He was born in the US but as the son of an Iranian diplomat he's not a natural born US citizen.
C 1950 : (NEMAZEE IS BORN IN WASHINGTON DC - THE SON OF AN IRANIAN DIPLOMAT) Nemazee was born in Washington, D.C., the son of an Iranian shipping magnate then serving as the commercial attach to the U.S. for the Shah's government. After college he formed a joint venture in Iran with insurer American International Group to sell life insurance, but the business fell victim to the Iranian revolution.----------- "Warning Flags," FORBES MAGAZINE, 1999 ; http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/0503/6309142a_print.html
Nemazee Hospital was founded by Mohamed Nemazee who was born in 1896 in Bombay, India, to Iranian parents who resided in the Far East. Nemazee spent his early years in Hong Kong, where he went to school. He was primarily a self-educated man who built a considerable fortune through a successful shipping enterprise based in Hong Kong between the two world wars.
During World War II, Nemazee was offered the post of Commercial Advisor at the Iranian Embassy in Washington, D.C.On his journey from Hong Kong to the U.S. he travelled through Iran. Although he had never lived there, his family was from Shiraz--the city of fabled poets--and links had been maintained over the years. As his late father had built a health-care clinic in Shiraz, Nemazee decided to rehabilitate the facility and provide it with new equipment.
It soon became apparent, however, that the public health needs of Iran transcended the scope of this project and he therefore decided to establish a new and larger facility at his own expense. But private philanthropy on a large, public scale was an alien concept in Iran, where political and religious institutions dominated, so he needed a novel approach to achieve his goal.
Nemazee understood that public hygiene and health were intimately connected. While in Tehran, he realized the city had no water works—drinking water was provided by open sewers know as jubes, with untreated wastewater spreading contagious diseases. Finding Shiraz in a similar situation, in 1945 he built the Shiraz Water Works as a preventive health measure that would function in tandem with the medical facility he planned to build. As well as a preventive health measure, the Water Works was designed to be a gainful enterprise. It would generate enough income to supplement the needs of the hospital, which would be a charitable facility offering free treatment for most patients. The Water Works could charge its customers the price of water and earn enough to allow for expansion as needed. And so it happened that piped water was available in Shiraz well in advance of Tehran.
In the meantime, Nemazee retired from his business, took up his post in Washington and married and had two children, Hassan and Susan. In Washington he developed his initial concept into an integrated plan to build a modern medical center, with a medical school and a nursing school for women, all supported by the revenues generated by the public water works. He also began to purchase several million square meters of land in Shiraz on which to situate the medical center, where construction began in late 1949.
As a successful entrepreneur, he understood the need to establish an organization to coordinate the plans for the medical center. He created the charitable Iran Foundation in New York and enlisted the aid of a young, American-trained Iranian doctor, Torab Mehra, to help him realize his ambition to advance the cause of health and education in Iran.
Because in the late 1940s there were not enough properly trained doctors and nurses in Iran, prominent doctors and scientists in the U.S. were invited to become part of the Foundation to help recruit American doctors and nurses willing to go to Iran to work at the medical center and train a generation of Iranian doctors and nurses, and to attract Iranian expatriates in the medical field to return.
In 1953, when Nemazee Hospital and Nemazee School of Nursing were inaugurated, they were state-of-the art facilities, far superior to any medical complex existing in either Iran or the rest of the Middle East. By this time, Nemazee had donated $10 million (equivalent to $100 million dollars today) of his own money, all derived from his shipping business in Hong Kong, to construct and maintain the medical facility and water works.
Nemazee Hospital, Nemazee School of Nursing and surrounding facilities also laid the groundwork for the development of a full-fledged university system constructed on the American model. When in 1960 Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi commissioned a study, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania with funding from USAID, that selected Shiraz instead of Tehran as the site for a university to expand educational opportunities for students and entice them to remain in Iran, the primary reason was that the Nemazee medical center complex provided the best base on which to build. Shiraz University was thus created and became the most advanced, western style academic institute in the Middle East. The Shiraz University Medical School was established as a teaching arm for the Nemazee Hospital doctors. Many of the university’s facilities—the library, dormitories and main campus—were subsequently built on his land.
The hospital and medical school transformed Iran’s medical and educational systems and the separate three-year school of nursing created opportunities previously unimaginable for women. Another innovation was that the hospital and nursing school were situated within a landscaped park providing villas for housing up to 40 doctors and their families.
During construction of the hospital, Nemazee resided part of the time in Tehran. In late 1953, he was named Minister Without Portfolio, acting primarily as an advisor on oil and economics, and remained in that post in two successive governments, headed by General Fazlollah Zahedi and Hossein Ala, until 1955 when he resigned and returned to Washington. At this time he began to research and write a multi-volume book in Persian on the history of civilization, which would be published posthumously by his son, Hassan Nemazee.
Until 1959, all doctors, nurses and technical staff at the medical center and nursing school were recruited from the U.S. The Iran Foundation worked as a liaison office to encourage educated Iranians in the medical field to return to take up employment at Nemazee Hospital, and in time U.S.-educated Iranians replaced the U.S. staff. The hospital continued to ensure access to the latest advances in medicine for both patients and doctors. Having performed the first kidney and liver transplants in Iran, the hospital became the leading facility in advanced transplants in the nation, while still being recognized for its excellence in a number of other areas. By the late 1950s, Nemazee Hospital had a world-class reputation and had become the most progressive medical facility in the Middle East. It became a model for philanthropists from other countries who shared a common vision and goal of improving and extending health services and medical education.
Nemazee later set up an Iranian-based foundation to take over the functions of the American-based Iran Foundation. It oversaw the various entities under the umbrella of the Nemazee Moghufeh (charitable organization). In 1962 Nemazee returned to live in Iran as trustee of the Moghufeh.
Nemazee also established the Honaristan, a philanthropic vocational school under the auspices of the Moghufeh. The purpose of the school was to provide citizens of Shiraz with necessary vocational skills. In 1970 he received an honorary doctorate from Shiraz University, for which he submitted a thesis on poetics, a subject he had explored in his book.
Mohamed Nemazee died in Shiraz in 1972 and was buried on the Nemazee Hospital grounds, where a statue of him was erected in his honor. On the day of his funeral the citizens of Shiraz declared a holiday out of respect and gratitude for his many contributions to the city. The sick and the needy continue to visit his grave daily to pray and give thanks. His philanthropic legacy has never been equalled in Iran.
Hassan Nemazee (became a US citizen in 1996)
TIME Magazine Fast Facts:
• Born January 27, 1950 to Iranian parents in Washington, D.C.
• Graduated with a Bachelor’s of Arts from Harvard University in 1972.
• Started a life insurance venture in Iran as part of a partnership with AIG after college, but plans were derailed by the fall of the Shah in 1979.
• Became a real-estate developer with a series of projects in Houston in the early 1980s. Founded an investment firm, Nemazee Capital, in 1987.
• Because a U.S. citizen in 1996.
• Nominated in 1999 by President Clinton to become the U.S. ambassador to Argentina. Withdrew from consideration before a confirmation vote.
• Member of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2004.
• Served as National Finance Chair for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
• Reportedly raised $100,000 for Clinton’s 2008 campaign, and went on to raise $500,000 for Barack Obama after Clinton bowed out of the race in June.
• Accused of defrauding Citibank of $74 million after allegedly forging loan documents dating back to Dec. 2006.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918860,00.html?xid=rss-nation-yahoo