66. Memorandum From the Deputy Director of the Office of Greek, Turkish, and Iranian Affairs (Howison) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs (Talbot)1
SUBJECT
- Attempt on Life of Iranian Prime Minister
At 10:00 a.m. (2:30 a.m. EST) Prime Minister Mansur was shot and seriously wounded by a young man reportedly carrying a Koran and a picture of Khomeini as the Prime Minister arrived at the Parliament to present the new oil agreements. We tentatively infer that the assassin may have been a conservative supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini, who was exiled to Turkey for anti-regime activity at the time of ratification of our Status Bill. Although Khomeini’s motivation is primarily opposition to secularist reforms, he thus succeeded in getting official endorsement of his nationalist (in this case, anti-American) pose. The attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, if the assassin’s sympathy for Khomeini is publicly established, has unfortunate implications of opposition to Iran’s relationship with the United States.
Though the event will tend to weaken the regime, it would require genius in mishandling the situation for it to precipitate the kind of chaos which has followed modern assassinations (successful) in Iran. The Shah is in personal charge of the situation, having returned immediately from the ski resort above Tehran.
The wire services have noted that the assassin is young, but have not labelled him a religious fanatic yet. They have clearly labelled Mansur a progressive reformist. The wire reports leave room for the almost certainly unjustified inference that the assassin opposed the oil agreements.
- Source: Department of State, NEA/IRN Files: Lot 69 D 484, Iran 1965, POL 23–8, Demonstrations, Riots. Confidential. Drafted by Howison. A notation on the source text indicates that it was seen by Rusk.↩