Hoveyda’s faith, Western ways brought fall

Press, 9 April 1979, Page 8

Hoveyda’s faith, Western ways brought fall

NZPA Reuter Teheran Amir Abbas Hoveyda, Iran’s Prime Minister for 13 years until he was sacked by the Shah, was regarded as the architect of his country’s rapid industrial expansion. During his long Prime Ministership he also served as the benign and often humorous face of a monarch who could not communicate with his people. The Shah’s gratitude, however, proved to be limited. In August, 1977, he sacked Mr Hoveyda after criticism in Parliament of widespread shortages and inflation as a result of development outstripping available manpower and infrastructure. Fifteen months later he was detained by the military Government of General Gholamrezi Azhari, appointed by the Shah.

But for those who toppled the monarchy in last February’s revolution, Mr Hoveyda, who was 60, was simply a symbol of the regime which had so long oppressed them.

In the present revolutionary mood, dominated by Islamic fundamentalism, it was not just his political record which was held against Mr Hoveyda. With an oddly-assorted taste for lan Fleming’s hero, James Bond, Bach, and Oscar Wilde, a European education, and widely-trav-elled past as a diplomat, he was quintessentially Western — a term now synonymous with evil for most of Iran’s religious leaders. He was a member of the Freemasons, a group distrusted by the Shah and regarded with the deepest suspicion by most of the popu- ■ lation.

What weighed against him even more heavily, however, was the fact that his diplomat father was also a preacher.of the Bahai faith, founded in Iran last century, which is feared and loathed by most of the country’s Shiite Muslim majority. Mr Hoveyda himself always denied being a follower of the faith, but in the popular imagination ( he always remained identified with the Bahai minority — estimated at about 400,000 — which wielded immense influence under the monarchy. Mr Hoveyda was an accomplished showman, always sporting a cane, a

pipe, and a different-col-oured orchid in his buttonhole every day. His favourite pastimes were reading, listening to music, and looking after his rose garden.

A technocrat rather than a politician, Mr Hoveyda came to power after Hassan-Ali Mansour, the reformist Prime Minister, was murdered by a young Muslim theological student in January, 1965. Two hours after Mr Mansour died, Mr Hoveyda, then Finance Minister, was sworn in as what was then seen as a stop-gap Prime Minister. It marked a new era in the Shah’s exercise of power. From then on, the Prime Minister of Iran would be a mere executor of the Shah’s decisions. Facing the revolutionary court last month that charged him on 17 counts ranging from massacres to treason and espionage for the West, Mr Hoveyda did not hide his bitterness at the shabby treatment meted out to him by the man he had so loyally served. “If I am responsible, everyone is responsible. We were all part of the same system,” he said. Born in Teheran on February 18, 1919, Mr Hoveyda was the son of middle class but not wealthy parents. He was one of the few leaders of Iran not connected with the aristocracy. His father was Iranian Charge d’Affaires in Saudi Arabia, but died when Amir was only nine.

Mr Hoveyda left Iran at an early age to be educated in Europe. He gained a master’s degree in political science from Brussels University and went on to get a doctorate in political science from the Sorbonne.

He returned to Iran at the age of 21 for military service as an artilleryman, later joining the Iranian Foreign Office. His first posting was as an attache in Paris in 1945, then moving to West Germany as second secretarv for four years from 1947.

Mr Hoveyda also served in Geneva, Ankara, and at the United Nations until his appointment to the board of the National Iranian Oil Company in 1958. He was also the leader of the ruling Iran Novin (New Iran) Party, which won a landslide victory over the Opposition Mardom (People’s) Party in a General Election in 1971.