By AMIR VAHDAT and JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press

Abolhassan Banisadr, the first Iranian president after the 1979 Islamic revolution who fled Tehran after being indicted for challenging the growing power of clerics as the nation became a theocracy, died on Saturday. He was 88 years old.

Among a sea of ​​Shiite clerics in black robes, Banisadr stood out for his Western-style costumes and his past so French that it was to the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre that he confided his conviction that he would be the first president of the country. Iran some 15 years before him. pass.

These differences only isolated him as the nationalist sought to instill a socialist-style economy in Iran supported by his deep Shia faith instilled by his religious father.

Banisadr would never consolidate his grip on the government he was supposed to lead as events far beyond his control, such as the US Embassy hostage crisis and Iraq’s invasion of Iran, n ‘only added to the tumult that followed the revolution.

Real power remained firmly wielded by the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with whom Banisadr worked in exile in France and followed in Tehran in the midst of the revolution. But Khomeini would dismiss Banisadr after just 16 months in power, sending him to flee to Paris, where he would stay for decades.

“I was like a child watching my father slowly turn into an alcoholic,” Banisadr later said of Khomeini. “Drugs this time was power.”

Banisadr’s family said in a statement on Saturday that he died in a Paris hospital from a long illness.

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