Aziz Daneshrad
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Aziz Daneshrad | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution | |
| In office 18 August 1979 – 15 November 1979 | |
| Constituency | Jewish community |
| Majority | 8,927 (99.4%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Aziz Daneshrad-Kiyai 1920 |
| Died | 1991 (aged 70–71) |
| Party | Tudeh Party of Iran |
| Alma mater | University of Tehran |
| Occupation | Engineer |
Aziz Daneshrad (Persian: عزیز دانشراد; 1920–1991)[1] also known as Gabay (Persian: گبای)[2] and Kiyai (Persian: کیائی)[1] was an Iranian Jewish political activist who represented Jews in the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution. His was a proponent of left-wing politics while also advocating ethnoreligious identity.[3]
Aziz Daneshrad-Kiyai was born in 1920 in Golpayegan, Isfahan Province.[1] His father was a rabbi and a merchant in bazaar.[1] He obtained a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Tehran and then became a civil servant.[1]
Political career
During the rule of Pahlavi dynasty, Daneshrad was a dissident associated with the Tudeh Party of Iran and he was imprisoned in the 1960s and the 1970s.[3][4]
He co-founded the Association of Jewish Iranian Intellectuals (Jame‘eh-ye rowshanfekran-e kalimi-ye Iran; abbreviated AJII) in 1978, a revolutionary organization that tried to challenge the old guard leadership of the Jewish community which had royalist and Zionist orientations.[3]
After the Iranian Revolution, he took charge as the interim chairman of the Tehran Jewish Association because the previous officeholder Habib Elghanian was executed.[2] Daneshrad was elected to the Assembly for the Final Review of the Constitution shortly after.[1] There he was one of the four members who represented religious minorities[5] and he is likely to have sided with opposition to inclusion of the Guardianship of the Islamic Jurists in the constitution.[6]
