Ibrahim Yazdi

1931 -

Iranian politician.

Born in Qazvin, where his father made his living as a retailer, Ibrahim Yazdi studied pharmacology at Tehran University and emerged as one of the leaders of the Muslim Student Association. In 1952 he galvanized student support in favor of Mohammad Mossadegh's oil nationalization platform. He co-edited two journals, Forugh-e Elm (The resplendence of knowledge) and Ganj-e Shayegan (The magnificent treasure), and was employed at the Worker Social Security Organization. Following the CIA-sponsored coup that ousted Mossadegh in 1953, Yazdi joined the newly formed National Resistance Movement. The movement was effectively crushed in 1957 but resurfaced in 1960 as the National Front, of which the Liberation Movement of Iran (formed in 1961 by the more religiously minded members of the original nationalist coalition) was a splinter group. Yazdi was a member of the nascent Liberation Movement of Iran, and after he left Iran for the United States in about 1960 was instrumental in organizing its opposition activities abroad, both in the United States and elsewhere. He also studied for his doctoral degree in the United States.

In 1978 he frequented Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's headquarters in France. When he returned to Iran in 1979, he was appointed deputy prime minister, and in 1980 he became foreign minister in the cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan's provisional government. He was among the group of Bazargan's friends who constituted the nonclerical, moderate figures in the Islamic movement and who cooperated closely with the Revolutionary Guards. He also headed the nationalized Kayhan Publishing Group, which produced a daily newspaper whose circulation rate exceeded that of all the other Tehran dailies. He was elected to the Islamic parliament as a deputy from Tehran (1980 - 1984). In the falling-out between the moderates and the more radical Islamic Republican Party affiliates (1979 - 1981), the latter won. After falling from political favor, Yazdi devoted his energies to revitalizing the Liberation Movement of Iran, which now functioned as the only tolerated - albeit eventually officially banned - opposition party in the political landscape of Iran.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yazdi's activities consisted primarily of criticizing the government's economic policies and its failure to deliver the political rights promised by the revolutionaries in 1979. Taking advantage of the liberalizing policies of President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Yazdi in this period advocated - in various speeches, articles, and manifestos - fiscal reform, equitable distribution of income, and the normalization of ties with the United States. In 1995, after the death of Mehdi Bazargan, Yazdi emerged as the leader of the Liberation Movement of Iran. In 1996, he made an unsuccessful bid in the parliamentary elections as the Liberation Movement of Iran candidate for a seat from Tehran. In 1997 he was arrested for a short while after signing a letter protesting mal-treatment by Ayatollah Khamenehi, the leader of Iran, of Grand Ayatollah Hosayn Montazeri, Ayatollah Khomeini's designated successor until he fell out with the regime in 1989, shortly before Khomeini's death. The judiciary arrested all senior members of the Liberation Movement of Iran in 2000, but Yazdi escaped arrest because he was in the United States undergoing treatment for prostate cancer. He was charged with antigovernment activity when he returned but was allowed to remain free after posting bail. His trial was still continuing at the end of 2003, although there were periods of several months' duration during which no court sessions were scheduled.

Bibliography

Chehabi, H. E. Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism: The Liberation Movement of Iran under the Shah and Khomeini. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990.

Milani, Mohsen M. The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution: FromMonarchy to Islamic Republic, 2d edition, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1994.

— NEGUIN YAVARI