Show Notes
A decorated general in Tehran holds a royal decree naming him prime minister while hunted and hiding - he has four days to decide. What would you do?
The General Who Toppled His Own Cousin
In this episode we follow Fazlollah Zahedi through the weeks that made a nation. It lays out his military rise, his family ties to Mohammad Mosaddegh, and the four-day decision that could change everything - would he act or vanish?
Person: Fazlollah Zahedi Date: 17 May 1892 (birth) Location: Tehran; Hamadan; Isfahan; Khuzestan Event: Royal decree naming Zahedi prime minister found in Tehran, summer 1953 Status: Hunted and in hiding with four days to decide
- Zahedi trained in the Imperial Russian-era Cossack Brigade alongside men who later built the Pahlavi state. - By the 1920s he was military governor of Khuzestan, overseeing an oil-rich province dominated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. - In 1941 British forces arrested and interned him in Palestine after Operation PONGO, seizing objects from his bedroom that suggested Nazi links. - He returned in 1945 to regain political power, becoming senator and then interior minister under Mohammad Reza Shah. - In summer 1953 a hidden royal decree named Zahedi prime minister while he was officially in hiding and his cousin Mosaddegh still held power.
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