Hasan Arsanjani

Who was Hasan Arsanjani?

Dr. Sayyid Hassan Arsanjani 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 of irrigated, and 2,000 acres 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,"