Establishment of Islamic Revolution Central Committed as narrated by Alviri

Translated by M. B. Khoshnevissan

2023-10-23

At this time (Bahman of 1357 – February 1979), grouplets such as People's Fedai Guerrillas and Mojahedin Khalq Organization misused the mayhem of the country, storing a large quantity of weapons in their team house. Even when the Imam ordered the people to hand over the weapons to the mosques, instead of handing over their weapons to the mosques, these grouplets built a headquarters and took the people's weapons and stored them. This situation worried us so much that Mr. Behzad Nabavi prepared a letter and gave it to Mr. Motahari and asked him to deliver it to the Imam. In the letter, we mentioned that the current process of formation of committees was very uncoordinated and there was no organized organization. And that different groups had been armed and it was possible that the country would face a civil war in the not too distant future. Therefore, we suggested to the Imam that we were ready to form a central committee and organize other committees under the centrality of this committee.

Mr. Motahari met with the Imam and after coming, he told us that he had raised our opinion with the Imam and the Imam also said that he had decided to make Mr. Mahdavi Kanny responsible for forming the committee.

Then he said that we could give any help to Mr. Mahdavi Kanny in this regard.

A few hours later, I heard on the radio that the Imam had appointed Mr. Mahdavi Kanny as the head of the Islamic Revolution Provisional Committee.

After getting the verdict, Mr. Mahdavi Kanny was settled in the former Majlis (parliament) building. I also introduced myself to them. Mr. Mahdavi Kanny said that among the revolutionary people who have a history of fighting, we should select those for the Central Council of the Islamic Revolution Committee, and start our work. In this way, after completing the names of people who were all well-known personalities, we started our work...

In the first place, we asked some forty people who were going to cooperate to introduce themselves and explain about their records and what they could do. Then, we asked them to choose some among themselves for the Central Council. After voting, Mr. Mahdavi Kanny and Mr. Eslami (who was martyred in the explosion of the Islamic Republic Party) and Asghar Nouri Nowrozi and I and one or two other people whose names I do not remember were elected as members of the Central Council.

After identifying the members of the Central Council, the members of the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin organization also helped us, and Mr. Behzad Nabawi, who was a member of this organization, was responsible for issuing identification cards.

Thus, the people brought their disputes and conflicts to the committee to be dealt with, and the committee became the authority to deal with people's affairs. I even remember that the head of the country's police asked us to give him a letter to show him if he was stopped during the trip. Even the official of a foreign company who wanted to take two or three suitcases out of Iran was brought to the committee to get approval, and if he got approval, he was allowed to leave the country.

In those days, we were so busy that we could not go home most of the nights. The volume of our works were very high but we had not room for sitting. We all used the three or four rooms that were available to the committee, and we often went from one room to another to answer the phone. I remember that sometimes there were three or four telephone lines waiting to talk to me simultaneously, and many times it happened that I would end my conversation with one half-way and start talking with another, while I completely forgot to continue talking with the first one. Working in the Central Committee in the first days of the revolution was literally twenty-four hours a day for us.

Mr. Motahari also came to visit us and followed up the issues.

In those days, the big problem was the illegal committees that had grown here and there. In this regard, we also received bitter news, which means that those baseless committees were doing illegal things and taking personal benefits from the situation obtained, and all of this ended up in the name of "committee", we also had no authority over these self-grown and disturbing committees. And their performance questioned the name of the committee.

In order to prevent the disarray of the illegal committees, we announced that the Islamic Revolution Provisional Committee intended to issue identity cards and cards for the weapons of all committees in order to provide services in this direction. We asked them to give us the names of their guns with their gun numbers so that we could give them a gun license, and if they have broken guns, give them to us so that we could give them healthy guns in return.

Thus, in order to make full use of this opportunity, the committees had even mentioned their broken weapons in the list.

With this notification, and getting the list of weapons, we were able to obtain the number of weapons of unwanted committees. Then, we issued cards for weapons. Then, we announced that we would give gun cards to those who have been approved by us; because we used to hear what disasters were created by unscrupulous people by abusing the title of the committee. Therefore, we didn't give gun cards to those who had a suspicious history, that was where the protests started, they considered themselves entitled to have a gun card, but we didn't approve them. Then we decided to disarm those who don't have a gun card through armed confrontation.

As a result of this process, three or four months after the victory of the revolution, all the unwanted and uncontrolled sub-committees were dissolved and what was left continued to work under the influence and control of the central committee. It was at this time that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was also born.

Source: Memoirs of Morteza Alviri, Edited by the Office of Islamic Revolution Literature, Tehran, Art Center, 1375 (1986), pp.78-82