Abdolhassan Banisadr
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Abdol-hassan Banisadr (Persian: ابوالحسن بنیصدر;born March 22, 1933) was the first elected President of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
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 was elected President in early 1980, when he ran in a competitive election against Ahmad Madani, Hassan Habibi, Sadegh Tabatabaee, Dariush Forouhar, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Kazem Sami, Mohammad Makri, Hassan Ghafourifard, and Hassan Ayat.
Banisadr was not an Islamic cleric: Ayatollah 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 Ayatollah Khomeini - first because of his opposition to the execution of dissidents;[citation needed] second because Banisadr wrote to Khomeini many times warning against dictatorship;[citation needed] and third because Banisadr's popularity was rising because -after 6 months of war[citation needed] which started because Saddam Hussein invaded Iran using Iraqi armies- Iraq and some of the other Persian Gulf regional States had agreed to pay reparations to Iran, about $60 Billion[original research?][citation needed] and agreed to all other Iranian terms for stopping the war.[original research?][citation needed] Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani argued that if they let Banisadr finish the war, he would sit on his tank,[citation needed] and march to Tehran,[citation needed] and not even Khomeini would be able to touch him.[citation needed]
So, falsley accusing[citation needed] Banisadr of a weak performance in leading Iranian troops in the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini reclaimed the power of Commander-in-Chief on June 10, 1981 that he had delegated to Banisadr.
Banisadr was impeached on June 21, 1981 by the Majlis (the Iranian Parliament), allegedly because of his moves against the clerics in power, most specifically the sadistic Mohammad Beheshti, the head of the judicial system at the time. Ayatollah Khomeini appears to have instigated the Impeachment, which he signed the next day, on June 22. Even before Ayatollah Khomeini had signed the Impeachment papers, the Pasdaran had seized the Presidential buildings and gardens and imprisoned newspaper writers which worked for a newspaper closely tied to Mr. Banisadr. In the next few days they also executed several of his closest friends, including Mr. Hossein Navab, Rashid Sadrolhefazi, and Manouchehr Massoudi. It was revealed later that the group of guards who were assigned to capture Mr. Banisadr were told to finish him off rather than get him to jail. However, President Abolhassan Banisadr managed to flee the country and escaped to France along with Masoud Radjavi, former leader of the Mojahedin, where (as of 2005) he still lives, and has published many articles about Iran.
[edit] See also
| Preceded by: Ebrahim Yazdi |
Foreign minister of Iran 12 November 1979–1979, 29 November |
Succeeded by: Sadegh Ghotbzadeh |
| Preceded by: Position created |
President of Iran 1980–1981 |
Succeeded by: Mohammad Ali Rajai |
| Presidents of Iran |  |
|---|---|
| Banisadr | Rajai | Khamenei | Rasfanjani | Khatami | Ahmadinejad |
