Mehdi Bazargan

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Mehdi Bazargan
مهدی بازرگان
Tehran, Rey and Shemiranat
Majority1,447,316 (68%)
Personal details
Born
Mehdi Bazargan

1 September 1907
Tehran, Sublime State of Persia
Died20 January 1995(1995-01-20) (aged 87)
Zürich, Switzerland
Resting placeQom, Iran
NationalityIranian
Political party
Other political
affiliations
SpouseMalak Tabatabayi
Children5, including Abdolali
Alma mater
Signature
Military service
AllegianceIran
Years of service1935–1937
  1. ^ The office was disputed between him and Shapour Bakhtiar from 4 to 11 February 1979.

Mehdi Bazargan (

Iran's interim government
.

One of the leading figures of

Ayatollah Khomeini, making him Iran's first prime minister after the revolution. He resigned his position in November of the same year, in protest at the US Embassy takeover and as an acknowledgement of his government's failure in preventing it.[5]

He was the head of the first engineering department of University of Tehran.

Early life and education

Bazargan in his youth

Bazargan was born into an Azerbaijani family[6][7] in Tehran on 1 September 1907.[8][9] His father, Hajj Abbasqoli Tabrizi (died 1954) was a self-made merchant and a religious activist in bazaar guilds.[8]

Bazargan went to

École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures (École Centrale Paris).[11][12][13]

Following his return to Iran, Bazargan was called up for conscription, and served from 1935 to 1937.[14] According to Houchang Chehabi, Bazargan was firstly tasked with shifting pebbles in a barracks but was then moved to translate technical articles from French.[15]

Career

After his graduation, Bazargan became the head of the first engineering department at

Tehran University in the late 1940s. He was a deputy minister under Premier Mohammad Mosaddegh in the 1950s.[16] Bazargan served as the first Iranian head of the National Iranian Oil Company under the administration of Prime Minister Mosaddegh.[17]

Bazargan co-founded the

Liberation Movement of Iran in 1961,[16] a party similar in its program to Mossadegh's National Front. Although he accepted the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, as the legitimate head of state, he was jailed several times on political grounds. A strong admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, he praised Mahatma Gandhi's ideas and the Indian independence movement in his writings in jail as an ideal example for Iranians.[18][19]

Iranian Revolution

On 4 February 1979, Bazargan was appointed prime minister of Iran by

constitution they wrote that was eventually adopted as Iran's constitution. Seeing his government's lack of power, in March 1979, he submitted his resignation to Ayatollah Khomeini.[23] Khomeini did not accept his resignation,[23] and in April 1979, he and his cabinet members were reported to have escaped an assassination attempt.[24]

Bazargan resigned, along with his cabinet, on 4 November 1979, following the US Embassy takeover and hostage-taking.[5][25] His resignation was considered a protest against the hostage-taking and a recognition of his government's inability to free the hostages, but it was also clear that his hopes for liberal democracy and an accommodation with the West would not prevail.

Parliament

Bazargan continued in Iranian politics as a member of the first

Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
.

The government has created an atmosphere of terror, fear, revenge and national disintegration. ... What has the ruling elite done in nearly four years, besides bringing death and destruction, packing the prisons and the cemeteries in every city, creating long queues, shortages, high prices, unemployment, poverty, homeless people, repetitious slogans and a dark future?[26]

Bazargan with Yasser Arafat

His term as a member of parliament lasted until 1984.

Council of Guardians
denied Bazargan's petition to run for president.

Views

Bazargan is a respected figure within the ranks of modern Muslim thinkers, known as a representative of liberal-democratic Islamic thought[27] and a thinker who emphasized the necessity of constitutional and democratic policies.[28] In the immediate aftermath of the revolution Bazargan led a faction that opposed the Revolutionary Council dominated by the Islamic Republican Party and personalities such as Ayatollah Mohammad Hossein Beheshti.[29] He opposed the continuation of the Iran–Iraq War and the involvement of Islamists in all aspects of politics, economy and society. Consequently, he faced harassment from militants and young revolutionaries within Iran.[30]

Attacks

During

the Pahlavi era, Bazargan's house in Tehran was bombed on 8 April 1978.[31] The underground committee for revenge, a reputed state-financed organization, proclaimed the responsibility of the bombing.[31]

Laws of social evolution

Bazargan is known for some of the earliest work in human thermodynamics, as found in his 1946 chapter "A Physiological Analysis of Human Thermodynamics" and his 1956 book Love and Worship: Human Thermodynamics, the latter of which being written while in prison, in which he attempted to show that religion and worship are a byproduct of evolution, as explained in English naturalist Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859), and that the true laws of society are based on the laws of thermodynamics.

Death

Bazargan died of a heart attack on 20 January 1995 in Switzerland.[7] He died at a hospital in Zürich after collapsing at the airport.[7] He was travelling to the United States for heart surgery.[7]

Personal life

Bazargan married Malak Tabatabai in 1939.[8] They had five children, two sons and three daughters.[8]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 0-691-10134-5
    .
  2. ISBN 9780812201055
  3. ISBN 0813014611
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-521-48498-5
    .
  5. ^ a b Godsel, Geoffrey (9 November 1979). "Bazargan resignation increases Iran risks to American hostages". The Deseret News. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  6. ^ The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay?, Crawford Young, p. 127, 1993
  7. ^ a b c d e f "Mehdi Bazargan, Former Iran Premier, Dies". The New York Times. 21 January 1995. Retrieved 9 November 2012.
  8. ^ a b c d Barzin, Saeed (21 January 1995). "Mehdi Bazargan". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 May 2022. Retrieved 22 August 2013.
  9. ^ Biography: Mehdi Bazargan BBC Persian 2009
  10. ^ Vakili Zad, Cyrus (Spring 1990). "Organization, Leadership and Revolution: Religiously-Oriented Opposition in the Iranian Revolution of 1978–1979". Conflict Quarterly: 5–25. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
  11. ^ Sahimi, Muhammad (6 August 2009). "If I Confess..." Tehran Bureau via PBS. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  12. ISBN 9780815604334
    . Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  13. ^ "Mehdi Bazargan". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  14. ISBN 1-4128-0516-3
    .
  15. ASIN B0007CAVDC
    .
  16. ^ a b "Iran's Political Elite". United States Institute of Peace. 11 October 2010. Retrieved 28 July 2013.
  17. ISBN 0471265179
    .
  18. ^ Reframing the Implications of Knowledge of History, Philosophy and Socio-political Science in the Prospect of Democratisation in Iran (PDF). Griffith University. p. 222.
  19. ISBN 978-0-674-05875-0
    .
  20. ISBN 9780028656045
    .
  21. ^ Nikou, Semira N. "Timeline of Iran's Political Events". United States Institute of Peace. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  22. ISBN 9780521821391
    .
  23. ^ a b "Bazargan talked out of resigning". The Palm Beach Post. Tehran. 10 March 1979. Retrieved 9 November 2012.[permanent dead link]
  24. ^ Branigin, William (25 April 1979). "Reports of Attack on Prime Minister Set Tehran on Edge". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2 November 2019.
  25. ^ Rakel, Eva Patricia (2008). The Iranian Political elite, state and society relations, and foreign relations since the Islamic revolution. University of Amsterdam.
  26. ^ "Khomenin's grip appears at its tightest". The New York Times. 21 November 1982.
  27. ^ Mahdavi, Mojtaba (2004). "Islamic Forces of the Iranian Revolution: A Critique of Cultural Essentialism". Iran Analysis Quarterly. 2 (2). Archived from the original on 14 September 2021. Retrieved 22 July 2007.
  28. JSTOR 195568
    .
  29. JSTOR 4283464
    .
  30. ^ Leicht, Justus (20 November 2001). "Mass trial of opposition group in Iran". World Socialist Website.
  31. ^
    JSTOR 4310346
    .

Further reading

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mehdi Bazargan.
Political offices
Preceded by Prime Minister of Iran
1979 		Succeeded by
Mohammad Ali Rajai
Preceded by
Foreign Affairs Minister of Iran

1979 		Succeeded by
Party political offices
Preceded by
None
 Secretary-General of Freedom Movement of Iran
1961–1995 		Succeeded by
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