Shapour Bakhtiar ( Shapour Bakhtiar (help·info)) (also Shapur Bakhtiar) (Persian: شاپور بختیار Shāpūr Bakhtīār) (26 June 1914 – 6 August 1991) was an Iranian political scientist, writer and the last Prime Minister of Iran under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Bakhtiar was born on 26 June 1914 in southwestern Persia [Iran] into a family of Iranian tribal nobility: the family of the paramount chieftains of the then powerful Bakthiari tribe. His father was Mohammad Reza Khan (Sardar-e-Fateh), his mother Naz-Baygom, both Lori and Bakhtiaris. Bakhtiar's maternal grandfather, Najaf-Gholi Khan Samsam ol-Saltaneh (a.k.a. Saad ad-Daula), was appointed prime minister twice, in 1912 and 1918. Bakhtiar's mother died when he was seven years old. He attended elementary school in Shahr-e Kord and then secondary school, first in Isfahan and later in Beirut, Lebanon, where he received his high school diploma from a French school..

In 1936 he left for France. Being a firm opponent of all totalitarian rule, he was active in the Spanish Civil War for the Republican side against General Franco's uprising and fascism. Later he volunteered for the French army and fought in the Orleans battalion and in the French Resistance against the occupation by Germany. In 1945 he received his PhD, in political science, as well as degrees in law and philosophy, from the Sorbonne.