Bahram Aryana

He was born on 17 March 1906 in Tehran[6] from a Georgian mother,[7] whose ancestor was King Heraclius II, and from a judge father, Sadr-ed-din.[6] His name was Hossein Manouchehri, which he would change it to Bahram Aryana in 1950.[6] 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" (published in 1957). Aryana is known to have styled himself on Napoleon and dressed in the Imperial French style.[8]

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 (Pars, Isfahan and Khuzestan) stirred-up by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, without shedding blood.

State visit by De Gaulle to Iran. From left to right; Charles de Gaulle, 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 (then the Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, who received him in Israel and General de Gaulle, during his visit to Iran.

Aryana left Iran in 1969 on the order of the Shah.[6] This was due to the Arvand Rud (Shatt al-Arab) crisis.[9] 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'. [10]

He died in exile in Paris in June 1985[11] and is buried at the Montparnasse cemetery. General Aryana was a Grand Officier of the French Legion of Honour.[12]

His last published book, Pour une Éthique Iranienne was a call for unity against the obscurantist forces driving Khomeini and the mullahs' fundamentalist revolution.[13]

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.[14] Aryana held dual membership of Aria Party and SUMKA.[15]

He founded Azadegan,[16] 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".[17] 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.[11]

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.[18][19]