Men Against a Monarch

In the politics of Iran, only one man counted until recently: Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. Now, however, four key opposition figures have emerged who may well determine whether or not the monarch keeps his embattled throne. The four:

AYATULLAH KHOMEINI, 80, chief mullah (religious leader) of the country's Shi'ite Muslim sect, to which 93% of all Iranians adhere, and symbol of resistance to the Shah. Khomeini was exiled in 1963 for opposing the Shah's land-reform program, ostensibly because it conflicted with Islamic law. He directs an almost messianic campaign to overthrow the Shah from a white stucco house in the French village of Neauphle-le-Chateau, not far from the home of Brigitte Bardot. Five times a day French gendarmes stop traffic while the ayatullah (a Persian term meaning "sign of God") shuffles across the road in robes and black turban to face Mecca and kneel in prayer under an apple tree.

Sitting lotus fashion on a small rug in his cottage, Khomeini these days receives a constant stream of Iranian visitors and inquisitive reporters. In a voice barely above a whisper, he issues unrelenting calls for a jihad (holy war) against the Shah and his replacement by a democratically elected Islamic republic, which Khomeini professes no interest in heading. He wants to reduce Western influence in Iran. The appointment of the new military government, he told TIME Paris Correspondent Sandy Burton last week, "will not change anything. Rather, it will intensify the unrest and strikes ... The goal of our people's struggle is to wipe out the root and the fundamental cause of all the corruption and crimes, which is the Shah and the monarchy."

AYATULLAH SHARIETMADARI, 76, a Shi'ite scholar who speaks for the conservative, religious-based resistance to the Shah from within Iran, as Khomeini speaks for it from without. Sharietmadari, who lives in the holy city of Qum, is slightly less militant than his fellow mullah. He believes in an Islamic state but has not ruled out a constitutional monarchy so long as it adheres to Islamic principles. A holy war, he argues, is acceptable only as a last resort--that is, if the Shah ignores the Islamic community's legitimate demands. He insists on the segregation of sexes in schools, but is not opposed to higher education for women or their right to vote--in booths separate from men. "The demands of the religious community and the Iranian people," says Sharietmadari, "are in accordance with the most advanced legal regulations of the world."

KARIM SANJABI, 73, arrested last week, is the leader of the National Front, the most vocal political force opposing the Shah. A professor of law at Tehran University and an expert on constitutional government, Sanjabi looks more like an elderly businessman than an opposition political figure. He was once a disciple of Mohammed Mossadegh, the "fainting fanatic" who nationalized the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co.; he served in Mossadegh's Cabinet before the Premier was overthrown by the Iranian army (with CIA help) in 1953.

Since then, Sanjabi has been in and out of jail and politically powerless. When the Shah began his liberalization program in 1976, Sanjabi emerged from oblivion to revive the National Front. After conferring with Khomeini in Paris last week, Sanjabi flatly ruled out the prospect that the Front might join a coalition government. Sanjabi's main goal now is a national plebiscite on the monarchy: "What we want is that the autocratic government and dictatorial order of the present regime be terminated."

ALI AMINI, 71, a moderate politician who is seeking to work out a compromise between the Shah and the resistance movements. Like Sanjabi, Amini was a Cabinet minister under Mossadegh; he broke away and later served as Ambassador to Washington and then briefly as Premier himself in 1961-62. Amini also quarreled with the Shah about the monarch's tendency to concentrate power in his own hands. Before the military government was appointed, Amini was the key negotiator in trying to set up an all-parties coalition, in which he intended to serve.

It was Amini who persuaded Sanjabi to visit Khomeini in France with the idea of forming a coalition government. Explaining his maneuvers to TIME'S Cairo Bureau Chief Wilton Wynn last week, Amini insisted that a coalition would have shown "the nation and the world that there is an alternative to the present regime. But I did not succeed. The extremists say we must wait. I say we don't have time to wait."

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