Teymur Bakhtiar

General Teymur Bakhtiar

Teymur Bachtiar (* 1914 - August 11, 1970 ; also Teymour Bakhtiar ) was an Iranian general and the first chief intelligence officer of the SAVAK from 1957 to 1961.

Life

Bachtiar was born in the province of Bakhtiyāri and studied at the French school in Beirut from 1928 . In 1930 he was accepted into the renowned Saint-Cyr Military Academy in France, which he attended until 1935. On his return to Iran in 1936, he was promoted to lieutenant.

Teymur Bachtiar first appeared as commander after the Second World War in 1945. After the end of the war, Josef Stalin refused to withdraw the Soviet troops from Iran, which had been occupied since 1941 as part of the Anglo-Soviet invasion. Rather, he supported the establishment of an autonomous Azerbaijani state, the Azerbaijani People's Government . Teymour Bakhtiar organized a kind of partisan struggle against the soldiers of the Red Army and the separatist movements, with many separatist rebels being killed in the battle of Khamseh .

The ethnic group of the Bakhtiars gained increasing influence at the court of Mohammad Reza Shah at this time . In 1951 the Shah and Soraya Esfandiary Bakhtiari married , who, like Teymour Bakhtiar, came from the ethnic group of the Bakhtiars.

Ascent

During the reign of Mohammad Mossadegh , Bakhtiar was the commander of the troops of Kermanshah . During Operation Ajax , Bakhtiar assisted Colonel Nassiri and General Fazlollah Zahedi . Bakhtiar had promised to march with his troops to Tehran in the event of armed conflicts with the supporters of Mossadegh . For his loyalty, Bakhtiar was appointed military governor of Tehran by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , an important and powerful post. As the military governor of Tehran, he was responsible for persecuting opponents of the Shah, mostly members of the communist Tudeh party , but also supporters of Mossadegh. More than 640 officers loyal to the Mossadegh were arrested. 10 had been shot in the course of the coup. In the following three years Bakhtiar managed to break almost all military and political resistance of the opposition.

In 1957, after the SAVAK was founded, Bakhtiar became its first director. As director of the SAVAK he hired numerous officers who were devoted to him and who had learned the secret service work less through explicit training and more through "training on the job". Soon the secret service developed under the leadership of Bakhtiar into a state within a state and a personal instrument of power for Teymour Bakhtiar. Once the agents of the SAVAK were installed everywhere, Teymour Bakhtiar was the secret ruler of the country.

case

After Prime Minister Jafar Sharif-Emami had to resign in May 1961 because of ongoing demonstrations against the extensive fraud in the parliamentary elections held during his term in office, Teymour Bakhtiar hoped to become prime minister. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi preferred Ali Amini . Bakhtiar then contacted the American embassy as to whether they would support a coup against Amini. Completely surprised, the ambassador informed the Shah of Bakhtiar's plans. Bakhtiar was immediately dismissed from service and deported abroad.

Teymour Bakhtiar, who had hoped that the exile would only last a short time, counted on his family and friends who left no stone unturned to change the Shah's mind and bring Bakhtiar back to Iran. After Bakhtiar was unsuccessful, he wanted to return to Iran "another way". He activated his political friends abroad and tried to personally discredit Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. For example, the British ambassador Sir Denis Wright was approached by the Iranian consul general on a visit to Geneva in 1962. The Consul General tried to make it clear to Sir Denis that the Shah, above all with his land reform, completely ignored the wishes of the Iranians and had to be replaced. Sir Denis should definitely meet with Teymour Bakhtiar to discuss everything else.

In 1967 Bakhtiar was charged with being an instigator in the attempted assassination of the Shah. On September 23, 1967, he was sentenced to death in absentia. In Iraq, Bakhtiar tried to contact all opposition groups. So he tried to meet Khomeini, who was in Najaf at the time. However, there is no evidence that this meeting actually took place. Bakhtiar had more success with representatives of the communist Tudeh party. He met the first secretary of the Tudeh party, Reza Radmanesh, in secret. However, this meeting was betrayed by the Tudeh party smuggled SAVAK agent Abbas Shahriyari, which led to the expulsion of Reza Radmanesh from the Tudeh party. This information did not reach the public until after the collapse of the GDR due to unhindered access to the Stasi archives. Mohammad Pour-Hormozan, the Tudeh Party's chief theorist on economic issues, worked as an agent for the GDR's state security. Pour-Hormozan regularly sent detailed reports on what was happening within the Tudeh party in the GDR and met regularly with employees of the State Security.

Before his visit to Germany in June 1967, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi is said to have received reports that Teymur Bakhtiar was planning an attack on him. "The unprecedented demonstrations against the Shah during his visit to Germany, which led to the death of a young German student ( Benno Ohnesorg ), had massively angered the Shah. He suspected that Bakhtiar had a hand in the demonstrations." Two days after his return, General Alavi Kia, head of the SAVAK's European office, was released. The Shah was convinced at this point that Kia was connected with Bakhtiar. The SAVAK was instructed to "hunt and kill" Bakhtiar.

The fact that Teymur Bakhtiar spent most of his time in Baghdad made it clear that Saddam Hussein had obviously granted him asylum. In March 1968, Bakhtiar was arrested in Lebanon for having been arrested with weapons in his luggage. The Iranian government immediately applied for extradition. But this time, too, Bakhtiar managed to be released unmolested and to travel to Iraq.

In 1969, the Iranian parliament passed a law stripping Teymour Bakhtiar of all military titles, annulling all of his claims to the Iranian state, and confiscating all of his movable and immovable property.

On August 9, 1970, Bakhtiar went on a hunting trip with his bodyguard and two new "friends" in the Diyala province on the border with Iran. Bakhtiar was shot there and died two days later.

Gérard de Villiers writes:

Bakhtiar's death was an irony of fate. He was executed by a tool that he himself made.

literature

• Teymour Bachtiar (Ed.): Black Book on Tudeh Officers Organization . Tehran 1956.
• Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, pp. 430-437.
• Gérard de Villiers: The Shah. The power and glory of the emperor on the peacock throne. Munich. 1976. ISBN 3-453-00632-1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, p. 431.
2. ^ Office of the Military Governor of Tehran: Black Book on Tudeh Officers Organization. 1956. ISBN 978-3-8442-7813-2 . [1]
3. ↑ Gérard de Villiers, pp. 308/316
4. ^ Ehsan Naraghi: From Palace to Prison, IBTauris, 1994, p. 176.
5. ^ Ehsan Naraghi: From Palace to Prison, IBTauris, 1994, p. 176.
6. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, p. 433.
7. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, p. 434.
8. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, pp. 435f.
9. ↑ Abbas Milani: Eminent Persians. Syracuse University Press, 2008, p. 434.

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