Editing SAVAK (section)

== History ==

=== 1957–1971 ===
After the [[1953 Iranian coup d'état]], Prime Minister [[Mohammad Mosaddeq]] was removed. He was originally focused on [[nationalizing]] Iran's oil industry but had also set out to weaken the [[Shah-an-shah|Shah's]] power. After the coup, the monarch, [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi|Mohammad Reza Shah]], established an intelligence service with police powers. The Shah's goal was to strengthen his regime by placing political opponents under surveillance and repressing dissident movements.<ref>[[Nikki R. Keddie]] and [[Yann Richard]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=tTqPdDNgfYoC ''Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140726161634/http://books.google.com/books?id=tTqPdDNgfYoC&printsec=frontcover&dq#PPA134,M1 |date=2014-07-26 }} (Yale University Press, 2006), p. 134.</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Intelligence - Iran, Nuclear, Diplomacy {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/intelligence-international-relations/Iran#ref796186 |access-date=2025-02-10 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=McGhee |first=Braedon |title=The Double-Edged Sword: Examining the Contradictory Nature of SAVAK and The U.S.- Iran Cliency Relationship |journal=History in the Making}}</ref> According to ''[[Encyclopædia Iranica]]'':

{{blockquote|A U.S. Army colonel working for the CIA was sent to Persia in September 1953 to work with General [[Teymur Bakhtiar]], who was appointed military governor of Tehran in December 1953, and immediately began to assemble the nucleus of a new intelligence organization. The U.S. Army colonel worked closely with Bakhtīār and his subordinates, commanding the new intelligence organization and training its members in basic intelligence techniques, such as surveillance and interrogation methods, the use of intelligence networks, and organizational security. This organization was the first modern, effective intelligence service to operate in Persia. Its main achievement occurred in September 1954, when it discovered and destroyed a large communist [[Tudeh Party]] network that had been established in the Persian armed forces.<ref>M. J. Gasiorowski, eds., ''Neither East Nor West. Iran, the United States, and the Soviet Union'', New Haven, 1990, pp. 148–51</ref><ref name="iranica">{{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20090622031811/http://www.iranica.com/newsite/index.isc?Article=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iranica.com%2Fnewsite%2Farticles%2Funicode%2Fv5f3%2Fv5f3a002.html Central Intelligence Agency in Persia]}} ''[[Encyclopaedia Iranica]]''. Retrieved 26 July 2008.</ref>}}

In March 1955, the Army colonel was "replaced with a more permanent team of five career [[Central Intelligence Agency]] (CIA) officers, including specialists in covert operations, intelligence analysis, and counterintelligence, including [[Major general (United States)|Major General]] [[Norman Schwarzkopf Sr.|Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf]] who "trained virtually all of the first generation of SAVAK personnel". In October 1956, news of the intended establishment of an agency was reported by state media and in 1965, this agency was reorganized and given the name ''Sazeman-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar'' (SAVAK).<ref name="iranica" /><ref>{{Cite web |last=Moravej |first=K. |date=2011 |title=The SAVAK and the Cold War: Counter-Intelligence and Foreign Intelligence (1957–1968) |url=https://pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/32469873/FULL_TEXT.PDF |website=}}</ref> These in turn were replaced by SAVAK's own instructors in 1965.<ref>N. R. Keddie and M. J. Gasiorowski, eds., ''Neither East Nor West: Iran, the United States, and the Soviet Union'' (New Haven, 1990), pp. 154–55; personal interviews.</ref><ref>[http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=norman_schwarzkopf_sr__1 Profile: Norman Schwarzkopf Sr.] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110422181500/http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=norman_schwarzkopf_sr__1 |date=2011-04-22}} History Commons</ref>

SAVAK had the power to censor the media, screen applicants for government jobs, and "according to a reliable Western source,<ref>''New York Times'', 21 September 1972.</ref>{{which|date=June 2020}} use all means necessary, including torture, to hunt down dissidents".<ref name="Iran">Ervand Abrahamian, ''Iran Between Two Revolutions'', p. 437</ref>{{clarify|date=June 2020}}<!--ISBN needed--> After 1963, the Shah expanded his security organizations, including SAVAK, which grew to over 5,300 full-time agents and a large but unknown number of part-time informers.<ref name="Iran"/> 

In 1961, the Iranian authorities dismissed the agency's first director, General [[Teymur Bakhtiar]],<ref name=pars>{{cite web|title=National security|url=http://www.parstimes.com/history/national_security.html|work=Pars Times|access-date=24 August 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130515172515/http://www.parstimes.com/history/national_security.html|archive-date=2013-05-15|url-status=live}}</ref> and he later became a political dissident. In 1970, SAVAK agents assassinated him, disguising the deed as an accident. 

[[General]] [[Hassan Pakravan]], director of SAVAK from 1961 to 1966,<ref name=pars/> had an almost benevolent reputation, for example dining on a weekly basis with [[Ruhollah Khomeini|Ayatollah Khomeini]] while Khomeini was under house arrest, and later intervened to prevent Khomeini's execution on the grounds that it would "anger the common people of Iran".<ref>[http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iohp/pakravan.html Harvard Iranian Oral History Project] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080229061120/http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~iohp/pakravan.html |date=2008-02-29 }} Transcript of interview with Fatemeh Pakravan conducted by Habib Ladjevardi 3 March 1983.</ref> After the [[Iranian Revolution]], however, Pakravan was among the first of the Shah's officials to be executed by the Khomeini regime.

Pakravan was replaced in 1966 by General [[Nematollah Nassiri]], a close associate of the Shah, and the service was reorganized and became increasingly active in the face of rising leftist and Islamist militancy and political unrest.

Throughout the 1960s, some agents in SAVAK started to consider financial corruption as a matter of financial security  and monitored not only the fiscal activities of the political and economic elite of Iran, but also the royal family. [[Mohammad Reza Pahlavi]] was reportedly angered by these SAVAK reports due to its contents and the belief that the security agents were prying into private matters beyond their purview.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Milani |first=Abbas |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8V1UhqWhKRwC&pg=PA19-IA1 |title=The Shah |date=2011-01-04 |publisher=Macmillan + ORM |isbn=978-0-230-11562-0 |pages=19 |language=en}}</ref>

===Siahkal attack and after===
A turning point in SAVAK's reputation for ruthless brutality was reportedly an [[Siahkal incident|attack on a gendarmerie post]] in the Caspian village of [[Siahkal]] by a small band of armed [[Marxists]] in February 1971, although it is also reported to have tortured to death a Shia cleric, Ayatollah Muhammad Reza Sa'idi, in 1970.<ref>Momen, Moojan, ''An Introduction to Shi'i Islam'' (Yale University Press, 1985), p. 255.</ref><ref>Bill, James A., [https://archive.org/details/eaglelion00bill/page/181 <!--  quote=Muhammad Reza Sa'idi. --> Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160518105818/https://books.google.com/books?id=FNBpbh-mDcoC&lpg=PA181&ots=i2JgJHF267&dq=Muhammad%20Reza%20Sa'idi&pg=PA182 |date=2016-05-18 }}(Yale University Press, 1989), p. 181–82</ref> 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.'" Brute force was supplemented with the [[bastinado]]; sleep deprivation; extensive solitary confinement; glaring searchlights; standing in one place for hours on end; nail extractions; snakes (favored for use with women); electrical shocks with cattle prods, often into the rectum; [[cigarette burns]]; sitting on hot grills; acid dripped into nostrils; near-drownings; mock executions; and an electric chair with a large metal mask to muffle screams while amplifying them for the victim. This latter contraption was dubbed the Apollo—an allusion to the [[Apollo (spacecraft)|American spacecraft]] of the same name. Prisoners were also humiliated by being raped, urinated on, and forced to stand naked.<ref>Ervand Abrahamian, ''[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft3s2005jq&chunk.id=d0e5364&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e4549 Tortured Confessions]'' (University of California Press, 1999), p. 106.</ref> Despite the new 'scientific' methods, the [[torture]] of choice remained the traditional bastinado used to beat soles of the feet.  The "primary goal" of those using the bastinados "was to locate arms caches, safe houses and accomplices ..."<ref>Abrahamian, ''Tortured Confessions'', p. 106.</ref>

Abrahamian estimates that SAVAK (and other police and military) killed 368 [[guerrilla]]s including the leadership of the major [[Urban guerrilla warfare|urban guerrilla]] organizations ([[Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas]], [[People's Mujahedin of Iran]]) such as [[Hamid Ashraf]] between 1971–1977 and executed up to 100 political prisoners between 1971 and 1979—the most violent era of the SAVAK's existence.<ref>Abrahamian, ''Tortured Confessions'', pp. 103, 169.</ref>

{{blockquote|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.<ref>Abrahamian, ''Iran Between Two Revolutions'', pp. 442–43.</ref>|}}

The repression was softened thanks to publicity and scrutiny by "numerous international organizations and foreign newspapers." [[Jimmy Carter]] became [[president of the United States]] and he raised the issue of [[human rights in the Imperial State of Iran]]. Overnight prison conditions changed. Inmates dubbed this the dawn of "jimmykrasy".<ref>Abrahamian, ''Tortured Confessions'', p. 119.</ref>