Ardeshir Zahedi, Irrepressible Iranian Diplomat, Dies at 93

By Katharine Q. Seelye

Ardeshir Zahedi, who as Iran’s ambassador to the United States hosted some of Washington’s most lavish, star-studded parties and derived his cachet in part from his closeness to the shah, died on Thursday in exile at his villa in the lakeside town of Montreux, near Lausanne, Switzerland. He was 93.

Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency announced the death without elaboration.

Mr. Zahedi had been hospitalized for five months with Covid, John Ghazvinian, a historian of U.S.-Iran relations at the University of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. He said he had received an email from Mr. Zahedi eight months ago in which Mr. Zahedi told him about his Covid and said that he had also fallen and broken a leg and had several bouts of pneumonia.

While serving twice as Iran’s ambassador to the United States, in the early 1960s and through most of the ’70s, the flamboyant Mr. Zahedi was best known for his extravagant entertaining in one of Washington’s most ostentatiously appointed embassies, a four-story, 46-room Georgian-style brick mansion with 14 fireplaces and terraced gardens.

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