In 1979, radical Islamic revolutionaries overthrew the Iranian

government ruled by the hereditary king or "Shah" of Iran,

Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi (1919–1980). One of the
grievances that the rebels cited against his regime was its use
of torture, especially by the secret police force SAVAK
(Sazeman-i Ettelaat va Amniyat-i Keshvar, or Organization for
Intelligence and National Security). In a 1976 document,
Amnesty International detailed some of SAVAK's torture
practices and stated that the shah's regime was one of the
worst human rights violators in the world.

The shah's relationship with the United States and the United
Kingdom was close, from his ascension to the throne in 1949
until his exile in 1979. During World War II, Iran was occupied
by the United Kingdom and Soviet Union to preempt a Nazi
invasion. During the occupation, the Allies forced the shah's
father to abdicate, and the younger man was installed as
constitutional monarch, sharing limited power with a national
parliament and prime minister. In the early 1950s, the
democratically elected Parliament and Prime Minister,
Mohammad Mossadegh (1882–1967), nationalized the oil
industry and made other nationalistic moves that displeased the
United Kingdom and the United States. In 1953, a coup
engineered by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and British
intelligence deposed Mossadegh and elevated the shah to
supreme power. He ruled until his deposition in 1979.

SAVAK was established in 1967 with help from both the

CIA and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad. Its first
director, General Teymur Bakhtiar, was dismissed in 1961 and
died in 1970, probably assassinated on orders from the shah.
From 1963 to 1979, thousands of political prisoners were
tortured and executed, dissent was suppressed, and
traditional Muslims were alienated. To this day, little public
information is available about SAVAK. It monitored all
journalists, professors, labor unions—indeed,
organizations of every type.

SAVAK also spied extensively on the 30,000 or so Iranian

students in the United States, with thirteen full-time case
officers devoted to this task. Students were an important
part of the revolution against the shah, and it was primarily
they who took over and occupied the U.S. embassy in Iran
in November 1979. The students cited the admission of the
exiled shah (who was dying of cancer) into the United
States as justification for the embassy takeover. They took
fifty-two Americans hostages and held them for 444 days,
releasing them on January 20, 1981.

Before trial, political prisoners were detained in one of two

prisons in Teheran…. After trial prisoners were transferred to
other prisons, either in Teheran or in the provinces. In addition
to these there were in every provincial capital and large city
Joint Committee of SAVAK and Police prisons which were used
for interrogation. As well, in large and medium-size cities there
were police prisons where political prisoners were detained at
the time of large scale arrests.

Prisoners held in pre-trial detention had no contact with other

prisoners, or with the outside world, and were subjected to
torture. They were locked up in small, damp cells with only a
straw mattress on which to sleep. In these prisons, as in others,
the extremes of temperature in Iran were an important factor.
Lack of heating in the winter or cooling in the summer created
extra hardship frequently remarked upon by prisoners. Washing
facilities were inadequate and opportunities for washing were
infrequent. Food rations were small and inadequate and no
opportunities were provided for exercise. Papers, pencils and
books were not allowed and prisoners were not given an
opportunity to join communal prayer.

In many cases prisoners were not able to see their families for
very long periods of time, and even when members of families
travelled long distances to visit prisoners they were still
restricted to 15 minutes' visiting time, or less. Food was usually
inadequate and of poor quality and this often led to malnutrition,
food poisoning or chronic illness. Medical treatment was
practically non-existent and prisoners were hardly ever seen by
a doctor, sent to hospital or allowed to receive medicines.
Discipline was severe and in cases of indiscipline prisoners may
be put into solitary confinement for anything up to three or four
months. Maltreatment and torture did not always cease after
trial and in some cases prisoners who were regarded as being
difficult were sent back to the Committee for further torture.
Former prisoners stated that they were convinced that the harsh
conditions and maltreatment were intended to break the
prisoner, with the aim of making him or her recant. This view is
supported by the appearance on television, from time to time, of
political prisoners who repudiate their previously-held opinions
and express their support for the Shah's policies.

Although article 131 of the Iranian Penal code expressly

prohibits torture, the practice of holding prisoners
incommunicado for long periods before trial, together with the
importance for the prosecution of obtaining a confession,
created a situation in which prisoners were very likely to be ill-
treated, and all the information received by Amnesty
International over the past decade confirms that torture did
invariably occur during the period between arrest and trial. All
observers to trials since 1965 reported allegations of torture
which had been made by defendants and expressed that
prisoners were tortured for the purpose of obtaining
confessions. Alleged methods of torture included whipping and
beating, electric shocks, the extraction of nails and teeth, boiling
water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the
testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to white
heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.

Allegations of deaths under torture were not uncommon.

One instance was the death of Ayatollah Haj Hosssen
Ghafari Azar Shari, a religious leader in the city of Qom,
who was arrested in August 1974 and died on 28 December
1974, following torture. Nine deaths which were announced in
April 1975 of political prisoners who had been in prison since
1968 and were allegedly "shot while trying to escape" may have
been due to torture. The official account of the deaths contained
discrepancies and the families were never allowed to have the
bodies for burial.

When questioned about the use of torture in his country, the

Shah never denied that it occurred. In a recent interview
reported in Le Monde on 1 October 1976, the Shah replied to a
question about the use of torture by saying: "Why should we not
employ the same methods as you Europeans? We have
learned sophisticated methods of torture from you. You use
psychological methods to extract the truth: we do the same."

Prisoners who have recanted may eventually be judged to have

expiated their crimes and be allowed to live a normal life, but
most released prisoners are kept under surveillance and
suffer constant harassment from SAVAK, which extends to
the treatment of their families. They are unable to obtain
employment without the permission of SAVAK and this
permission is rarely granted. Prisoners tried by military
tribunals automatically suffer the loss of their civil rights
for 10 years, regardless of the length of their sentence….

In addition to the violations already referred to there was little

respect demonstrated for human rights in many other areas of
Iranian life. Freedom of speech and association were non-
existent. The press was strictly censored and had been
dramatically curtailed since the Shah decreed that every
newspaper with a circulation of less than 3,000 and
periodicals with a circulation of less than 5,000 should be
shut down. Trade unions were illegal and workers' protests
were dealt with severely, sometimes resulting in
imprisonment and deaths. Political activity was restricted to
participation in the Rastakhiz Party. Some Iranians had difficulty
in obtaining, or were refused, passports. This restriction on
freedom of movement applied especially to released political
prisoners and members of their families. Academic freedom
was also restricted and students and university teachers
were kept under surveillance by SAVAK. A recent account
concerns a professor of literature who was harassed, beaten,
arrested and tortured because his courses had been deemed
as not conforming to the "ideology" of the "White Revolution" of
the shah.

Iran's revolution, which overthrew the shah, was the first

Islamist revolution in modern times. It was the result of
many factors, but hatred for SAVAK's cruelty was certainly
a contributing factor. Iran's government has been
passionately anti-American since 1979. Much of this
history might have been different had the United States not
contributed to the founding of SAVAK in the 1950s and
publicly supported the shah throughout his increasingly
cruel regime.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter, who had said that human
rights were the "soul of our foreign policy," praised the Shah as
a wise ruler and, toasting the Shah during a state visit to Iran,
told him that "Iran, because of the great leadership of the Shah,
is an island of stability in one of the troubled areas of the world.
This is a great tribute to you and to your majesty and to your
leadership and to the respect, admiration, and love which your
people give to you." In 1979, the former chief Iran analyst for
the CIA, Jesse J. Leaf, told New York Times reporter Seymour
Hersh that prior to 1973 the CIA had worked closely with
SAVAK and the Shah had known of the torture of dissenters.
Leaf also stated that a senior CIA officer had been "involved in
instructing officials in the Savak on torture techniques … based
on German torture techniques from World War II." Shredded
documents from the captured U.S. embassy were painstakingly
reassembled by hand after the revolution, producing documents
that showed CIA collaboration with SAVAK.

Several writers have argued that the rise of anti-American terror

organizations such as Al Qaeda in recent years is partly due to
U.S. support for oppressive regimes in Islamic countries such
as Iran. According to Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times
correspondent, "I think it's not an exaggeration to say that you
can draw a line from the American sponsorship of the 1953
coup in Iran, through the Shah's repressive regime, to the
Islamic revolution of 1979 and the spread of militant religious
fundamentalism that produced waves of anti-Western
terrorism." This thesis is controversial.

The Islamist Iranian revolutionary regime replaced SAVAK with

a similar organization, VEVAK (Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniat-e
Keshvar, Ministry of Intelligence and Security). According to a
2005 report by Amnesty International, the human rights
situation in Iran continues to be grim; punishments such as
beheading and amputation have been introduced, and the
death penalty "continues to be handed down for charges such
as 'enmity against God' or 'morality crimes.' that do not reflect
internationally recognized criminal charges."