SAVAK

The Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State, shortened to SAVAK or S.A.V.A.K., was the intelligence agency and secret police of the Imperial State of Iran from 1957 to 1979. SAVAK was established in Tehran in 1957 by national security law. The French intelligence service, the SDECE, 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. According to a declassified CIA memo citing a classified U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, the CIA played a significant role in establishing SAVAK, providing both funding and training. The organization became notorious for its extensive surveillance, repression, and torture of political dissidents. The Shah used SAVAK to arrest, imprison, exile, and torture his opponents, leading to widespread public resentment. This discontent was leveraged by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile, to build popular support for his Islamic philosophy. At its peak, SAVAK reportedly employed approximately 5,000 agents operating under the Pahlavi dynasty. Iranian-American scholar and ex-politician Gholam Reza Afkhami estimates that SAVAK had between 4,000 and 6,000 members, while TIME stated in a publication on 19 February 1979 that the agency had 5,000 members.