Ibrahim Yazdi, who emerged as Iran’s foremost dissident after being rejected by fellow revolutionaries as insufficiently radical because he had rebuffed their seizure of the United States Embassy in Tehran in 1979, died on Sunday in Izmir, in western Turkey. He was 85.
The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, said. He was in Turkey receiving treatment.
Dr. Yazdi, a pharmacologist, was born in Iran but worked for nearly two decades in the United States. He became an American citizen in 1971.
In 1979, after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was deposed, Dr. Yazdi returned to Iran triumphantly with the revolution’s leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, from France, where Khomeini had set up his revolutionary headquarters in exile.
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Dr. Yazdi served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the new government until Khomeini, after briefly waffling, ignored Dr. Yazdi’s advice and endorsed the takeover of the American Embassy. More than 50 Americans were seized and held as hostages for 444 days.
Foreign policy analysts later suggested that the hostage taking was designed as much to purge the regime of officials like Dr. Yazdi, who was relatively moderate, as to embarrass the United States.
Joining other government ministers in resigning from the cabinet, Dr. Yazdi helped found the secular, pro-democracy Freedom Movement of Iran, which was frequently suppressed by the theocratic Islamic government.
Dr. Yazdi described himself as a “modernist intellectual Muslim.” His political outspokenness was generally tolerated by the regime because of his early kinship with Khomeini — “No one can claim to be more revolutionary or Islamic than I am,” he said — although he was marginalized and regularly arrested and charged with rumor-mongering and jeopardizing Iranian security.
“We have a political crisis. We have an economic crisis. We have a social crisis,” he told The New York Times in 1995, the year he began leading the Freedom Movement. “People feel they’ve been betrayed, that the revolution has been kidnapped.”
In 2005 he sought to run for president, but he was disqualified. In 2011 he was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, but he was released because of his deteriorating health.
Ibrahim Yazdi was born in 1931 (sources differ on the exact date) in Qazvin, in northwestern Iran. His father was a merchant trader who sold henna.
Dr. Yazdi earned a bachelor’s degree in pharmacology from the University of Tehran in 1953. That same year, a military coup supported by the United States deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh, and installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose father had abdicated as shah in 1941.
After the coup, Dr. Yazdi joined the National Resistance Movement, formed in response to the coup to keep the flame of nationalism alive. He left for the United States with his wife, Sourour Taliye, in 1961.
She survives him, along with four daughters and two sons.
Dr. Yazdi taught at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and completed his postdoctoral studies at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, where he conducted research in pathology, taught pharmacology and worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital.
Unable to return to Iran, where the shah’s military court had condemned him to 10 years in prison, he remained in the United States until 1977, then joined Khomenei in France as his interpreter and spokesman.
As an opponent of American foreign policy and Zionism, he helped organize disparate rebel groups into the Revolutionary Guards, the military arm of the revolt.
Dr. Yazdi had foiled an attempted takeover of the American Embassy earlier in 1979, but later that year he warned American officials that their decision to admit the exiled shah to the United States for cancer treatment would open “a Pandora’s box.” Three days later, on Nov. 4, 1979, student supporters of the Iranian revolution seized the embassy.
But by 1981, when the Revolutionary Guards and allied groups had rallied behind the mullahs and ousted the moderates, he was criticizing the ruling Islamic Republic Party for what he called its “Stalinistic and un-Islamic methods.”
The title of Dr. Yazdi’s memoir, published in Persian in 2012, reflected his long-term perspective: “Sixty Years of Patience.”
“The day after the revolution, Khomeini was facing the question: What is an Islamic republic?” Dr. Yazdi recalled in 2008 in an interview with The Times. “I was in favor of a constitution and elections. They were against it. Khomeini was oscillating, but gradually he turned to the conservative side.”
Dr. Yazdi predicted then that while Iran’s “revolutionary chapter” was not over, the country was “learning democracy.”
“Democracy is not a commodity to be imported,” he said. “America doesn’t carry democracy in its soldiers’ rucksacks.”
Rather, he said, democracy and its basic components — pluralism, tolerance, compromise — must be acquired from within a society, one that for the time being he considered still to be despotic.
“Many basic rights and liberties are continuously being denied,” Dr. Yazdi said. “Therefore, one inspiration behind the revolution, restoration of people’s sovereignty, democracy and so on, hasn’t been achieved — yet.”
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Ebrahim Yazdi
| Ebrahim Yazdi | |
|---|---|
Yazdi in 1979
| |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran | |
| In office 12 April 1979 – 12 November 1979 | |
| Prime Minister | Mehdi Bazargan |
| Preceded by | Karim Sanjabi |
| Succeeded by | Abulhassan Banisadr |
| Deputy Prime Minister of Iran for Revolutionary Affairs | |
| In office 13 February 1979 – 12 April 1979 | |
| Prime Minister | Mehdi Bazargan |
| Succeeded by | Mostafa Chamran |
| Member of the Parliament of Iran | |
| In office 28 May 1980 – 28 May 1984 | |
| Constituency | Tehran, Rey and Shemiranat |
| Majority | 1,128,304 (52.9%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 26 September 1931 Qazvin, Iran |
| Died | 27 August 2017 (aged 85) İzmir, Turkey |
| Nationality | Iranian |
| Political party |
|
| Spouse(s) | Soran Talie[1] |
| Children | Six |
| Alma mater | University of Tehran Baylor University |
Ebrahim Yazdi (Persian: ابراهیم یزدی; 26 September 1931[2][3][4] – 27 August 2017) was an Iranian politician and diplomat who served as deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan, until his resignation in November 1979, in protest at the Iran hostage crisis. From 1995 until 2017, he headed the Freedom Movement of Iran.
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[hide]Early life and education[edit]
Yazdi was born in Qazvin on 26 September 1931.[5][6] He studied pharmacology at the University of Tehran.[6] Then he received a master's degree in philosophy again from the University of Tehran.[7]
After the military coup of 1953, which deposed the government of Mohammad Mossadegh, Yazdi joined the underground National Resistance Movement of Iran, and was active in this organization from 1953 to 1960. This organization opposed to the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Yazdi traveled to the United States in 1961[8] to continue his education and in the US, continued his involvement in political activities against the Shah.
He was cofounder of the Freedom Movement of Iran, Abroad, along with Mostafa Chamran, Ali Shariati, and Sadegh Qotbzadeh in 1961. They were all part of the radical external wing of the group.[9] In 1963, Yazdi, Chamran and Ghotbzadeh went to Egypt and met the authorities to establish an anti-Shah organization in the country, which was later called SAMA, special organization for unity and action.[9] Chamran was chosen as its military head before returning to the US.[9] In 1966, Yazdi moved headquarters of SAMA to Beirut.[9] In 1967, he enrolled at Baylor University and received a PhD in biochemistry.[7]
In 1975, Yazdi was tried in absentia in an Iranian military court and condemned to ten years imprisonment, with orders issued for his arrest upon return to Iran. Because of his activities, he was unable to return to Iran and remained in the United States until July 1977.[7] He became a naturalized US citizen in Houston in 1971.[8] When Ayatollah Khomeneimoved to Neauphle-le-Château an Parisian suburb from Iraq in 1978, Yazdi also went to Neauphle-le-Château and began to serve as an advisor to the Ayatollah.[10] He was also his spokesperson in Paris.[8]
Career and political activities[edit]
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Yazdi worked as a research assistant of pathology and research instructor of pharmacology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston until 1977.[7] He also worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Houston.[7]
In 1978, he joined Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris where the latter had been in exile and became one of his advisors.[11] He translated the reports of Khomeini into English in a press conference on 3 February 1979 in Tehran.[12]He was the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan, until 6 November 1979.[13] Yazdi proposed to celebrate 'Jerusalem Day' and his suggestion was endorsed by Khomeini in August 1979.[13] In May 1980, he was appointed by Khomenei as head of the Kayhan newspaper.[14]
On 4 November 1979, the US embassy was taken over for a second time, this time by a group calling itself “Students Following the Line of the Imam (i.e. Ayatollah Khomeini)” and led by Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, who had closer ties to certain revolutionary leaders.
As before, Yazdi was asked to go to the embassy and resolve the crisis. He asked and received permission of Khomeini to expel the occupiers, but shortly thereafter found out Khomeini had changed his mind[15] and appeared on state television openly endorsed the takeover of the embassy. The entire cabinet of the interim government, including Yazdi and Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, resigned in protest the next day. They stated that they opposed the embassy takeover as “contrary to the national interest of Iran”.
The embassy takeover is considered to have been motivated in part by an internal struggle between various factions within the revolutionary leadership, with Yazdi and Bazargan on one side, and more radical clergy on the other. The embassy attackers, in subsequent statements indicated that one of their primary objectives in the takeover of the US embassy in November 1979 was to force the resignation of Yazdi, Bazargan, and the entire cabinet.[citation needed]
Among the areas of conflict between the two factions was the behavior of the Revolutionary Courts and the Revolutionary Committees. Yazdi and Bazargan supported a general amnesty for all members of the Shah’s regime, provided that they cease to act against the revolution. They publicly opposed the secret trials and the summary executions carried out by the Revolutionary Courts, led by Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhaali. Bazargan and other members of the interim government called for fair and open trials for those accused of crimes committed under the Shah’s regime. The radical clerics, on the other hand, stated that the rapid trials and executions were essential to protect the revolution.
After resignation from office, Yazdi and other members of the Freedom Movement of Iran ran in elections for the first post-revolutionary Islamic Consultative Assembly or parliament. Yazdi, Bazargan, and four other members of the Freedom Movement, namely Mostafa Chamran, Ahmad Sadr, Hashem Sabbaghian, and Yadollah Sahabi, were elected. They served at the parliament from 1980 to 1984.
After the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980, Yazdi fully supported the Iranian war effort against the invasion, but opposed the continuation of the war after the Iranian victory in Khorramshahr in 1982. The war continued for an additional six years. During these six years, Yazdi and others in the Freedom Movement issued several open letters to Ayatollah Khomeini opposing the continuation of the war. These letters and other public statements resulted in the firebombing of Yazdi’s residence in Tehran in 1985, and the arrest and imprisonment of several member of the Freedom Movement.
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In subsequent elections in Iran for president, parliament, and city councils, Yazdi and other members of the Freedom Movement filed for candidacy but were barred from running by the Guardian Council, because of their opposition to policies and actions of the government.[16]
In December 1997, Yazdi was arrested on unknown charges and detained in Evin prison in Tehran. Even after his release, he was barred from leaving the country for many years, and summoned on a regular basis to answer questions before the revolutionary council, with his lawyer, Nobel Prize–winning Shirin Ebadi. As of 2008 Yazdi is still accused of “attempting to convert the rule of velaii (jurisprudence) into democratic rule.”
After the death of Bazargan in January 1995, Yazdi was elected as leader of Freedom Movement of Iran. Under pressure from the revolutionary court prosecutor, Yazdi offered his resignation as FMI Leader from on 20 March 2011 to the leadership council of the FMI. They have yet to accept his resignation and Yazdi continues to function as the leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran.
Later years and death[edit]
Yazdi was arrested in December 1997 for "desecrating religious sanctities" and freed on 26 December on bail.[17] On 17 June 2009, during the 2009 Iranian election protests, it was reported that Yazdi was arrested while undergoing tests at the Tehran hospital according to the Freedom Movement of Iran website.[18] On 22 June, he was released back to the hospital for a medical procedure.[19] On 28 December 2009, Yazdi was arrested again in the wake of renewed protests,[20] according to the Jaras reformist website.
Yazdi and several others were arrested on 1 October 2010 in Isfahan for participating in an "illegal Friday prayer." All others were freed within days. Ebrahim Yazdi remained in "temporary custody"—first in Evin prison and then in a "secure" facility under the control of Iran's security forces until March 2011. He was released in April 2011.[21]
On 27 August 2017, Yazdi died of pancreatic cancer, at the age of 85 in Izmir, Turkey, where he was under treatment.[22][23]His body transferred to Iran and was buried in Behesht-e Zahra.[24]
Selected works[edit]
- Aakhareen Talaash-ha Dar Aakhareen Rooz-ha (Final Efforts, Final Days), Qalam Publications, 1984 (13th Edition, 1999) (a report and analysis on the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979)
- Principles of Molecular Genetics (Third Edition), Ettela’aat Publications, Tehran, 2000
- Mutational Changes in Generic Materials, Matin Cultural Foundation, Tehran, 1986
- Seh Jumhuri (The Three Republics), Jaameye Iranian Publications, 2000 (a compilation of political essays and articles by Ebrahim Yazdi published in Iranian journals from 1997–2000)
- Khatti Dar Darya (A Line in the Sea), Qalam Publications, Tehran, 2000 (a new interpretation of the verse of the Quran on “Marajul Bahrain”)
- Khaak-haa-ye Rosi va Paydaayesh-e Hayaat (Clay Minerals and the Origin of Life), Qalam Publications, 2001 (a new interpretation of the verses of the Quran on “Teen-e Laatheb”)
- Kalbod Shekaafee-ye Towte-e: Barresee-ye Kudetaa-ye Beestohasht-e Mordaad 1332 (The Anatomy of a Plot: An Analysis of the Coup of August 1953), Qalam Publications, 2002 (a collection of essays on the US and British led military coup against the national government of Mohammad Mossadegh)
- Docterin-e Amniyyat-e Melli (National Security Doctrine), Sarai Publications, Tehran, 2004 (a compilation of political essays on Iranian foreign affairs from 1980–2004)
- Jonbesh-e Daaneshju-yi-e Iran 1320–1340 (The Iranian Student Movement from 1941–1961), Qalam Publications, 2004 (a history and memoirs of the student movement and activities of Ebrahim Yazdi during this period)
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Ebrahim Yazdi, or Ibrahim Yazdi, (Persian: ابراهیم یزدی; b. September 26, 1931, Qazvin, Iran – d. August 27, 2017, Izmir, Turkey) was an Iranian politician and diplomat who served as deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan, until his resignation in November 1979, in protest at the Iran hostage crisis. From 1995 until 2017, he headed the Freedom Movement of Iran.
Yazdi studied pharmacology at the University of Tehran. Then he received a master's degree in philosophy again from the University of Tehran.
After the military coup of 1953, which deposed the government of Mohammad Mossadegh, Yazdi joined the underground National Resistance Movement of Iran, and was active in this organization from 1953 to 1960. This organization opposed to the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Yazdi traveled to the United States in 1961 to continue his education and in the United States, continued his involvement in political activities against the Shah.
Yazdi was co-founder of the Freedom Movement of Iran, Abroad, along with Mostafa Chamran, Ali Shariati, and Sadegh Qotbzadeh in 1961. They were all part of the radical external wing of the group. In 1963, Yazdi, Chamran and Ghotbzadeh went to Egypt and met the authorities to establish an anti-Shah organization in the country, which was later called SAMA, special organization for unity and action. Chamran was chosen as its military head before returning to the United States. In 1966, Yazdi moved the headquarters of SAMA to Beirut. In 1967, he enrolled at Baylor University and received a Ph.D. in biochemistry. Yazdi became a naturalized United States citizen in Houston in 1971.
Yazdi worked as a research assistant of pathology and research instructor of pharmacology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston until 1977. He also worked at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Houston.
In 1975, Yazdi was tried in absentia in an Iranian military court and condemned to ten years imprisonment, with orders issued for his arrest upon return to Iran. Because of his activities, he was unable to return to Iran and remained in the United States until July 1977. When Ayatollah Khomeini moved to Neauphle-le-Chateau, a Parisian suburb from Iraq in 1978, Yazdi also went to Neauphle-le-Château and began to serve as an advisor to the Ayatollah. He was also his spokesperson in Paris.
In 1978, he joined Ayatollah Khomeini in Paris where the latter had been in exile and became one of his advisors. He translated the reports of Khomeini into English in a press conference on February 3, 1979 in Tehran. He was the deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs in the interim government of Mehdi Barargan, until November 6, 1979. Yazdi proposed to celebrate 'Jerusalem Day' and his suggestion was endorsed by Khomeini in August 1979. In May 1980, he was appointed by Khomeini as head of the Kayhan newspaper.
On November 4, 1979, the United States embassy was taken over for a second time, this time by a group calling itself "Students Following the Line of the Imam (i.e. Ayatollah Khomeini)” and led by Mohammad Mousavi Khoeiniha, who had closer ties to certain revolutionary leaders.
As before, Yazdi was asked to go to the embassy and resolve the crisis. He asked and received permission of Khomeini to expel the occupiers, but shortly thereafter found out Khomeini had changed his mind and appeared on state television openly endorsing the takeover of the embassy. The entire cabinet of the interim government, including Yazdi and Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, resigned in protest the next day. They stated that they opposed the embassy takeover as “contrary to the national interest of Iran”.
The embassy takeover is considered to have been motivated in part by an internal struggle between various factions within the revolutionary leadership, with Yazdi and Bazargan on one side, and more radical clergy on the other. The embassy attackers, in subsequent statements indicated that one of their primary objectives in the takeover of the United States embassy in November 1979 was to force the resignation of Yazdi, Bazargan, and the entire cabinet.
Among the areas of conflict between the two factions was the behavior of the Revolutionary Courts and the Revolutionary Committees. Yazdi and Bazargan supported a general amnesty for all members of the Shah’s regime, provided that they cease to act against the revolution. They publicly opposed the secret trials and the summary executions carried out by the Revolutionary Courts, led by Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhaali. Bazargan and other members of the interim government called for fair and open trials for those accused of crimes committed under the Shah’s regime. The radical clerics, on the other hand, stated that the rapid trials and executions were essential to protect the revolution.
After resignation from office, Yazdi and other members of the Freedom Movement of Iran ran in elections for the first post-revolutionary Islamic Consultative Assembly or parliament. Yazdi, Bazargan, and four other members of the Freedom Movement, namely Mostafa Chamran, Ahmad Sadr, Hashem Sabbaghian, and Yadollah Sahabi, were elected. They served in the parliament from 1980 to 1984.
After the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980, Yazdi fully supported the Iranian war effort against the invasion, but opposed the continuation of the war after the Iranian victory in Khorramshahr in 1982. The war continued for an additional six years. During these six years, Yazdi and others in the Freedom Movement issued several open letters to Ayatollah Khomeini opposing the continuation of the war. These letters and other public statements resulted in the firebombing of Yazdi’s residence in Tehran in 1985, and the arrest and imprisonment of several members of the Freedom Movement.
In subsequent elections in Iran for president, parliament, and city councils, Yazdi and other members of the Freedom Movement filed for candidacy but were barred from running by the Guardian Council, because of their opposition to policies and actions of the government.
After the death of Bazargan in January 1995, Yazdi was elected as leader of Freedom Movement of Iran. Under pressure from the revolutionary court prosecutor, Yazdi offered his resignation as FMI Leader on March 20, 2011 to the leadership council of the FMI. By the time of Yazdi's death the leadership council had yet to accept his resignation and Yazdi continued to function as the leader of the Freedom Movement of Iran.
Yazdi was arrested in December 1997 for "desecrating religious sanctities" and was freed on December 26 on bail. Even after his release, he was barred from leaving the country for many years, and was summoned on a regular basis to answer questions before the revolutionary council, with his lawyer, Nobel Prize–winning Shirin Ebadi.
On June 17, 2009, during the 2009 Iranian election protests, it was reported that Yazdi was arrested while undergoing tests at the Tehran hospital according to the Freedom Movement of Iran website. On June 22, Yazdi was released back to the hospital for a medical procedure. On December 28, 2009, Yazdi was arrested again in the wake of renewed protests, according to the Jaras reformist website.
Yazdi and several others were arrested on October 1, 2010 in Isfahan for participating in an "illegal Friday prayer." All others were freed within days. Ibrahim Yazdi remained in "temporary custody" — first in Evin prison and then in a "secure" facility under the control of Iran's security forces until March 2011. He was released in April 2011.
On August 27, 2017, Yazdi died of pancreatic cancer in Izmir, Turkey, where he was under treatment. His body transferred to Iran and was buried in Behesht-e Zahra.
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