Abolhassan Banisadr

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Abolhassan Banisadr

Abol-hassan Banisadr (Persian: ابوالحسن بنی‌صدر; born March 22, 1933) was the first elected President of Iran after the 1979 Iranian Revolution.

Banisadr had participated in the anti-Shah student movement during the early 1960s, was imprisoned twice, and was wounded during an uprising in 1963. He then fled to France and joined the Iranian resistance group led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Banisadr returned to Iran together with Khomeini as the revolution was beginning in February 1979. He was the deputy economy and finance minister and acting foreign minister briefly during 1979, and the finance minister from 1979 to 1980.

He was elected President in early 1980, when he ran in a competitive election against Ahmad Madani, Hassan Habibi, Sadegh Tabatabaee, Dariush Forouhar, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, Kazem Sami, Mohammad Makri, Hassan Ghafourifard, and Hassan Ayat.

Banisadr was not an Islamic cleric: Ayatollah Khomeini had insisted that clerics should not run for positions in the government. In August and September, 1980, Banisadr survived two helicopter crashes near the Iranian border with Iraq.

Banisadr soon fell out with Ayatollah Khomeini. So, accusing^{[citation needed]} Banisadr of a weak performance in leading Iranian troops in the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini reclaimed the power of Commander-in-Chief on June 10, 1981 that he had delegated to Banisadr.

Banisadr was impeached on June 21, 1981 by the Majlis (the Iranian Parliament), allegedly because of his moves against the clerics in power, most specifically Mohammad Beheshti, the head of the judicial system at the time. Ayatollah Khomeini appears to have instigated the impeachment, which he signed the next day on June 22. Even before Ayatollah Khomeini had signed the impeachment papers, the Pasdaran had seized the Presidential buildings and gardens and imprisoned newspaper writers who worked for a newspaper closely tied to Banisadr. In the next few days, they also executed several of his closest friends, including Hossein Navab, Rashid Sadrolhefazi, and Manouchehr Massoudi. It was revealed later that the group of guards who were assigned to capture Banisadr were told to finish him off rather than get him to jail^{[citation needed]}. However, President Banisadr managed to flee the country and escaped to France, along with Massoud Rajavi, former leader of the Mojahedin, where (as of 2005) he still lives and has published many articles about Iran.

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Preceded by Ebrahim Yazdi	Foreign minister of Iran 12 November 1979–1979, 29 November	Succeeded by Sadegh Ghotbzadeh
Preceded by Position created	President of Iran 1980–1981	Succeeded by Mohammad Ali Rajai