SAVAK

The Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State (), shortened to SAVAK () or S.A.V.A.K. (), was the secret police of the Imperial State of Iran. It was established in Tehran in 1957 by national security law, and continued to operate until the Iranian Revolution in 1979, when it was dissolved by Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar.

Key facts

Government agency.agency_name: Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State
Government agency.seal: SAVAK.svg
Government agency.seal_caption: Seal, incorporating the words "S.A.V.A.K. 1335" in the bottom (1335 being the Solar Hijri equivalent of 1957 CE)
Government agency.superseding1: Prime Ministry Intelligence Office
Government agency.dissolved: (de facto) (de jure)
Government agency.headquarters: Tehran, Iran
Government agency.employees: 5,000 at peak
Government agency.chief1_name: Teymur Bakhtiar (first)
Government agency.chief2_name: Nasser Moghaddam (last)
Government agency.agency_type: Secret police

via Wikipedia infobox

~13 min read

Encyclopedic overview

13 sections

Contents

History
1957–1971
Siahkal attack and after
Directors
Timeline
Organization
Number of employees
Operations
Victims
Fardoust and security and intelligence after the revolution
See also
References
External links

The French intelligence service, the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE, predecessor of today’s DGSE), assisted in establishing and training SAVAK during its formative years in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. French instructors provided courses in surveillance, counter-subversion, interrogation techniques, and political intelligence gathering—expertise refined during the Algerian War.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “SAVAK” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.