Bahram Afzali

Bahram Afzali
Afzali in summer 1980
Birth name	Bahram Afzali Khoshkebijari[1]
Born	6 December 1937 Qom, Imperial State of Iran
Died	25 February 1984(1984-02-25) (aged 46) Tehran, Iran
Service / branch	Islamic Republic of Iran Navy
Years of service	1957–1984
Rank	Captain
Commands	Islamic Republic of Iran Navy
Battles / wars	Iran–Iraq War Operation Morvarid
Alma mater	Italian Naval Academy University of Genoa

Bahram Afzali (Persian: بهرام افضلی; 6 December 1937 – 25 February 1984) was an Iranian admiral who served as the Commander of the Iranian Navy from May/June 1980 to 24 April 1983.^[2] He was executed for his clandestine membership in the Tudeh Party of Iran in 1984.^[2]

Career

Afzali was born in 1937^[3] in the city of Qom.^[2] His father was a cleric.^[1] He entered the service of the Imperial Iranian Navy in 1957 and was sent to Italy for further education.^[3] In 1961, he was graduated from Italian Naval Academy,^[2] where he was trained in mechanical engineering and shipbuilding.^[3] He later obtained a PhD in boat and submarine architecture in 1970.^[2]

Afzali was an engineer and a captain in the Imperial Iranian Navy.^[4] After the 1979 revolution, he continued to serve in the Navy and took part in the Iran–Iraq War.^[4] Then Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr appointed him as the commander of the Navy in June 1980.^[5] He was also special adviser of then speaker of the Iranian parliament, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.^[6]

Arrest, trial and death

At the beginning of 1983, Afzali, along with more than a thousand members of the Tudeh Party was arrested by the IRP.^[7] The trial carried out in the form of a military tribunal in December 1983, and 32 of them were sentenced to death.^[8] Their judge was Hojjat Al Islam Mohammad Reyshahri, who also interrogated Mahdi Hashemi in 1986.^[9] The location of the tribunal has been never revealed.^[9]

Ten of these Tudeh members were executed.^[8] On 25 February 1984, Afzali was executed on charges of espionage for the Soviet Union.^[4][8][10]

See also

• List of Iranian commanders in the Iran–Iraq War

References

1. Nikola B. Schahgaldian, Gina Barkhordarian (March 1987), The Iranian Military Under the Islamic Republic (PDF), RAND, p. 113, ISBN 0-8330-0777-7, retrieved 15 January 2017
2. Boroujerdi, Mehrzad; Rahimkhani, Kourosh (2018). Postrevolutionary Iran: A Political Handbook. Syracuse University Press. p. 63. ISBN 9780815654322.
3. Iran Almanac and Book of Facts, vol. 18, Echo of Iran, 1987, p. 304
4. "Mr. Bahram Afzali". OMID. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
5. "30 persons dead, 80 injured in Iranian-Iraqi frontier clash". The Calgary Herald. 2 June 1980. Retrieved 13 February 2013.
6. Shireen T. Hunter; Jeffrey L. Thomas; Alexander Melikishvili (2004). Islam in Russia: The Politics of Identity and Security. M.E. Sharpe. p. 506. ISBN 978-0-7656-1282-3.
7. George W. Breslauer (1990). Soviet Strategy in the Middle East. Unwin Hyman. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-04-445232-4.
8. Sepehr Zabir (2012). The Iranian Military in Revolution and War (RLE Iran D). CRC Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-1-136-81270-5.
9. Ervand Abrahamian (1999). Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran. University of California Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-0-520-21623-5.
10. Hunter, Shireen T. (Spring 1987). "After the Ayatollah". Foreign Policy. 66 (66): 77–97. doi:10.2307/1148665. JSTOR 1148665.

External links

• Official website

Military offices
Preceded by A. Tabatabaei	Commander of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy 1980–1983	Succeeded by Esfandiar Hosseini