Bahram Aryana was a top Iranian military commander during the reign of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as well as a philosopher of Zoroastrianism, Persian nationalist and humanist. Professor Monica M. Ringer has described Aryana as probably the most notorious “converted Zoroastrian” of the Pahlavi era.
Biography
He was born on 17 March 1906 in Tehran from a Georgian mother, whose ancestor was King Heraclius II, and from a judge father, Sadr-ed-din. His name was Hossein Manouchehri, which he would change it to Bahram Aryana in 1950. 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". Aryana is known to have styled himself on Napoleon and dressed in the Imperial French style. 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 stirred-up by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, without shedding blood. , Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and Bahram Aryana. Following his military success in the south, General Aryana was named Chief of Staff of the Shah's Army, position he maintained from 1965 to 1969. During his posting as Chief of Staff, he met with various head of states including Richard Nixon, who received him at the White House, Yitzhak Rabin crisis. Brian Murphy has described Aryana as a flawed tactician, noting his failure to quell the Qashqai revolts, strategic blunders and his 'insatiable appetites for booze and high-class prostitutes'. He died in exile in Paris in June 1985 and is buried at the Montparnasse cemetery. General Aryana was a Grand Officier of the French Legion of Honour. His last published book, Pour une Éthique Iranienne was a call for unity against the obscurantist forces driving Khomeini and the mullahs' fundamentalist revolution.
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. Aryana held dual membership of Aria Party and SUMKA. He founded Azadegan, 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". while in exile in Paris. 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. 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.
