Saddam Hussein could have changed everything. In an ironic twist, the Iraqi dictator responsible for countless deaths across the Middle East once had the chance to eliminate the leader of the Iranian Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and potentially save the region from 46 years of the Islamic Republic, the Iran hostage crisis, and even the Iran-Iraq War.
In the complex world of Middle Eastern power politics, there are moments that fade into silence, left unrecorded except in the memories of spies, ministers, and monarchs.
One such moment came in the 1970s when Saddam Hussein, then Iraq’s vice president but already the regime’s dominant power, is believed to have made an extraordinary offer to the shah of Iran: to assassinate Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the exiled cleric agitating against the Pahlavi regime from a dusty corner of Najaf.
The shah declined.
According to Iranian exiles, intelligence veterans, and biographers of the period, the offer was made discreetly, possibly even during a backchannel encounter at the United Nations. The message was clear: Saddam, already suspicious of Khomeini’s influence among Iraq’s Shia population, was willing to “solve” Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s Khomeini problem permanently. The shah, however, refused to engage in political assassination, reportedly saying: “We are not in the business of killing clerics.”
It is a moment lost to official archives but remembered in the margins of memoirs and whispered by those who lived through the dying days of Iran’s monarchy. Conflicting timelines make it impossible to construct a direct timeline. However, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the fundamental points are accurate. It is also a story with enduring consequences, one of those rare “what if” moments where history is balanced on the edge.
KHOMEINI HAD been exiled from Iran since 1964 after delivering a searing denunciation of the shah’s “White Revolution,” which he accused of betraying Islam and serving Western imperialists. After a brief refuge in Turkey, he was granted asylum in Iraq, where he settled in the Shia holy city of Najaf, a center of clerical learning.
Khomenei's reach grows as Hussein's control threatened
While the shah likely hoped Khomeini would fade into obscurity, the opposite happened. From a modest home near the shrine of Imam Ali, the Ayatollah recorded sermons on cassette tapes that were smuggled across the border into Iran. These tapes, often distributed in bazaars and mosques, became political dynamite.
As his reach grew, so too did Saddam Hussein’s concerns. The Ba’ath regime in Iraq was secular, Arab nationalist, and increasingly authoritarian. Khomeini’s pan-Shia rhetoric posed a direct threat to Iraqi control over its Shia majority. It was only a matter of time before Saddam concluded that harboring Khomeini wasn’t worth the trouble.
One version says that the offer was conveyed by an Iraqi diplomat to an Iranian envoy at the United Nations in the context of warming relations after the Algiers Agreement, which resolved a territorial dispute between the two regimes.
The shah’s last ambassador to the United States, Ardeshir Zahedi, remembered, “I was at the UN. Iraq’s foreign minister brought us a message from Saddam. Saddam offered us a choice. He would expel Khomeini or eliminate him.”
In his book, The Spirit of Allah, Amir Taheri, former editor of the daily newspaper Kayhan, describes a dramatic moment in September 1978: An unscheduled Iraqi Airways Boeing landed in Tehran with a single passenger, Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam Hussein’s half-brother and head of Iraqi intelligence. He was driven directly to the Shah’s Niavaran Palace, then dimly lit amid rolling blackouts ordered by Khomeini’s followers.
Barzan delivered a message from Saddam: “His Majesty must stand firm. Iraq is prepared to help in every way.” He strongly hinted that Iraq could arrange the “physical liquidation” of the troublesome mullah.
“The shah, expressing his gratitude for President Hussein’s concern and offer of help, ruled out any suggestion of organizing an unfortunate accident for Khomeini,” Taheri wrote. “Instead, however, he asked the Iraqis to force the ayatollah to leave their country. Barzan instantly agreed.”
THE SHAH, though deeply threatened by Khomeini’s growing influence, rejected the offer. His reasoning has been the subject of debate. Some believe it was moral restraint, a belief that political murder, especially of a revered cleric, was unthinkable. Others argue it was a matter of optics and legacy: the shah wanted to be seen as a modernizing monarch, not a mafioso.
The shah’s widow, Queen Farah, who has spent 46 years living in exile, told the BBC in an interview, “In those days, we thought if someone would get rid of Khomeini, he would become a martyr or someone greater.”
Taheri concurred, writing, “The reason why the shah refused to have Khomeini murdered was plain enough: such a move would have inflamed passions in Iran beyond all possible control.”
Whatever his motivation, the decision proved fateful.
While the archives of SAVAK, the shah’s feared intelligence service, were largely destroyed after the revolution, former officers have confirmed that they monitored Khomeini’s every move. Parviz Sabeti, a top SAVAK official, has admitted in interviews that the agency was aware of Iraq’s frustrations with Khomeini and that Saddam “might have been willing to go further.” But, he said, the shah was firm: Iran did not engage in assassinations abroad.
There were certainly other ways the shah pressured Iraq. Diplomatic cables suggest that Tehran pressured Baghdad to restrict Khomeini’s access to the press and his students. The Ba’ath regime, always transactional, obliged for a time. However, the shah never followed through on a permanent solution.
In October 1978, under growing internal unrest and renewed Iranian pressure, Saddam expelled Khomeini from Iraq, hoping it would end the problem.
Instead, it amplified his reach beyond anything seen before.
Khomeini fled to Neauphle-le-Château, just outside the French capital of Paris, where he had unfettered access to the press, telephone, and international media. There, his daily statements were faxed and broadcast into Iran, and he gave between five and six interviews a day to foreign media. Young Iranians spread across the diaspora poured into Neauphle-le-Château to join Khomeini and became a part of history. Najaf’s whispers became a roar in Tehran.
Within four months, the shah was gone.
WHY WAS Khomeini, then an elderly cleric, with his spartan way of life, such a threat? On paper, he was just a religious scholar in exile, with no army, no political party, and no territory. But in reality, he had something far more powerful that appealed to those disaffected with the shah’s regime: an ideology, based on Islamic purity, and a message that resonated across all classes and regions of Iran.
He fused Shia martyrdom theology with anti-imperial revolution, offering a worldview that cast the shah as both a heretic and a puppet. He didn’t need to be charismatic, as his austerity and refusal to compromise became his strengths.
Saddam recognized this threat earlier than most. So did SAVAK. But the shah, whether from pride or principle, failed to act decisively.
When Saddam invaded Iran in 1980 to begin the Iran-Iraq War, he believed the new Islamic Republic was weak and divided and would fall within weeks. He was wrong. The war dragged on for eight brutal years, killing over a million people and involving the use of child soldiers and chemical weapons. Saddam would eventually execute scores of Shia clerics inside Iraq, trying to stamp out the ideological fire Khomeini had helped ignite.
As for the shah, he died in exile of cancer in 1980, never returning to the country he ruled for nearly four decades.
Had he accepted Saddam’s offer, would things have been different? Would Iran have taken a different path? Perhaps one toward democracy, a constitutional monarchy, or at least a less theocratic state?
It’s impossible to know. However, what is certain is this: One decision, made quietly, cautiously, and with the best of intentions, reshaped the fate of a nation and the entire region.