Hassan Arsanjani

Hasan Arsanjani
Hasan Arsanjani at Hotel Königshof (Bonn) in June 1961
Minister of Agriculture

Dr. Sayyid Hassan Arsanjani (1922–1969) was a radical reformer, and as the minister of agriculture in the cabinet of Dr. Ali Amini introduced the program of land reform in Iran. Later on the shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi forced him to resign and credited himself for introducing the land reform through his White Revolution. He was a law graduate who held several positions including publisher of the Darya newspaper, Member of Parliament during the Majlis's fifteenth assembly, political deputy of Qavam al-Saltana and Agricultural Minister in the cabinets of both `Ali Amini and ` Assadolah Alam. His death in suspicious circumstances was attributed to the fact that he had become immensely popular especially among peasants after the land reform, something that was not appreciated by SAVAK, the secret police of the Shah.

In the early 1960s, fearing widespread revolution in Iran, the administration of U.S. President John F. Kennedy urged the reluctant shah to undertake socio-economic reforms. The US approved cabinet of Dr. Amini rose to the occasion and implemented an ambitious agrarian reform law which was the brainchild of the populist Dr. Arsanjani. As the minister of agriculture, he ordered a fresh topographic survey of government-owned lands, in order to parceling them out to landless peasants. At the time, Premier Amini warned land owners: "I do not expect slow action from you either." A long-ignored law restricting individual family holdings to 1,000 acres (4 km²) of irrigated, and 2,000 acres (8 km²) of nonirrigated land was dusted off and declared operative. Arsanjani's program permitted landlords to own only one village and its farm lands and buildings; their other holdings must have been sold to the government at specified prices for distribution to sharecropping farmers. Arsanjani declared: "First we will tackle those who own 150 villages and whose only talent is for drink and drugs and for beating and torturing peasants,"

Along with most of the other 450 wealthy families, the landlords of Fars fought the land distribution law by helping to foment street riots in Teheran, falsifying ownership records with the connivance of provincial officials, forging ballots in local elections. The landlords won powerful allies by enlisting mullahs who were using their pulpits to frighten illiterate, landless peasants out of demanding their legal rights. They hired assassins to murder a young land-reform agent, and turned an angry nation against them.

Malek Abedi, 32, lived in the provincial capital of Shiraz with his wife and an eight-year-old son. While he was being driven home in a Jeep with two other land-reform officials, a band of 15 or 20 masked, armed horsemen stopped the car near town and ordered the occupants to get out. "Abedi was the first one out." recalled the driver, "and they immediately cut him down with shotgun and rifle fire." Without harming the other two officials, the killers fled. The government, convinced that the landlords were responsible for the deed, moved swiftly. Army planes flew low over the hills of Fars, stronghold of the fierce Kashgai tribe, to try to spot the killers. Under martial law, a military governor took over control from civilian officials who, it was rumored, had plotted with landlords to oppose reform. A national day of mourning was declared for Abedi, and the Teheran radio broadcast only news and funeral music. Instead of halting land reform in the area, the murder had the opposite effect. Agriculture Minister Hasan Arsanjani, who has aggressively pushed the cause of land reform under two Premiers, ordered local officials to finish the job in Fars within 45 days.