Ayatollah Khomeini guarded by a French policeman…the French Government played host at a time when Tehran was rocked by violent protests against the Shah of Iran.
In 1978, as protests against Shah Pahlavi swept across Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini was living in a cozy house in the Parisian suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau, engineering an Islamic revolution that would soon shake the world. Under the watchful eye of the French government, Khomeini met regularly with journalists and actively campaigned for the shah’s overthrow. In fact, when Pahlavi finally fled his country in 1979, Khomeini was provided with a chartered Air France flight to Tehran, where he presided over one of the world’s most repressive regimes until his death in 1989. LINK
From the safety of France the Ayatollah distributed cassettes to Iran inciting against democracy, peace in the Middle East, the Jews and Israelis. He also called for jihad, a violent holy war. The PLO distributed Khomeini’s cassettes to Iran. When the American embassy in Teheran was attacked in November 1979, PLO members were among the perpetrators. Yasser Arafat was the first official guest in Teheran. He received a popular welcome as a great hero for supporting the Islamic revolution.
David Frum writes in his recent review of David Pryce-Jones’s book Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews:
Pryce-Jones demonstrates that French foreign policy has repeatedly arrived at nearly equally perverse results in the Middle East. When Saddam Hussein banished Ayatollah Khomeini from Iraq in 1978, France welcomed the turbaned zealot. In France, the ayatollah discovered limitless freedom to agitate: As he himself later said, “We could publicize our views extensively, much more than we expected.” Pryce-Jones quotes a study by Amir Taheri that the ayatollah gave 132 radio, television, and print interviews over the four months of his stay in France. He received almost 100,000 visitors, who donated over 20 million British pounds to his cause. In February 1979, the ayatollah returned to Iran in a chartered Air France jet; an Air France pilot held his elbow as he descended the steps to the tarmac.
And what happened next?
France Cuts Diplomatic Relations With Iran : Still Insists on Questioning Suspected Terrorist; Troops inTehran Seal Off French Embassy – July 18, 1987
So why did France support the Ayatollah? Humm…there was no altrusim here…it was something more insidious…maybe Edward Snowden may help us throw light on the subject.
Lest we forget France was a colonial power fiddling in the affairs of other nations.
The mentality hasn’t changed.