Abolhassan Banisadr

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Abolhassan Banisadr
1st President of Iran
In office 4 February 1980 – 21 June 1981
Prime Minister	Mohammad-Ali Rajai
Leader	Ruhollah Khomeini
Preceded by	Office Created
Succeeded by	Mohammad-Ali Rajai
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 12 November 1979 – 29 November 1979
Preceded by	Ebrahim Yazdi
Succeeded by	Sadegh Ghotbzadeh
Born	22 March 1933 (1933-03-22) (age 76) Hamadan[1], Iran
Political party	Independent
Religion	Twelver Shia Islam

Abolhassan Banisadr (Persian: ابوالحسن بنی‌صدر; born 22 March 1933) was the first President of Iran, following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the abolition of the monarchy.

Early life

Banisadr had participated in the anti-Shah student movement during the early 1960s, was imprisoned twice, and was wounded during an uprising in 1963. He then fled to France and joined the Iranian resistance group led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Banisadr returned to Iran together with Khomeini as the revolution was beginning in February 1979. He was the deputy economy and finance minister and acting foreign minister briefly during 1979, and the finance minister from 1979 to 1980. He studied Finance and Economics at Sorbonne.

Presidency

He was elected to a four-year term as President on January 25, 1980, receiving 78.9 percent of the vote in a competitive election against Ahmad Madani, Hassan Habibi, Sadegh Tabatabaee, Dariush Forouhar, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Kazem Sami, Mohammad Makri, Hassan Ghafourifard, and Hassan Ayat, and inaugurated on February 4. Khomeini remained the Supreme Leader of Iran, with the constitutional authority to dismiss the President. The inaugural ceremonies were held at the hospital where Khomeini was recovering from a heart ailment. ^[2]

Banisadr was not an Islamic cleric; Khomeini had insisted that clerics should not run for positions in the government. In August and September 1980, Banisadr survived two helicopter crashes near the Iranian border with Iraq.

Banisadr soon fell out with Khomeini, who reclaimed the power of Commander-in-Chief on June 10, 1981.

Impeachment

The Majlis (Iran's Parliament) impeached Banisadr in his absence on June 21, 1981, allegedly because of his moves against the clerics in power, in particular Mohammad Beheshti, then head of the judicial system. Khomeini himself appears to have instigated the impeachment, which he signed the next day.

Even before Khomeini had signed the impeachment papers, the Pasdaran had seized the Presidential buildings and gardens, and imprisoned writers at a newspaper closely tied to Banisadr. Over the next few days, they executed several of his closest friends, including Hossein Navab, Rashid Sadrolhefazi, and Manouchehr Massoudi. Montazeri, one of Banisadr's few supporters in the government, was soon stripped of power and jailed. It was revealed later that the group of guards who were assigned to capture Banisadr were told to kill him rather than get him to jail^{[citation needed]}.

At the same time, the Iranian government outlawed all political parties, except the Islamic Republic Party. Government forces arrested and imprisoned members of other parties, such as People's Mujahedin, Fadaian Khalgh, Tudeh, and Paikar.

Banisadr went into hiding two days after his removal. He hid in remote areas of western Iran, protected by the People's Mujahedin (PMOI) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). He tried to organize an alliance of anti-Khomeini factions to retake power, including the PMOI, KDP, and the Fedaian Organisation (Minority), while eschewing any contact with pro-Shah exile groups. He met many times while in hiding with PMOI leader Massoud Rajavi to plan an alliance, but after the execution on July 27 of PMOI member Mohammadreza Saadati, Banisadr and Rajavi concluded that it was unsafe to remain in Iran.

Flight and exile

On July 28 1981, Banisadr and Rajavi were smuggled aboard an Iranian Air Force Boeing 707 piloted by Colonel Behzad Moezzi. It followed a routine flight plan before deviating out of Iranian airspace, eventually landing in Paris.

Banisadr and Rajavi found political asylum in Paris, conditional on abstaining from anti-Khomeini activities from France. This restriction was effectively ignored after France evacuated its embassy in Tehran, and Banisadr and Rajavi set up the National Council of Resistance of Iran.^[3] However, Banisadr soon fell out with Rajavi, accusing him of ideologies favouring dictatorship and violence. Furthermore, Banisadr opposed the armed opposition as initiated and sustained by Rajavi, and sought support for Iran during the war with Iraq.^{[citation needed]}

In a 1991 book, Banisadr alleged covert dealing between the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign and leaders in Tehran to prolong the Iran hostage crisis before the 1980 U.S. presidential election.^[4]

In July 2009, Banisadr publicly denounced the Iranian government's conduct after the disputed presidential election: "Khamenei ordered the fraud in the presidential elections and the ensuing crackdown on protesters". He said the government was "holding on to power solely by means of violence and terror" and accused its leaders of amassing wealth for themselves, to the detriment of other Iranians.^[5]

In published articles on the 2009 Iranian election protests, he ascribed the unusually open political climate before the election to the government's great need to prove its legitimacy.^[6] However, he said the government had lost all legitimacy. In particular, the spontaneous uprising had cost it its political legitimacy, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's threats - leading to the violent crackdown - its religious legitimacy.^[4]

As of July 2009^[update], he lives in Versailles, near Paris, in a villa closely guarded by French police.^[5][6]

See also

Abu Al-Hasan Bani Sadr, Abol Hassan Bani-Sadr & Jean-Charles Deniau "My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals With the U.S." Potomac Books (April 1991) ISBN 0080405630

References

External links

• Abolhassan Banisadr's website (in Persian )
• "Abolhasan Bani Sadr." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. The Gale Group, Inc, 2004. Answers.com

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