Jamshid Amuzegar (25 June 1923 – 29 September 2016) was an Iranian politician who served as Minister of Finance from 1 February 1965 to 1 March 1974, succeeding Amir-Abbas Hoveyda and preceding Hushang Ansary; Minister of Interior from 1 March 1974 to 7 August 1977, succeeding Kamal Hassani and preceding Gholam Reza Azhari; and Prime Minister from 7 August 1977 to 27 August 1978, succeeding Amir-Abbas Hoveyda and preceding Jafar Sharif-Emami.
Biography[]
Jamshid Amuzegar was born on 25 June 1923 in Tehran, Iran, and he graduated from Tehran University with law and engineering degrees before gaining a PhD from Cornell University. During the 1960s to the 1970s, he held various positions under the Kingdom of Iran, and in 1971 Amuzegar and Ahmed Zaki Yamani were instrumental in implementing a series of price hikes for petroleum with OPEC. On 21 December 1975, Carlos the Jackal and the Arm of the Arab Revolution group took Amuzegar, Saudi Arabian delegate Ahmed Zaki Yamani, and the other OPEC delegates hostage, with Amuzegar and Yamani being the two targets of the operation, which was backed by Ba'athist Iraq in hopes of forcing Saudi Arabia and Iran to cease its support of Kurdish rebels. He was released after the terrorists were unable to land in Libya, and from 1977 to 1978 he served as Prime Minister before resigning. He moved to the United States, and he lived there in exile for many decades after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Amuzegar died in Maryland on 29 September 2016.