Ibrahim Yazdi, Leading Iranian Dissident, Dies at 85
Dr. Yazdi had foiled an attempted takeover of the American Embassy earlier in 1979, but later
that year he warned American officials that their decision to admit the exiled shah to the United States for cancer treatment would open "a Pandora’s box." Three days later, on Nov. 4, 1979, student supporters of the Iranian revolution seized the embassy.
That same year, a military coup supported by the United States deposed the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh,
and installed Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose father had abdicated as shah in 1941.
Dr. Yazdi described himself as a "modernist intellectual Muslim." His political outspokenness was generally tolerated by the regime because of his early kinship with Khomeini — "No one can claim to be more revolutionary or Islamic than I am," he said — although he was marginalized
and regularly arrested and charged with rumor-mongering and jeopardizing Iranian security.
In 1979, after Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was deposed, Dr. Yazdi returned to Iran triumphantly with the revolution’s
leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, from France, where Khomeini had set up his revolutionary headquarters in exile.
Dr. Yazdi served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister in the new government until Khomeini, after
briefly waffling, ignored Dr. Yazdi’s advice and endorsed the takeover of the American Embassy.