1. Mehdi Bazargan was an Iranian scholar, academic, long-time pro-democracy activist and head of Iran's interim government.
18 Facts About Mehdi Bazargan
1. 2.
Mehdi Bazargan was the head of the first engineering department of University of Tehran.
3.
Mehdi Bazargan's father, Hajj Abbasqoli Tabrizi was a self-made merchant and a religious activist in bazaar guilds.
4.
Mehdi Bazargan went to France to receive university education through an Iranian government scholarship during the reign of Reza Shah.
5.
Mehdi Bazargan attended Lycee Georges Clemenceau in Nantes and was a classmate of Abdollah Riazi.
6.
Mehdi Bazargan then studied thermodynamics and engineering at the Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures.
7.
Mehdi Bazargan was a deputy minister under Premier Mohammad Mosaddegh in the 1950s.
8.
Mehdi Bazargan served as the first Iranian head of the National Iranian Oil Company under the administration of Prime Minister Mosaddegh.
9.
Mehdi Bazargan co-founded the Liberation Movement of Iran in 1961, a party similar in its program to Mossadegh's National Front.
10.
On 4 February 1979, Mehdi Bazargan was appointed prime minister of Iran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
11.
Mehdi Bazargan had been a supporter of the original revolutionary draft constitution, and opposed the Assembly of Experts for Constitution and the constitution they wrote that was eventually adopted as Iran's constitution.
12.
Mehdi Bazargan resigned, along with his cabinet, on 4 November 1979, following the taking of hostages at the US Embassy.
13.
Mehdi Bazargan's resignation was considered a protest against the hostage-taking and a recognition of his government's inability to free the hostages, but it was clear that his hopes for liberal democracy and an accommodation with the West would not prevail.
14.
Mehdi Bazargan continued in Iranian politics as a member of the first Parliament of the newly formed Islamic Republic.
15.
Mehdi Bazargan openly opposed the Cultural Revolution and continued to advocate civil rule and democracy.
16.
Mehdi Bazargan is a respected figure within the ranks of modern Muslim thinkers, known as a representative of liberal-democratic Islamic thought and a thinker who emphasized the necessity of constitutional and democratic policies.
17.
Mehdi Bazargan died of a heart attack on 20 January 1995 at a hospital in Zurich, Switzerland after collapsing at Zurich Airport.
18.
Mehdi Bazargan was travelling to the United States for heart surgery.