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In the hostage crisis, some Western analysts believe, Khomeini is torn two ways. He seized on the Shah's admittance to the U.S. for medical treatment as a heaven-sent opportunity to focus all popular discontent and criticism on two hated scapegoats, the deposed monarch and the Americans, and incited a wave of fury that culminated in the seizure of the U.S. embassy. (Some intelligence sources think that the Ayatullah genuinely feared the Shah might die of cancer before Khomeini could exact his revenge.) But Khomeini did not think through the consequences, and—implausible though it now seems—may actually be looking for a way out. According to this analysis, Khomeini recognizes that the wave of anarchy unloosed in Iran by the violent emotions of the confrontation with the U.S. is a threat to his dream of an Islamic republic, the establishment of which is his overriding goal. At the same time, he will not accept any settlement that would appear to be a defeat. If he feels totally boxed in, he just might seek an outlet in national martyrdom, by provoking the U.S. to military action.
In Qum, Khomeini lives as an unassuming man of God. In his sparsely furnished house, he is surrounded by the cheerful noise and confusion of a typical Middle Eastern home. He evidently enjoys the company of his 14 grandchildren. He is said to have a weak heart, has suffered from a form of undulant fever and can work for only a few hours a day. Still he performs the devout Muslim's daily ritual of prayer without visible effort. He subsists on a sparse diet of rice, bean curd, yogurt and raw onions, supplemented now and then by a slice of melon or a bit of mutton. There are some signs that power has begun to intoxicate him. He has admitted enjoying the adulation of the crowds, and he took personal command of the government, though he had originally said he would not, apparently because he decided no one else could be trusted to carry out God's will. Another Iranian ayatullah has observed that Khomeini, because of his long career in opposition to the Shah, is "a good wrecker but a bad builder."
Indeed, Khomeini's Islamic state is planned and governed in conditions of primitive chaos. Ambassadors and government ministers as well as peasant petitioners wait for their audiences in an antechamber lit by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Two mullahs stand guard over the residence's only link to the outside world: four single-line telephones.
The mullahs or Khomeini's son Seyyed Ahmed, about 35, handle all the calls; the Ayatullah does not deign to use this modern invention. That disdain could well stand as a symbol of the Ayatullah's whole rule, which aims at creating, to ward the end of the 20th century, a modern version of his ideal 7th century state. In one sense he has succeeded: Iran is undoubtedly the only major nation that is ruled by a mystic philosopher-king sitting cross-legged on the floor of a bare room in a dusty provincial town. -