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Show Page Twenty - The Springville Herald - July 15, 1982 , 1 Ha pinjr8 immm - - ' ' iiijiiinn iu,i .1 in Editor's note: This is the fourth in a series of stories of personal accounts ac-counts of the Iranian, revolution written by Chris Tahbaz. By Chris Tahbaz Contributing Reporter The two days after the closing of the airport were some of the most frightening of the revolution for my family and I.'We wondered if the airport would reopen as promised, or if we would remain in Iran in-definately. in-definately. To further our anxiety, nightly rioting was getting very near to ' our home, so near that we could hear it. The riots would always start im-mediatly im-mediatly after curfew. First, there would be a loud roar of voices, then individual shouts would become audible. An army officer would ac-casionally ac-casionally fire a shot. This continued for hours, well after we went to bed each night. On December 10, 1978, the airport reopened as scheduled. My family and I left Tehran on the first flight out of the city, to ; Frankfurt, Germany. I thought we would never return to the country. i I did not see the remainder of the Iranian Revolution, but watched it through newspapers and television broadcasts in the United States and England". It was a very short revolution. Open fighting between revolutionaries and the, army broke out in the middle of January, 1979. The. shah, fearing for his safety, fled the country on January 21. Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran during the first week . of February, and by mid-February, mid-February, the revolution was complete. The Empire of Iran had fallen. .: - In all actuality, there was no real fight for Iran. The old regime simply left the country in the hands of the revolutionaries. The United States.by offering the Iranjan government no covert intellegence help nor overt military help, left the shah with no solid political backing. Because of this, the shah left the country, hoping his army could subdue the revolution. He left the country in the hands of his Prime Minister, Shah-pour Shah-pour Bakhtiar. Bakhtiar allowed Khomeini to return to Iran, then decided that all was lost, so he too left. In this huge power vacuum, it was very easy for Khomeini and his assistants to step in. There was some serious fighting, obviously, ob-viously, but it was brief and limited. This transfer of power was wante'd by many Iranians; certainly, this was not an undesired revolution. The people had many valid reasons for the fight. First of all, most Iranians never saw the country's billion-dollar-plus oil revenues, which they thought were theirs. There were only a very few rich, and a great many poor in Iran. Secondly, many felt that the shah and his government govern-ment had betrayed Islam, the national religion. The shah carried out huge land reforms, taking land away from its traditional keepers, feudalistic "barons." Modern technological reforms were introduced to the country too quickly, thus damaging the traditional '.social structure. Finally, most Iranians resented the increasing foreign influence in their country. ' Khomeini, in the months after the revolution, attempted to reestablish an Islamic society, removed from the previously known kingdom. He set up a provisional government under the direction of Mehdi Bazargan, a popular nationalistic leader, and renamed the country "Jomhuri-e- . Eslami Iran" (The Islamic Republic of Iran). The first item on the new government's agenda was change. Alcohol, movie theatres, and other "evil" influences in-fluences were outlawed. Names and locations bearing any relationship to the shah or royalism in general were changed. Neighborhoods were governed by small "Komitehs" (committees), (com-mittees), and a national security force was formed. for-med. Some of the changes, however, were not so peaceful. In the first few months after the revolution, over 500 people were executed by the new government. Some of the victims were officials of the old regime, while others were considered con-sidered social enemies. During the greater part of 1979, my family spent time in the United States, England, and Egypt. In October, for various personal and business1 related reasons, we decided to return to Iran. My father made a trip to the country, and assured us that we would be safe. There was an accredited international school, and some of my mother's friends were in the country. We left for Iran on November 2. A day's layover in Amman, Jordan, kept us detained for awhile. As we were preparing to leave Jordan, Jor-dan, we sat in a hotel room, watching an English language television station. A reporter came on for a special announcement. The American Embassy in Iran had been invaded, and 100 hostages had been taken. In a few short hours, we were scheduled to board a plane for Iran. We had no way to contact my father, who was already in Iran, to tell him that we were having second thoughts about coming. To say we were frightened was an understatement. Student needs right shots Many High School seniors may not have enough immunizations to attend school this fall. A new Utah Law, passed last legislative session, emphasizes the need for school children to be protected against the preventable diseases, Polio, Measles, Rubella, Tetanus, Mumps, and Dephtheria. The local Public Health Nurse, Kathy Bell, has been working to make immunization information in-formation available. Her main focus during the summer has been with the seniors who will be excluded from school if they cannot Show evidence that they have been adequately immunized. im-munized. In order to be adequately immunized a child must have received: 4 DTP or Td, 3 POLIO, 1 MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella). 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