What it was
SAVAK was the state security and intelligence organization of Iran under Mohammad Reza Shah. It was founded in 1957 with assistance from the American CIA and, subsequently, Israeli advisers.
Role
Its functions were domestic surveillance, censorship, counterespionage, and the suppression of opposition; it monitored Iranian students abroad as well as dissent at home. Its use of arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture of political prisoners is extensively documented — Amnesty International and other organizations reported on it in the 1970s — though estimates of its informant network and victim numbers vary widely. By the standard assessment, SAVAK’s notoriety became a central grievance of the 1978–79 revolution, its name a byword for the monarchy’s repression.
Fate
Its last director under the shah, along with many of its officers, was executed after the revolution. The organization was formally dissolved in 1979; accounts of the succession differ — the new state’s intelligence apparatus, SAVAMA, is variously dated 1979–80 and described in some accounts as a renaming rather than a dismantling, and an intelligence ministry was formalized in 1984. It remains the emblematic case of Cold-War-era secret police in the region, and its archives and full record are still only partially accessible.