Hoveida would serve as minister of court within Jamshid Amouzegar’s government in 1977. With this role, he would come to discover the pervasiveness of internal corruption, once concealed by Asadollah Alam and the team he had surrounded himself with. Nevertheless, he continued to tolerate the practice as well, while simultaneously remaining a trusted advisor to the Shah.Hoveyda was alleged to have been the author of an article which attacked the opposition figure the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as being a British agent and a liar, which was anyonymously published in Kayhan newspaper in January 1978 on the Shah’s orders. Whether or not the allegations were true, the article generated a major backlash among Khomeini’s supporters, which eventually spiralled into the Revolution.
