Iran International
Hassan Nemazee inherited one of Iran’s best-known charitable legacies, lost his family’s fortune to the 1979 revolution and later found a new cause inside a US prison: justice reform.
A businessman, philanthropist and Democratic fundraiser, Nemazee told Iran International that the revolution, the confiscation of his family’s assets and his years in prison reshaped how he thinks about Iran, freedom and justice.
In Shiraz, the name Nemazee Hospital remains more than the name of a medical center. It is a reminder of a philanthropic legacy built decades before the Islamic Republic, when Nemazee’s father used his fortune to create institutions that served the public.
“My father made his fortune outside of Iran and he repatriated that fortune to Iran,” Nemazee said. “He built the first modern hospital, the first modern nursing school, the first modern orphanage, and the first modern medical school.”
He said his father also built the country’s first piped water system, both to provide clean water for the hospital and to help finance free medical care for local residents.
“What he did was unique,” Nemazee said. “Most Iranians of that time and afterwards made their money in Iran and took it out. Philanthropy was an unknown process at that time.”
A legacy in Shiraz
Born in Washington, DC, and educated in the United States, Nemazee returned to Iran at 22 after his father’s death. He said he saw no other choice.
“There was no choice for me to do anything other than return to Iran when my father passed away,” he said.
Continuing his father’s work in Shiraz, he added, gave him “the greatest satisfaction” of his life.
Nemazee became chairman of the board of Nemazee Hospital, the nursing school and the Shiraz Waterworks, and also oversaw the family’s broader charitable institutions through Bonyad Iran.
At the same time, he entered business during what he described as Iran’s “golden years” of rapid economic growth before the revolution. He invested in insurance, banking and real estate, including joint ventures with major American institutions.
That life ended abruptly when he left Iran in December 1978 for what he expected to be a short business trip to the United States.
“I left Iran on what I thought would be a two-week business trip,” Nemazee said. “The Shah left in January of 1979. Khomeini returned in February of 1979. And in March, the Iranian government nationalized 51 families. We were one of the 51 families.”
He said the confiscation covered nearly everything he owned in Iran.
“Everything that I owned in Iran, my house, my possessions, horses, dogs, bank accounts, land, factories, everything was confiscated,” he said.
Nemazee said many people initially believed the revolution would target only the Shah and those closest to him, but its reach quickly widened.
“The revolutionaries had an agenda, and the agenda was to completely eradicate a certain level of people within the Iranian society,” he said.
Politics after exile
After returning to the United States, Nemazee rebuilt his life in business, philanthropy and politics.
He became a prominent Democratic fundraiser and developed close ties with Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as other senior Democrats including John Kerry, Al Gore, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
He said his entry into American politics was partly shaped by the lesson he drew from Iran.
“I decided that I didn’t want to make the same mistake that I believe I had made in Iran, and that was abdicating any political responsibility for the country in which I lived,” he said.
President Bill Clinton later nominated Nemazee to serve as US ambassador to Argentina, but the nomination was blocked in the Senate. Nemazee summed up the reason in one word: “Politics.”
Years later, his life took another dramatic turn.
Nemazee pleaded guilty in the United States to inflating assets in loan documents, but said the banks did not lose money and that his punishment was excessive.
“The truth of the matter is that those assets were inflated,” he said. “The truth of the matter is as well that the banks never lost any money.”
He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and entered prison on August 27, 2010. He served nine years before being released in 2019 under the First Step Act, a criminal justice reform law signed by President Donald Trump.
A longtime Democrat, Nemazee said he remains grateful to Trump for signing the law that allowed his early release.
“You have to give credit where credit is due,” he said. “It is ironic but true that Donald Trump was responsible for my coming home early.”
A prison sentence becomes a cause
Nemazee said prison changed the course of his life. While incarcerated, he read 2,651 books, wrote two books, taught GED classes and mentored hundreds of fellow inmates.
He said a friend had advised him before prison not to see the sentence only as lost time, but as “a gift of time” to write, teach, exercise, read and mentor others.
After his release, Nemazee turned much of his attention to criminal justice reform and helping former prisoners rebuild their lives.
He now serves on the board of the Fortune Society, a New York-based organization that supports former inmates with housing, education, employment and reintegration.
Nemazee said the United States has failed by imprisoning too many people for too long.
“The United States has 5% of the world’s population, yet it has 25% of the world’s prisoners,” he said. “That’s a statistic that is not only morally wrong, it’s economically unfeasible.”
He said many former prisoners face basic barriers after release, including difficulty opening bank accounts, finding housing and securing jobs.
“How can you begin to put your life back together if you don’t have the fundamental rights that every other human being has?” he said.
Despite the upheavals in his own life, Nemazee said he still hopes to return one day to Shiraz.
“I would love to be able to return to Shiraz. I would like to return to Iran,” he said. “It’s been 46 long years. It’s time for Iran to be able to turn the page and for all Iranians to have the freedoms that they so richly deserve.”
Asked what he would have done if the revolution had not happened, Nemazee said he would probably have continued the life he was building in December 1978: running businesses while expanding the hospital, nursing school, vocational schools and orphanages linked to his family’s legacy.
“Iran is a country of magnificent talent and opportunities,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that it’s taken this moment in history during our lifetimes to not allow the people of Iran to progress in the ways that they deserve to progress.”
His is a story of loss and reinvention, but also of Iran itself: what was built, what was lost, and what future the country may still choose.
