Abolhassan Banisadr (22 March 1933-9 October 2021) was President of Iran from 1980 to 1981, under supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Biography[]
Abolhassan Banisadr was born in Hamedan in 1933, and studied finance and economics at the University of Paris. After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Banisadr was appointed Minister of Finance by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, whom he met at his father's funeral. He became President of Iran in 1980, and during his term as President, Iran fought Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War. In 1981, he was appointed the de facto commander-in-chief of the Iranian Army, but he was impeached due to his fighting with clerics in the country in an impeachment fixed by Khomeini himself. The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps executed many of his friends after the coup, and Banisadr and Massoud Rajavi fled to Paris. Rajavi, leader of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), married Banisadr's daughter and formed an alliance with him, but they later divorced and the alliance ended. Banisadr was heavily guarded by police at Versailles, and he was a major leader of the Iranian opposition to Khomeini and the Islamist government. He died in Paris in 2021 at the age of 88.