Mohammad-Ali Rajai
Iranian Prime Minister and President of Iran (1933-1981)
Mohammad-Ali Rajai (Persian: محمدعلی رجایی; 15 June 1933 – 30 August 1981) was an Iranian politician who served as the president of Iran from 2 August 1981 until his assassination four weeks later. Before his presidency, Rajai had served as prime minister under Abolhassan Banisadr, while concurrently occupying the position of foreign affairs minister from 11 March 1981 to 15 August 1981. He died in a bombing on 30 August 1981 along with then-prime minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar.
Early life and education
Mohammad-Ali Rajai was born on 15 June 1933 in Qazvin, Iran. His father, a shopkeeper named Abdolsamad, died when he was four years old. Rajai grew up in Qazvin and moved to Tehran in the late 1940s. He joined the Air Force at age sixteen or seventeen. In 1959, he graduated from Tarbiat Moallem University with a degree in education, later working as a teacher of mathematics.
Political career
After moving to Tehran, Rajai became involved in the anti-Shah movement and associated with Mahmoud Taleghani and the Fadayeen-e Islam group. A one-time member of the largely anti-clerical People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK), Rajai soon came out against its left-leaning ideals and in 1960, joined the Freedom Movement of Iran.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q310592. VIAF identifies the subject as 38342288. The Library of Congress control number is n85073256. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1933, 1981, 1959 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mohammad-Ali Rajai” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.