Mohammad Ali Rajai

Soheila Einollahzadeh

Son of Abdol-Samad Alaghehband, Mohammad Ali Rajai was born in a religious family in Qazvin, 1923. He lost his father when he was four years. Due to financial problems of the family, he went to work after six years of education. He left Qazvin for Tehran when he was fourteen, and worked as an apprentice in the ironmongers’ in Tehran bazaar. For a time he was a peddler in the south of Tehran, and simultaneously he entered a night school. He entered the service of air forces in 1949 and at the same time succeeded to get his diploma from Azar high school. He retired himself from the army because of compulsory transference from air forces to ground forces. Under influences from Ayatollah Taleqani, he began to teach in a school in Bijar. He got his B.A. in 1959 and taught in a high school in Khansar.

He participated in the sessions of Koran interpretation in Hedayat mosque and cooperated with the members of Iran freedom movement, combatant ulamas, the founding members of the Mujahedin organization and remaining members of the Islamic cooperation groups. He was imprisoned in 1963 and was released after departed with the Iran freedom movement. Again he was arrested in 1967 and this time he was imprisoned for seven years. While in prison he got separated from the Marxist members of the Mujahedin. After the success of the Islamic revolution he was active in the committee for welcoming Ayatollah Khomeini. He was the acting minister of education and then was appointed the minister of education in the provisional government of Bazargan.

After the election of BaniSadr as the first president of Islamic Repulic of Iran, Rajai was appointed as the prime minister. Among main events happened during his premiership are the Iraq’s invasion to Iran, attack to the US embassy in Tehran. The rising disputes between him and BaniSadr led the majlis to conclude the removal of the president due to lack of competence. In the second period of presidential elections, Rajai won the vote and became the second president of Iran. Within a period of less than a fortnight, Rajai and Bahonar his prime minister died in a bomb blast in the prime minister’s office in 8 shahrivar 1981.

Keeping good relationship with people, self-purification, and economy, simple style of life, discipline and orientation to law were among his moral merits.
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