The Odyssey of Ibrahim Yazdi

In postrevolutionary Iran, proximity to Ayatullah Khomeini probably counts more than any formal title. By that standard, few in the country carry more clout than Foreign Minister Ibrahim Yazdi, 47. An aide to Khomeini during the Ayatullah's exile in France, Yazdi returned to Tehran on the 747 that brought Khomeini home in triumph, and became Deputy Prime Minister for Revolutionary Affairs in the provisional government of Mehdi Bazargan. Although he gave up that post when he took over the Foreign Ministry, most Tehran observers believe that Yazdi's star is still ascending. A resident of the U.S. for 18 years, Yazdi has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the presidency should Bazargan, an old mentor from Tehran University days, decide not to run when the national election takes place.

Yazdi is the son of a well-to-do Tehran merchant and was brought up in a strict Muslim home. While he was a microbiology student at Tehran University he joined the National Movement of Former Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. When Mossadegh fell from power in a U.S.-sponsored coup in 1953, Yazdi joined the National Resistance Movement, whose founders included Bazargan and Ayatullah Mahmoud Taleghani, leader of Tehran's 4 million Shi'ites. In 1960, after most political organizations in Iran had been driven underground and their leaders jailed, Yazdi and his wife Sourour left for the U.S., where he studied at several universities, including the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. A specialist in cancer research, he eventually became a supervising pathologist at the Veterans Administration hospital in Houston.

Most of his Texas colleagues remember Yazdi as "pleasant, humanitarian and a good scientist." They were unaware of his political activities, which included helping to organize several anti-Shah Iranian student organizations in the U.S. From time to time he visited Khomeini, who was in exile in Iraq from 1964 until late 1978, when he was expelled and moved to France. Yazdi's wife and several of their six children still live in Houston. Last week his wife said that she would remain a U.S. citizen even if her husband does not.

Washington analysts see Yazdi as a bridge between Iran's Western-educated elite and the more conservative forces of religion and nationalism that made Iran's revolution. State Department officials recall that during the attack on the American embassy last February Yazdi's timely arrival on the scene settled the situation and possibly saved American lives. On the other hand, some American reporters in Iran worry about the stridency of Yazdi's public statements. In an address last week to the police academy he denounced "Zionist newspapers like the New York Times and TIME" for denigrating Khomeini, adding that Zionism was "one of the greatest enemies of our revolutionary movement."

Yazdi wasted no time in wielding a new broom at the Foreign Ministry; his first act was to accept the resignation of four deputy ministers appointed by his predecessor, Karim Sanjabi, who resigned two weeks ago. The White House is eager to learn whom Yazdi will name as a replacement for the Shah's longtime, high-living ambassador to Washington, Ardeshir Zahedi. In Zahedi's absence, the spokesman for the Iranian embassy has been Yazdi's articulate son-in-law, Shahriar Rouhani, 29, who temporarily put aside his doctoral studies in physics at Yale to serve as a diplomat-without-portfolio.

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