Jamshid Amoozegar

Fatemeh Moezzi

Jamshid Amoozegar, one of Habib-Allah Amoozegar’s children, was born in Tehran in 1922. He graduated from Tehran University majoring in law and engineering. In 1944 he went to Cornel University in Washington and studied civil engineering for seven years and after a time received his PhD in Hydraulic engineering.
Amoozegar started teaching hydraulics and civil engineering in Cornel University at first and also worked as groundwater resource expert in the United Nations. Upon his return to Iran he was immediately recruited by the Americans as the head of the engineering office of article six. After that he progressed and was appointed to important jobs one after the other. In 1958 Dr. Manouchehr Eghbal assigned him the ministry of labor which of course lasted a short time and in November 1959, following his cabinet reshuffle, Amoozegar was once again appointed to the ministry of agriculture.
During his ministry in the agriculture department he was assigned the preparation of the first agriculture reform law. In 1963, Dr. Jamshid Amoozegar was appointed as the minister of health by Hasan-Ali Mansour, then prime minister. Mansour’s government, a government of young faces, was inclined towards the US and was dissolved by his assassination and Amoozegar was appointed as minister of health in the new government led by Amir Abbas Hoveida in 1964. In the next government Hoveida used him again for the ministry of finance. Hoveida was active in this ministry until 1975. During his ministry in the finance department he was responsible for the matters related to oil pricing and OPEC and he was directly in contact with the Shah. In 1973, he was taken hostage with other world oil ministers in OPEC conference in Vienna by Carlos, a partisan advocate of Palestine liberation movement, and was finally released after two days by world arbitration. After his release, he stated that his life is worthless defending his majesty’s discipline.
In 1973, Amoozegar was appointed membership of Tehran University board of trustees and undertook chairmanship of the OPEC meeting in Tehran in the same year and Hoveida assigned him the ministry of interior in his new cabinet.
After the establishment of the resurrection party by the Shah, Amoozegar joined this party and in 1976 he was appointed as the secretary-general of this nominative party. After Hoveida’s 13-year reign, Shah assigned him the premiership in 1977. His chancellorship lasted for a year. His plan was an open political atmosphere, economizing and controlling economic crises which were a demonstration to silence the widespread dissatisfaction of people but this didn’t end well for the Pahlavi regime either. Events occurring during Dr. Jamshid Amoozegar’s premiership, accelerating the occurrence of the Islamic Revolution include: organizing the 11th Shiraz art festival at the same time as Ramadan, death of Haj Mostafa Khomeini and holding of funerals and memorials by people, publication of the Iran and Red and Black Colonialism and its consequences, setting military curfews in Isfahan and the last incident during Amoozegar’s reign was the fire at Rex cinema in Abadan. These events finally led to his resignation from premiership on the August 27th and from the resurrection party in October 1978 and he managed to leave the country for the US in the name of his German wife’s illness in the peak of the revolution and he still lives I the US.
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