(2 of 3)
The Soviets have purged the central committee of the Tudeh of what they call "bourgeois-minded reformists" and put in their own people. The security agents have set up shop in Saltanatabad, a northern suburb of Tehran, in the former headquarters of SAVAK, the notorious secret police of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Recruits for the new revolutionary secret service include some Islamic Guards, the better members of an inefficient secret service created after the fall of the Shah, and former SAVAK agents who have lost none of their taste for brutality and their skill at torture. Their Soviet teachers, who are evidently members of Central Asian minorities who speak languages related to Farsi, behave like true Muslim believers. "We are Muslim brothers and must help one another," is the KGB line in the Saltanatabad spy school. The Soviet instructors even pray with their students, while ostentatiously riffling through their traditional Muslim prayer beads.
Rivalry between the Islamic Guards, the clergy's military arm, and the regular armed forces gave Moscow another valuable opportunity to exploit Iran's increasingly unstable situation. Fear of a strong opposition and disloyalty in the armed services has led such clergymen as Hojja-toleslam Ashgar Mousavi Khoeiny, the deputy speaker of the Majlis (parliament), to endorse Soviet offers to reinforce the military effectiveness of the Islamic Guards. Thus, for the first time, the Soviet Union has introduced its weapons into revolutionary Iran. Soviet advisers, forming the nucleus of a military mission, have begun teaching Islamic Guards and some strongly pro-Khomeini groups how to use heavy Soviet weaponry, including Katyusha rocket launchers.
Still another team of Soviet advisers is trying to help the Khomeini regime escape economic disaster.
Working with a group of East Germans, the Soviets are hoping to salvage hundreds of factories that are scarcely functioning because of poor maintenance, labor chaos and the flight of manpower abroad. Ironically, the Soviet specialists are striving to improve the distribution of consumer goods, one of the weakest links in the Soviets' own economy. Still, the experts from Moscow have accumulated a great deal of experience in rationing food and other essential goods. Iranians, who are suffering from chronic shortages of meat, eggs, cereals, kerosene and gasoline, recently received detailed questionnaires about their needs that were direct translations of those used in the U.S.S.R.
In what is evidently a coordinated effort to court the Islamic leadership, Cuba has dispatched Foreign Minister Isidore Malmierca Peoli to Iran eight times since the fall of the ' Shah. In addition, more than two dozen visits have been exchanged between Khomeini aides and high-level Cuban officials. An Iranian parliamentary delegation attended a large meeting in Havana in September with top Cuban leaders, including Fidel Castro. One delegate later told the Iranian parliament how Castro had praised Khomeini and his "anti-imperialist struggle." The Cubans reportedly urged Iran to open an embassy in Havana.