# SAVAK

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
>
> Cite as: "SAVAK," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/savak/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*The intelligence service of the Shah of Iran, which John Kiriakou describes as bloodthirsty and as having spent far more effort investigating and murdering Iranian citizens than operating abroad. He credits its record — torture, executions of tens of thousands, and bodies dismembered and left in the street — with the durability of Iranian hostility to the Pahlavi family half a century later.*

- **Type:** Iranian intelligence service under the monarchy
- **Served:** [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mohammad-reza-pahlavi)
- **Per Kiriakou:** 'Bloodthirsty'; aimed inward rather than abroad
- **Ended:** With the collapse of the monarchy, 1979

**SAVAK** was the intelligence service of the Iranian monarchy under [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mohammad-reza-pahlavi). [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) characterises it by the direction it faced: a *"bloodthirsty intelligence service called SAVAK that spent way more time investigating and murdering Iranian citizens than it ever did doing anything, you know, in any other country."*[1]

## Scale

In a separate account Kiriakou puts numbers and a terminal date on it. Writing off the claim that the monarchy was a democracy, he addresses the Shah's record directly: a ruler *"who was more bloodthirsty than anybody in power in Iran today, who with his intelligence service, the SAVAK, tortured and executed untold thousands, tens of thousands of people, who raped and pillaged the country and stole billions of dollars as they were running away to save themselves in February of 1979."*[2]

## Method

The detail he reaches for when explaining what the service meant to ordinary Iranians is deliberately physical. SAVAK was *"the dreaded, feared Iranian intelligence service that would scoop you off the street and they'd find your head on one side of town and the rest of your body on the other."*[3][4]

## Why it still matters

Kiriakou uses SAVAK as the load-bearing element in his argument that the Pahlavi restoration proposed by Western commentators has no domestic constituency. Asked why [Reza Pahlavi](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/reza-pahlavi) would not survive a return, he answers with the service rather than the son: *"Because they hate him. Why do they hate him? Because his father created SAVAK."*[3] Outside the royalists and an expatriate community in Southern California, he says, *"there is no love of this family."*[4]

## See also

- [Mohammad Reza Pahlavi](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/mohammad-reza-pahlavi)
- [Reza Pahlavi](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/reza-pahlavi)
- [1953 Iran coup](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/1953-iran-coup)

## Sources

1. The Fix Is In / DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou (2026-01-13), at 39:08. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdzab0KqbA8&t=2348s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-13-deprogram-show-with-ted-ra-the-fix-is-in-deprogram-with-ted-rall-and-joh/
2. Venezuela, Cuba, Greenland, Iran — Empire in Plain Sight (2026-01-09), at 35:20. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbvuY-IqXvQ&t=2120s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-01-09-unfiltered-with-s-a-m/
3. Trump's Worst Nightmare Just Came True — CIA Spy on Iran War (2026-04-06), at 46:51. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA2slD8xEpc&t=2811s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-06-danny-jones-iran-war-trumps-nightmare/
4. Trump's Worst Nightmare Just Came True — CIA Spy on Iran War (2026-04-06), at 47:21. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA2slD8xEpc&t=2841s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-04-06-danny-jones-iran-war-trumps-nightmare/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/savak/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt