| On February 16, 1979, two weeks after the Iranian revolution returned religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini to Iran, and nine months before student followers of Khomeini took American diplomats hostage at the US Embassy in Tehran, Falk wrote an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "Trusting Khomeini." He criticized President Jimmy Carter`s accusations of "religious fanaticism" and media descriptions of Khomeini as being backward, antisemitic, and guilty of "theocratic fascism." Believing that Khomeini had been judged unfairly, he concluded "the depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false ... To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief. ... Having created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane governance for a third-world country" |
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