1942 -
Iranian politician.
Born in Tehran in 1942, Behzad Nabavi has had a roller-coaster career in politics. A son of a historian closely affiliated with the shah's regime, he joined the secular National Front (NF) and participated in antishah activities at Tehran Polytechnic University (now Amir Kabir University), where he received a masters degree in electronics in 1964. In the late 1960s he left the NF and joined the new underground Organization of People's Mujahedin of Iran (OPMI), which mixed Marxism and Islam and advocated armed struggle against the Pahlavi regime. In 1971 he was arrested and jailed for his antigovernment activities. In 1975 the OPMI splintered and Nabavi joined a group of Muslim activists working closely with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against the shah's regime. When released from prison in 1978, he joined revolutionaries surrounding Khomeini and was assigned to oversee the transformation of the Iranian broadcasting system. He also founded the Organization of the Mujahedin of Islamic Revolution (OMIR), a semiclandestine paramilitary counterforce against the OPMI. With the outbreak of the Iran - Iraq War, internal disputes led to the closure of the OMIR; it re-emerged in 1994.
When the Iran - Iraq War began in 1980, Nabavi established the National Economic Mobilization Headquarters for rationing foods. In the government of Mohammad Ali Rajai, he was a spokesperson and a minister without portfolio for executive affairs. He was appointed minister of heavy industry in 1982 - a post he held until 1989. He was also the government representative in the Iran - United States Claims Tribunal in the Hague, the Netherlands, a forum for dispute resolution set up in accordance with the Algiers Agreement of 1981 that ended the hostage crisis between Iran and the United States. Nabavi was one of the Iranian negotiators of that agreement. He had a major role in the centralized policies of Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi's administration (1981 - 1989).
After the death of Khomeini in 1989, the conservative camp gained ascendancy and individuals such as Nabavi were pushed out of power. Nabavi and his associates restarted the OPMI and began the publication of the biweekly Asre Ma (Our times). This paper, along with the journal Kian, which was published by the supporters of Abdolkarim Soroush, transformed the religious discourse and kindled a reformist movement that culminated in the election of Mohammad Khatami as Iran's president in 1997. This election brought the left back to power. In 2000 Nabavi was elected first deputy speaker of the sixth parliament.
This "old guerrilla," as his colleagues call Nabavi, is the most controversial revolutionary and political strategist in Iranian politics. The conservative faction views him with suspicion and has tried to bring him down politically, accusing him of embezzlement and financial corruption several times without any legal success. While a minister, he survived ten motions of no confidence initiated by the conservatives in the parliament. Nabavi's politics and economic views have changed tremendously. His current attitudes toward moderate privatization of markets and a rapprochement with the United States are the opposite of his views in the early 1980s.
— ALI AKBAR MAHDI
