Shah, I don't want the same to happen to you; I don't want you to become like your father.  Listen to my advice, listen to the ulama [learned clergy] of Islam.  They desire the welfare of the nation, the welfare of the country.  Don't listen to Israel; Israel can't do anything for you.  You miserable wretch, forty-five years of your life have passed; isn't it time for you to think and reflect a little, to ponder about where all this is leading you, to learn a lesson from the experience of your father?  If what they say is true, that you are opposed to Islam and the religious scholars, your ideas are quite wrong.  If they are dictating these things to you and then giving them to you to read, you should think about it a little.  Why do you speak without thinking?  Are the religious scholars really some form of impure animal?  If they are impure animals, why do the people kiss their hands?  Why do they regard the very water they drink as blessed?  Are we really impure animals? . . .

If some American's servant, some American's cook, assassinates your marja' [a scholar of proven learning and piety whose rulings are authoritative in matters of religious practice], in the middle of the bazaar [market], or runs over him, the Iranian police do not have the right to apprehend him!  Iranian courts do not have the right to judge him!  The dossier must be sent to America, so that our masters there can decide what is to be done! . . .

The Majlis passed it without any shame, and the government shamelessly defended this scandalous measure.  They have reduced the Iranian people to a level lower than that of an American dog.  If someone runs over a dog belonging to an American, he will be prosecuted.  Even if the Shah himself were to run over a dog belonging to an American, he would be prosecuted.  But if an American cook runs over the Shah, the head of state, no one will have the right to interfere with him.

Why?  Because they wanted a loan and America demanded this in return.  A few days after this measure was approved, they requested a $200 million loan from America and America agreed to the request. . . . Iran has sold itself to obtain these dollars.  The government has sold our independence, reduced us to the level of a colony, and made the Muslim nation of Iran appear more backward than savages in the eyes of the world! . . .

I don't know where this White Revolution is that they are making so much fuss about.  God knows that I am aware of (and my awareness causes me pain) the remote villages and provincial towns, not to mention our own backyard city of Qum.  I am aware of the hunger of our people and the disordered state of our agrarian economy.  Why not try to do something for this country, for this population, instead of piling up debts and enslaving yourselves? . . .

Let the American President [Lyndon Johnson] know that in the eyes of the Iranian people, he is the most repulsive member of the human race today because of the injustice he has imposed on our Muslim nation.  Today the Qur'an has become his enemy, the Iranian nation has become his enemy.  Let the American government know that its name has been ruined and disgraced in Iran.

The imposition of foreign laws on our Islamic society has been the source of numerous problems and difficulties.  Knowledgeable people working in our judicial system have many complaints concerning the existing laws and their mode of operation.  If a person becomes caught up in the judicial system of Iran . . . , he may have to spend a whole lifetime trying to prove his case. . . .

Huge amounts of capital are being swallowed up; our public funds are being embezzled; our oil is being plundered; and our country is being turned into a market for expensive, unnecessary goods by the representatives of foreign companies, which makes it possible for foreign capitalists and their local agents to pocket the people's money.  A number of foreign states carry off our oil after drawing it out of the ground, and the negligible sum they pay to the regime they have installed returns to their pockets by other routes.  As for the small amount that goes into the treasury, God only knows what it is spent on.  All of this is a form of "consumption of what is forbidden" that takes place on an enormous scale, in fact on an international scale.  It is not merely an evil, but a hideous and most dangerous evil. . . .

Our wretched people subsist in conditions of poverty and hunger, while the taxes that the ruling class extorts from them are squandered.  They buy Phantom jets so that pilots from Israel and its agents can come and train in them in our country. . . . Israel, which is in a state of war with the Muslims, so that those who support it are likewise in a state of war with the Muslims, and so great is the support the [Iranian] regime gives it, that Israeli soldiers come to our country for training!  Our country has become a base for them!  The markets of our country are also in their hands. . . .

You have neither a country nor an army now, but propagating activity is possible for you, because the enemy has been unable to deprive you of all the requisite means.  You must teach the people matters relating to worship, of course, but more important are the political, economic, and legal aspects of Islam.  These are, or should be, the focus of our concern.  It is our duty to begin exerting ourselves now in order to establish a truly Islamic government.  We must propagate our cause to the people, instruct them in it, and convince them of its validity.  We must generate a wave of intellectual awakening, to emerge as a current throughout society, and gradually, to take shape as an organized Islamic movement made up of the awakened, committed, and religious masses who will raise up and establish an Islamic government. . . .

So, courageous sons of Islam, stand up!  Address the people bravely; tell the truth about our situation to the masses in simple language; arouse them to enthusiastic activity, and turn the people in the street and the bazaar, our simple-hearted workers and peasants, and our alert students into dedicated mujahids [those engaged in jihad or holy struggle].  The entire population will become mujahids.  All segments of society are ready to struggle for the sake of freedom, independence, and the happiness of the nation, and their struggle needs religion.  Give the people Islam, then, for Islam is the school of the jihad, the religion of struggle; let them amend their characters and beliefs in accordance with Islam and transform themselves into a powerful force, so that they may overthrow the tyrannical regime imperialism has imposed on us and set up an Islamic government.

All the miseries we have suffered, still suffer, and are about to suffer are caused by the heads of those countries that have signed the Declaration of Human Rights [in 1975], but that at all times have denied man his freedom.  Freedom of the individual is the most important part of the Declaration of the Human Rights.  Individual human beings must all be equal before the law, and they must be free.  They must be free in their choice of residence and occupation.  But we see the Iranian nation, together with many others, suffering at the hands of those states that have signed and ratified the Declaration.

The US is one of the signatories to this document.  It has agreed that the rights of man must be protected and that man must be free.  But see what crimes America has committed against man.  As long as I can remember--and I can remember back further than many of you, for you are younger than I--America has created disasters for mankind.  It has appointed its agents both in Muslim and non-Muslim countries to deprive everyone who lives under their domination of his freedom.  The imperialists proclaim that man is free only in order to deceive the masses.  But people can no longer be deceived.  All these declarations they make, supposedly in favor of human rights, have no reality; they are designed to deceive.  They draw up some pleasant-looking, high-sounding declaration with thirty articles relating to human rights and then neglect to enact a single one of them!  The Declaration of Human Rights exists only to deceive the nations; it is the opium of the masses. . . .

Before it was the British that brought us misfortune; now it is the Soviets on the one hand, and the Americans on the other.  All our miseries are caused by those imperialists; if they would stop protecting the Iranian government, the people would skin them alive.  The Iranian government granted absolute immunity to the American advisers and got a few dollars in exchange.  How many American officers there are in Iran now, and what huge salaries they receive!  That is our problem--everything in our treasury has to be emptied into the pockets of America, and if there is any slight remainder, it has to go to the Shah and his gang.  They buy themselves villas abroad and stuff their bank accounts with the people's money, while the nation subsists in poverty. . . .

This [US President Jimmy] Carter fooled people for a time, and they said he would do all kinds of things if he came to power.  Later he said clearly--after all, liars have short memories--"There can be no question of human rights in countries where we have military bases; human rights must not even be mentioned."  For after all, freedom is part of human rights.  First he says human rights are inalienable, and then he says, "I don't want to hear about human rights."  Of course, he's right from his own point of view; he uses the logic of bandits.  The head of a government that has signed the Declarations of Human Rights says, "We have military bases in Iran; we can't talk about human rights there.  Respect for human rights is feasible only in countries where we have no military bases."  What miseries America, for all its boasting about human rights, has inflicted on the peoples of Latin America, in its own hemisphere!

Declaration issued from exile in Paris during anti-Shah demonstrations in Iran, 11 October 1978: According to the way Carter thinks, all the crimes, savagery, and repression the Shah practices represent efforts to establish democracy and find progressive solutions for social problems.  He accuses the Iranian people of being opposed to the freedom the Shah wishes to give them--as if all the strikes and protest movements taking place all over Iran were an attempt to evade freedom!  But he should realize that this kind of nonsense no longer has any effect and people have come to recognize the Shah for what he is.

Great people of Iran!  The history of Iran, even world history, has never witnessed a movement like yours; it has never experienced a universal uprising like yours, noble people!  Today primary school children of seven or eight stand ready to sacrifice themselves and shed their blood for the sake of Islam and the nation; when has anything like that been seen?  Our lion-hearted women snatch up their infants and go to confront the machine guns and tanks of the regime; where in history has such valiant and heroic behavior by women been recorded?  Today the thunderous cry "Death to the Shah!" arises from the heart of the primary school child and the infirm old man alike, and it has blackened the days of this vile Pahlavi regime and so shattered the nerves of the Shah that he seeks to calm himself with the blood of our children and young people.

Beloved sisters and brothers!  Be steadfast; do not weaken or slacken your efforts.  Your path is the path of God and His elect.  Your blood is being shed for the same cause as the blood of the prophets and the Imams and the righteous.  You will join them, and you have no cause to grieve, therefore, but every reason for joy.

[Shah] Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, the vile traitor, has departed; after destroying everything, he has fled.  In his time, only the cemeteries prospered; the country itself, he destroyed.  The economy has been disrupted and ruined, and years of continuous effort by the whole population will be needed to restore it; the efforts of the government alone, or a single segment of the population, will not be enough.  Unless the whole nation joins hands, our shattered economy cannot be restored.

You will remember that the Shah's regime carried out land reforms on the pretext of turning the peasants into independent cultivators, and that those reforms ultimately resulted in the complete destruction of all forms of cultivation.  Our agrarian economy was ruined, and we were reduced to depending on the outside world for all our essential needs.  In other words, Muhammad Reza enacted his so-called reforms in order to create markets for America and to increase our dependence upon America.  We were forced to import wheat, rice, and chickens either from America or from Israel, which acts as an agent of America.  In short, the so-called reforms constituted a blow that it will take us maybe as long as twenty years to recover from, unless all our people work hard, hand in hand.

Our educational system has been kept in a poor condition, so that our youth cannot receive a complete education in Iran; after being half-educated at home, at the cost of great suffering, they are obliged to go abroad to complete their studies. . . . That man destroyed all our human resources.  In accordance with the mission he was given as the servant of foreign powers, he established centers of vice and made radio and television subservient to immoral purposes.  Centers of vice operated with complete freedom under his rule.  As a result, there are now more liquor stores in Tehran than there are bookstores.  Every conceivable form of vice was encouraged. . . .

As for our oil, it was given away to America and the others.  It is true that America paid for the supplies it received, but that money was spent buying arms and establishing military bases for America.  In other words, first we gave them our oil, and then we established military bases for them.  America, as a result of its cunning policies (to which that man was also a party), thus benefited doubly from us.  It exported weapons to Iran that our army was unable to use so that American advisers and experts had to come in order to make use of them. . . .

I will never permit the former situation to be restored, with all its accompanying cruelty and oppression.  I will never allow Muhammad Reza to return to power, for that is what they are planning to do.  Yes, people, be alert, for the Shah has set up a headquarters where he is now and is establishing his contacts.  They want to return us to the period when all we knew was repression and America swallowed up all our wealth.  We will never allow that to happen. . . .

Army commanders, do you want to be independent?  Do you want to be the servants of others?  My advice to you is to enter the ranks of the people and to add your voices to their demand for independence.  The people want their army to be independent, not under the orders of American and other foreign advisers.  They are making this demand on your behalf, so you too should come forward and say, "We want to be independent and to be rid of those advisers."  But instead, you reward us by slaughtering the young soldiers on the streets who have joined the ranks of the people and thus saved the nation's honor as well as their own.

We would have welcomed a soothing expression of concern on the part of His Eminence, the Pope, or an attempt by him to discover why our nation has acted as it has.  Let him ask Carter why he enabled a man like the Shah to keep ruling us; let him inquire of Carter why he has brought to America, under his protection, the man who blatantly committed so many crimes and acts of treachery for more than thirty years, and why he now wishes to hatch conspiracies with that man. . . . We fear neither military action nor economic boycott, for we are the followers of Imams who welcomed martyrdom. . . . We are warriors and strugglers; our young men have fought barehanded against tanks, cannons, and machine guns, so Mr. Carter should not try to intimidate us. . . . As for economic pressure, we are a people accustomed to hunger.  We have suffered hardship for about thirty-five or fifty years.  Assuming that the Americans can impose an economic embargo on us by persuading all nations to sacrifice their own interests--which is nothing more than an idle dream, something that will never happen--we can always fast, or content ourselves with the barley and corn that we sow on our own land.  That will be enough for us. . . .

America is the number-one enemy of the deprived and oppressed people of the world.  There is no crime America will not commit in order to maintain its political, economic, cultural, and military domination of those parts of the world where it predominates. . . . Iran has tried to sever all its relations with this Great Satan and it is for this reason that it now finds wars imposed upon it.  America has urged Iraq to spill the blood of our young men [in border clashes that sparked the Iran-Iraq War], and it has compelled the countries that are subject to its influence to boycott us economically in the hope of defeating us. . . . This is a result of the Islamic content of our Revolution, which has been established on the basis of true independence.  Were we to compromise with America and the other superpowers, we would not suffer these misfortunes.  But our nation is no longer ready to submit to humiliation and abjection; it prefers a bloody death to a life of shame. . . .

I have said repeatedly that the taking of hostages by our militant, committed Muslim students was a natural reaction to the blows our nation suffered at the hands of America.  They can be set free if the property of the dead Shah is returned, all claims of America against Iran are annulled, a guarantee of political and military non-interference in Iran is given by America, and all our capital is released.  Of course, I have turned the affair over to the Islamic Assembly for it to settle in whatever way it deems best.  The hostages have been well treated in Iran, but the propaganda of America and its satellites has left no lie untold in this respect.  At the same time, our beloved young people in America and England have suffered the worst kind of indignity as well as physical and psychological torture.  No official in any international organization has defended these dear friends of ours, and no one has condemned America and Britain for their barbaric behavior.  I ask God Almighty that He grant all captive people freedom, independence, and an Islamic Republic.  And peace be upon the righteous servants of God.