Page:Documents from the Den of Espionage.djvu/84



IRAN

Member of Central Council of National Front

The leader of the activist wing of the National Front (NF), Shapur Bakhtiar is a member of the Central Council of the NF and a member of the Executive Committee of the major NF component, the Iran Party. He is preparing to challenge the NF's leader, Allahyar Saleh, for control of the loosely organized opposition movement. He describes Saleh as both too old and too moderate to effectively lead the NF, and blames the NF's present state of disorganization on its leadership. Bakhtiar would forge the NF into a strongly organized party with an emphasis on youth.

The former head of the NF University Committee, he is distressed at the decline in NF influence among Tehran University students, and the corresponding growth in the influence of the NF's major rivals, the Tudeh (Communist) Party and the fanatic, religiously oriented Freedom Movement of Iran (FMI). Bakhtiar opposes revolution and prefers a party which can give its end through legal methods. He objects to the Shah's control of the Government; although Bakhtiar would retain the Shah as head of the state, he would place the Government under a strong Prime Minister. Internationally, he would have Iran follow a path of neutrality similar to that of India. It would be pro-West but on close terms with the USSR, accepting economic aid from both camps. He is especially opposed to military alliances such as CENTO. Bakhtiar is bitterly opposed to Communism, and consider himself a socialist of the French syndicalist school.

Shapur Bakhtiar was born in 1914, the son of a khan of the Bakhtiari tribe. He received his early schooling in Isfahan, then attended a French college in Beirat, where he earned his first BA. In 1930 he went to France, earned another BA at the Borbonne and in 1939 received licenses from the Paris University faculties of political science and law. He served in the French army until the fall of France. In 1946 he earned an LLD. Returning to Iran, he joined the Labor Ministry, and in 1946 took part in a strike against the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) while chief of the Khuzistan Labor Office. His opposition to the AIOC and its labor policies earned him much popularity among the Khuzistan workers, some of which he still retains. In 1948 he ran successfully for the Majlis, and was accused of having tacit support of the Tudeh Party. AIOC complaints led to his dismissal from the Labor Ministry the following year.