Thread by @KyleWOrton

July 1979: Ibrahim Yazdi, foreign minister of the new Islamic Republic of #Iran, is interviewed by BBC. An extremely unctuous man (and one soon purged for being too "moderate"), he lies about the governance structure, Khomeini's responsibility for Hoveyda's murder, and much else.

Immediately after the revolution, several figures from the Liberation Movement of Iran—Ibrahim Yazdi (FM), Mehdi Bazargan (PM), Sadegh Ghotbzadeh (later FM)—were given leading positions. LMI had given Khomeini access to a larger audience; once they were unneeded they were purged.

The U.S. Embassy takeover in NOV 1979 was precisely to force Bazargan—who had done more than perhaps anyone to manipulate U.S. AMB Sullivan, convincing him to help usher the Shah out and Khomeini in—to resign. Khomeini felt Bazargan was reducing hostilities with America too much.

Yazdi also resigned over the Embassy takeover. Both Bazargan and Yazdi died in exile. Ghotbzadeh did not make it that far.

With some input from the KGB, fabricating documents suggesting Ghotbzadeh had been a CIA agent, Ghotbzadeh was executed by the Islamic Republic in 1982.

The other major religious-nationalist figure, Abolhassan Banisadr, fled for his life in mid-1981, as did the Marxist-Islamists of MEK. The Left was broken in pieces: first the Fedayeen Minority was picked off—with the help of its Majority and Tudeh, who were then destroyed next.

The Islamic Republic of #Iran was born in a frenzy of bloodshed against the elite of the old order and by 1983 it had eliminated the lesser zealots and Leftists who helped it into power. Later, in 1988, 5,000+ Leftists and atheists were massacred in the prisons.