On June 28, Iran commemorates the martyr Ayatollah Behesthi.
On June 28, the Islamic Republic of Iran commemorates the late martyr Ayatollah Sayyed Mohammad Behesthi, who was martyred on the same day in 1981 following a brutal attack that killed 72 other men.
Ayatollah Beheshti was one of the leading architects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, as well as the first Chief Justice of the Islamic Republic. A refined international scholar, Beheshti, breaking with the widespread narrative that Iranian revolutionaries were entrenched in their beliefs, delved into European thinkers, particularly Marxist dialectics and existentialism, attempting to engage with these currents using the philosophical school of Transcendent Wisdom by Mulla Sadra. For him, human reason was not in conflict with divine revelation, but rather the necessary tool for interpreting and applying sacred texts to the problems of the modern world. Another interesting aspect of his thought was that, opposing historical fatalism, he insisted that human beings possess complete free will and are solely responsible for their own social and spiritual destiny.
His opposition to the Shah's tyrannical regime led to his arrest by SAVAK, the Pahlavis' infamous secret police, and his subsequent exile to Germany, where he led the Islamic Center of Hamburg until 1970. Upon his return to his homeland, he intensified his activism against the monarchy. His revolutionary role was so significant that, when street protests erupted across the country in 1978, Imam Khomeini appointed him a key member of the Council of the Islamic Revolution, the clandestine body that managed field operations while the Imam was still in exile in Paris. In the aftermath of the Revolution's victory, it was the martyred Beheshti who worked to erect the legal and political framework of the new Islamic system: he co-founded the Islamic Republican Party, which won the subsequent elections, played a key role in drafting the new Constitution, and eventually became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
With the country's entry into the war against Iraq, the internal situation in Iran became critical and provided an excuse for terrorists, who had rejected the popular vote that had sanctioned the birth of the Islamic Republic, to attempt to violently overthrow the democratic system. On the evening of June 28, 1981, while Beheshti was chairing a meeting at the party headquarters, a terrorist belonging to the so-called Mujahideen e-Kalq planted the bombs that led to the martyrdom of Beheshti and 72 other high-ranking officials, including four ministers and 27 members of parliament. It is worth remembering that the martyred Leader of the Revolution, Imam Khamenei, had suffered a similar attack just a day earlier but managed to survive.
The attack, far from subverting the republican order, brought the people even closer to the father of the Revolution, Imam Khomeini, spreading grief, mourning, anger, and a demand for justice throughout the country. On this day, the Islamic Republic mourns one of its founders and most active servants, the man who laid the foundations for the new order and fulfilled the aspirations of a people who, exhausted by the Shah's dictatorship, had placed their hopes in him and other revolutionaries.