Hassan Arsanjani

Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (center), Prime Minister Ali Amini (left) and Agriculture Minister Hassan Arsanjani (far right) distributing land deeds in Kermanshah, 1961

Hassan Arsanǰānī ( listen ^{? / I} ; Persian حسن ارسنجانی Hasan Arsanjani ; * August 1923 in Tehran ; † June 1969 in Tehran) was an Iranian lawyer, journalist and Minister of Agriculture in the cabinet of Prime Ministers Ali Amini and Asadollah Alam . Arsanjani is considered the architect of land reform, one of the central reform projects of the White Revolution by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi .

Life

Hassan Arsanjani at a press conference in Bonn, 1961

Hassan was born in Tehran in August 1923. His mother Hajar came from a religious family and his father Mohammad Hossein was a clergyman and farmer from the city of Arsanjan. His father died when Hossein was six years old. His mother supported her family with sewing and received some financial support from her father, who owned a small farm and shop in a village near Tehran. In this way, Hassan learned early about the poor life of the rural population, who at that time made up about 90% of Iran's population.

Hassan went to one of the newly established Pahlavi elementary schools on the orders of Reza Shah Pahlavi , which gradually replaced the religious schools of the clergy. Hassan became a member of the Boy Scouts and learned French. At the age of 17 he translated Montesquieu's Persian letters into Persian.

After high school, he studied law at the University of Tehran . In addition to his studies, he worked as a journalist. At the age of 22 he founded his own magazine with Daria. After completing his studies, he opened an economically very successful law firm. In 1945 he founded his own party, the Freedom Party, which he soon gave up due to a lack of political success. Instead, Arsanjani became a member of Ahmad Qavam's newly founded Democratic Party. Arsanjani ran for parliament and was also elected. But since he had never lived in his constituency Lāhidschān, his mandate was revoked . Arsanjani took over the post of editor-in-chief of the party organ of the Democratic Party Demokrāt-e Īrān for two years, but later worked again as a lawyer in his office.

After Mohammad Mossadegh's resignation as Prime Minister in mid-July 1951, Arsanjani was appointed Deputy Prime Minister by Prime Minister Ahmad Qavam. After only six days, Qavam had to resign due to ongoing protests. This ended Arsanjani's political career for the time being. Just 30 years old, Arsanjani decided to return to university and do a doctorate. In 1955, Arsanjani became friends with General Valiollah Gharani, then head of the military intelligence service, who was planning a coup. The coup was intended to make Ali Amini prime minister. The coup in 1958 failed and Arsanjani ended up in prison for a few weeks. Three years later Ali Amini was officially appointed Prime Minister by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , and Arsanjani became Minister of Agriculture. The Shah wanted to push through the long pending land reform as part of the White Revolution , with which the large landowners should be expropriated for compensation and then the land should be distributed to farmers. Arsanjani was supposed to take over the planning for this reform project, which had failed several times politically, and to introduce the relevant laws into parliament. After parliamentary approval, Arsanjani was supposed to put the land reform into practice.

Large landowners and the clergy, who owned substantial property themselves or through religious foundations and benefited economically from the feudal leasing system, wanted to prevent this reform at all costs. There were heated discussions in parliament, so that in the end the Shah saw the solution in a referendum for his reform program. On January 26, 1963, an overwhelming majority of the population voted for the reform program, but this did not stop the political conflict. On June 5, 1963, there was an unprecedented unrest, led by a sheikh by the name of Ruhollah Khomeini, who was largely unknown at the time , and which would go down in Iranian history as the unrest of Chordad 15 . Amini had resigned as prime minister, but the new prime minister, Asadollah Alam , had Khomeini arrested and tried to bring him to trial. Arsanjani remained Minister of Agriculture in Alam's cabinet and with the support of the Shah, land reform could be carried out. Arsanjani had reached the height of his political career.

As part of the land reform, cooperatives and cooperatives were founded in collaboration with agricultural advisers from Israel . Arsanjani was in close contact with the Israeli representative in Iran and also traveled several times to Israel to get to know the agricultural methods there better. He had thousands of farmers transported in buses to meetings in which he criticized the old feudal structures and thus convinced the farmers of the land reform. In the end, the great popularity he had gained through his speeches with the peasants was his undoing. The Shah replaced Asanjani as Minister of Agriculture and appointed him ambassador to Italy.

Arsanjani, who saw himself as the future Prime Minister, did not want to be sidelined politically and gave the international press in Rome several interviews in which he was critical of the new Prime Minister Hassan Ali Mansur . Mansur had Arsanjani replaced as ambassador. His political career came to an end. Hassan Arsanjani was working as a freelance lawyer again and was soon to be one of the best-paid lawyers in Tehran.

Hassan Arsanjani died suddenly of heart failure in June 1969 at the age of forty-seven after a big party in his home. His death gave rise to wild speculation, as his brother wanted to have found poison on a glass in the house of Arsanjanis. However, Arsanjani's friends pointed to the persistent heart problems that preceded the infarction. Hassan Arsanjani was married to Maryam Daftari, who was twenty years his junior and a relative of former Prime Minister Ahmad Matin-Daftari . The marriage produced a son. There were violent disputes between the young wife and the family of the deceased about the division of the not inconsiderable property, which the courts all decided in favor of his wife.

literature

• Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians . Syracuse University Press, 2008, pp. 85-91.

Web links

• Hasan Arsanjani Entry in the Encyclopaedia Iranica