| On August 30, 1981, an explosion ripped through the headquarters of Prime Minister in Tehran, were Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar and President Mohammad-Ali Rajai along with some other officials were meeting at the time. |
Born in 1933 in the southeastern city of Kerman, Mohammad Javad Bahonar embarked on religious studies at Ma’soumieh hawza (seminary) in his hometown. Then, he left for Qom, where he was a student of such noted clerics as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Seyed Hossein Boroujerdi, and Ayatollah Tabatabai, author of the famous and voluminous Quranic exegesis Al-Mizan.
Bahonar was arrested several times during the reign of Reza Shah owing to his vocal criticism of the Pahlavi dynasty. After the fall of the Western-backed Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1979, he became one of those who helped draft a new constitution and served as a founding member of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
He was appointed to the minister of education under Rajai’s premiership. Bahonar became the secretary-general of the Islamic Republic Party, a post formerly held by Ayatollah Mohammad Hosseini Beheshti, assassinated on 28, 1981, along with some 70 other high ranking officials when a bomb exploded at the Party’s headquarters. Having gained the Parliament’s approval, he became Rajai’s Prime Minister. He was at the post for less than a month.
On August 30, 1981, an explosion ripped through the headquarters of Prime Minister in Tehran, were Premier Mohammad-Javad Bahonar and President Mohammad-Ali Rajai along with some other officials were meeting at the time. The perpetrator, Masoud Kashmiri, was a member of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK), who infiltrated into the Prime Minister’s Office. He left the room leaving his suitcase containing the bomb behind.