For the first time in Iranian history in February 1979, there were two governments in the country within a week: one provisional government to Prime Minister Mahdi Bazargan introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini on 4 February and the other the 37-day government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to Prime Minister Bakhtiar.
Shapour Bakhtiar (26 June 1914-6 August 1991) was an Iranian politician who served as the last Prime Minister of Iran under the Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi. He and his secretary were murdered in his home in Suresnes, near Paris.
Bakhtiar was born on 26 June 1914 in southwestern Iran into a family of Iranian tribal nobility, the family of the paramount chieftains of the then powerful Bakhtiari clan. His father was Mohammad-Reza Khan (Sardar-e Fateh), his mother Naz-Baygom, both Lurs and Bakhtiaris. Bakhtiar’s maternal grandfather, Najafgholi Khan Samsam al-Saltaneh, had been appointed prime minister twice, in 1912 and 1918.
He attended elementary school in Shahr-e Kord and then secondary school, first in Esfahan and later in Beirut, where he received his high school diploma from a French school. He attended Beirut University for two years.
Bakhtiar’s mother died when he was a child of seven. Having intended to begin his university studies in France in 1934, Bakhtiar set off to France by ship. But during the journey, he was informed that the father and four other members of his family were executed because of disputes between the Bakhtiari tribes and Reza Shah. Therefore he returned to Iran.
In 1937, Bakhtiar with his cousin, Teymour, went to Paris for additional university education. There, he attended the College of Political Science. Being a firm opponent of totalitarian rule, he was active in the Spanish Civil War for the Second Spanish Republic against General Francisco Franco’s fascism. In 1940, he volunteered for the French army – rather than the French Foreign Legion – and fought in the 30th Artillerie Regiment of Orleans. Bakhtiar did 18 months’ military service. In 1945, he received his Ph.D. in political science as well as degrees in law and philosophy from the Sorbonne.
Bakhtiar returned to Iran in 1946 and joined the social democratic Iran Party in 1949 and led its youth organization. In 1951 he was appointed director of the labour department in Esfahan province by the ministry of labour. He later held the same position in Khuzestan, the centre of the Iran oil industry. In 1951 Mohammad Mosaddeq had come to power in Iran.
Under his premiership, Bakhtiar was appointed deputy minister of labour in 1953. After the Shah was reinstated by a British-American-sponsored coup d’état, Bakhtiar established a private law practice. He remained a firm critic of the Shah’s administration and was subsequently imprisoned for a total of nearly six years and banned from leaving Iran for a period of ten years.
In the mid-1950s, he was involved in underground activity against the Shah’s regime, calling for 1954 parliamentary 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 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 government opponents 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 a constitutional monarchy. The Shah refused to co-operate and outlawed the Front and imprisoned the most prominent liberals. From 1964 to 1977, the imperial regime refused to permit any form of opposition activity, even from moderate liberals like Bakhtiar. In the following years, Bakhtiar was imprisoned repeatedly for his opposition to the Shah. He was also one of the prominent members of the central council of the illegal Fourth 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 National Front).
On June 22, 1977, Bakhtiar together with Karim Sanjabi and Dariush Forouhar wrote an open letter to the Shah, criticizing the situation in the country. About a year and a half later, with the height of the events of the Islamic Revolution in January 1979, the military government of General Azhari was forced to resign.
Fearing the million people demonstration, the Shah was about to leave the country. He sought a prime minister who had not been a part of the government in previous years. The Shah offered prime ministers such as Karim Sanjabi, Gholamhoseyn Sadeqi and Ali Amini, but they refused. Finally, Lieutenant General Moqaddam (Chief of SAVAK) proposed Shapour Bakhtiar to the Shah.
Having been a leading member of the opposition to the Shah for over twenty-five years on constitutional and democratic grounds, Dr. Bakhtiar accepted the position only on two conditions.
At first, the Shah temporarily exit the country, and the second was that the prime minister and his plans get a total vote of confidence in the parliament. The Shah agreed to take an open-ended vacation abroad – a genteel form of abdication – and Mr. Bakhtiar took over as Prime Minister on January 4, 1979. Indeed, he was chosen to help in the creation of the almost impossible task of forming a civilian government to replace the existing military one, and also as a concession to the Shah’s opponents, especially the followers of Ayatollah Khomeini.
It should be noted, although that caused Bakhtiar to be expelled from the National Front, he accepted the appointment, as he feared a revolution in which communists and the ayatollahs would take over the country, which he thought would ruin Iran.
In one of his speeches, Bakhtiar referred to himself as a thunderbird in the face of current events in the country, reading a poem quote from a contemporary Iranian poet at the end of his message:
“I am a thunderbird, not afraid of the storm.
A wave am I, not which escapes from the ocean”
The revolutionary people, who made slogans on every issue, chanted in their demonstrations condemning the Bakhtiar government:
“Bakhtiar Bakhtiar, don’t talk about your goodness, everybody knows you, neither a thunderbird nor sea wave, you are a ruthless wolf, a servant of the Shah.”
In his 37 days as premier of Iran, Bakhtiar ordered all political prisoners to be freed, lifted censorship of newspapers (whose staff had until then been on strike), relaxed martial law ordered the dissolving of SAVAK and requested for the opposition to 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 the conciliatory gestures, Khomeini refused to collaborate with him, denouncing the premier as a traitor for siding with the Shah, labelling his government “illegitimate” and “illegal” and calling for the overthrow of the monarchy.
Bakhtiar’s only chance for long-term success would have been to abolish the monarchy, but he did not have the time. Moreover, the army was the only threat Bakhtiar had against Khomeini’s simply setting up an alternative government. The army leadership was presumed to be a royalist.
January 19 was Arba’in, and Ayatollah Khomeini called for a massive march against Bakhtiar. Over a million people marched in Tehran, half a million in Mashhad, two hundred thousand in Qom.
Bakhtiar had sought unsuccessfully to persuade Khomeini to postpone his return to Iran. He refused to negotiate with the Bakhtiar administration and refused to receive a member of the regency council Bakhtiar sent as an emissary to Paris. He also rejected Bakhtiar’s offer to come to Paris personally for consultations.
Negotiations proceeded between the army, Bakhtiar, Bazargan, and Khomeini. Ayatollah Khomeini announced his intention of returning to Iran on January 26.
The closure of Mehrabad Airport in the Iranian capital and some other airports across Iran was the last move from the half-dead regime in order to prevent Khomeini from flying to Tehran. Bakhtiar had ordered the military occupation of the airports which took place on January 24 to prevent the return of Khomeini.
On 26 January, massive rallies and marches were held in support of Ayatollah Khomeini. Thousands of people had come from all cities and towns to Tehran. There were huge demonstrations of a hundred thousand on Friday and half a million on Saturday, with slogans “Death to Bakhtiar” and “Neither Shah nor Shapour” (a pun: “Shahpour” means “son of Shah”); On Friday there were several clashes, but on Saturday, military troops kept away. The whole cycle of violence threatened to break out anew. At the last minute, Khomeini’s aides convinced Shapour to change his mind. Bakhtiar reopened the airports.
On 1 February Ayatollah Khomeini flew to Iran in a chartered Air France plane, accompanied by supporters as well as 120 international journalists. The presence of journalists was in part to ensure the safety of the plane from being attacked. When “Imam Khomeini” arrived in Iran, the tumultuous welcome that he received pointed to the likely outcome of the events. After delivering a speech at the Mehrabad International Airport, he travelled to the Behesht-e Zahra Cemetery, where many people killed during the revolution were buried. Millions of supporters line on the path cheering Khomeini’s name, and hundreds of thousands gather at the cemetery to listen to his speech. Ayatollah Khomeini declared that Shapour Bakhtiar’s cabinet was illegal and he said he would appoint his own.
Bakhtiar asked Khomeini to create a Vatican-like state in Qom, promised free elections, and called upon the opposition to help preserve the constitution, proposing a “national unity” government including Khomeini’s followers.
Ayatollah Khomeini rejected Bakhtiar’s demands and appointed his own interim government, with Mahdi Bazargan as prime minister, stating that “I will appoint the government! I will strike the present government on the mouth! With the nation’s support, I will appoint the government! I will do this, because the people approved me.”
Bakhtiar had hoped that with the support of the army he would be able to ride the revolutionary tiger, but, following an armed uprising in February 1979, the army withdrew to their barracks, the revolution succeeded.
Bakhtiar’s government was overwhelmingly rejected by the masses except for a quite small number of pro-Shah loyalists and a few moderate pro-democratic elements. The opposition was not willing to compromise. Consequently, he went into hiding, and after six months of secretly living by April had reached France.
In November 1979 Bakhtiar seized the moment and stepped forward from his hideout in Paris as a leader of the opposition to the Islamic Republic of Iran. He declared himself a constitutional monarchist and launched his National Resistance Movement in exile with financial help from Iraq, where his supporters ran a Persian broadcast service directed into Iran.
Between 9 and 10 July 1980, Bakhtiar helped organize a coup attempt known as the Nojeh coup plot, prompting the Islamic Republic to issue a death sentence on him. As a result of his measures, an attempt was made on his life on 18 July 1980 in his home in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris, in which a policeman and a neighbour were killed. It was foiled by French police, under whose protection he lived until his assassination on 6 August 1991 when he was murdered along with his secretary, Soroush Katibeh, by three assassins in his home. Both men were killed with kitchen knives.
He published a memoir in addition to many articles. Bakhtiar’s books include Ma Fidélité (in French) and 37 Days after 37 Years (in Persian), his biography (highlighting his political career and his beliefs, up to the Iranian Revolution). His writings are of special interest regarding society and politics in the Pahlavi era and the period of riots and turbulence just before the fall of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Bakhtiar was first married to a French woman with whom he had three children, a son, and two daughters. His second wife was an Iranian, and they had a son.
Bakhtiar is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris.
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