SAVAK

The Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State (Persian: سازمان اطلاعات و امنیت کشور, romanized: Sâzmân-e Ettelâ'ât va Amniyyat-e Kešvar), shortened to as SAVAK (Persian: ساواک) or S.A.V.A.K. (Persian: س.ا.و.ا.ک) was the secret police of the Imperial State of Iran. It was established in Tehran in 1957 by national security law. and continued to operate until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when it was dissolved by Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar.

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.