Hossein Fatemi

He began to write his memoir, but after 204 days of concealment, he was discovered and arrested on 13 March 1954. During his capture the forces killed his sister, Saltanate Banoo, who attempted to save Fatemi. He was then tortured and convicted by a military court on 10 October for "treason against the Shah" and sentenced to death. Diminishing his role in Fatemi's execution, Mohammad Reza Shah wrote in his posthumously published book Answer to History that, "I was unable to prevent the execution of Hossein Fatemi, Mossadegh’s Foreign Minister, because he was a communist."

Fatemi was executed by firing squad at Ghasr barracks at 6 am on 10 November 1954 in Tehran, when he was still suffering from fever and the injuries of the unsuccessful attempt of assassination on him by Fadayan-e Islam. Fatemi was buried in Ebn-e Babooyeh cemetery in Shahr-e Ray, near Tehran.

In August 1953, Mosaddegh's government was overthrown by a CIA-orchestrated coup d'état. Just before the coup d'état the Western publications, including Newsweek, reported that Fatemi was one of communists who were dangerous threats for Iran. The other cabinet members who were also regarded as communist threats were Mehdi Azar and Abdol Ali Lofti.

There is an avenue in Tehran named after Fatemi. Mossadegh often quoted Fatemi as the force behind the nationalization of oil from inception to implementation. After the 1953 CIA-MI6 coup, the Shah gave back half of Iran's oil and gas rights, mainly to US-UK oil companies, with a few percents for French and Italian ones, under a new agreement known as the Oil Consortium. Other countries in the Persian Gulf and North Africa followed the example and took national ownership of their oil and gas fields. President Nasser of Egypt was influenced by the earlier example of Fatemi's thesis carried out by Mossadegh when he nationalized the Suez canal.

He served as an assistant to the prime minister and as deputy of Tehran in the Iranian parliament. At the age of 33 he was appointed minister of foreign affairs to the Mosaddegh's cabinet in October 1952. He replaced Hossein Navab in the post. According to Mosaddegh's memoir, published after Fatemi's death, Fatemi was the initiator of the policy of oil nationalization in Iran.

On 15 February 1952, Fatemi was delivering a formal speech at the grave of the journalist Mohammad Masud who had been assassinated in 1948. There Fatemi became the target of an unsuccessful assassination by Mohammad-Mehdi Abdekhodaei of the Fadayan-e Islam, which also had planned to assassinate Mosaddegh. In the shooting attack, Fatemi suffered serious injuries which sidelined him for the next seven or eight months, and left permanent wounds.

Hossein Fatemi married Parivash Satvati on 27 November 1951. Fatemi was 15 years older than her. She was the daughter of an army general and the sister of Manijeh Rahimi who was the widow of Mehdi Rahimi, an executed military officer following the Iranian revolution.

After graduation, Fatemi returned to Iran and became instrumental in launching the daily titled Bākhtar (West) in Isfahan. From its founding in 1949, Fatemi was an active member of the Iranian National Front, the democratic and nationalist movement of Mosaddegh. Later the daily was moved to Tehran and began to be the mouthpiece of the front. He also contributed to a Tehran-based weekly newspaper, Mard-i Imruz, which was owned by his confidant, Mohammad Masud.

Hossein Fatemi (Persian: حسین فاطمی; also Romanized as Hoseyn Fātemi; 10 February 1917 – 10 November 1954) was an Iranian scholar. A close associate of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh, he proposed nationalization of Iranian oil and gas assets. Initially a journalist, he served as Foreign Affairs Minister of Iran from 1951 to 1953. After the 1953 coup d'état toppled the government of Mosaddegh, Fatemi was arrested, tortured, and convicted by a military court of "treason against the Shah", and executed by a firing squad.

Fatemi was born in Nain on 10 February 1917, the youngest of five. He was educated in his hometown. In his teens he moved to Isfahan for higher education. He was a caustic critic of the Iranian monarch Rezā Shāh, and his views were candidly reflected in his newspaper editorials. From 1944 to 1948 he studied in France, where he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism. There he also received a doctorate degree in law in 1948.