Mostafa Chamran
Mostafa Chamran | |
|---|---|
مصطفی چمران | |
| Member of the Parliament of Iran | |
| In office 28 May 1980 – 21 June 1981 | |
| Constituency | Tehran, Rey and Shemiranat |
| Majority | 1,100,842 (51.5%) |
| Minister of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics | |
| In office 30 September 1979 – 28 May 1980 | |
| Prime Minister | Mehdi Bazargan |
| Preceded by | Taghi Riahi |
| Succeeded by | Javad Fakoori |
| Deputy Prime Minister of Iran for Revolutionary Affairs | |
| In office 29 April 1979 – 30 September 1979 | |
| Prime Minister | Mehdi Bazargan |
| Preceded by | Ebrahim Yazdi |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Mostafa Chamran Save'ei 2 October[citation needed] 1932 |
| Died | 21 June 1981 (aged 48) |
| Resting place | Behesht-e Zahra, Tehran |
| Nationality |
|
| Party | Freedom Movement of Iran Amal Movement |
| Spouse(s) | Tamsen H. Parvaneh (1961– div. 1973) Ghadeh Jaber (1977–1981) |
| Children | 4 |
| Alma mater |
|
| Profession | Scientist |
| Nickname | Jamal[2] |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | |
| Branch/service | Lebanese Resistance Regiments Irregular Warfare Headquarters Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps |
| Years of service |
|
| Battles/wars | |
| Part of a series on the |
| Amal Movement |
|---|
Mostafa Chamran Save'ei (Persian: مصطفی چمران ساوهای) (2 October[citation needed] 1932 – 21 June 1981) was an Iranian physicist, politician, commander and guerrilla fighter who served as the first defense minister of post-revolutionary Iran and a member of parliament as well as the commander of paramilitary volunteers in Iran–Iraq War, known as "Irregular Warfare Headquarters". He was killed during the Iran–Iraq War.
Early life and education
[edit | edit source]Chamran was born into a religious family on 2 October[citation needed] 1932 in Tehran.[4][5] He received religious education from Ayatollah Taleqani and Morteza Motahari.[6] He studied at Alborz High School and then graduated from University of Tehran with a bachelor's degree in electromechanics.[4]
In the late 1950s, he moved to the United States for higher education, obtaining an M.S. degree from the Texas A&M University.[7] He then went on to obtain his PhD in electrical engineering and plasma physics in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley.[8]
In the book Self-construction and development he said he was hired as a research staff scientist at Bell Laboratories and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s.[9][10]
Career and activities
[edit | edit source]Chamran was one of the senior members of the Freedom Movement led by Mehdi Bazargan in the 1960s.[4][11] He was part of the radical external wing together with Ebrahim Yazdi, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and Ali Shariati.[12]
Following graduation, Chamran went to Cuba to receive military training.[13] In December 1963, he along with Ghotbzadeh and Yazdi left the US for Egypt where he was trained in guerilla warfare.[14][15] They met the Egyptian authorities to establish an anti-Shah organization in the country, which was later called SAMA, special organization for unity and action.[12] Chamran was chosen as its military head.[12] Upon his return to the US in 1965 he founded a group, Red Shiism, in San Jose with the aim of training militants.[14] His brother, Mehdi, was also part of the group.[14] In 1968, he founded another group, the Muslim Students' Association of America (MSA), and it was led by Ebrahim Yazdi.[14] The group managed to establish branches in the United Kingdom and France.[14]
In 1971 Chamran left the US for Lebanon[14] and joined the camps of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Amal movement.[13] He became a leading and founding member of the Islamic revolutionary movement in the Middle East, organizing and training guerrillas and revolutionary forces in Algeria, Egypt, Syria. During the civil war in Lebanon he actively cooperated with Musa Al Sadr, founder of the Amal movement.[16] Chamran also became an Amal member and "right-hand man of Sadr".[17][18]
Chamran along with Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was part of the faction, called the "Syrian mafia", in the court of Khomeini, and there was a feud between his group and the Libya-friendly group, led by Mohammad Montazeri.[19]

With the Islamic Revolution taking place in Iran, Chamran returned to Iran.[20] In 1979, he served as deputy prime minister in the cabinet of Mehdi Bazargan.[21][22] He led the military operations in Kurdistan where Kurds rebelled against the Interim Government of Iran.[21] He served as minister of defense from September 1979 to 1980,[23] being the first civil defense minister of the Islamic Republic.[24]
In March 1980, he was elected to the Majlis of Iran (the Iranian Parliament) as a representative of Tehran.[25] In May 1980, he was named the Ayatollah's representative to the Supreme Council of National Defense.[26]
Personal life
[edit | edit source]Chamran was married to a woman from Lebanon, Ghadeh Jaber.[27]
Death
[edit | edit source]
Chamran led an infantry unit during the Iran–Iraq War and received two wounds in his left leg by shrapnel from a mortar shell.[9] However, he refused to leave his unit.[9] He was killed in Dehlavieh on 21 June 1981 as the war was raging on.[4][28][29][30][31] His death was regarded as "suspicious" and the related details have remained unclear.[20][32][33] Chamran was buried in the Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran.[9]
Legacy
[edit | edit source]Ayatullah Khomeini publicly proclaimed Chamran as a "proud commander of Islam".[9] Chamran was posthumously designated a hero and many buildings and streets in Iran and Lebanon were named for him, including major expressway.[9] In 2012, Mohsen Alavi Pour published Chamran's biography.[34] A species of moth was named after him in 2013.[35][36] Nick Robinson published an English biography of Chamran in the United Kingdom in 2013, 22: Not a new lifestyle for those who thirst for humanity!.[37]
In 2014 a film named Che (Persian: چ) directed by Ebrahim Hatamikia, was released to honour Chamran; the film portrays two days of Chamran's life after the Islamic Revolution.
In 2017 Iranian film director Reza Mirkarimi made an animated film about Chamran.[38][39]
See also
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References
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- ^ Bernard Reich, Political Leaders of the Contemporary Middle East and North Africa p.466
- ^ Daniel Brumberg, Reinventing Khomeini p.272
- ^ Lua error in Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration at line 2172: attempt to index field '?' (a nil value).
- ^ Houchang E. Chehabi, Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism p.293
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External links
[edit | edit source]- (in Persian) Official website
Error creating thumbnail: File missing Media related to Lua error in Module:Commons_link at line 62: attempt to index field 'wikibase' (a nil value). at Wikimedia Commons
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- 1932 births
- 1981 deaths
- Alborz High School alumni
- Texas A&M University alumni
- UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni
- University of Tehran alumni
- 20th-century Iranian engineers
- 20th-century Iranian politicians
- National Front (Iran) student activists
- People of the Iranian Revolution
- Iranian revolutionaries
- Amal Movement politicians
- Defence ministers of Iran
- Deputy prime ministers of Iran
- Deputies of Tehran, Rey, Shemiranat and Eslamshahr
- Freedom Movement of Iran MPs
- Members of the 1st Islamic Consultative Assembly
- Iranian Irregular Warfare Headquarters guerrillas
- Iranian military personnel killed in the Iran–Iraq War
- Military personnel killed by friendly fire
- Unsolved murders in Iran
- Burials at Behesht-e Zahra