tragic end awaits anyone who crosses swords with me: Nasser’s no more; John and Robert Kennedy died by assassins, their brother Edward disgraced, Khrushchev toppled …’
In October 1967, he had promoted himself to shahanshah – king of kings. Yet Alam begged him to liberalize the autocracy. When Farah suggested elections, he mocked her: ‘You’re becoming quite the revolutionary yourself. I’d like to see you run this country …’ The shah micromanaged SAVAK: 2,000 political prisoners were arrested and tortured. ‘Sophisticated societies have efficient systems of interrogation,’ he later explained. ‘In cases of betrayal of one’s country, anything goes.’
Even his love life spun out of controclass="underline" ‘A girl named Gilda,’ wrote Alam, ‘is spreading rumours around Teheran that His Majesty is head over heels in love with her.’ Gilda was ‘a beauty but vain and ruthlessly ambitious’.
‘Bloody woman,’ said the shah. ‘I met her a few times … The rumours are getting close to the Queen.’ Farah’s mother then threatened him with divorce ‘to the effect that her daughter had not become accustomed to luxury’.
‘Crap,’ said the shah. ‘After much debate,’ wrote Alam, ‘we agreed the bloody girl Gilda must be found a husband.’ But the shah still lived for his ‘visits’: ‘I passed on a letter addressed to His Majesty by a charming young creature,’ recorded Alam. ‘He was greatly flattered,’ until Empress Farah came to ask what they were talking about.
‘Affairs of state,’ replied the shah with a straight face.
In March 1972, the shah entertained a secret female visitor who was there to discuss affairs of state. The seventy-three-year-old Golda Meir, Israeli prime minister, a tough Zionist veteran (née Golda Mabovich in Kyiv) whom Ben-Gurion had predictably called ‘the only man in my cabinet’, found much in common with the shah, and together they backed the Kurds against Iraq.
Golda Meir was now receiving warnings of war from an extraordinary agent right at the centre of Egyptian power. Sadat promoted Nasser’s son-in-law Dr Ashraf Marwan, married to Mona Nasser, to be his chief adviser on foreign affairs. Yet a month later, in December, Marwan met a Mossad agent at London’s Royal Lancaster Hotel to offer his services to Israel. Mossad called him the Angel. His motives were family bitterness, frustrated ambition and conspiratorial glee. Now he began to warn that Sadat was planning a surprise attack. The intelligence was compelling, but Sadat twice delayed the war, undermining Marwan’s credibility.
Meir had focused on the rising terrorism against Israel. On 6 September 1972, Palestinian terrorists seized eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The terrorists were members of Black September, a unit formed by Arafat to hit Israel after King Hussein’s defeat of the PLO in September 1970. At least one hostage was castrated; all eleven Israelis and nine terrorists were killed when the West German rescue attempt ended in a catastrophic shootout. Two days later Meir formed Committee X to direct Operation Wrath of God to assassinate the twenty leaders behind Black September: in October, as the assassinations started, the Angel’s warnings became urgent.
Sadat and Assad met in Alexandria and summoned King Hussein, concealing the imminence of the planned assault but inviting him to join. On 25 September 1973, the king flew to Tel Aviv and warned Golda that the Syrians would attack. ‘Are they going to war without the Egyptians?’ she asked.
‘They’ll cooperate,’ replied the Hashemite. It sounded like a trap. Golda and Dayan believed the Arabs would never dare attack so soon after 1967.
On 6 October, the Arab armies caught Israel by surprise, pushing back Israeli forces from the Suez Canal and storming Israeli positions on Golan. Their air forces hit their targets, their hand-held Soviet Sagger missiles crippled Israeli armour, their anti-aircraft missiles brought down Israeli planes. The Syrians broke through Israeli positions; in desperate fighting, a few Israeli tanks just held the Syrians. But the Egyptians, with different aims, halted and dug in, letting Israeli throw everything at the Syrians.
By 8 October, Dayan was so downhearted he told Golda that Israel was in peril, asking, ‘Is it the end of the Third Temple?’ – his coded way of suggesting they might need to use nuclear weapons (code: Temple). Meir ordered the arming of thirteen tactical devices. Meir desperately asked Nixon for military supplies; Sadat and Assad requested more weapons from Brezhnev; both airlifted weapons to their proxies. But the worst was over: on the 9th the Syrians retreated. On the 11th, Israeli tanks counter-attacked and broke through, heading towards Damascus. On the 15th, Israeli forces crossed the Canal into Egypt and surrounded Sadat’s Third Army. Suddenly Cairo was imperilled. Sadat panicked, appealing to Nixon and Brezhnev, together or separately, to send soldiers to stop the Israelis, who kept advancing.
On the evening of 24 October, Brezhnev told Nixon, ‘I will say it straight that if you find it impossible to act jointly with us in this matter, we’d face the necessity to consider taking appropriate steps unilaterally.’ Brezhnev dispatched airborne divisions towards Egypt. Kissinger rushed to the White House. ‘What’s going to stop them,’ he asked, ‘flying in paratroopers? Shall I wake the president?’ But the soused president had passed out, ‘distraught’ about the growing clamour for his impeachment. Kissinger, now secretary of state, asked Sadat to withdraw his request for Soviet and American intervention and reassured Brezhnev, but he moved nuclear readiness to DEFCON 3. Brezhnev was shaken. Sadat withdrew his request; Brezhnev sent a conciliatory message as Kissinger shuttled between the combatants, finding Meir a ‘preposterous woman’, Assad surly and Sadat admirable. Assad and Sadat had both won respect but used it differently. Assad had moved to extend Syrian power into Lebanon, position himself as chief enemy of Israel and found a dynasty. As for Sadat, Kissinger thought he ‘had the wisdom and courage of the statesman and occasionally the insight of a prophet’. Now he would risk everything to make peace.*