Shapour Bakhtiar

Shapour Bakhtiar (Shapour Bakhtiar  (help· info)) (also Shapur Bakhtiar) (Persian: شاپور بختیار Shāpūr Bakhtīār) (born 1914 or 1915 - August 6, 1991) was an Iranian politician and the last Prime Minister of Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After the Iranian Revolution, he soon went into exile and was assassinated in Paris in 1991. Image File history File links ShapourBakhtiar. ... Image File history File links ShapourBakhtiar. ... Image File history File links Shapour_Bakhtiar. ... “Farsi” redirects here. ... Year 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Year 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday[1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... is the 218th day of the year (219th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... As the result of an amendment to the Constitution of Iran in 1989, there is no longer a post titled Prime Minister of Iran, but Iran has had many prime ministers since the Qajar era, when the country was internationally known as Persia. ... Shah or Shahzad is a Persian term for a monarch (ruler) that has been adopted in many other languages. ... Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran (Persian: ) (October 26, 1919, Tehran – July 27, 1980, Cairo), styled His Imperial Majesty, and holding the imperial titles of Shahanshah (King of Kings), and Aryamehr (Light of the Aryans), was the monarch of Iran from September 16, 1941 until the Iranian Revolution on February... After Islamic Conquest  Modern SSR = Soviet Socialist Republic Afghanistan  Azerbaijan  Bahrain  Iran  Iraq  Tajikistan  Uzbekistan  This box:      The Iranian Revolution (also known as the Islamic Revolution,[1][2][3][4][5][6] Persian: انقلاب اسلامی, Enghelābe Eslāmi) was the revolution that transformed Iran from a monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza... This article is about the capital of France. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ...

Early life

Shapour Bakhtiar was born in 1914 or 1915 in southwestern Iran to Mohammad Reza (Sardar-e-Fateh) and Naz-Baygom, both Bakhtiaris. Bakhtiar's maternal grandfather, Najaf-Gholi Samsam ol-Saltaneh, was appointed prime minister twice, in 1912 and 1918. Bakhtiar's mother died when he was seven years old. He attended elementary school in Shahr-e Kord and then secondary school, first in Isfahan and later in Beirut, Lebanon, where he received his high school diploma from a French school. Year 1914 (MCMXIV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... Year 1915 (MCMXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday[1] of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... The Bakhtiari (or Bakhtiyari) are a group of southwestern Iranian people. ... 1912 (MCMXII) was a leap year starting on Monday in the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday in the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ... 1918 (MCMXVIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar (see link for calendar) or a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar. ... Isfahan, Inner Courtyard of Medresseh-I Shah Husein Isfahan, Medresseh-I Shah Husein Mosque Entrance Isfahan or Esfahan (historically also rendered as Ispahan, anciently known as Aspadana; اصفهان in Persian) (population in 2000: 2,540,000), located about 340 km south of Tehran is the... This article is about the Lebanese city. ...

His Time in France

In 1936 he left for France. He received his PhD, in political science (in 1939), as well as degrees in law and philosophy, from Sorbonne. As a firm opponent of all totalitarian rule, he volunteered for the French Foreign Legion and then fought with the resistance against the occupation by Germany in the Orleans battalion. 1936 (MCMXXXVI) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will take you to calendar). ... PhD usually refers to the academic title Doctor of Philosophy PhD can also refer to the manga Phantasy Degree This is a disambiguation page — a list of pages that otherwise might share the same title. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... For other uses, see Law (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Philosophy (disambiguation). ... The Sorbonne, Paris, in a 17th century engraving The historic University of Paris (French: ) first appeared in the second half of the 12th century, but was in 1970 reorganised as 13 autonomous universities (University of Paris I–XIII). ... Legionnaire redirects here. ... Belligerent military occupation occurs when the control and authority over a territory belonging to a state passes to a hostile army. ...

Political Career in Iran

Shapour Bakhtiar returned to Iran in 1946. In 1951 he was appointed by the Ministry of Labor, first as director of the Labor Department in the Province of Isfahan, then he even headed up the Labor Department in Khuzestan, center of the oil industry. In 1953 Mohammad Mosaddeq was briefly in power in Iran, before being deposed. Under his premiership Bakhtiar was deputy minister of labor. After the Shah was reinstated by a British-American sponsored coup d'etat, Bakhtiar remained a critic of his rule. In the mid-1950s, he was involved in underground activity against the Shah's despotic regime, calling for the 1954 Majlis elections to be free and fair and attempting to revive the nationalist movement. In 1960, the Second National Front was formed and Bakhtiar played a very crucial role in the new organization's activities as the head of the student activist body of the Front. He and his colleagues differed from most other oppositionists in that they were very moderate, restricting their activity to peaceful protest and calling only for the restoration of democratic rights within the framework of constitutional monarchy. Despite these moderate demands, the Shah refused to cooperate and opted to outlaw the Front and imprison the most prominent liberals. From 1964 to 1977, the imperial regime refused to permit any form of anti-state activity, even from the moderate liberals like Shapour Bakhtiar. In the following years Bakhtiar was imprisoned repeatedly, a total of 6 years, for his opposition to the Shah. He even rose to the position of deputy chief of the illegal National Front in late 1977 when the group was reconstituted as the Union of National Front Forces with Bakhtiar as head of the Iran Party (the largest group in the Front). Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full 1946 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1951 (MCMLI) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Esfahān province (Persian: استان اصفهان (Ostan-e Esfahan); also transliterated as Isfahan, Esfahan, Espahan, Sepahan or Isphahan) is one of the 30 provinces of Iran. ... Map showing Khuzestan in Iran Domes like this are quite common in Khuzestan province. ... Year 1953 (MCMLIII) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mohammed Mossadegh (Persian: محمد مصدق‎) (May 19, 1882 - March 4, 1967) was prime minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953. ... A coup détat, or simply a coup, is the sudden overthrow of a government, usually done by a small group that just replaces the top power figures. ... Majlis (مجلس) is an Arabic term used to describe various types of formal legislative assemblies in countries with linguistic or cultural connections to Islamic countries. ... The National Front of Iran (Jebhe Melli) is a Democratic political opposition group founded by Mohammad Mossadegh and other secular Iranian leaders of Nationalist, Liberal, and Social-Democratic political orientation who had been educated in France in the late 1940s. ...

At the end of 1978, as the Shah's power was crumbling; because Bakhtiar had been a leader in the resistance, he was chosen to help in the creation of a civilian government in place of the military one, which had existed up to this point. He was appointed to the position of Prime Minister by the Shah, as a concession to his opponents, especially the followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Although this caused him to be expelled from the National Front, he accepted the appointment, as he feared a revolution, in which communists and mullahs would take over the country, because he thought this would ruin Iran. In his 36 days as premier of Iran, Bakhtiar ordered all political inmates to be freed, lifted censorship of newspapers (whose staff had until then been on strike), relaxed martial law, ordered the dissolving of SAVAK (the former regime's secret police) and requested that the opposition give him three months to hold elections for a constituent assembly that would decide the fate of the monarchy and determine the future form of government for Iran. Despite these conciliatory gestures, Ayatollah Khomeini refused to collaborate with Bakhtiar, denouncing the premier as a traitor for siding with the Shah, labeling his government "illegitimate" and "illegal" and calling for the overthrow of the Monarchy. Bakhtiar made some key mistakes during his premiership including allowing Khomeini to re-enter Iran. In the end, he failed to rally even his own former colleagues in the National Front behind him and his government was overwhelmingly rejected by the masses, except for a very small number of pro-Shah loyalists and some moderate pro-democratic elements. The opposition was not willing to compromise and the Shah was forced to leave the country in January of 1979; Bakhtiar left Iran again for France in April of the same year. Year 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1978 Gregorian calendar). ... For other uses, see Ayatollah (disambiguation). ... Grand Ayatullah Sayid Ruhullah Musawi Khomeini ( ) (Persian: RÅ«ullāh MÅ«sawÄ« KhumaynÄ« (September 21, 1900 [1]– June 3, 1989) was a senior Shi`i Muslim cleric, Islamic philosopher and marja (religious authority), and the political leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution which saw the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ... Mullah (Persian: ملا) is a title given to some Islamic clergy, coming from the Arabic word mawla, means both `vicar` and `guardian. ... This article does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Also: 1979 by Smashing Pumpkins. ...

French Exile

Out of Paris, Shapour Bakhtiar led the National Resistance Movement of Iran, which fought the Islamic republic in his homeland. In July 1980 he escaped an assassination attempt in his home in the Parisian suburb, Suresnes, which killed a policeman and a neighbor. But on August 7, 1991, Bakhtiar was murdered by three assassins along with his secretary, Soroush Katibeh, in his home. The inquest found him being stabbed by a knife matching that of a nearby blood stained bread knife. One of the assassins was later arrested in Switzerland and extradited to France. During his trial in 1994, he admitted to having been sent by the Iranian government to kill Bakhtiar. {name of the assassin and verifiable source for this claim is needed} This article is about the capital of France. ... The National Movement of Iranian Resistance (NAMIR) was founded in the early 1980s by Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar, the last prime minister of Iran under the Monarchy, before it was destroyed in the Feb. ... An Islamic republic, in its modern context, has come to mean several different things, some contradictory to others. ... Year 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link displays the 1980 Gregorian calendar). ... Assassin and Assassins redirect here. ... Suresnes is a commune in the western suburbs of Paris, France. ... is the 219th day of the year (220th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1991 (MCMXCI) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display the 1991 Gregorian calendar). ... Year 1994 (MCMXCIV) The year 1994 was designated as the International Year of the Family and the International Year of the Sport and the Olympic Ideal by the United Nations. ...

It is suspicious that hours after the assassination of Shapour Bakhtiar, a French and British hostage were released from Lebanon, presumably held by Hezbollah. Some Iranian critics have suggested that the French government allowed the assassination to occur in exchange for the release of the French hostage in Lebanon.^{[citation needed]} At the time Dr Bakhtiar was under armed guard provided by the French government. In the inquest, it was found that he was killed by a knife wound in a major artery. That much blood would be thought to have been seen by his guard who manned the entrance to his house, who saw the murderers exit. However nothing could be proven. For other uses, see Hezbollah (disambiguation). ...

Internal Links

• 1953 Iranian coup d'état

In the 1953 Iranian coup détat, the administration of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower orchestrated the overthrow of the democratically-elected administration of Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq and his cabinet from power. ...

External links

• Harvard University, Iranian oral history project: Interview with Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar
• Iran Chamber Society--Historic Personalities: Shapour Bakhtiar
• Persian Iran page about Bakhtiar
• A list of human rights violations committed by Iran including the assassination and assassination attempt on Bakhtiar
• Article about Bakhtiar's role in the Islamic Revolution

Published works

• Memoirs of Shapour Bakhtiar, Harvard University Press, 1996 (edited by Habib Ladjevardi)