Please go back to 1979 and Iran. The Shah had oil wealth and an incredible military machine. He had the dreaded SAVAK intelligence agency. He launch a campaign of terror and intimidation on opponents. It failed and he had to flee the country. Mugabe's terror and intimidation campaign will not work.
Please note the text below:
Ministry of Security SAVAK
Shah-an-Shah [King of Kings] Mohammad
Reza Pahlevi was restored to the Peacock Throne of Iran with the
assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1953. CIA mounted a
coup against the left-leaning government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq,
which had planned to nationalize Iran's oil industry. CIA subsequently
provided organizational and and training assistance for the
establishment of an intelligence organization for the Shah. With
training focused on domestic security and interrogation, the primary
purpose of the intelligence unit, headed by General Teymur Bakhtiar,
was to eliminate threats to Shah.
Formed under the guidance of
United States and Israeli intelligence officers in 1957, SAVAK
developed into an effective secret agency. Bakhtiar was appointed its
first director, only to be dismissed in 1961, allegedly for organizing
a coup; he was assassinated in 1970 under mysterious circumstances,
probably on the shah's direct order. His successor, General Hosain
Pakravan, was dismissed in 1966, allegedly for having failed to crush
the clerical opposition in the early 1960s. The shah turned to his
childhood friend and classmate, General Nematollah Nassiri, to rebuild
SAVAK and properly "serve" the monarch. Mansur Rafizadeh, the SAVAK
director in the United States throughout the 1970s, claimed that
General Nassiri's telephone was tapped by SAVAK agents reporting
directly to the shah, an example of the level of mistrust pervading the
government on the eve of the Revolution.
SAVAK increasingly to
symbolized the Shah's rule from 1963-79, a period of corruption in the
royal family, one-party rule, the torture and execution of thousands of
political prisoners, suppression of dissent, and alienation of the
religious masses. The United States reinforced its position as the
Shah's protector and supporter, sowing the seeds of the
anti-Americanism that later manifested itself in the revolution against
the monarchy.
Accurate information concerning SAVAK remains publicly
unavailable. A flurry of pamphlets issued by the revolutionary regime
after 1979 indicated that SAVAK had been a full-scale intelligence
agency with more than 15,000 full-time personnel and thousands of
part-time informants. SAVAK was attached to the Office of the Prime
Minister, and its director assumed the title of deputy to the prime
minister for national security affairs. Although officially a civilian
agency, SAVAK had close ties to the military; many of its officers
served simultaneously in branches of the armed forces.
Another
childhood friend and close confidant of the shah, Major General Hosain
Fardust, was deputy director of SAVAK until the early 1970s, when the
shah promoted him to the directorship of the Special Intelligence
Bureau, which operated inside Niavaran Palace, independently of SAVAK.
Founded
to round up members of the outlawed Tudeh, SAVAK expanded its
activities to include gathering intelligence and neutralizing the
regime's opponents. An elaborate system was created to monitor all
facets of political life. For example, a censorship office was
established to monitor journalists, literary figures, and academics
throughout the country; it took appropriate measures against those who
fell out of line. Universities, labor unions, and peasant
organizations, among others, were all subjected to intense surveillance
by SAVAK agents and paid informants. The agency was also active abroad,
especially in monitoring Iranian students who publicly opposed Pahlavi
rule.
SAVAK paid Rockwell International to implement a large
communications monitoring system called IBEX. The Stanford Technology
Corp. [STC, owned by Hakim] had a $5.5 million contract to supply the
CIA-promoted IBEX project. STC had another $7.5 million contract with
Iran's air force for a telephone monitoring system, operated by SAVAK,
to enable the Shah to track his top commanders' communications.
Over
the years, SAVAK became a law unto itself, having legal authority to
arrest and detain suspected persons indefinitely. SAVAK operated its
own prisons in Tehran (the Komiteh and Evin facilities) and, many
suspected, throughout the country as well. SAVAK's torture methods
included electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting brokon glass and
pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles,
and the extraction of teeth and nails. Many of these activities were
carried out without any institutional checks.
At the peak its
influence under the Shah SAVAK had at least 13 full-time case officers
running a network of informers and infiltration covering 30,000 Iranian
students on United States college campuses. The head of the SAVAK
agents in the United States operated under the cover of an attache at
the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, with the FBI, CIA, and State
Department fully aware of these activities.
In 1978 the deepening
opposition to the Shah errupted in widespread demonstrations and
rioting. SAVAK and the military responded with widespread repression
that killed thousands of people. Recognizing that even this level of
violence had failed to crush the rebellion, the Shah abdicated the
Peacock Throne and departed Iran on 16 January 1979. Despite decades of
pervasive surveillance by SAVAK, working closely with CIA, the extent
of public opposition to the Shah, and his sudden departure, came as a
considerable suprise to the US intelligence community and national
leadership. As late as September 28, 1978 the US Defense Intelligence
Agency reported that the shah "is expected to remain actively in power
over the next ten years."
However, it was no surprise that SAVAK was
singled out as a primary target for reprisals, its headquarters
overrun, and prominent leaders tried and executed by komiteh
representatives. High-ranking SAVAK agents were purged between 1979 and
1981; there were 61 SAVAK officials among 248 military personnel
executed between February and September 1979. The organization was
officially dissolved by Khomeini shortly after he came to power in 1979.
Sources and Resources
SAVAK in IRAN - A Country Study Library of Congress Federal Research Division
A 'great venture': overthrowing the government of Iran by Mark Curtis Lobster #30, December 1995
HISTORY OF MOJAHEDIN [Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran ]
Khomeini's Incorporation of the Iranian Military Mark Roberts NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY McNair Paper 48 January 1996
"Judgment;
An Analysis of Savak", by General Hashemai, the former head of
counterespionage of Savak who in Savak for 22 years. Unfortunately this
book is only available in Farsi.
SAVAK (Persian:
?????, short for ?????? ??????? ? ????? ???? Sazeman-e Ettela'at va
Amniyat-e Keshvar, National Intelligence and Security Organization) was
the domestic security and intelligence service of Iran from 1957 to 1979. Its headquarters were in Tehran.
At its peak, the organization had as many as 60,000 agents serving in
its ranks. It has been estimated that by the time the agency was
finally dismantled in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution, as many as one third of all Iranian men had some sort of connection to SAVAK by way of being informants or actual agents.[1]
Contents[hide]
1 History
2 Operations
3 Post-Revolution and Fardost
4 SAVAK Directors
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
//
[edit] History
SAVAK was founded in 1957 to strengthen the Shah's
regime by placing political opponents under surveillance and repress
dissident movements. SAVAK had the power to censor the media, screen
applicants for government jobs, "and according to reliable Western
source [2], use all means necessary, including torture, to hunt down dissidents." [3]
According
to a book published in Iran after the revolution, reputedly written by
Hussein Fardust, a high level SAVAK official, SAVAK was created with
the help of American and Israeli advisers who devised the agency to closely model after the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).[4]
After
1963, the shah expanded the security organizations, including SAVAK
which grew to a total of over 5300 full-time agents and a large but
unknown number of part-time informers.[5]
The agency's first director, General Teymur Bakhtiar,
was dismissed in 1961 and later became a political dissident. In 1970
he was a victim of assassination by SAVAK agents disguised to look like
an accident.
Hassan Pakravan,
director of Savak from 1961-1965, had an almost benevolent reputation,
for example, dining with the Ayatollah Khomeini while Khomeini was
under house arrest on a weekly basis, and later intervened to prevent
Khomeini's execution, on the grounds it would "anger the common people
of Iran".[6] After the Iranian Revolution, however, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed.
Pakravan was replaced in 1965 by General Nematollah Nassiri, a close associate of the Shah, and the service was reorganized and became increasingly active in the face of rising Shia and Communist militancy and political unrest.
A
turning point in SAVAK's reputation for ruthless brutality was an
attack on a gendarmerie post in the Caspian village of Siahkal by a
small band of armed Marxists in February 1971. According to Iranian political historian Ervand Abrahamian,
after this attack SAVAK interrogators were sent abroad for `scientific
training to prevent unwanted deaths from `brute force.` .... Despite
the new `scientific` methods, the torture of choice remained the traditional bastinado used to beat soles of the feet. Its "primary goal was to locate arms caches, safe houses and accomplices ..." [7]
Abrahamian estimates that SAVAK (and other police and military) killed 368 guerillas
between 1971-1977 and executed something less than 100 political
prisoners between 1971 and 1979 - the most violent era of the SAVAK's
existence. [8]
One
well known writer was arrested, tortured for months, and finally placed
before television cameras to `confess` that his works paid too much
attention to social problems and not enough to the great achievements
of the White Revolution.
.... By the end of 1975, twenty-two prominent poets, novelist,
professors, theater directors, and film makers were in jail for
criticizing the regime. And many others had been physically attacked
for refusing to cooperate with the authorities. [9]
By
1976, this repression was softened considerably thanks to publicity and
scrutiny by "numerous international organizations and foreign
newspapers." In 1976, Jimmy Carter Was elected president of the United States and he "raised the issue of human rights in Iran as well as in the Soviet Union. Overnight prison conditions changed. Inmates dubbed this the dawn of `jimmykrasy.` .... " [10]
After the Islamic Revolution former directors Pakravan and Nassiri were tried by inadequate Revolutionary 'Courts' and executed by the Revolutionary Guard.
[edit] Operations
During
the height of its power, SAVAK had virtually unlimited powers of arrest
and detention. It operated its own detention centers, like Evin Prison. In addition to domestic security the service's tasks extended to the surveillance of Iranians abroad, notably in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, and especially students on government stipends. The agency also closely collaborated with the American CIA by sending their agents to an air force base in New York to share and discuss interrogation tactics.[11]
SAVAK agents often carried out operations against each other.[citation needed] Teymur Bakhtiar was assassinated by SAVAK agents in 1970, and Mansur Rafizadeh,
SAVAK's United States director during the 1970s, reported that General
Nassiri's phone was tapped. Mansur Rafizadeh later published his life
as a SAVAK man and detailed the human rights violations of the Shah in
his book Witness: From the Shah to the Secret Arms Deal : An Insider's
Account of U.S. Involvement in Iran.
According to Polish author Ryszard Kapuscinski, SAVAK was responsible for
Censorship of press, books and films.[12]
Interrogation and often torture of prisoners
Surveillance of political opponents.
[edit] Post-Revolution and Fardost
Further information: Human rights in Islamic Republic of Iran
Hossein Fardoust, a former classmate of the Shah, was a deputy director of SAVAK until he was appointed head of the Imperial Inspectorate,
also known as the Special Intelligence Bureau, to watch over high-level
government officials, including SAVAK directors. Fardust later is
rumoured to have become director of SAVAMA, the post-revolution incarnation of the original SAVAK organization.
SAVAK was closed down shortly before the end of themonarchy and the gain of power by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
in February 1979. Following the departure of the Shah in January 1979,
SAVAK's 3,000+ central staff and its agents were targeted for
reprisals; almost all of them that were in Iran at the time of the
Iranian Revolution were hunted down and executed, only a few who were
on missions outside of Iran managed to survive.[citation needed]
SAVAK has been replaced by the SAVAMA, Sazman-e Ettela'at va Amniat-e Melli-e Iran, later renamed the Ministry of Intelligence.
The latter is also referred to as VEVAK, Vezarat-e Ettela'at va
Amniat-e Keshvar, though Iranians and the Iranian press never employ
this term, using instead the official Ministry title.[citation needed]
According
to some sources, the new organization is structurally identical to the
old one and retains many of the same people, but there is no reliable
proof of these allegations.[citation needed]
Many
books have since been published about the pre-revolution status of Iran
politicians, based on the documents found in SAVAK's offices.
[
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