Parviz Sabeti

Parviz Sabeti, 1970

Parviz Sabeti ( Persian پرویز ثابتی* 25. March 1936 in Sangesar ) of the Iranian intelligence service is a former senior security officer SAVAK ( Sa zeman-e Ettela'at V a A mniat-e K eschvar - "Organization for information and to protect the country"). Sabeti was Head of Department III (Domestic Intelligence).

Life

Parviz Sabeti was born on March 25, 1936 in Sangesar, a village near Semnan . Parviz attended elementary school in his hometown. He was sent to Tehran to attend high school.

After graduating from high school, Parviz Sabeti enrolled in the law faculty of Tehran University. After graduating, Sabeti wanted to become a judge. Before he took up his post, Sabeti heard that the newly founded intelligence service SAVAK was looking for employees. He applied and was hired as a political analyst in 1957.

The Iranian secret service SAVAK was originally a kind of combination of the CIA and FBI . He had three departments that were responsible for social, economic and political analysis. Parviz Sabeti became head of the important political department relatively quickly. The department produced two different types of reports: a daily top secret report in three copies, one copy for the Shah, one copy for the head of the SAVAK and one copy for the Prime Minister. The second type of report were special reports "only for the eyes of the Shah", which dealt with selected issues of internal security. These special reports were among other things to which Sabeti owed his later reputation.

The first report requested by the Shah that Sabeti wrote was in 1962. In the United States, John F. Kennedy had been elected President and he urged the Shah and Prime Minister Ali Amini to finally hold free and fair elections in Iran. The Shah asked General Hassan Pakravan, then head of SAVAK, for a report on what would happen in Iran if free elections were held. Parviz Sabeti was asked to write the report. At the beginning of the report, he asked whether the Iranians considered holding free elections to be really necessary. He answered the question by stating that the Iranians were not dissatisfied because there was no democracy or free elections in Iran. Sabeti said that the Iranians would support an authoritarian ruling king as long as there was no corruption and the country was "developing in the right direction". Sabeti believed that the Iranians preferred bread and security to democracy and elections. Then Sabeti went into his report on the requirements for the successful holding of free elections. First of all, the population must be prepared for such elections. If the population were not informed about the process and the deeper meaning of free elections, an election campaign would only bring chaos in the country. In an election analysis for each constituency in the country, Sabeti found that roughly a third of the seats would go to opposition parties. Since the members of the opposition parties are politically active and well trained, it would be easy for them to steer decisions in parliament in their direction through their speeches.

When the Shah read the report, he literally "went up to the ceiling." He considered the report to be far too negative and an example of the "nihilistic negativism" that he had identified in the opposition. A commission of inquiry consisting of three people was formed to check the report for errors in content and method. The Commission concluded that both the poll-based election forecasts and the conclusions of the report were correct. The elections in Iran therefore continued “in keeping with the country's tradition”.

In 1969, under Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda , the SAVAK was reorganized. Parviz Sabeti's department was merged with the department for combating subversive groups. Subversive groups included the communist Tudeh party and communist guerrilla organizations , the movements of the National Front , Kurdish and other separatist movements and Islamic radicals such as the Fedayeen-e Islam and the People's Mujahedin .

In an interview broadcast on Iranian television, a "high-ranking security officer", meaning Parviz Sabeti, commented on the attempts to overthrow the former head of the secret service, Teymur Bakhtiar . Sabeti said he had clear evidence that Western oil companies were providing financial support to Teymur Bakhtiar to torpedo the Shah's policy of higher oil prices. Sabeti also said that the student protest movements against the Iranian government at home and abroad are led by extremist groups and that they are supported by Western political movements, as they see Iran's development as an industrial state as an immediate threat to their economy . After the American and British embassies complained to the Iranian government about these alleged untruths, the Iranian side issued a statement that these statements were based on documents found at Teymur Bakhtiar.

At the beginning of the seventies, a new “Special Department for the Fight against Terrorism” was founded, but Parviz Sabeti was the de facto military leader. It was this special department that developed a notorious reputation for torture and brutality, methods that were later linked to the entire SAVAK. The People's Mujahideen were dealing with a new generation of militants who were ready at any time to kill their political opponents and who were arrested and found cyanide pills under their tongues.

With the growing criticism of the SAVAK's torture methods by foreign lawyers and human rights organizations, the SAVAK's power was curtailed. General Nematollah Nassiri, who had headed the intelligence service for 13 years, was replaced by Lieutenant General Nasser Moghadam . Parviz Sabeti was convinced that the planned political liberalization could endanger the entire political system of Iran. After Jimmy Carter had won the US presidential election, and it was clear that the pressure on the Shah to further liberalize the political system, Sabeti wrote a long report that was as controversial as his first Report from 1961 on "Free elections in Iran". Sabeti thought the situation in 1976 was much more dangerous than in 1961. The opposition was much better organized. A central factor for the existing danger are the militant groups who have received military training in foreign training camps. A policy of liberalization could bring the entire system down, wrote Sabeti. As in 1961, the Shah was full of criticism of Sabeti's negative analysis. “Does Sabeti think that the White Revolution would have done nothing?” This time the Shah decided against Sabeti's advice and began in 1977 with the policy of “open political space”, which Sabeti had predicted with a wave of demonstrations and End of 1978 led to the collapse of the constitutional monarchy in Iran.

As recently as May 1978, Sabeti was convinced that the demonstrations organized by Khomeini's supporters could be ended by using violence. He sent the Shah a list of 1,500 names and asked to have those on the list arrested. The Shah reduced the list of people to be arrested to a few hundred. The arrests began and calm returned to the country. But Prime Minister Jamjid Amusegar insisted that those arrested be released immediately because he wanted a policy based on the demands of US President Jimmy Carter and, above all, his human rights-based policy. Those arrested were released and the political unrest reached a new high with the arson attack on Cinema Rex in Abadan, with 400 dead.

When the political situation in Iran reached its boiling point in late 1978, Sabeti suggested that the Shah declare a state of emergency, dissolve Parliament, close the British and American embassies, and take an iron fist against the opposition movement. With law and order restored, the necessary reforms could be undertaken. The Shah rejected Sabeti's proposal as "childish". A few weeks later, Sabeti left Iran and has lived abroad since that time.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has published thousands of documents by Parviz Sabeti and made them available for research. In an interview given after the Islamic Revolution, Parviz Sabeti stated: “The Shah may have had his flaws, but considering what came before him and what came after him and what governments are neighboring Iran's states own, the Shah's system was the best Iran could expect. "

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, Vol. 1, 2008, p. 287.
2. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, Vol. 1, 2008, p. 288.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, Vol. 1, 2008, p. 289.
4. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, Vol. 1, 2008, p. 290.
5. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, Vol. 1, 2008, p. 290.