Bahram Aryana

Field Marshal Bahram Aryana ; also spelled Bahram Ariana born Hossein Manouchehri; 17 March 1906 – 21 June 1985) was the most senior military commander of the Imperial Iranian Army during the reign of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and an Iranian nationalist and humanist. Professor Monica M. Ringer described Aryana as probably the most famous “converted Zoroastrian” of the Pahlavi era.

He was born on 17 March 1906 in Tehran from a noble Georgian mother, who was the great granddaughter of King Heraclius II, and from a judge father, Sadr-ed-din.

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.

His name was Hossein Manouchehri, which he would change to Bahram Aryana in 1950 and he was a descendant of Sepahsalar Khalatbari Tonekaboni, the noble Iranian statesman who was the leader of the constitutional revolutionary forces and four time former prime minister of Iran.

Professor Monica M. Ringer has described Aryana as probably the most notorious “converted Zoroastrian” of the Pahlavi era.

He was instrumental in many of the nationalist policies in the 1950-1960s.

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.

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.

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.

This was due to the Arvand Rud (Shatt al-Arab) crisis.

Unlike his fellow Arteshbod and exiled leader, Gholam-Ali Oveissi.

Aryana was 'beloved' by the Kurdish population of Iran from his time as the military governor of Kurdistan.

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.

He died in exile in Paris in June 1985 and is buried at the Montparnasse cemetery.

General Aryana was a Grand Officier of the French Legion of Honour.

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

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.

Aryana held dual membership of Aria Party and SUMKA.

He founded Azadegan, 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".

while in exile in Paris.

Aryana combined his forces with not just Gholam Ali Oveissi but also Shapour Bakhtiar, Ahmad Madani and Ali Amini.

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.