Karim Sanjabi

Karim Sanjabi was a Kurdish-Iranian lawyer and politician from the Sanjabi tribe of Kermanshah. He studied law at the University of Paris and became a professor of law at the University of Tehran.

In 1949 he co-founded the National Front of Iran alongside Mohammad Mossadegh and became one of its most prominent leaders. He served as Minister of Education in Mossadegh's cabinet during the oil nationalisation period (1951–1953). After the CIA/MI6-backed coup of August 1953, he was arrested and imprisoned alongside other National Front figures.

During the buildup to the 1979 revolution, Sanjabi travelled to Paris in October 1978 to meet Ayatollah Khomeini at Neauphle-le-Château. On 4 November 1978 they issued a joint Three-Point Declaration calling for the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Shah, the establishment of a government based on Islamic and democratic principles, and a national referendum. The declaration helped unify secular nationalists and Islamists behind a common revolutionary front.

When Shapour Bakhtiar accepted the Shah's appointment as Prime Minister in January 1979, Sanjabi and the National Front expelled him from the party.

After the revolution, Sanjabi served as Minister of Foreign Affairs in Mehdi Bazargan's provisional government from February 1979, succeeded by Ebrahim Yazdi when Sanjabi resigned around April 1979 in protest against revolutionary tribunals, summary executions, and the growing dominance of the clerical faction.

He was also politically close to Dariush Forouhar, a fellow National Front ally. In 1981 Sanjabi left Iran for exile in France, where he died in Paris on 4 July 1995.