(2 of 2)
Police detained six suspects. Among them: the owner of the Rex, who was charged with negligence for having ordered his employees to lock the exits to prevent terrorists from entering the theater. But opposition groups outside Iran accused SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, of setting the blaze in order to provoke a backlash against dissident groups. Many Iranians, however, blamed Ayatullah Khomeini, a Shi'ite mullah (religious leader) who has lived in exile in Iraq since 1963. Khomeini swore unrelenting enmity to the Shah after hundreds of his followers were killed while protesting the monarch's land-reform program. Alone among Shi'ite leaders, Khomeini failed to condemn the Abadan atrocity.
Khomeini's ominous silence was further evidence of a developing split between the exile and more moderate Shi'ites within Iran. Khomeini is not only supported by radical Iraq and Libya but also is suspected by Western intelligence sources of receiving encouragement from the Soviet Union as well. Muslim leaders object not only to Khomeini's flirtation with the left but to the fact that his adherents in Iran use gangland tactics to frighten moderates.
The division among the Shi'ites could provide the Shah with a chance to isolate the extremists. That would allow him to pursue his plan to hold free parliamentary elections next year. So far, however, the otherwise efficient Iranian regime has not been able to take advantage of its opportunities. The Shah's forward-looking Premier, Jamshid Amouzegar, had better luck coping with the problems of industrialization than negotiating with Shi'ite mullahs. Unable to bridge the gap between mullahs and modernists, the otherwise able Amouzegar resigned early this week, and the Shah quickly replaced him with Jaafar Sharif-Emami, chairman of the Iranian Senate.