Zahedi, playboy Iran ambassador to US under shah, dies at 93

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Ardeshir Zahedi, Iran’s flamboyant ambassador to the United States during the regularisation of the shah who charmed some Hollywood stars and politicians with his lavish parties until the 1979 Islamic Revolution, died connected Thursday, Iranian authorities media reported. He was 93.

Whether seen with Henry Kissinger oregon entertaining Barbra Streisand, Zahedi chopped specified a memorable beingness crossed Washington’s societal country that 1 paper study referred to him arsenic some the “playboy of the Western world” and the capital’s “most-sought-after bachelor.” He was linked romantically to Elizabeth Taylor, the siren of the age.

But arsenic the gyration erupted and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, fatally sick with cancer, fled the country, the Iranian Embassy connected 3005 Massachusetts Ave. that hosted Zahedi’s raucous parties was abandoned and would basal bare for the adjacent 40 years. The gyration swept done the country, installing the Islamic theocracy that governs the federation to this day.

“Iran and America needed and inactive request each other, and it is successful their involvement to prosecute a caller and constructive attack successful their relations,” Zahedi wrote successful 2020 from Switzerland wherever helium yet settled. “It is the governments that request to beryllium acceptable to marque sacrifices, to amusement goodwill, region artificial barriers, and beryllium their sincerity and tendency to reconcile.”

Iran’s state-run IRNA quality bureau attributed Zahedi’s decease to “old age,” without elaborating. Other semiofficial quality agencies successful Iran, arsenic good arsenic the BBC’s Persian service, said helium had precocious been ill, without elaborating.

Zahedi would wed Shahnaz, the shah’s archetypal girl with Egyptian Princess Fawzia Fuad. Though that matrimony lone lasted 7 year, the shah considered Zahedi arsenic different lad and a trusted adviser. Zahedi would service arsenic ambassador to the U.S. and the United Kingdom, arsenic good arsenic Iran’s overseas minister, earlier returning to Washington arsenic the shah’s apical diplomat there.

At the time, the shah had rapidly modernized his state with its lipid wealth, and expanded its subject with American-manufactured weapons. The U.S. considered him arsenic a bulwark against the neighboring Soviet Union successful the Persian Gulf and operated concealed listening posts successful Iran to show its Cold War enemy.

Zahedi, azygous again and backmost successful Washington, threw himself into the capital’s societal scene. The Iranian Embassy became known arsenic the “the fig 1 embassy erstwhile it came to extravagance,” Barbara Walters would constitute successful her memoirs. Guests munched connected caviar and swilled champagne.

While partying, however, Zahedi maintained adjacent relationships with some the Nixon and Carter administrations. Along with ambassadors from Egypt and Pakistan, helium helped resoluteness a 1977 hostage situation successful Washington that saw 2 radical killed and implicit 140 captives freed.

But the shah, who had some constricted each dissent and waffled arsenic his state progressively recovered itself successful turmoil, felt progressively isolated and ended up fleeing. His departure and the gyration the pursuing period brought an extremity to 2,500 years of monarchial regularisation crossed Persia.

Yet contempt facing a decease condemnation backmost location and aboriginal settling successful Switzerland, Zahedi acknowledged the woes that led to the gyration and pushed for a reconciliation betwixt Iran and the U.S. adjacent amid caller tensions implicit Tehran’s collapsed atomic woody with satellite powers. He dismissed President Donald Trump’s maximalist run targeting Tehran arsenic “a unit maneuver wrapped successful bellicosity folded wrong a chimera.”

“It is bereft of a viable imaginativeness and based connected the naive presumption that overthrowing the Islamic Republic volition miraculously pb to a pluralistic and pro-American order,” Zahedi wrote successful 2019. “That erstwhile U.S.-sponsored authorities alteration successful the portion has ushered successful failed states oregon worse autocracies seems to beryllium an afterthought.”

“We look guardant to the time erstwhile we tin instrumentality the keys of this embassy to a genuinely typical Iranian authorities that is motivated not by a hateful, antiquated revolutionary ideology, but by the interests and the volition of the large Iranian people,” Hook said. Hook said successful the video that the furnishings and rugs erstwhile wrong the embassy are held successful temperature-controlled storage.

However, Zahedi’s liquor cellar did not past the gyration arsenic representatives of the Islamic Republic who concisely ran the embassy astatine the clip poured much than much than 4,000 bottles of Scotch, champagne and different beverages down a drain.

“It took 4 hours of continuous pouring to dispose of each the alcohol,” an embassy work said astatine the time.

Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat successful Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

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