# Abolhassan Banisadr

Abolhassan Banisadr (Persian: سید ابوالحسن بنی‌صدر; 22 March 1933 – 9 October 2021) was an Iranian politician, writer, and political dissident. He was the first president of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution abolished the monarchy, serving from February 1980 until his impeachment by parliament in June 1981. Prior to his presidency, he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Interim Government.
Following his impeachment, Banisadr fled Iran and found political asylum in France, where he co-founded the National Council of Resistance of Iran. Banisadr later focused on political writings about his revolutionary activities and his critiques of the Iranian government. He became a critic of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the country's handling of its 2009 elections.

## Early life and education

Banisadr was born on 22 March 1933 in Baghcheh, a small village north of Hamedan. His father, Nasrollah, was a Shia cleric who had originally migrated to the area from Bijar, Kurdistan. As a student, Banisadr studied law, theology, and sociology at the University of Tehran. He participated in the anti-Shah student movement during the early 1960s, which led to his being imprisoned twice and wounded during the 1963 uprising. Soon after, due to his political activities, Banisadr fled to France, where he studied finance and economics at the Sorbonne. He wrote a book on Islamic finance, Eghtesad Tohidi, which roughly translates as "The Economics of Monotheism."
In 1972, Banisadr's father died and it was at the funeral in Iraq where he first became acquainted with Ruhollah Khomeini. He later joined the Iranian resistance group led by Khomeini, becoming one of his most fervent advisors. On 1 February 1979, with the end of the Iranian Revolution drawing near, Banisadr returned to the country together with Khomeini.

## Career

With the Interim Government controlling Iran, Banisadr was appointed Deputy Minister of Finance on 4 February 1979. At the direction of Khomeini, he also became a member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution, taking the seat of Mehdi Bazargan, who left to become prime minister. On 12 November 1979, following the Interim Government of Iran dissolution, Banisadr was appointed by the Council to replace Ebrahim Yazdi as Minister of Foreign Affairs. That same month, on 17 November, Banisadr was promoted to Minister of Finance, replacing the outgoing Ali Ardalan.
In January 1980, Banisadr registered to become a candidate for Iran's newly formed presidential office. He was not an Islamic cleric; Khomeini, who was by then the Supreme Leader of Iran with a constitutional authority to dismiss politicians, had insisted that members of the clergy not run for positions in the government. On 25 January 1980, Banisadr was elected to a four-year term as president, receiving 78.9 percent of the vote. Inaugural ceremonies took place on 4 February at a hospital where Khomeini was recuperating from a heart ailment.
In August and September 1980, Banisadr survived two helicopter crashes near the Iran–Iraq border. During the Iran–Iraq War, Banisadr was made acting commander-in-chief by Khomeini on 10 June 1981.

### Impeachment

The Majlis (Iranian Parliament) impeached Banisadr in his absence on 21 June 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. According to historian Kenneth Katzman, Banisadr believed the clerics should not directly govern Iran and was perceived as supporting the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK). Only one deputy, Salaheddin Bayani, spoke in favor of Banisadr during his impeachment. Banisadr called for a referendum, arguing that the people should have the right to choose, and pointing out that he had received over 10 million votes in the presidential election while the IRP had received less than 4 million in the parliamentary elections.
Even before Khomeini signed the articles of impeachment, the Revolutionary Guard had seized presidential buildings and imprisoned writers at a newspaper closely tied to Banisadr. Over the next few days, the government executed several of Banisadr's closest friends and advisors, in addition to hundreds of revolutionaries deemed unsympathetic to the regime. Ayatollah Hussein-Ali Montazeri was among the few people in the government who remained in support of Banisadr, but he was later stripped of his powers.
Banisadr had gone into hiding in Tehran for a few days before his removal, assisted by the MEK. There, he attempted to organize an alliance of anti-Khomeini factions to retake power, including the MEK, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and the Fedaian Organisation (Minority), while eschewing any contact with monarchist exile groups. He met numerous times while hiding with MEK leader Massoud Rajavi to plan an alliance. However, after the execution on 27 July 1981 of prominent MEK member Mohammad Reza Saadati, Banisadr and Rajavi concluded that it was unsafe to remain in Iran.

## Flight and exile

On 29 July 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 groundspace to Turkish airspace and eventually landing in Paris. As a disguise, Banisadr shaved his eyebrows and mustache and dressed in a skirt.
Banisadr and Rajavi found political asylum in Paris, conditional on abstaining from anti-Khomeini activities in France. This restriction was effectively ignored after France evacuated its embassy in Tehran. Banisadr, Rajavi, and the Kurdish Democratic Party established the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Paris in October 1981. By 1984, however, Banisadr had fallen out with Rajavi, accusing him of ideologies favoring dictatorship and violence. Furthermore, Banisadr opposed the armed opposition as initiated and sustained by Rajavi and instead sought support for Iran during the war with Iraq.

### My Turn to Speak

In 1991, Banisadr released an English translation of his 1989 text My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals with the U.S. In the book, Banisadr alleged covert dealings between the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign and leaders in Tehran to prolong the Iran hostage crisis before the 1980 United States presidential election. He also claimed that Henry Kissinger plotted to set up a Palestinian state in the Iranian province of Khuzestan and that Zbigniew Brzezinski conspired with Saddam Hussein to plot Iraq's 1980 invasion of Iran.
Lloyd Grove of The Washington Post wrote: "The book is not what normally passes for a bestseller. Cobbled together from a series of interviews conducted by French journalist Jean-Charles Deniau, it is never merely direct when it can be enigmatic, never just simple when it can be labyrinthine." In a review for Foreign Affairs, William B. Quandt described the book as "a rambling, self-serving series of reminiscences" and "long on sensational allegations and devoid of documentation that might lend credence to Bani-Sadr's claims." Kirkus Reviews called it "an interesting—though frequently incredible and consistently self-serving-memoir" and said "frequent sensational accusations render his tale an eccentric, implausible commentary on the tragic folly of the Iranian Revolution."

### Views

In 1980, Banisadr openly criticized the Iran hostage crisis, arguing that the ordeal was isolating Iran from the Third World and forming "a state within a state".
In a 2008 interview with the Voice of America, Banisadr claimed that Khomeini was directly responsible for the violence originating from the Muslim world and that the promises Khomeini made in exile were broken after the revolution. In July 2009, Banisadr publicly denounced the Iranian government's conduct after the disputed presidential election by alleging that "Khamenei ordered the fraud in the presidential elections and the ensuing crackdown on protesters." In addition, Banisadr said the government was "holding on to power solely by means of violence and terror", and accused its leaders of amassing individual wealth to the detriment of other Iranians.
In published articles on the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, Banisadr ascribed the unusually open political climate before the election to the government's great need to prove its legitimacy, which he said was lost. He further stated that the spontaneous uprising had cost the government its political legitimacy, and that Khamenei's threats led to the violent crackdown, which also cost the government its religious legitimacy.

## Personal life and death

Beginning in 1981, Banisadr lived in Versailles, near Paris, in a villa closely guarded by French police. Banisadr's daughter, Firouzé, married Massoud Rajavi in Paris following their exile. They later divorced, and the alliance between him and Rajavi also ended.
After a long illness, Banisadr died at Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris on 9 October 2021, at age 88. He is buried in Versailles, in the cemetery of Gonards.

## Books

* Touhid Economics, 1980
* My Turn to Speak: Iran, the Revolution and Secret Deals with the U.S. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 1991. ISBN 0-08-040563-0. Translation of Le complot des ayatollahs. Paris: La Découverte, 1989
* Le Coran et le pouvoir: principes fondamentaux du Coran, Imago, 1993
* Dignity in the 21st Century, Doris Schroeder and Abol-Hassan Banisadr, with translation by Mahmood Delkhasteh and Sarah Amsler
* Books after 1980