Lieutenant General Fazl-Allah Zahedi

Asiyeh Ale Ahmad

Fazl-Allah Zahedi, son of Mirza Abulhassan Khan Basir Divan, was born in 1893 in Hamadan. He served in the Hamadan Ghazagh brigade in the First World War and he was among the troops sent to Gilan to suppress the forest. He was one of the friends of Reza Khan Mirpanj in the 1920 coup and after the coup he became brigadier general. He also participated in the suppression of Semitghou and Sheikh Khaz¢al and for this he was awarded the grade 4 Zulfiqar medal. He was appointed as Khuzestan governor and was in charge of military jobs like head of security (Gendarmerie), chief of police and head of officers’ club during Reza Shah’s reign.
In 1929, when he was chief of police, Zahedi went to Shiraz to suppress the riot of Fars tribes but after a while, the Shah grew suspicious of him and he was summoned to Tehran together with Nosrat-al-Doleh and Sarem-al-Doleh, the governor of Fars, and he was demoted. He was jailed for a while until forgiven and released.
After Reza Shah left Iran, Fazl-Allah Zahedi was detained by the allies on the charge of helping the Germans and was exiled to Palestine. He returned to Iran after World War two and he was the country’s chief of police. In 1949 he went to senate as appointed senator from Hamadan and in 1951 he became the minister of interior in Hussein Ala¢’s government and he also held this position in May 1951 in Dr. Mosadegh’s government. After the events in July 1951, disagreements arose between Zahedi and Dr. Mosadegh and he resigned and became one of Mosadegh’s opponents and returned to senate and after the liquidation of the parliament by Mosadegh in March 1952 he was detained and released after two months but he continued participating with Mosadegh’s opponents and finally on August 19th 1953, with the help of the coup participants, he brought down Dr. Mosadegh’s government as the Shah’s appointed prime minister. Zahedi remained there until April 1955.

Photo 1: Zahedi, Prime minister while welcoming Richard Nixon, US deputy president, 1-336801

Photo 2: Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Fazl-Allah Zahedi, Ahmad Hussein Adl, Ali Amini, Ali Hei¢at, 1-520701.

Zahedi, who was a popular prime minister in the Pahlavi regime, resigned after two years by the request of the Shah and left Iran in a state of exile. He went to Switzerland as Iran’s ambassador in the European office of the United Nations in Geneva. He died in September 1963 at the age of 71.
https://iichs.ir/vdch.mnzt23nqz10d2.html