Fereydoun Hoveyda

According to his Benador Associates' profile, Fereydoun Hoveyda is a "Senior Fellow and member of the Executive Committee of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy (NCAFP), a non-profit, independent foreign policy think tank, founded in 1974 by the late professor Hans J. Morgenthau.

"Born in 1924 in Damascus, Syria where his father was the Consul-General of Iran, Hoveyda was raised in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. He holds a Ph.D. in International Law and Economics from the Sorbonne (Paris, France).

"In 1948, as a young diplomat, he participated in the final drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. From 1951 to 1966 he served as an international civil-servant in UNESCO's Department of Free Flow of Information. In 1966, he negotiated the final texts of the two Covenants on Human Rights. In 1967, he undertook a secret mission at the behest of President Lyndon B. Johnson in order to establish secret contacts with North Vietnam and to explore the possibilities of a peaceful resolution of the war. In the late 1960s, he returned to the Iranian Foreign Ministry as Under-Secretary for International and Economic Affairs. From 1971 to 1978 he served as the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations. As such, he was directly involved in many critical situations, including: the India-Pakistan conflict that led to the creation Bangladesh in 1972, the disagreement between the United States, China, and the Soviet Union about the convening of a World Conference on Disarmament, and the New International Economic Order proposed by the developing countries.

"In 1975 Hoveyda shared the Planetary Citizenship Award with Dr. R. Buckminster Fuller. During his years at the United Nations, he chaired the Committee on International Terrorism, the Committee on a World Disarmament Conference, among others. In 1993 and 1999 he participated on behalf of the NCAFP in fact-finding missions in South Africa and Northern Ireland.

"Hoveyda is also a well-known author of 18 novels and non-fiction books in French and English. In 1980 he published The Fall of the Shah both in London and New York. In 1991 his Que Veulent les Arabes? (What do Arabs Want?) became a best-seller in France. His most recent books in English are The Broken Crescent. The Threat of Militant Islamic Fundamentalism (1999) and The Hidden Meaning of Mass Communications (2001). The Broken Crescent will be published in soft-cover in September 2002, and The Shah and the Ayatollah: Islamic Revolution and Iranian Mythology, Hoveyda's latest manuscript, will be published in 2003.

"Hoveyda was also involved in the 1960s in the New Wave cinema that came into existence in Paris. He was for a decade a member of the editorial board of the celebrated film magazine Cahiers du Cinema whose fiftieth anniversary was marked by an international Conference organized under the auspices of New York University in 2001.

"A close friend and collaborator of Roberto Rossellini, Hoveyda wrote several scripts for Rossellini and worked with him on a vast project about Islamic civilization for television until Rossellini's death. In June 2001, Hoveyda was invited the Louvre Museum in Paris to deliver a lecture about this unfinished project.

"Hoveyda currently lectures on Cinema, Human Rights, the Middle East, Iran, and Islam."


 * Governing Board, Council on Middle Eastern Affairs