From Tehran to Tehran; Nasrollah Entezam at the United Nations

On July 5th 1943, the Iranian government expressed in a memorandum to the American, British, and Soviet governments, its desire to become a signatory to the United Nations (UN) Declaration of January 1st 1942. The request was granted upon certain prerequisites, foremost in which Iran was to give up its neutrality and declare war on Germany and the Axis powers. Shortly after this condition was met, the Tehran Conference of 1943—housing Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill—took place. In the “Declaration of the Three Powers Regarding Iran,” the three leaders stated their shared “desire for the maintenance of the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Iran.” The cause of ‘independence,’ ‘sovereignty,’ and ‘territorial integrity,’ proved no less prominent twenty-five years later at the Tehran Conference of 1968, the first UN International Conference of Human Rights. By then, the political complexion of the UN had been revolutionized from an organization intended to preserve empire, to one dedicated to its dismantling. One related consequence was the shift in the understanding of human rights from a model that favoured the individual, to one that primarily emphasized state sovereignty via economic development and the collective rights of the nation.

Through the use of these two historical bookends, from the Tehran of 1943 to the Tehran of 1968, this research investigates Iran’s involvement and contribution to history of the UN by tracing the work of the its five successive permanent representatives. Focusing on ‘sovereignty’ as an integral aspect of the UN project, attention is given to how was the concept was understood and articulated by the Iranian representatives and how it changed with both national and international historical developments. This talk will limit itself specifically to the inaugural contribution of Nasrollah Entezam (1900-1980) who besides being his countries intermittent foreign minister and ambassador to the United States, had a long career at the UN. He represented Iran at the founding conference of the UN at San Francisco in 1945, assumed leadership of Iran’s permanent mission in 1947, and subsequently became president of the fifth session of the General Assembly (GA) in 1950. During these stages of his career, he was deeply involved in the Special Committee on Palestine in 1947, the Korean Cease Fire group in 1950, and was at the head of the GA when it passed the Uniting for Peace resolution.