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Habib Sabet (Persian: حبیب ثابت‎; 1903 – 1990) was a businessman and follower of the Baháʼí Faith.[1][2] He is considered one of Iran's major industrialists.[3]

Biography

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (last Shah of Iran) with Habib Sabet during a visit to a television centre

Sabet was born in Tehran in 1903.[1] Both his maternal and paternal grandparents were Iranian Jews who had converted to the Bahá’i Faith.[4] He began to involve in business selling tobacco and renting bicycles.[5] In 1925 he went to Beirut where he started his transport services between Tehran and Baghdad.[6] In the 1950s his business activities expanded and mostly included car dealerships, manufacturing, and agricultural machinery.[5]

One of his companies was Firooz Trading Company.[7] He was granted the franchises of many American and European brands, including General Electric, Kelvinator, Westinghouse and Volkswagen.[8] In 1955 he managed to acquire the rights to bottle Pepsi Cola in Iran.[5] However, the same year due to the anti-Baháʼí movements and the fatwa of Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi against Pepsi Sabet became the target of the attacks.[5]

Sabet was also the founder of Iran's first television station.[3][9] His television station was called "Iran Television" which was launched in Tehran on 23 October 1958.[7]

Sabet left Iran before the regime change in 1979,[6] and he spent his remaining years in Paris, France. He died at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure in 1990 at the age of 86.[6][10] He had the Sabet Pasal built in Tehran, a palace modeled after the Petit Trianon in Versailles.[11] His companies and other assets were confiscated by the Islamic government of Iran shortly after its establishment.[6]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Sabet, Habib Encyclopædia Iranica
  2. ^ TV Turns 60 In Iran With Biased, Ideological Programming And Low Credibility Radio Farda
  3. ^ a b Abbas Milani (2008). Eminent Persians: The Men and Women Who Made Modern Iran, 1941-1979, Volumes One and Two. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. p. 678. ISBN 978-0-8156-0907-0.
  4. ^ "Sabet, Habib". Iranica Online.
  5. ^ a b c d A.H. Fink (2020). The importance of conspiracy theory in extremist ideology and propaganda (PhD thesis). Leiden University. p. 382. hdl:1887/87359.
  6. ^ a b c d H. E. Chehabi; Hassan I. Mneimneh (2007). "Five Centuries of Lebanese–Iranian Encounters". In H. E. Chehabi (ed.). Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years. New York: I.B. Tauris. pp. 18, 25. ISBN 9781860645617.
  7. ^ a b Javad Mesbahee (1973). Television Broadcasting in Iran (Thesis). Florida State University. p. 25. ISBN 9798661025623. ProQuest 302676973.
  8. ^ Reza Farokhfal (2001). Under Western eyes: the BBC and the Iranian revolution 1978-1979: a discursive analysis (MA thesis). Concordia University. p. 26.
  9. ^ Sabet, Habib Encyclopædia Iranica
  10. ^ Habib Sabet Is Dead; An Iranian Altruist And Industrialist, The New York Times, 24 February 1990, p.30
  11. ^ Sabet Pasal Protection Prioritized by ICHHTO, Financial Tribune, 13 June 2017

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