Darioush Bayandor ( fa, داریوش بایندر) is a former
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
ian diplomat and official who worked for the government of Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
, title = Shahanshah Aryamehr Bozorg Arteshtaran
, image = File:Shah_fullsize.jpg
, caption = Shah in 1973
, succession = Shah of Iran
, reign = 16 September 1941 – 11 February 1979
, coronation = 26 October ...
. Following the
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution ( fa, انقلاب ایران, Enqelâb-e Irân, ), also known as the Islamic Revolution ( fa, انقلاب اسلامی, Enqelâb-e Eslâmī), was a series of events that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynas ...
, he left Iran to work for the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
in the 1980s and 1990s before retiring to Switzerland where he writes and consults.
Diplomatic career
Born in Iran, Bayandor served as a senior diplomat of the Iranian government in
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
and
Tehran
Tehran (; fa, تهران ) is the largest city in Tehran Province and the capital of Iran. With a population of around 9 million in the city and around 16 million in the larger metropolitan area of Greater Tehran, Tehran is the most popul ...
in the 1960s and 1970s. During final years of the 1970s he served as Foreign-Affairs Adviser to prime ministers
Amir Abbas Hoveyda
Amir-Abbas Hoveyda ( fa, امیرعباس هویدا, Amīr 'Abbās Hoveyda; 18 February 1919 – 7 April 1979) was an Iranian economist and politician who served as Prime Minister of Iran from 27 January 1965 to 7 August 1977. He was the l ...
,
Jamshid Amouzegar
Jamshid Amouzegar ( fa, جمشید آموزگار; 25 June 1923 – 27 September 2016) was an Iranian economist and politician who was prime minister of Iran from 7 August 1977 to 27 August 1978 when he resigned. Prior to that, he served as ...
and
Jafar Sharif-Emami
Jafar Sharif-Imami ( fa, جعفر شریفامامی;
17 June 1912 – 16 June 1998) was an Iranian politician who was prime minister from 1960 to 1961 and again in 1978. He was a cabinet minister, president of the Iranian Senate, president ...
.
In an interview with Norman Forer in 1977, Bayandor defended status of
human rights in the Imperial State of Iran
The Imperial state of Iran, the government of Iran during the Pahlavi dynasty, lasted from 1925 to 1979. During that time two monarchs — Reza Shah Pahlavi and his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi — employed secret police, torture, and executions ...
and expressed his indignation with
Amnesty International
Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...
, calling its activities attempts to "vilify" and "interfere in internal affairs" of Iran.
He added that all political prisoners in Iran had either committed or conspired to conduct violent acts, and argued that "when you have 40% illiteracy, you can't have
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
like in the United States".
After the Revolution in 1979, Bayandor briefly served as director of the regional bureau for the Americas in the foreign ministry before joining the
United Nations High Commission for Refugees
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integratio ...
(UNHCR) in 1980 where he led several offices in Asia, Europe and Africa over a twenty-year period. His last assignment before retirement in 2000 was the Regional Representative for Central Africa and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator based in
Democratic Republic of Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (french: République démocratique du Congo (RDC), colloquially "La RDC" ), informally Congo-Kinshasa, DR Congo, the DRC, the DROC, or the Congo, and formerly and also colloquially Zaire, is a country in ...
during the wartime in late 1990s.
Works published
As a UN delegate to France, Bayandor wrote an article in 1996 about the humanitarian crisis of war refugees. In 1999 he submitted an editorial opinion piece to the ''
International Herald Tribune
The ''International Herald Tribune'' (''IHT'') was a daily English-language newspaper published in Paris, France for international English-speaking readers. It had the aim of becoming "the world's first global newspaper" and could fairly be said ...
'' about war refugees in Africa.
Shifting to historic Persian poetry, In 2006 he published an essay about Iran's iconic fourteenth century poet
Hafez
Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī ( fa, خواجه شمسالدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez (, ''Ḥāfeẓ'', 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1325–1390) and as "Hafiz", ...
, under the title, "Hafez: A Face-Off with Virtue". He contested the perennial orthodox narratives which accord a gnostic sense to the language of love and worldly pleasures by the poet, and project a theosophical interpretation to his outlook.
In 2010 Bayandor published his study on the fall of Iran's prime minister,
Mohammad Mosaddegh
Mohammad Mosaddegh ( fa, محمد مصدق, ; 16 June 1882 – 5 March 1967) was an Iranian politician, author, and lawyer who served as the 35th Prime Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953, after appointment by the 16th Majlis. He was a member of ...
, a fall which is widely attributed to the CIA. Titled, ''Iran and The CIA: The Fall of Mosaddeq Revisited'', Palgrave-Macmillan, (), the book argued that the failure of the Anglo-American coup plot, codenamed TP-Ajax, that brought at its wake the flight of the Shah
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
, title = Shahanshah Aryamehr Bozorg Arteshtaran
, image = File:Shah_fullsize.jpg
, caption = Shah in 1973
, succession = Shah of Iran
, reign = 16 September 1941 – 11 February 1979
, coronation = 26 October ...
to Baghdad, unleashed internal dynamics that culminated in a clergy-inspired uprising on 19 August. The event led to the downfall of Mosaddeq's government after the pro-shah army units joined the fray in the afternoon of that day. Bayandor dismissed as prevarication the claim by the CIA operative in Tehran
Kermit Roosevelt
Kermit Roosevelt MC (October 10, 1889 – June 4, 1943) was an American businessman, soldier, explorer, and writer. A son of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, Kermit graduated from Harvard College, served in both Wo ...
to the effect that he had planned events of August 19 two nights earlier in a "Council of War" held at the American Embassy in Tehran.
Bayandor's narrative stirred controversy in academic circles, reflected in a special edition of ''Iranian Studies'' in September 2012. The brunt of criticism was on Bayandor's affirmation of the role played by the supreme quiescent Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah
Seyyed Hossein Boroujerdi, deemed by others to be above the political fray.
Homa Katouzian
Homa Katouzian (Persian: همايون کاتوزیان; born Homayoun Katouzian on 17 November 1942) is an economist, historian, sociologist and literary critic, with a special interest in Iranian studies. Katouzian's formal academic training wa ...
, a historian and political scientist, dismissed Bayandor's book as "political". Academics
Fouad Ajami
Fouad A. Ajami ( ar, فؤاد عجمي; September 18, 1945 – June 22, 2014) was a MacArthur Fellowship winning, Lebanese-born American university professor and writer on Middle Eastern issues. He was a senior fellow at Stanford University's Ho ...
,
Yann Richard
Yann is a French language, French male given name, specifically, the Breton language, Breton form of "Jean (male given name), Jean" (French for "John (given name), John").
Notable persons with the name Yann include:
__NOTOC__
In arts and enterta ...
s,
Shahram Chubin
Shahram Chubin is a former nonresident senior fellow in the Carnegie Nuclear Policy Program. He was director of research at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy in Switzerland from 1996 until 2009. Born in Iran and educated in Britain and the Uni ...
and
Michael Axworthy
Michael George Andrew Axworthy (26 September 1962 – 16 March 2019) was a British academic, author, and commentator. He was the head of the Iran section at the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office between 1998 and 2000.
Personal life and fam ...
praised the book as a valuable contribution to the literature. The book received mixed reviews in the media. ''
The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British weekly newspaper printed in demitab format and published digitally. It focuses on current affairs, international business, politics, technology, and culture. Based in London, the newspaper is owned by The Econo ...
'', while pointing to the polemical character of the new narrative, considered the author's skepticism, "A useful antidote to Roosevelt's self-aggrandizing, which some later writers have mimicked uncritically". ''
The Washington Times
''The Washington Times'' is an American conservative daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., that covers general interest topics with a particular emphasis on national politics. Its broadsheet daily edition is distributed throughout ...
'' criticized the book stating that "a careful reading of Mr. Bayandor's book, along with the CIA history and Mr. Roosevelt's memoir, shows that there is a very thin element of truth in his revisionist theory". However, when in 2017 the CIA secret files of the episode were released by the US Department of State, several documents bore out Bayandor's contentions, notably regarding Boroujerdi's active role. Among these documents was a dispatch by Roosevelt to the CIA headquarters on the very morning of Mosaddeq's overthrow on 19 August which revealed that the CIA Station in Tehran had no knowledge of the events that were about to end Mosaddeq's rule.
In December 2018, Bayandor published a comprehensive history of the 1979 Revolution titled, ''The Shah, the Islamic Revolution and the United States'', (Palgrave-Macmillan) (). Portrayed as a multifaceted historical paradox, Bayandor delved into the roots of the revolution, highlighting cultural, demographic and historical factors that along with systemic flaws in the Shah authoritarian rule allowed incongruous socio-political forces to coalesce with the radical clergy to end the millennia-old monarchy in Iran. The role played by Carter administration has been examined in several chapters based on Department of State archives including new batches released by Wikileaks in 2017.
Brookings Institution
The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in ec ...
described the book. "A very worthy addition to an already copious literature on Iran". Similarly, the
International Institute of Strategic Studies
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) is a British research institute or think tank in the area of international affairs. Since 1997, its headquarters have been Arundel House in London, England.
The 2017 Global Go To Think T ...
(IISS) praised it as, "An important and honest appraisal that adds to our understanding of how a formidable monarchy came crumbling down in 1979".
*
* 1999 - Look Away From Kosovo to See the Crisis in Central Africa, International Herald Tribune
Personal life
Bayandor was born in Iran to
Gholamali Bayandor
Gholamali Bayandor ( fa, غلامعلی بایندر; December 13, 1898 – August 25, 1941) was the Commander of the Imperial Iranian Navy from 1931 to August 25, 1941, and was killed during the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. He was born in Teh ...
, the head of the
Imperial Iranian Navy
The Iranian Navy traditionally located in the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf, has always been the smallest of the country's military forces. An Iranian navy in one form or another has existed since Achaemenid times in 500 BC. The Phoenician n ...
under
Reza Shah
Reza Shah Pahlavi ( fa, رضا شاه پهلوی; ; originally Reza Khan (); 15 March 1878 – 26 July 1944) was an Iranian Officer (armed forces), military officer, politician (who served as Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (Iran), ...
.
Bayandor has analyzed and adapted Iranian poetry into French and English. In 2006, for the ''Journal of Middle Eastern and African Intellectual and Cultural Studies'', he wrote "Hafez: A Face-Off With Virtue" about the 14th century Iranian lyric poet,
Hafez
Khwāje Shams-od-Dīn Moḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī ( fa, خواجه شمسالدین محمّد حافظ شیرازی), known by his pen name Hafez (, ''Ḥāfeẓ'', 'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1325–1390) and as "Hafiz", ...
.
References
External links
Darioush Bayandor's books on AmazonBooks by Darioush BayandorArticles by Darioush Bayandor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bayandor, Darioush
Living people
Iranian diplomats
Iranian writers
Year of birth missing (living people)
Iranian officials of the United Nations