Parviz Sabeti

[NUR]

http://www.eminentpersians.net/#parviz-sabeti

Photo: http://www.parsine.com/files/fa/news/1390/11/22/27212_229.jpg

He was like a character from a le Carré novel. As his fame and reputation grew, his name and face disappeared from the public domain. To much of the population, he was simply known as “High Ranking Security Official.” To the political cognoscenti, he was one of the most powerful men in Iran during the last two decades of the Pahlavi era. To be summoned to his office was at once disquieting and a sign of importance. Ministers and generals, no less than dissident intellectuals and militant members of the opposition, listened attentively when he talked. And he talked with the calm and premeditation of a diplomat—choosing his words carefully, avoiding bombast, and invariably infusing a hint of menace into his discourse. Although to the opposition his name augured fear and loathing and was synonymous with torture and censorship, he was as much the theorist of the state as its enforcer. Not surprisingly, then, in his public demeanor, he was deliberate, soft-spoken, and usually polite. He had a true poker face, altogether bereft of public displays of affect. Neither anger nor anxiety, no more than pity or prevarication, changed his steely countenance. His name was Parviz Sabeti, and he was easily one of the most controversial figures in postwar Iran.

He joined SAVAK at its inception in 1957, and his rise in its ranks was rapid. In little more than a decade, he became the omnipotent head of the organization’s crucial Third Division, in charge of internal security. So powerful and pervasive—or in the eyes of the opposition, infamous—was his reputation and his shadow that SAVAK’s other necessary work, like its Eighth Division fighting Soviet espionage in Iran, was all but ignored. In his memoir of life in SAVAK, General Manuchehr Hashemi, for many years the head of the Eighth Division, complains that the success of his group in fighting Soviet spies was overshadowed by the reality or rumor of the Third Division’s tactics.[1] Furthermore, the wife of General Hassan Pakravan, the second chief of SAVAK, claims in an interview that during a gala dinner in the early 1970s, she refused to sit next to Sabeti in protest of what he had done to the organization’s reputation. The general himself, of course, had a far more sanguine view of Sabeti, telling his wife that, “each period had its own exigencies.”[2]

Regardless of his reputation, Sabeti was, by the mid-1970s, arguably one of the most informed men about Iranian politics. Furthermore, the shah by all accounts relied heavily on SAVAK for his survival and for intelligence. Nevertheless it is one of the most astonishing facts of Sabeti’s life, and a testimony to his controversial character and his complicated relationship with the shah, that all through his long career he was never granted a private audience with the king. Even when the shah was desperately searching for a solution to the crisis that threatened his throne, during the days that he sought out many antique political figures for advice, he still adamantly refused to meet with Sabeti. Eventually, at the insistence of the queen, he agreed to a meeting, under the condition that the queen should also be present. Sabeti demurred; in those days, as the power of the shah was fast waning, there were many who refused to heed his commands. Sabeti argued that only in a private audience could he tell the king all he needed to say. He knew well what many in the court had known for a long time. The shah was almost a different person in a private meeting than he was with more than one person present. Alone he was shy, attentive, agreeable, and willing to hear views different than his own; in company, he was stiff, intolerant of “saucy minions,” and unwilling to hear criticism.

Some have tried to suggest that the shah’s refusal to meet with Sabeti was the result of his unwillingness to circumvent the chain of command. He met regularly with Sabeti’s superior, General Ne’matollalh Nasiri, the head of SAVAK, and that obviated the need or the appropriateness of a meeting with someone like Sabeti. But this argument flies in the face of reality. The shah often broke the chain of command to meet with anyone he wanted to meet. Furthermore, when the throne was on the line, imagined chains of command must give way—as they in fact did—to the exigencies of the moment.

It was no less a measure of Sabeti’s power, and the complicated nature of his relationship with the shah, that when prominent figures of the government were arrested as a ploy to appease the opposition—forgetting that when the fever of revolution is at full pitch, feeding the frenzied appetite for revenge only “makes hungry when it most satisfies”— Sabeti, who would easily have been the opposition’s most cherished prey, was not only spared but was allowed to leave Iran. No sooner had he left Iran than Iran’s complicated conspiratorial cosmos was filled with rumors about his departure. Sabeti was spared, some said, because the CIA wanted him saved. General Fardust, for many years SAVAK’s deputy director, claimed in his vituperative memoir that Sabeti told him that the CIA was helping him leave Iran. It is interesting that in the same memoir, as Fardust hurled invective at nearly everyone in the political elite, he more or less spared Sabeti, writing that he was only “ambitious” and a “show boater.” Another conspiracy theory was that Mossad had saved Sabeti. In both theories, “he has had plastic surgery.” Some say he lives incognito in Israel; others have him active as “chief advisor” to Prince Reza Pahlavi.[3] In exile, no less than in his days of power, the “real” Sabeti is hidden under a heavy fog of rumor, gossip, innuendo, rightful criticism, and calculated disinformation.

Parviz Sabeti was born on March 25, 1936 (4 Farvardin 1315) in Sangesar, near the city of Semnan, a town perched on the lush mountains that skirt the arid desert in the geographic heart of Iran, known for its peculiar language, its unusual weather, and the disproportionately large number of Bahais who lived there.
Sabeti’s father was a sheep rancher of middle-class means. He was also a member of the Bahai faith. Later, as Sabeti’s reputation grew, his religion became the subject of considerable controversy. Parviz spent the first nine years of his education in his town of birth; for high school, he moved to Tehran, following his brother’s footsteps. He lived with his sister and brother-in-law and was registered at the famous Firouz Bahram high school—renowned for its academic excellence and for the fact that it had been set up by Zoroastrians.
His high school years coincided with the days when Iran was caught in a relentless battle among Mossadeq and his advocates, Ayatollah Seyyed Abolqasem Kashani and his followers, the Tudeh Party and its members, and finally the shah and his supporters. By all accounts Sabeti had no political engagement in this period. It is, after all, an article of faith for members of the Bahai religion not to engage in politics. At the same time, the young Sabeti had an avid curiosity about the world of politics, and thus, he read regularly about the news of the day. He had come to believe that of the four main forces in Iranian politics of the time, the Tudeh Party was the most potentially dangerous. In later years, his contempt for the communists helped shape his political views. Of the political figures of the time, he was one of the few who made no concessions—real or imaginary, theoretical or practical—to the communist point of view.

In 1954, he entered Tehran University’s Law School, which was modeled on the French system where students enter law school right out of high school and graduate in three or four years. In his last year of university, Sabeti sought employment as a teacher and was assigned to a small school in one of the poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Tehran. In those days, the law school was lax in terms of its requirements for student attendance. Many students signed up for a class, showed up a couple of times to get a syllabus or the course reader, and then reappeared only during exam time. For his third year, Sabeti was among this group. He was teaching full time while enrolled as full-time student.

A degree in law usually led to a career in the judiciary or as a lawyer, and Sabeti chose the former, garnering an appointment as a judge. But before he could begin, he heard from a family friend that a new security organization was hiring. Sabeti changed his mind about the judgeship and applied for the new job. “It was,” he said, “a shortcut to a political future.”[4] By then his religious affiliations seemed to have changed and no longer posed a problem.

Sabeti was hired to work for the new organization, known by its acronym, SAVAK. His first job was as a political analyst. In the autobiography he submitted as part of his application, he wrote,

all through my education, I also helped my father with his sheep ranching and trade. I am competent in English and have also taken courses in judicial, economical, administrative and political fields. I have four brothers and a sister. All my life I have lived in a family that has been through my father a Bahai. Both my parents were Bahais. As for myself, I have been a Moslem from the time I reached maturity, and have received deferment from the military because I have been responsible for the livelihood of my family. My senior thesis has been on the subject of those immune from prosecution, namely juveniles and the mentally handicapped. As you can see, I am from the town of Sangesar.[5]

It is not clear how Sabeti managed to get his military deferment. His classification, as he indicates in his letter, implied that he was his family’s sole breadwinner, but considering the image he gave of his family’s economics, it is hard to imagine how that could have been the case. Nevertheless, Sabeti certainly impressed his recruiters and was hired to work as an analyst.

SAVAK, initially modeled on a combination of the CIA and the FBI at the time, had three different analytical sections—social, economic, and political—and before long Sabeti had become acting director of the important political section. The job consisted of preparing two types of reports. There were daily “top secret” intelligence briefs prepared in three copies. One was for the shah, the second for the prime minister, and the third for the head of SAVAK. The second type were special reports prepared on crucial and pending security topics, and usually for the shah’s “eyes only.” These were the reports that made Sabeti’s reputation, and in later years, some of the same reports, on the political situation as well as on corruption in men and women of power, got him repeatedly in trouble with the shah. Before long, Sabeti was chosen to head this department, lasting in the position for a little more than five years.

The first controversial report he wrote for the shah embodied his vision and method. It combined his hardheaded realism with an unabashed belief in the salutary use of force, even authoritarianism, in the early stages of economic and political development. He was a firm believer in the power and possibility of social engineering, while also condoning the use of extreme measures in achieving desired ends. The year of his first controversial report was 1962. Amini had come to power, and the United States had been pressuring the shah to have free and fair elections. The shah asked Pakravan, then head of SAVAK, to prepare a report on what would happen if there were free elections held in the country.

Sabeti was entrusted with the task of preparing the report. He first questioned the wisdom of the premise of the proposed policy. The source of unhappiness among the Iranian people, he claimed, was not the absence of democracy or free elections. In fact, people will support an authoritarian king so long as the regime is free from corruption and is moving the country in the right direction. Like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, Sabeti believed that people prefer bread and security to freedom and want. Furthermore, he wrote, you cannot have free elections without first adequately preparing the people for such elections.

In the absence of such preparations, he concluded, free elections would bring nothing but chaos for the country and disaster for the shah. He then offered a district-by-district analysis of the probable results of a free election and concluded that at least a third of the elected members would be from the opposition. Because such members are organized and trained in the vagaries of politics, they would easily control the agenda and cripple the government’s ability to rule. “The shah hit the roof,” Sabeti remembered, “when he read the report.” He wanted to know who had written it. “This is all the nihilistic negativism of the opposition,” the shah reportedly declared. Furthermore, he ordered an investigation into the report’s methodology and conclusion. “If he can’t show how and why he arrived at these stark conclusions,” the shah ordered, “he should be put on trial.”[6]

A three-man commission was formed by Pakravan and after lengthy discussions and questioning, they concluded that no malice had been intended. The free elections were never held, but Sabeti’s basic philosophy remained the same. Before you could open the system, he believed, you had to reform it from inside and disarm the opposition by alleviating the social ills that provide them with propaganda material. For him, corruption was as much of a security problem as organized militancy. At the same time, he often argued that the ability and freedom of supporters of the system to criticize it must precede liberty for its opponents.

His views and prescriptions were very similar to those he advocated about fifteen years later, when the system was once again faced with a serious challenge. At that time, early in 1978, when the queen asked Sabeti why there was not more freedom in the country, he answered tartly, “Because there is no freedom for me to speak my mind. How can we allow the opponents to speak?”7 He went on to say that when he could openly and freely state his views about some of the men and women in power, then the opposition should also be given a free hand to articulate its views. As a “social engineer” he clearly did not seem to believe that freedom was an inalienable right of the people, but something leaders, more specifically enlightened despots, “give” to the people when they see fit. There is much evidence to suggest that he was, throughout the 1960s and 1970s, a critic of corruption and nepotism not only in public figures, but also in members of the royal family. On more than one occasion, his reports on malfeasance by a member of the shah’s entourage—Hushang Davvalou Ghajar, for example—or members of the royal family, particularly the shah’s brothers and sisters, caused the ire of the shah. In one case, the shah told Hoseyn Fardust, SAVAK’s deputy director, to “find out what is wrong with this boy? He clearly has psychological problems.”[8]

In 1969, there was some restructuring in SAVAK, and Sabeti’s group was combined with the department responsible for fighting what were called subversive political groups. The groups were divided into five categories—communists, National Front, Kurds, secessionist movements, and Islamic radicals—with Sabeti in charge of dealing with communist groups. It was in this capacity that Sabeti first appeared on television and with
chilling efficiency described and lambasted the opposition groups outside Iran. He always appeared not under his own name, but under the title “High Ranking Security Official.” Another of his television appearances, in 1970, caused a serious diplomatic row between Iran, the United States, and England.

In a program describing General Bakhtiyar’s activities against the government of Iran, Sabeti declared that Iran has found clear evidence that the Western oil companies, in their effort to bring pressure on the shah to ease his demands for higher prices, had provided financial support for Bakhtiyar. In the same television program, Sabeti declared that student unrest inside and outside Iran had been associated with “imperialist sponsored extremist groups” and that they were “under strong influence of western imperialist policies which consider Iran’s industrial progress a threat to their market. [Earlier this year] the agent insinuated that HMG were supporting the Ba’thists, which you will remember, was a bee in the Shah’s bonnet.” England and the United States were not amused. The American Embassy contacted Alam, and the British issued a démarche and talked to the Foreign Ministry to register their views “fairly forcibly.” The British ambassador “pulled no punches in speaking with the Minister of Court, the Minister of Finance, and Dr. Egbal in the course of evening.”
Responding to this unusually strong reaction by the British and American governments, “the Iranians eventually put out an official statement . . . to the effect that the allegations against the oil companies were based on Bakhtiyar documents and statements and did not reflect the views of the Iranian government.”[9]

But whatever the diplomatic reaction, Sabeti’s several television appearances made him an overnight sensation. He did not fit the normal image of a SAVAK agent—faux leather jacket, gruff appearance, foul language, an innocuous pseudonym, invariably calling themselves “doctors.” Sabeti was a different breed. He was handsome, well dressed, well prepared, and combative though polite. In his work habits, he was dedicated and disciplined. He was unfailingly punctual. He arrived at work no later than seven in the morning. “The army officers seconded to SAVAK,” he said, “prided themselves in their ability to come to work according to the military hours. I too followed the same schedule.”

As his comments on thousands of documents since published by the Islamic Republic show, he was brief, firm, and clear when issuing orders. In conversation, as in his marginal notes, he went directly to the heart of matter. He spoke without any notes but seemed to have every fact at the tip of his fingers. “If you read from a text,” he had concluded, “then people do not believe you; they tend to think you are giving them propaganda.”10 He was then, as he is now, unabashed in his defense of the system. “The shah had his faults,” he says, “but considering what was before him, and what has come after him, and considering what there is in the area, he was the best system Iran could hope to have.”[11]

Gradually, as this image began to set in, as his power within the SAVAK bureaucracy grew, and as SAVAK’s power grew in Iran, he began to disappear from the public arena.

By 1970, as a new militancy began among some of the shah’s opponents in the form of armed guerrilla activities, what is today called terrorism, and as it became evident that interagency rivalries among the police, SAVAK, and the army’s intelligent unit was hurting the fight against the new militant groups, a new Joint Committee to Fight Terrorism was set up, and Sabeti was its de facto leader. The committee always had a nominal head from the ranks of the military, but Sabeti was its leader. He arrived at the infamous “Joint Committee” with the pomp and security of a head of state. Interrogators, who in the confines of their own offices often had delusions of divine power, vied with each other for a chance to be in the same room with him. The “Committee” developed a notorious reputation as a den of torture and brutality, and in the public imagination it was Sabeti’s name that was identified with the committee and its notoriety. There is no doubt that there was torture in the prisons at the time. But there is also much evidence to indicate that torture became a routine part of prison after the rise of terrorism in Iran. Before that time, there had been some torture and beatings, but systematic torture was a new phenomenon. SAVAK agents were faced with a new breed of militants who had cyanide pills under their tongues, ready to kill or die for the cause any minute.

By then Sabeti was the head of SAVAK’s Third Division, in charge of internal security. His power was such that even the long survival of Hoveyda as prime minister, according to the American Embassy in Tehran, was in no small measure the result of his close friendship with Sabeti. The two men met regularly for lunch. So close and intimate was the relationship that it was often assumed by Amir-Abbas Hoveyda’s foes that he used SAVAK to sabotage his enemies.

The rising tide of revolution put Sabeti even more than before at the center of Iranian politics. On the one hand, SAVAK and its practices had become a major bone of contention for the opposition. International media and jurists were also increasingly vocal in their criticism of torture in Iran. On the other hand, for years SAVAK had been a pillar of power in Iran, and now, in an effort to appease the opposition, its power was gradually reduced. General Nasiri was replaced by General Nasser Moghadam as the new head of SAVAK, and from the outset the latter’s liberalizing attitude put him at odds with Sabeti, who believed that such liberalization would jeopardize the system.

As it became clear that Carter was winning the elections in America, and that he would bring pressure on the shah to open up the system politically, Sabeti says he prepared another lengthy report like the controversial one he had written in 1961. The situation in 1976, he wrote, was far more fraught with danger than it had been in 1961. There were millions more living in urban centers; another few million had been added to the ranks of the country’s students. The opposition was more organized than before and some of them had training in armed battle. Liberalization, he concluded, could bring the system to a crashing fall.

Once again the shah hit the roof. “How can Sabeti be so negative,” he reportedly said. “Does he mean to say that our White Revolution has accomplished nothing?” Needless to say, in spite of Sabeti’s views, liberalization went on.

As the situation deteriorated, on more than one occasion Sabeti suggested the use of force to change the political dynamics in the country. As late as May 1978, he believed that his Third Division could turn back the tide. Through Hoveyda he sent a message to the shah asking for permission to arrest some three thousand people. “We can still control the situation,” he said, “if we are allowed to do our work.” Although the shah knew that at least part of his problem was in fact “the work” SAVAK had done in the past, he was by then sufficiently interested to ask for a specific plan of action. Sabeti worked on preparing the list of those to be arrested. The plan was submitted to the shah, who agreed to the arrest of only a small fraction of those on the list. SAVAK went to work, a few hundred leaders were arrested, and, in fact, the situation did, according to the American Embassy in Tehran, quiet down.

But then at the instigation of Amuzegar, many of the detainees were released. “What are we going to say to the human rights group?” he asked. “Hell with the human rights group,” Sabeti responded.[12]

As the situation deteriorated, Sabeti had one last plan of action. He wanted the shah to declare a state of emergency, dismiss the Parliament, and close the American and British Embassies to protest the BBC and Western media’s role in encouraging riots. The iron fist, he suggested, must replace the velvet revolution; only after reestablishing law and order could the shah begin to implement the necessary changes, but from a position of strength, not weakness. The shah dismissed the suggestion as childish. A few weeks later, Sabeti left Iran for a life of exile.

Easily the revelation most damaging to Sabeti’s career came after the revolution, from one of SAVAK’s star interrogators. During his trial, he revealed what the opposition had known for many years. At the height of terrorist activities, one of the groups had killed a prominent leader of SAVAK. Nine leading figures of the opposition—all already tried and convicted on different charges—were taken to the hills outside Tehran and shot in cold blood. The list included Bijan Jazani who had been a mastermind of one of these terrorist groups. Newspapers at the time reported that the nine had been killed while attempting to escape from prison.

As it turns out, three of the nine were, in fact, trying to escape. Their childish attempt had been thwarted in its first stage. But in retribution for the successful executions of SAVAK, government, and business leaders, the nine, who were thought to be chief theorists of the newly founded armed groups, were executed. In the course of the revelations, the interrogator made clear that while Sabeti did not directly participate in the act, he was not only informed but was the mastermind. For his turn, Sabeti categorically denies any role in the incident. “What happened in that case,” he claims, “is what the papers reported at the time. The Islamic Court’s revelations are propaganda.”

In exile, Sabeti has kept out of the limelight. He has, he says, written a two-thousand page, yet-to-be-published memoir. He lives with his wife of more than thirty years and has two children, both successful professionals. As reappraising the legacy of the Pahlavi era is now a subject of intense curiosity and shifting sensibilities inside and outside Iran, Sabeti, and his controversial role, is never far from the center of the debate.

1. Manuchehr Hashemi, Davari: Sokhani Dar Karnameye-e SAVAK [Judgment: Some Remarks about SAVAK] (London: Aras, 1373/1994).
2. In an interview with General Pakravan’s daughter, she remembered this conversation. Saideh Pakravan, interview with author, Palo Alto, Calif. Nov. 14, 2002.
3. In her portrait of the Irani-American diaspora, Connie Bruck of the New Yorker refers to this relationship. See Connie Bruck, “Exiles,” New Yorker, Mar. 6, 2006.
4. Parviz Sabeti, interviewed by author, Nov. 17, Los Angeles, 2002.
5. Hoseyn Fardust, Jostarhai Dar Tarikhe Moaser Iran [Inquiries in the Modern History of Iran], vol. 2 (Tehran: Markaz Asnad, 1370/1991), 450–51. The book is, in fact, the second volume of Fardust’s alleged memoirs.
6. Parviz Sabeti, phone interview by author, Jan. 10, 2003. 7. Ibid.
8. Parviz Sabeti, phone interview by author, Nov. 24, 1997. 9. Parviz Sabeti, phone interview by author, Jan. 10, 2003. 10. Parviz Sabeti, phone interview by author, Feb. 26, 2003. 11. Parviz Sabeti, phone interview by author, Sept. 3, 2005. 12. Parviz Sabeti, phone interview by author, Sept. 4, 2004.