Death Of The Ayatollah : Europe Responds Warily on Khomeini : Concern for Hostages, Future of Iran Leads to Guarded Reaction

With the fate of Western hostages and the “death sentence” against British author Salman Rushdie still in limbo, European governments reacted guardedly Sunday to the death of Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

“I cannot make any considered comment on the death of the ayatollah,” said British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe in London. “It is bound to lead to some changes in Iran. We cannot yet begin to foreshadow what they will be.”

“An important event,” was all that French Foreign Affairs Minister Roland Dumas, carefully measuring his words during a press conference, would say about Khomeini’s death.

Volatile Force

Obviously relieved by the departure of such a volatile force in international relations, European officials nonetheless took pains to neither publicly rejoice nor mourn his demise. Clearly in the back of most minds was the uncertainty over possible consequences for the 18 Western hostages still believed held in Lebanon by pro-Iranian Shiite Muslim extremists.

George Joffe, a respected Mideast analyst in Britain, observed that the appointment of President Ali Khamenei as Khomeini’s successor seemed a compromise between radical and moderate political factions. That development, he said, would appear to rule out any immediate action on release of the hostages.

Joffe surmised that if moderates gain power in upcoming Iranian parliamentary elections, the hostages might be quietly freed, but he saw little hope of change if radicals maintained their strength.

In another carefully worded reaction to Khomeini’s death, Pope John Paul II on Sunday called for “respect and reflection.”

“Before the death of the Ayatollah Khomeini, a political and religious leader of his people, it is necessary to state with great respect and with deep reflection about his impact on his country and a considerable part of the world,” the pontiff said, as he flew from Iceland to Finland on his current five-nation Scandinavia tour.

Thread of Hope

In London, the brother of British businessman Roger Cooper, jailed in Tehran for the last three years on charges of espionage, saw a thread of hope in Khomeini’s death.

“A change from the present state of affairs could hardly make matters worse for him,” John Cooper said. “He’s had no justice. . . . Things can’t get any worse.”

Likewise, Amanda Hopkinson, a spokeswoman for the London-based International Committee for the Defense of Salman Rushdie, said she hopes new Iranian leadership will lift the “death sentence” issued by Khomeini against Rushdie for his book “Satanic Verses,” which Khomeini claimed was blasphemous.

“One hopes that a more moderate attitude will prevail,” Hopkinson said. “But at the moment the situation seems to be very confused in Iran. It’s difficult to know whom we are placing our hopes in.”

West German, Italian and Spanish reactions to the death also cautiously avoided any sense of celebration.

“We have always hoped that Iran would return to the circle of civilized countries and we can only keep hoping that today,” said a spokesman for the West German government, carefully avoiding specific comment on the dead Iranian leader.

Dreary Forecasts

Meanwhile, reactions in the large and historically important Iranian exile community in France ranged from jubilation to dreary forecasts of an impending civil war in their homeland.

Khomeini himself was a political exile in the Paris suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau for 117 days--after 15 years of exile in Iraq--before his triumphant return to Iran in 1979 on an Air France airliner.

Sunday afternoon, a few dozen Iranian royalists, supporters of Reza Pahlavi, son of the former Shah of Iran, celebrated Khomeini’s death by drinking champagne and distributing candy on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees in front of the Paris ticket office for the Iran national airlines.

At his large villa in Versailles, former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the first president of revolutionary Iran who fled the country in 1981 after being branded a moderate, said he feared the “Lebanonization” of his former homeland.

“It was the death of a dictator who even destroyed the last thing he touched--his successor,” Bani-Sadr said. In March, Khomeini dismissed his designated successor, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri.

Power Struggle

As a result, predicted Bani-Sadr and many others here, Iran faces a power struggle that could easily result in a bloody civil war.

“There will be a fight for power,” said Amir Taheri, another prominent Iranian political exile who was editor of Iran’s largest newspaper, Kayhan, until he fled to France in 1982.

Taheri predicted that the political fight would likely come between supporters of the ousted Montazeri and a coalition formed by backers of Khomeini’s son, Ahmed, and Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Speaker of Parliament.

He said the Khomeini-Rafsanjani faction has the advantage of controlling the state machinery, including the army. However, Montazeri is thought to be more popular among the middle class and the powerful bazari element of shopkeepers.

At best, Taheri and other analysts said, outgoing President Khamenei would serve only an interim role in leadership. Khamenei, who under the Iranian constitution cannot serve a third term in office, had already endorsed Rafsanjani as best qualified to take over the presidency.

The United States, said Taheri, “has cause to rejoice in the long run.”

Personal Vendetta

“The United States is a natural ally of Iran, but working relations had become impossible because of the ayatollah’s almost personal vendetta against the U.S., which he called ‘the Great Satan,’ ” Taheri said.

Meanwhile, the Ayatollah Mehdi Rouhani, 52, a distant relative of Khomeini who acts as spiritual leader for Shiite Muslims living in Europe, cautioned against any intervention by foreign powers.

“I ask the great powers not to intervene,” Rouhani, a moderate leader who has a doctorate in philosophy from the Sorbonne and who has lived in Paris since 1962.

The news of Khomeini’s demise came to many Iranian exiles living in Europe by way of coded telephone calls from their relatives and friends back home.

“In the Iranian language, the first letters of ‘aunt’ and ‘Khomeini’ are the same,” explained Behzad Daroush, 26, a student at the American University of Paris, one of 40,000 Iranian exiles living in France. “I had several friends telephone from Iran using the code language: ‘The Aunt has died.’ ”

Many of the exiles interviewed were cautious about interpreting the death as a hopeful sign.

A computer engineer in Paris commented, “Obviously my reaction is happiness mixed with inquietude because I don’t think the Iranian regime will change. The problem is how the succession will be done. It could be bloody, but I don’t think it will be swift. There will be two or three groups struggling for power that could lead to assassinations and bombs.”

Others, including Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister before the fall of the shah, said many more lives would be lost before order would be restored in Iran.

“We have lost millions of human lives in the Khomeini regime and in the war (with Iraq). Alas, it doesn’t matter if we lose ten thousand more to break the mullahs (clergy members) and their dictatorship. It is better to lose a few heads and have a democratic regime.”