Rajab Ali Mansur

Rajab Ali Mansour

Rajab Ali Mansur (Mansur al Molk) ( Persian ارجبعلی منصورا; * 1895 in Tehran ; † December 8, 1974 ibid) was an Iranian politician , minister and prime minister of Iran.

Life

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Rajab Ali Mansur came from a prominent Iranian family. He was Foreign Minister in 1916 in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hassan Vosough under the reign of Ahmad Shah Qajar and later Governor of Azerbaijan . Under Reza Shah Pahlavi , Mansour played a key role in the construction of the Trans-Iranian Railway as Minister for Public Works in Prime Minister Mahmud Jam's cabinet . Mansour also built the famous Chalus motorway from Tehran to the Caspian Sea . The construction of this road was to put Mansour in dire straits. In 1936, Rajab Ali Mansur was charged with financial irregularities in the construction of the highway. Parliament lifted his ministerial immunity and Mansour was at the center of a huge scandal. At the end of the trial, he was found to be innocent. Mansour was fully rehabilitated and reassigned to Prime Minister Mahmud Jam's cabinet as Minister of Industry and Mining. Two years later, in June 1940, Rajab Ali Mansur became Prime Minister.

Rajab Ali Mansur's term of office was only supposed to last a little more than a year. After British and Russian troops marched in on August 25, 1941 as part of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran , Mansour was forced to resign on August 28, 1941. Reza Shah suspected Mansour of collaborating with the British in the preparation phase for the invasion. One year after the successful invasion, Mansour received the Order of the British Empire at the suggestion of the British Embassy in Iran , which further reinforced the suspicion of cooperation with the British. Mansour was therefore considered extremely pro-British in political circles in Iran.

In February 1942 Mansour took over the office of governor of Khorasan . It would then be another eight years before Rajab Ali Mansur became Prime Minister again on March 28, 1950. Iran was facing economic bankruptcy and Prime Minister Mohammad Sa'ed Maraghei had reached out to the US Ambassador asking for US financial support for the urgently needed infrastructure investments in agriculture, road construction and airport construction. On May 27, 1949, Secretary of State Ala had once again turned to the US government for financial aid. It was a $ 500 million loan. But the US refused. On January 26, 1950, Foreign Minister Hossein Ala made another attempt to finally get substantial financial support from the United States to help build the country. This time, too, they met with rejection, so that Prime Minister Maraghei resigned in March 1950, who he saw no opportunity to implement the development program he had planned.

Rajab Ali Mansur was elected Prime Minister on March 28, 1950. Thanks to his good political connections to the British, he had promised the prospect of getting financial support for Iran from England. It quickly became apparent, however, that Mansour's 1941 merits, which had earned him a British medal, no longer counted in 1950. The British viewed Mansour as a man “with certain weaknesses”. In an internal report he was classified as "addicted to opium" and "highly corruptible". After only three months, Mansour realized that he had completely overestimated the value of his relations with the British and resigned from the post of Prime Minister in favor of General Ali Razmara .

Rajab Ali Mansur spent the remaining years of his professional career as Iranian ambassador to the Vatican and Turkey . Rajab Ali Mansur was married and had a son, Hassan Ali Mansur , who was also to become Prime Minister of Iran from 1963 to 1965.

literature

• 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 , p. 230ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, p. 230
2. ^ Kristen Blake: The US-Soviet confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962. University Press of America, 2009, p. 52.
3. ^ Kristen Blake: The US-Soviet confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962. University Press of America, 2009, p. 53.
4. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, p. 231.