Manutschehr Eghbal

Manutschehr Eghbal

Manutschehr Eghbal ( Persian منوچهر اقبال, also Manouchehre Eqbal ; * October 14, 1909 in Kashmar ; † November 25, 1977 in Tehran) was Rector of Tehran University, Minister and Prime Minister of Iran. Manutschehr Eghbal was married to a French woman. The marriage produced three daughters. While one daughter went to a monastery and became a nun, the other daughter first married Mahmood Reza Pahlavi, the brother of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi and later, after a divorce, Shahriar Schafiq, the son of Aschraf Pahlavi , the twin sister of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The third daughter married a Swiss doctor and lives in Switzerland.

Life

Manutschehr Eghbal was born on October 14, 1909, the fifth of eleven children in Mashhad . Manutschehr Eghbal's father was a member of the constituent assembly that drafted the constitution of 1906 and thus created the constitutional basis for a constitutional monarchy in Iran as part of the Constitutional Revolution .

Manutschehr attended the Dar-ol Fonun -Gymnasium. After graduating from high school, he went to France and studied medicine there. He returned to Iran in 1933 with a medical doctorate. In Mashhad he enlisted for service in the army and became head of the local army hospital. After the end of his military service, he moved to Tehran in 1936 and began a career as a professor at the newly established medical faculty of the University of Tehran .

In 1942, after the resignation of Reza Shah in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Manutschehr Eghbal was appointed to the Ministry of Health by Prime Minister Ahmad Qavām . A little later, Eghbal became minister of health in the Qavām cabinet.

On February 4, 1949, Manutschehr Eghbal was expecting Mohammad Reza Shah as a member of the reception committee of the University of Tehran when he was slightly injured in an assassination attempt . Eghbal gave the wounded Shah first aid and escorted him to the hospital.

After Mohammad Mossadegh became Prime Minister in 1951, Manutschehr Eghbal's political career was over for the time being. On the one hand, Eghbal was close to the Pahlavis. On the other hand, he was married to a French Christian and his daughters were also baptized Christians who also wore a cross as an ornament. Eghbal had already been put on a list as “unfit for public office” under Mossadegh's predecessor, Prime Minister Hajj Ali Razmara . In 1953 Eghbal went back to the University of Tehran and became its rector.

prime minister

Cabinet Eghbal Ali-Akbar Zargham (far left), Teymur Bachtiar (fourth from left), Jafar Sharif-Emami (left from Eghbal), Manutschehr Eghbal (center), Jamschid Amusegar (right from Eghbal), Asadollah Alam (far right)

After only three years as rector of the University of Tehran, Manutschehr Eghbal became politically active again when he was appointed court minister on June 2, 1956. The fact that Mohammad Reza Shah Eghbal entrusted this important office shows the special trust that Mohammad Reza Shah had in Eghbal. It is therefore not surprising that Manutschehr Eghbal became Prime Minister on April 4, 1957, while the previous Prime Minister Hossein Ala became Court Minister. Manutschehr Eghbal took office at the time of the second development plan , the economic program designed by Abol Hassan Ebtehadsch , the director of the powerful planning organization, for the years 1956 to 1962.

The appointment of Eghbal was warmly welcomed by the Iranian press. He did not disappoint his supporters and ordered that from now on there should no longer be a state of emergency or the use of the military against demonstrators. With this decision, the political conflicts of the post-Mossadegh era should finally be ended and the economic development of the country should be brought to the fore of political interest. In the United States, President Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected for a second term. On January 5, 1957, the doctrine named after Eisenhower was enacted, according to which the USA wanted to take all possible means against the aggression started by international communism in the Middle East. For Iran, this initially meant that the country should set up a secret service with American help in order to be able to detect possible communist infiltration at an early stage. Even before Eghbal was appointed Prime Minister, the law establishing the SAVAK was passed on March 20, 1957 . Prime Minister Eghbal now had the task of establishing the service.

Under Prime Minister Eghbal, the center of power in Iranian politics shifted from Prime Minister to Shah. Eghbal was the first Prime Minister to sign his official letters to the Shah with the greeting "Your very devoted slave". Eghbal had stated that the policy guidelines were not given by the Prime Minister but by the Shah and that the fundamental decisions in defense and foreign policy lay solely with the Shah. With Eghbal's view that the government of Iran was merely the executive organ for the policy of the Shah, a fateful path was taken. The Prime Minister was no longer responsible for political or economic undesirable developments, but only the Shah.

At the beginning of his reign, Prime Minister Eghbal was given two important missions. The first thing he should do is sign an agreement with the Italian oil company Eni in order to reduce the dependence on the British and American oil companies of the consortium agreement . Second, Eghbal was supposed to negotiate a friendship and non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union that would replace the Soviet-Iranian friendship treaty of 1921 . Iran had been a member of CENTO , a defense alliance between the United States, Iraq, Turkey, Great Britain, Pakistan and Iran, since 1955 . By joining this military alliance, Iran had given up its centuries of foreign policy neutrality. The planned treaty between the Soviet Union and Iran was intended to strike a balance between Western security interests and the security interests of the Soviet Union, at least as far as Iran was concerned. However, President Eisenhower viewed this proposed treaty between Iran and the Soviet Union as an unfriendly act towards the United States. After Eisenhower's written intervention with the Shah, the Iranian side initially abandoned the project. On March 2, 1959, however, the Iranian government under Prime Minister Manutschehr Eghbal declared to the Soviet government that it no longer considered Article 6 of the treaty, which granted the Soviet Union the right to invade Iran under certain conditions, to be valid. Thus an important part of the treaty that restricted Iran's sovereignty was unilaterally terminated by Iran.

Another instruction by Mohammad Reza Shah to Eghbal provided that Iran should be given a two-party system along the lines of the US. Prime Minister Eghbal should found one of the two parties. While Prime Minister Eghbal founded the Melliyune (Nationalist Party) , Asadollah Alam founded the Mardom Party (People's Party) . The 19th session of Parliament ended on July 9, 1960 and a regular election campaign broke out between the parties. Completely unexpectedly, a third political force intervened in the election campaign of the two newly founded parties, the National Front , which was strengthened again in the politically liberal climate of the election campaign . Eghbal, now under attack from both the Mardom Party and the National Front, tried to “control” the July 19, 1960 elections. The massive election fraud led to massive protests and demonstrations. On August 3, 1960, Eghbal was even tried for election fraud. Even Ali Amini and Asadollah Alam spoke of the biggest fraud of Iranian history, prompting Prime Minister Eghbal resigned on August 7 1960th Mohammad Reza Shah called on the newly elected members of parliament to resign because they clearly did not have the trust of the population. Jafar Sharif-Emami became the new Prime Minister .

After his resignation as Prime Minister, Eghbal took over the office of rector of the University of Tehran again. But he was soon to have to give up this office too, haunted by the effects of his electoral fraud. Students organized demonstrations and lecture strikes, set his car on fire during a protest march and Eghbal had to be brought from the university campus to safety by helicopter under police protection. Eghbal left Iran and became Iran's ambassador to UNESCO in Paris.

Head of the NIOC

After the situation in Iran had calmed down a bit, Manutschehr Eghbal returned and became president of the National Iranian Oil Company ( NIOC ). He would hold this post for 14 years without significantly influencing the country's oil policy. Mohammad Reza Shah had long determined Iran's oil policy himself and used Jamjid Amusegar as his issuer to implement his political ideas. In November 1977 Eghbal was asked by the Shah to step down as President of the NIOC. Eghbal complied with the Shah's wish, but was deeply struck that he had lost the Shah's trust.

Manutschehr Eghbal died of a heart attack on the night of November 25, 1977. Many who knew him better said he died of a broken heart. Obviously he hadn't coped with his departure from power.

Honors

• 1957: Grand Cross of the Federal Cross of Merit
• 1958: Grand Cross of the Papal Order of Pius

literature

• Alireza Avsati: Iran in the last 3 Centuries . Intishārāt-i Pā'kitāb, Tehran 2003, ISBN 964-93406-6-1 (vol. 1), ISBN 964-93406-5-3 (vol. 2) (Persian).
• 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 , pp. 124-128.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Encyclopædia Iranica on Manutschehr Eghbal from December 15, 1998.
2. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, Vol. 1, p. 127.
3. ↑ AAS 51 (1959), n.5, p. 286.