Teymur Bakhtiar (Persian: تیمور بختیار; 1914 – 12 August 1970) was an Iranian general and the founder and head of SAVAK from 1956 to 1961 when he was dismissed by the Shah.

He studied at a French school in Beirut (many Iranians were Francophiles at the time: e. g. Amir Abbas Hoveyda and General Hassan Pakravan) from 1928 to 1933, whereupon he was accepted to the renowned Saint-Cyr military academy.

After World War II when the USSR refused to withdraw its troops from Iran, the separatist movement intensified in a number of regions of the country.

[8] One of his first major successes was the capture and trial of Mossadeq's minister of foreign affairs, Hossein Fatemi, who had actively fought the military government that succeeded Mossadegh's period in office.

[10][11][12] With the full support of the Shah's court and the West, the new government brought down brutal repressions against members of the pro-Mossadegh and leftist organizations, figures known for their anti-monarchist views.

In the spring of 1954, ayatollah Abol-Ghasem Kashani, publicist Seyyed Hossein Makki, and other opposition leaders made an attempt to organize mass protests against the Zahedi government.

[14] By that time, the court and the government had become masters of the situation, having established full control over the army, police and gendarmerie, strengthening the Shah's imperial guard.

Under the General Bakhtiar, SAVAK turned into an effective secret agency of internal security to combat the enemies of the monarchical regime of the Pahlavi dynasty.

In 1969, the Iranian parliament passed a law under which Teymur Bakhtiar was deprived of all military ranks, and all his movable and immovable property were confiscated.

[citation needed] On 12 August 1970, during a hunting party, he was shot and killed by an Iranian Savak agent, feigning to be a sympathizer.

As a cover for the plot, the assassin and a colleague had hijacked an Iranian passenger plane, forcing it to land in Baghdad.

Disguised as dissidents of the Iranian government, the two assassins duped the Iraqi regime and gained access to Teymur Bakhtiar and his entourage.

In an Interview with the French author and biographer, Gérard de Villiers, the Shah publicly made a statement to this effect.

Once out hunting in the field, the assassin fired a shot at him with a pistol, hitting him in the shoulder, thus making Bakhtiar drop his rifle.