Ali Razmara

Lieutenant General Hajj Ali Razmara

Hajj Ali Razmara ( Persian حاجیعلی رزم‌آرا `Alī Razmāra ; * March 30, 1901 in Tehran ; † March 7, 1951 ) was Lieutenant General ( Sepahbod ) of the Iranian Army and from June 1950 to March 1951 Prime Minister of Iran . He was married to Anwar-el Moluk Hedayat, a sister of Sadegh Hedayat , and had five children. Razmara is an accepted literary name and literally means "combat designer". Razmara is described as "methodical, disciplined, serious and ambitious". He died on March 7, 1951 from a politically motivated assassination attempt by a member of the Islamist group Fedayeen-e Islam .

Youth and military career

Hajj Ali was born on the evening of the Feast of Sacrifice in 1901. This led to the addition of Hajj to his first name Ali . In elementary school he was top of the class. After attending primary school, he first attended the French grammar school in Tehran and later went to Dar-ol Fonun . He then enrolled in the newly opened military school in Tehran. In the entrance examination, he achieved the tenth best result of all applicants ever tested.

After graduating, he began his military career in the headquarters of the military administration. Under Reza Shah he was involved in the suppression of the separatist Jangali movement of Mirza Kutschak Khan in northern Iran and the separatist movement of Ismael Agha Simko , the leader of the Kurdish Shikak tribe , in Azerbaijan .

At the age of 22 he was sent to the St. Cyr Military Academy in France along with other officers . After two years he returned to Iran. He was posted to Lurestan for 6 years to end the ongoing separatist unrest there. In 1934 he was ordered back to Tehran, where he was charged with founding the Center for Military Cartography. He later became deputy president of the Iranian Military Academy and responsible for officer training.

At the age of 37 he was promoted to general in 1938. From then on he was a member of the High Military Council. In August 1941, when Iran was attacked by England and the Soviet Union as part of the Anglo-Soviet invasion , he advised Reza Shah to surrender immediately. After the dissolution of the Iranian army by the Allied forces, General Razmara reformed the remaining troops in Tehran and re-established them as Division No. 1.

General Razmara became head of the Iranian army under Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam . After the Second World War , he was instrumental in the dissolution of the Azerbaijani People's Government , which was founded in 1946 with the support of the Soviet Union, and thus in ending the Iran crisis .

Prime Minister of Iran

After the resignation of Prime Minister Rajab Ali Mansur on June 26, 1950, Hajj Ali Razmara became Prime Minister. Razmara advocated decentralization of the government. His motto was: "Let's bring the government to the people". Accordingly, as the first legislative initiative, he introduced a bill to create city and district councils in parliament. Local self-government was provided for in the Iranian constitution, but has not yet been implemented. The city and district councils should u. a. be responsible for local health care, education and agricultural projects. Mossadegh was a bitter opponent of decentralization . In order to secure his political power base, Razmara prepared the establishment of a new, social-democratically oriented party.

The most significant success of Razmara was the institutionalization of the Point IV program ( asl-e chahar ) in Iran through an agreement with the President of the United States Truman . During Razmara's tenure, negotiations with the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) about a fairer distribution of oil revenues took place. The Abadan Refinery had grown into the largest refinery in the world over the past 40 years. The refinery, like all other oil facilities in this part of Iran, was operated by the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) on the basis of an agreement signed in 1933 between the AOIC and Iran. According to this agreement, which was valid for a period of 60 years, Iran was entitled to approximately 8% of the net proceeds from the sale of crude oil, regardless of the proceeds from the refinery and the sale of finished oil products. The AIOC achieved net sales of £ 40 million in 1947, of which £ 7 million was transferred to Iran, which corresponded to a quota of 18%.

The political confrontation between Razmara and Mossadegh was marked by a death threat even at the beginning of Razmara's term of office. On June 27, 1950, Razmara presented his cabinet and government program to the Iranian parliament . In the following session, Mossadegh attacked Razmara personally:

“... I swear by one God, blood will flow, blood will flow. We will fight and we may be killed. If you're a military man, I'm more of a soldier than you. I will kill, I will kill you in this Parliament. "

In 1950, the Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO) negotiated a new agreement with the Saudis that provided a 50/50 split of net oil revenues. For the Iranian government, parliament and the Shah it was a matter of course that a comparable settlement should be achieved with the AIOC. In the negotiations, the Iranian government had two options: it could threaten nationalization or, as provided for in the agreement, after 30 years (1963) with massive taxation of AIOC profits. Razmara was a staunch opponent of nationalization, while Mossadegh , the spokesman for the newly formed party of the National Front , saw nationalization as the only viable option. Razmara had commissioned an expert opinion on the consequences of the nationalization of the oil facilities. Reviewers Fathollah Nacficy and Baqer Mostofi, who were employed by the AIOC, concluded that it would be extremely difficult for a national Iranian oil company yet to be established to break the cartel of international oil companies, and crude oil or refined oil in the world market for sale. Nationalization would lead to a significant loss of income for Iran due to the cartel's blockade.

In a special session on December 24, 1950, Prime Minister Razmara said in the Iranian Parliament:

"I would like to make it clear here that Iran currently does not have the industrial possibilities to get the oil out of the earth and sell it on the world market [...] Gentlemen, you cannot with the employees who are available to you manage a cement factory once. [...] I say this very clearly, whoever puts the property and resources of our country at risk is betraying our people. "

The counter-speech to Prime Minister Razmara's government statement was given by Mozaffar Baqai . Baqai strongly advocated nationalization and sharply criticized Razmara's position.

Mossadegh intensified the political conflict with the government on March 7, 1951 with a press release on Prime Minister Razmara's position on the oil issue:

“On behalf of the National Front, I declare that the Iranians only feel hatred for what the Prime Minister has said. We consider a government illegitimate that engages in such slave-like humiliation. There is no avoiding the nationalization of oil. "

On the same day, Razmara was murdered by a member of Fedayeen Islam .

assassination

After his speech in Parliament, Razmara went to the Soltani Mosque in the bazaar to attend a funeral service for Ayatollah Fajz. The police cleared a way for the prime minister through the assembled crowd. Khalil Tahmasbi, a member of Fedayeen-e Islam , shot three times and fatally wounded Razmara. He was arrested at the scene. Ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani proclaimed the murderer Razmaras a "savior of the Iranian people" and demanded his immediate release from prison. Kaschani had previously sentenced Razmara to death in a fatwa .

One week after Razmara's assassination, the Iranian parliament decided to nationalize the oil facilities. On May 8, 1951, Mossadegh became Prime Minister. The murderer Razmaras was pardoned in November 1952 on the basis of a resolution drafted by Kashani with the support of the members of the National Front by the Iranian parliament. The 104-year-old father of Razmara had called for the rejection of the resolution in a personal letter to parliament, in which he pointed out the merits of his son, who had campaigned for the nation all his life. It was no use. The killer was hailed as a hero and Prime Minister Mossadegh received him at his official residence.

Hajj Ali Razmara was buried in the Bagh-e Touti (Parrot Garden) in Shah Abdul Azim in Ray.

Effects on Politics in Iran

After the assassination of Razmara, a period of assassination attempts, death threats and violent demonstrations began unlike anything the country had seen before. The nationalization of the oil industry led to the Abadan crisis , which forced Mohammad Reza Shah into first exile, and to the overthrow of the Mossadegh government. The crisis was only ended with the intervention of the US under President Eisenhower . The consortium agreement signed in the mid-1950s, which was supposed to clarify the question of oil revenues for the next 25 years, ultimately did not really satisfy anyone in Iran.

See also

• Assassination attempt on Ahmad Kasravi
• Assassination attempt on Abdolhossein Hazhir
• Assassination attempt on Hassan Ali Mansour
• Assassinations of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi
• Hassan Arfa
• Gholamali Bayandor

literature

• 'Alí Rizā Awsatí (عليرضا اوسطى): Iran in the past three centuries ( Irān dar Se Qarn-e Goz̲ashteh - ايران در سه قرن گذشته), Volumes 1 and 2 (Paktāb Publishing - انتشارات, 2003). ISBN 9-6-49340-66-1 (volume 1), ISBN 9-6-49340-65-3 (volume 2).
• Mostafa Elm: Oil, Power, and Principle. Iran's Oil Nationalization and Its Aftermath . Syracuse University Press, Syracuse NY 1994, ISBN 0-8156-2642-8 .
• M. Reza Ghods: The rise and fall of General Razmara . In: Middle Eastern Studies . 1, 1, Jan. 1993, pp. 22-35.
• Mary Ann Heiss: Empire and Nationhood. The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil, 1950–1954 . Columbia University Press, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-231-10819-2 .
• Stephen Kinzer: All The Shah's Men. An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror . John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ 2003, ISBN 0-471-26517-9 .
• Yousof Mazandi, United Press, and Edwin Muller: Government by Assassination . Reader's Digest, September 1951.
• Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. The men and women who made modern Iran, 1941–1979. Volume 1. Syracus University Press et al., Syracus NY et al. 2008, ISBN 978-0-8156-0907-0 , SS 483-489.
• Mehdi Shamshiri: Five historical terrors - Opening the way for premiership of Mossadegh. 2011. ISBN 978-0-578-08079-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, Vol. 1, 2008, p. 483
3. ↑ ^{a b} Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and times of the Shah . UC Press, 2009, p. 119.
4. ↑ Stephen Kinzer : All the Shah's Men . John Wiley and Sons, 2003, p. 67
5. ↑ Speech transcript of the parliamentary scribes of 16 Majlis, 8th Tir 1329. Quoted from: Ali Mirfetros: Mohammad Mosaddeq - Pathology of a failure. Farhanf, Montreal 2008, p. 57.
6. ^ Full text of the minutes of parliament from June 27, 1950
7. ↑ ^{a b} Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and times of the Shah . UC Press, 2009. p. 121.
8. ↑ Gholam Reza Afkhami: The life and times of the Shah . UC Press, 2009. p. 199.