Field MarshalBahram Aryana (Persian: بهرام آریانا); also spelled Bahram Ariana born Hossein Manouchehri;[3] 17 March 1906 – 21 June 1985)[4] was the most senior military commander of the Imperial Iranian Army during the reign of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and an Iranian nationalist and humanist. Professor Monica M. Ringer described Aryana as probably the most famous "converted Zoroastrian" of the Pahlavi era.[5]
Biography
He was born on 17 March 1906 in Tehran[6] from a noble Georgian mother,[7] who was the great-granddaughter of King Heraclius II, and from a judge father, Sadr-ed-din.[6] His name was Hossein Manouchehri, which he would change to Bahram Aryana in 1950 and he was a descendant of Sepahsalar Khalatbari Tonekaboni, the noble Iranian statesman who was the leader of the constitutional revolutionary forces and four time former prime minister of Iran.[6] Professor Monica M. Ringer has described Aryana as probably the most notorious "converted Zoroastrian” of the Pahlavi era.[8]
He was educated in France at the École Supérieur de Guerre and received his PhD in 1955 from the Faculty of Law of Paris with his thesis "Napoleon et l'Orient" (published in 1957). Aryana is known to have styled himself on Napoleon and dressed in the Imperial French style.[9]
After the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 during World War II, he went on with armed struggle and resisted the occupation before being arrested by the British forces. He was instrumental in many of the nationalist policies in the 1950-1960s. During the military campaign of 1964-65 he successfully pacified rebellious tribes in the south of Iran (Pars, Isfahan and Khuzestan) stirred-up by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, without shedding blood.
Unlike his fellow Arteshbod and exiled leader, Gholam-Ali Oveissi. Aryana was 'beloved' by the Kurdish population of Iran from his time as the military governor of Kurdistan.
His last published book, Pour une Éthique Iranienne was a call for unity against the obscurantist forces driving Khomeini and the mullahs' fundamentalist revolution.[11]
Party affiliation
Aryana described himself as being an Iranian nationalist and moderate socialist, not a monarchist. Although he received a great deal of support from monarchists who considered him to be a supporter.[10] Aryana held dual membership of Aria Party and SUMKA.[12]
He founded Azadegan,[13] a nationalist opposition group which had "developed a full command staff structure and support from all nationalist elements from the moderate left to the monarchists".[14] while in exile in Paris.
Aryana combined his forces with not just Gholam Ali Oveissi but also Shapour Bakhtiar, Ahmad Madani and Ali Amini.[15] Azadegan, meaning Born Free, was an anti-Khomeini movement which claimed as many as 12,000 followers in Iran, many of them in the armed forces.[10] The daring seizing by Azadegan's officers of Tabarzin, an Iranian Navy's Combattante II class fast attack craft just built by France and en route to Iran while in the Mediterranean in August 1981, attracted media attention to Azadegan and its members' armed resistance against the clerical regime of Iran.[16][17]
^ ab"Who was Aryana" (in Persian). Political Studies and Research Institute. Retrieved 5 November 2017.
^Ali Akbar Dareini (1998). The Rise and Fall of the Pahlavi Dynasty: Memoirs of Former General Hussein Fardust. Motilal Banarsidass Publ. pp. 15–16. ISBN8120816420.
^Ali Rahnema (24 November 2014). Behind the 1953 Coup in Iran: Thugs, Turncoats, Soldiers, and Spooks. Cambridge University Press. p. 55. ISBN978-1107076068.
