On June 5, 1963, the Pahlavi government, by the arrest of Ayatollah Khomeini, plunged into a whirlpool that devoured the imperial monarchy fifteen years later.
On the afternoon of June 3, 1963, Ayatollah Khomeini, at the ceremony held to commemorate the anniversary of Ashura, delivered a speech at the Feyziyeh Seminary in which he drew parallels between the Umayyad Caliph Yazid and the Shah.
Addressing a large gathering of people, seminary students and scholars, the Ayatollah exposed the treasons of the Pahlavi regime to the Iranian nation. He pointed out: “They are against the foundations of the divine religion of Islam and the scholars and aim at destroying Islam and the scholars. Oh, people! You should know that our Islam and country are threatened. We are deeply concerned about the situation of Iran and the state of the Shah’s despotic regime.”
He also denounced the Shah as a “wretched, miserable man,” attacked his policy, especially its support of Israel, calling on him to learn from his father’s fate. Khomeini would refer to the removal of Reza Shah and his exile on the remote island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean by the British. On that day, SAVAK announced the arrest of Ayatollah Khomeini in a statement.
Two days later at four o’clock in the morning, security men and commandos descended on Khomeini’s home in Qom and arrested him. Ayatollah Khomeini’s influence and popularity were to the extent that the commandos refused his request for waiting only five minutes to allow him to perform his morning prayers, to take no risk of people finding of the detention. Moreover, they even did not dare to start the car engine and pushed the car for some distance as they feared the sound of the engine would wake the neighbours who would for sure prevent the arrest. They hastily transferred him to the Qasr Prison in Tehran. After nineteen days in the Qasr Prison, Ayatollah Khomeini was moved first to the Eshratabad garrison and then to a house in Tehran where he was kept under surveillance. Then on that date, severe rioting broke out in Tehran, Qom, Shiraz, Tabriz and other Iranian centers.
As dawn broke on June 3, the news of his arrest spread first through Qom and then to other cities. In Qom, Tehran, Shiraz, Mashhad, and Varamin, masses of angry demonstrators were confronted by tanks and paratroopers.
In Qom, Sayyed Mostafa Khomeini, the eldest son of Ayatollah Khomeini, reported his father’s arrest to the scholars of Qom and rushed to the Holy Shrine of Lady Fatimah al-Ma’sumah with a group of his father’s companions.
Many people rallied around the Feyzieh Seminary next to the Holy Shrine to hear Khomeini’s arrest, and to hear the words of Ayatollah’s son and some other clergy. Besides, Qom Grand Ayatollahs and the scholars gathered at the house of Ayatollah Mortaza Haeri - who was then chairman of the Islamic Seminary of Qom – to deliberate on the problems that had occurred. In the meantime, it was suggested that the scholars and the senior clerics be among the people to prevent the military from invading the people.
Although the action was delayed and many people outside the shrine were killed and wounded in the conflict with armed soldiers, a flare of anger ignited within them as the martyrs’ bodies were brought into the shrine courtyard. Soon, the army officers were stationed all over the city and several fighter jets flew over Qom.
In Tehran, events took place more widely. The news of Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrest spread mouth-to-mouth in the city, and the people closed the bazaars. Demonstrators attacked police stations, SAVAK offices, and government buildings, including ministries. Academics and students also marched off the streets of Tehran University toward 24th Esfand Square, closing the universities, until the police officers stopped them from approaching further.
Multiple rallies in central Tehran were shaped into a massive protest that encountered the police guards. But the demonstrators confronted the guards, shouting “Death or Khomeini” and “Khomeini Khomeini, God is your protector, die, die, your bloodthirsty enemy.”
Some of the demonstrators, when marching towards Shah Square captured police station No. 5 and then moved toward Ark Square, the location of Tehran Radio Station. Along the way, large crowds joined them.
Each bunch of protesters were headed in a direction, which added to the confusion of the riot police. Therefore, an all-out confrontation with the demonstrators was ordered, and a large number of troops stationed in barracks around Tehran came to the aid of the police.
At noon, as most protesters dispersed for prayer and rest, the repressive forces of the regime reorganized themselves. In the afternoon, as people again took to the streets, the riot police and fresh soldiers attacked the demonstrators and shelled them.
Until sunset, the spontaneous action of the people who had taken to the streets to protest the arrest of Ayatollah Khomeini, which had pushed the regime to the brink of collapse, was stopped by the regime’s massacre. The government attributed the major source of the unrest to foreign elements.
The surprised government declared martial law and a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. The Shah then ordered a Division of the Imperial Guard under the command of Major General GholamAli Oveysi, to move into the city and crush the demonstrations. The following day, protest groups took to the street in smaller numbers and were confronted by tanks and “soldiers in combat gear with shoot-to-kill orders.”
The village of Pishva near Varamin became famous during the uprising. The people, wearing kafans (white burial shrouds as a sign of their readiness for death) began marching to Tehran, shouting “Khomeini or Death.” They were stopped by soldiers at a railroad bridge who blocked the way with machine guns. When the villager refused to disperse and attacked the soldiers “with whatever they had,” the regime attacked and brutally suppressed them, killing and wounding a large number of the defenceless people. Whether “tens or hundreds” were killed is unclear. It was not until six days later that the order was fully restored. Similar events occurred in Tabriz, Shiraz and some other cities in the country.
According to evidence, police files indicate 320 people from a wide variety of backgrounds, including thirty leading clerics, were arrested on June 3. The files also list 380 people as killed or wounded in the uprising, not including those who did not go to the hospital “for fear of arrest,” or who were taken morgue, or who were secretly buried in mass graves by security forces.
Hardliners in the regime (Prime Minister Asadollah Alam, SAVAK head Nematollah Nasiri) favoured the execution of Ayatollah Khomeini, as the main one responsible for the riots.
Grand Ayatollahs in Qom, Mashhad, and Najaf issued statements, condemning the regime’s actions and calling for the immediate release of Khomeini and the other scholars. On the other hand, dozens of scholars and prominent clerics came together in Tehran. In this gathering – since the regime had sought to execute him and thereby to nip the rebellion in the bud- they endorsed Ayatollah Khomeini’s knowledge and his religious authority (marja’iyyah). According to the Iranian constitution, the Shah was not allowed to act inappropriately with the senior religious authorities (maraji).
The June 3 uprising opened a new chapter in a grassroots resistance against the Pahlavi regime, which faced a legitimacy crisis after a CIA-engineered coup d'état on August 19, 1953. After the bloody uprising, however, the regime stepped up its heavy-handed crackdown, going on a spree of arrest, jailing, and execution of the clergy and dissidents, which fueled further unrest.
Throughout those years, Ayatollah Khomeini was sent to exile in Iraq, Turkey, and France for fourteen years, before returning to Iran which culminated in the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Following the Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the day to be marked as a national mourning day on the Iranian calendar, and he had always referred to this day as the forerunner of the formation of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, as he put it in one of his poems: “15 Khordad, I, too, am waiting for the opening of relief.”
Although the 15 Khordad Uprising (on June 5-6, 1963) met with severe repression by the ruling regime, it was the introduction of a movement that dismantled the Pahlavi despotism and Imperial government in Iran in less than two decades.
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