Vienna Police, takes the body of Dr. Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, the general secretary of Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party, who assassinated by Iranian agents on 13 July 1989
IranHRDC– Since 1979, the senior leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been linked to at least 162 extrajudicial killings of the regime’s political opponents in 19 different countries around the world. These operations flourished in contravention of both international and national legal regimes, and were planned at the highest levels of state. Many of those responsible are still in power today. The IHRDC’s new report is the most authoritative study of Iran’s global campaign of political assassination to appear to date.
Table of Contents
1. PREFACE
2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
3. THE LONG ARM OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC
3.1. GENERAL MODUS OPERANDI
3.2. THE SUPREME LEADER
3.3. SPECIAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
3.4. MINISTRY OF INTELLIGENCE
3.5. THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS
The Quds Force
3.6. LEBANESE HEZBOLLAH
4. INDIVIDUAL CASES
4.1. SHAHRIAR SHAFIQ
4.2. ALI AKBAR TABATABAI
4.3. GENERAL GHOLAM ALI OVEISI
4.4. DR. ABDOL-RAHMAN GHASSEMLOU
4.5. KAZEM RAJAVI
4.6. DR. CYRUS ELAHI
4.8. MOHAMMAD HOSSEIN NAGHDI
4.9. DR. REZA MAZLOUMAN
5. CONCLUSION
METHODOLOGY
APPENDICES (pdf download)
1. Preface
The 1979 Iranian Revolution was the result of a broad-based opposition movement that encompassed clerics, Islamists, communists, ethnic nationalists and liberal secularists. Although these groups were able to unite around the common goal of deposing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, they could not agree on the shape the future republic should take and the triumphant coalition gradually fell apart in mutual acrimony.
Between 1979 and 1982, a struggle for power raged within Iran in which all sides suffered major casualties. The radical clerics who formed the nucleus of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s support gradually gained the upper hand ruthlessly using organs such as the Revolutionary Guards and local Islamic Komitehs to squelch dissent. Some political parties sought to reach an accommodation with the clerical establishment, others chose direct confrontation; ultimately all were suppressed.
From the outset, the radical clerics who made up Ayatollah Khomeini’s inner circle demonstrated an unwavering commitment to exporting their revolution abroad. In support of this objective, the Islamic Republic established the Ministry of Intelligence (Vizarat-i Ittila’t) with a global network of intelligence assets. The Revolutionary Guards established the Quds Force to carry out clandestine military operations overseas. Both organizations would establish a close working relationship with emerging Shi’a terrorist organizations inspired by the success of the Islamic revolution in Iran, most notably Lebanese Hezbollah. The Islamic Republic would use these organizations to track down and eliminate opponents of the regime living outside the country’s borders.
It is perhaps only fitting that the first of these operations, the assassination of the Shah’s nephew, Shahriar Shafiq, in Paris in December 1979 should come only a month after the interim government, led by Mehdi Bazargan, had been replaced by the Revolutionary Council, Ayatollah Khomeini’s “government within a government.” With the collapse of the Bazargan government, the clerical establishment immediately began to move against potential centers of opposition both at home and abroad. Iranian intelligence agents have since assassinated more than 162 monarchist, nationalist and democratic expatriate activists in countries as diverse as the United States, Austria, Pakistan, France and Turkey.
Inevitably, any investigation of clandestine structures and operations must necessarily be somewhat incomplete. Therefore, this report focuses on nine of the best documented incidents. All of these incidents provide compelling evidence that senior government officials, particularly those within the Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards, were complicit in these extrajudicial killings, and that these killings comprised a widespread and systematic policy. The report complements an earlier IHRDC publication, Murder at Mykonos: Anatomy of a Political Assassination.
Iran’s global assassination campaign was predicated on the simple principle that for opponents of the Islamic Republic there can be no safe haven anywhere in the world. It flourished in contravention of both international and national legal regimes. It is a campaign for which the organizers and perpetrators within the Islamic Republic of Iran must be held accountable.
2. Executive Summary
Since 1979, high-level officials within the Islamic Republic of Iran, particularly those within the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence, have been linked to at least 162 extrajudicial killings of the regime’s political opponents around the globe. These attacks have been carried out on the authority of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic and have been planned and coordinated at the highest levels of the clerical establishment. The Iranian government has made extensive use of its own intelligence facilities as well as terrorist proxies, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah organization, to mount attacks on foreign soil in contravention of national and international law.
In the immediate aftermath of the Iranian Revolution the loose coalition of opposition parties that deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi began to fragment. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s supporters quickly gained the upper hand and systematically began marginalizing and then eliminating potential challengers to their dominance.
Many political opponents of the radical clerics were ultimately forced to follow prominent royalists like General Gholam Ali Oveisi into exile. Prime Minister Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar, President Abolhassan Banisadr and Mujahedin-e Khalq leader Massoud Rajavi were all ultimately forced to make the same journey to Paris. As the focus of opposition to clerical rule shifted abroad, the clerical establishment responded by seeking to extend its efforts to suppress dissent beyond Iran’s borders.
The first successful overseas political assassination that can be linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran was that of Shahriar Shafiq, the nephew of the deposed Shah of Iran, who was shot dead in Paris in December 1979, only a month after the broad-based National Front government of Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan was forced from office by radical clerics and supplanted by the Revolutionary Council. The last political assassination, outside the territory of Iran and Iraq, that can be linked directly to the Islamic Republic was that of Dr. Reza Mazlouman, deputy leader of the Flag of Freedom Organization, who was murdered, also in Paris, in May 1996.
This report focuses on nine high-profile assassinations, beginning with the murder of Shahriar Shafiq and ending with that of Dr. Mazlouman. The cases also include the killings of Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran leader Dr. Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, former Prime Minister and National Front politician Dr. Shapour Bakhtiar, and Kazem Rajavi, the brother of the Mujahedin-e Khalq leader Massoud Rajavi. Each case illustrates different aspects of how this government-directed program operated.
The government of the Islamic Republic has made little attempt to hide its involvement in these killings. Commenting on the death sentences passed on members of the Shah’s family in absentia, Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, Head of the Revolutionary Court, told reporters: “If we are not able to arrest them, then we will assassinate them.” Daoud Salahuddin, the American-born murderer of Ali Akbar Tabatabai, was accorded a personal meeting with Ayatollah Khomeini after the killing.
Ali Fallahian, Head of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence under the government of Hashemi Rafsanjani, boasted in a televised interview in August 1992 that his organization had been able “to strike a blow” at many of the opposition groups outside Iran’s borders. Fallahian was personally congratulated by Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor as Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, for his “great achievements in combating and uprooting the enemies of Islam, inside and outside the country.”
Iran finally abandoned its campaign of overseas assassination in large part because of growing international pressure over its activities. At present, Ali Fallahian is the subject of no less than three international arrest warrants. Since November 2007 he has been the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, making him one of the world’s highest profile fugitives from justice. Nonetheless, Fallahian currently serves on the Council of Experts responsible for selecting Iran’s Supreme Leader and remains an influential figure in Iranian politics as a security advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei.
Iran’s global campaign of extrajudicial killings violated fundamental principles of international human rights law. Iran is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which provides in Article 6(1) that: “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life.” The UN Human Rights Committee has described the right to life as the “supreme human right” (General Comment 6(16)). In every instance, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s targeted killings of political opponents violated both the territorial sovereignty and the domestic criminal law of those countries in which the killings were staged.
The assassination of political opponents abroad by order of the Islamic Republic reflected a policy of resorting to extrajudicial executions as an alternative to lawful arrests and fair trials before an impartial and independent judiciary. Considering the scale and breadth of these murders, there may be a basis to conclude that such acts were part of a systematic policy of murder and persecution on political or other impermissible grounds, thus constituting crimes against humanity under international law.
Those within the Iranian state who ordered, instigated, committed, aided and abetted, or otherwise shared the intent of and made a significant contribution to these extrajudicial killings can and should be held individually responsible for international crimes, irrespective of their official capacity.[1]
3. The Long Arm of the Islamic Republic
Any person who claims that the formation of an Islamic government is not necessary implicitly denies the necessity for the implementation of Islamic law, the universality and comprehensiveness of that law, and the eternal validity of the faith itself.[2]
As Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and his followers consolidated their grip on power in the first months of 1979, they went about their task with a ruthlessness that would become a hallmark of the clerical establishment’s response to political opposition. Summary trials of leading figures associated with the Shah’s rule took place at the Refah School in Tehran, where Ayatollah Khomeini initially lived after his return from exile.[3] A classroom in the school was used by the Extraordinary Islamic Revolutionary Court to hear cases. Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali presided over these trials. Those convicted of such crimes as “corruption on earth” were executed on the roof of the school building, starting on February 15, when four leading generals, including the Head ofSazman-i Ittila’t va Amniyat-i Kishvar (SAVAK), were shot. Ayatollah Khomeini personally approved the sentences handed down by the court.[4]
The summary executions at the school, and throughout the country, continued nonstop for several weeks[5] and drew protests from Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, most other members of the interim government, and international human rights organizations.[6] However, Ayatollah Khomeini was dismissive of such concerns:
Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is against human rights. Human rights demand that we should have killed them in the first place when it became known that they were criminals … they criticize us because we are executing the brutes. As soon as former SAVAK chief Nasiri’s identity was established, he had to be killed. Despite the fact that he deserved summary execution, he was kept for a few days and was tried. Doesn’t the human rights lobby think that criminals must be killed for the sake of human rights, in order to ensure the rights of man and those whom these people killed, tortured and destroyed? Nevertheless we are trying them and we have tried them. Our belief is that criminals should not be tried and must be killed.[7]
The clerical establishment adhered to much the same logic confronting challenges to its newfound authority as it had in eradicating the vestiges of the Shah’s regime. Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters moved aggressively against potential rivals within the coalition of forces that had supported the revolution, including secular politicians, proponents of greater regional autonomy and other religious parties such as the Mujahedin-e Khalq. Some of these groups fought back. The new regime saw threats wherever it looked. The Shah’s supporters in exile pledged to overturn the revolution. Khomeini’s refusal to countenance greater autonomy for the province of Kurdistan had provoked a full-scale Kurdish uprising by August 1979. Between November 1979 and January 1981, Iran and the United States were embroiled in the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis. In December 1979, the Soviet Union invaded neighboring Afghanistan, further heightening the clerical establishment’s distrust of the communist Tudeh party. In September 1980, war broke out with Iraq and Iraqi forces crossed into Iranian territory. In 1981, the marginalized members of the Mujahedin-e Khalqlaunched a terrorist campaign that claimed the lives of many prominent members of the clerical establishment, including the President, the Prime Minister and the President of the Supreme Court.[8] Yet the Islamic Republic was able to weather the storm and ultimately force the majority of its opponents into exile. However, the violence of the post-revolutionary period had shaped and hardened the attitudes of many senior figures in the Islamic Republic and the clerical establishment’s pursuit of its enemies would not stop at the country’s edge.
3.1. General Modus Operandi
Agents of the Islamic Republic have assassinated opposition figures in the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, India, and Pakistan in Asia; Dubai, Iraq, and Turkey in the Middle East; Cyprus, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden, and Great Britain in Western Europe; and across the Atlantic in the United States.[9] To date, at least 162 individuals have been victims of a deliberate program of political assassination directed and coordinated at the highest levels of the Iranian government. Attacks are often planned in such a way as to heighten their psychological impact by grouping attacks in a particular location or on a particular organization together. The IRI has favored close quarter assassinations carried out with firearms or knives over the use of explosives.[10] In support of these operations, the Iranian government has made extensive use of trusted surrogates, most notably the Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah, as well as its own intelligence agents.[11]
A tactic particularly favored by the IRI is infiltrating an undercover operative into an opposition organization to facilitate attacks. The use of a “Trojan horse” is designed to undermine trust among members of the Iranian dissident community. In its public statements, the IRI has also frequently sought to place the blame for an individual attack on rival opposition organizations or power struggles within a particular group in a further attempt to undermine the cohesion of the opposition movement.[12]
3.2. The Supreme Leader
Until his death in June 1989, the assassinations program operated under Ayatollah Khomeini’s personal authority.[13] In July 1980, as Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini was the de facto head of the army and an array of other security organizations – the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij militia, Law Enforcement Forces and intelligence agencies.[14] Ayatollah Khomeini issued fatwascalling for the execution of plotters against the regime and lent his personal authority to individuals associated with political assassinations.
In July 1980, Ayatollah Muhammad Beheshti, the President of the Supreme Court and a member of the Revolutionary Council, responded to a reporter’s question about the alleged creation of a unit to eliminate ‘infidels’:
From an Islamic view, there is no problem with this idea but, since we have an Islamic government now, the activities of such groups must be supervised by a branch of the leadership that would explain and oversee their direction. Basically, this matter has to be supervised by the Supreme Leader of the revolution.[15]
Former Iranian Intelligence officer Abolghassem Mesbahi, a witness in the Mykonos murder trial in Germany, told the Court that he had personally seen an operational order signed by Ayatollah Khomeini authorizing an assassination:
I, myself, in another case, saw such an order with Khomeini’s signature, although I was not the operational commander. This case regarded Khusru Harandi [Hadi Khursandi].[16] Mohammad Musavizadih, the Deputy of Mohammad Reyshahri, then Minister of Intelligence, came to Dusseldorf with a copy of the order. There, me and him [Musavizadih] met with the head of the hit team and his deputy….I was their interpreter and translated the order from Farsi to French.[17]
3.3. Special Affairs Committee
The Special Affairs Committee was established after Ayatollah Khomeini’s death to make decisions on important matters of state. The committee’s existence is not provided for by the constitution. The fact that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, is the head of the committee, and that the IRI’s “guardianship of the jurist” (Velayat-i Faqih) doctrine endows the Supreme Leader with extraordinary powers, effectively places the committee above both the government and the parliament.[18]
The other permanent members of the Committee include the President of the Republic, the Speaker of the Majlis, the Minister of Intelligence, the Foreign Minister, the Interior Minister, the Defense Minister, the Head of the Judiciary, the Head of the Organization for Budgets and Planning, the Head of the Armed Forces Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of the Revolutionary Guards and the Head of the Republic’s Police force.[19] Some individuals with specific skills and experience serve on the committee without a specific portfolio. For example, Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri continued to serve on the Committee after he stood down as Minister of Intelligence alongside his successor.[20] Several personal representatives of the Supreme Leader also sit on the Committee. In the mid 1990s, these positions were filled by Hassan Rouhani and Ali Larijani, later Iran’s chief negotiator with the international community on nuclear issues.
One of the issues handled by the Committee was the suppression and elimination of political opposition to the Islamic Republic. As the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Vice-President Hassan Rouhani, told the Iranian newspaper Ettela’at in 1994 “[Iran] will not hesitate to destroy the activities of counterrevolutionary groups abroad.”[21] After Khomeini’s death, the responsibility for recommending individual assassinations fell to the Special Affairs Committee. Once the Committee’s recommendation was approved by the Supreme Leader, an individual committee member would be charged with implementing the decision with the assistance of the Ministry of Intelligence’s[22] Special Operations Council (Shurayih Amaliyat-i Vijih).[23] The council’s operational commanders receive a written order signed by the Supreme Leader authorizing an assassination.[24] The Quds Force was more likely to be assigned to operations in Iran’s neighboring countries such as Iraq or Turkey and the Ministry of Intelligence to operations further afield.[25] Sometimes the two organizations worked together on a particularly challenging case.
Emblem of the Ministry of Intelligence of the IRI
3.4. Ministry of Intelligence
In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution a number of competing entities in the new republic – militias, political factions and government organs – nurtured their own intelligence capabilities, running networks of informers and conducting disjointed and uncoordinated investigations. The new Republic confronted serious threats to its stability on many fronts and yet its response to these threats was fragmentary and confused.[26] On October 1, 1982, theMujahedin-e Khalq planted a bomb near the Ministry of Telecommunications, which killed around seventy people and wounded over 300. Visiting the survivors in hospital, Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi called for the rapid passage of a bill to form a single intelligence agency in Iran to prevent such catastrophes from happening again.[27]
Lawmakers considered a number of proposals, including awarding an exclusive intelligence function to the Revolutionary Guards, whose intelligence office was the country’s preeminent existing intelligence body, subordinating the new intelligence service to the judiciary or placing it under the direct authority of the Office of President. Lawmakers finally opted for the creation of a new Ministry of Intelligence because, under the constitution, ministries fell under the joint supervision of the Prime Minister and the President, as well as the Majlis, and it was hoped that such broad oversight would prevent another SAVAK from forming.[28]
The Code for the Formation of the Ministry of Intelligence was ratified on August 18, 1983, by theMajlis and on September 1 by the Council of the Guardians. The code charges the Ministry of Intelligence with the “gathering, procurement, analysis, and classification of necessary information inside and outside the country”[29] but only sketches in the broadest terms the tools and legal provisions at the disposal of the new Ministry.[30] The Ministry was given the specific responsibility of making anti-opposition measures more efficient.[31] Since its inception, the Ministry of Intelligence has grown to be the largest single government agency in Iran[32] and it is the principal operational mechanism through which the regime can extend its reach overseas.[33]
On May 19, 1983, the Majlis ratified the Code for Determining the Conditions and Specifications of the Head of the Ministry of Intelligence. Only a cleric holding the rank of Ijtihad can head this key ministry.[34] This requirement ensures that the ministry remains within the province of the clerical establishment, despite the legal requirement that its main targets and priorities must be approved by the cabinet and the President of the Republic.[35] The Minister must also be publicly renowned for his sense of “justice and piety” and must not be a member of a political party.[36]
Originally, Prime Minister Mousavi nominated Mr. Isma’il Firdawsipur for the post of Minister of Intelligence, but failed to win the approval of the Majlis for the appointment.[37] Mousavi next offered the post to Hojjatoleslam Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri. The appointment was endorsed by both Ayatollah Khomeini and Ayatollah Meshkini, Reyshahri’s father-in-law and the Chairman of the Assembly of the Experts from 1984-2007. Ayatollah Meshkini also confirmed Reyshahri had obtained the necessary level of Ijtihad. Reyshahri accepted the offered post and on August 15, 1984, was introduced to the Majlis as the new candidate for Minister of Intelligence. His appointment was confirmed.[38]
Hojjatoleslam Reyshahri had briefly worked as the religious magistrate of the city of Dezful before being asked to establish the Revolutionary Court of the Armed Forces in early 1980. As Head of the Court, he presided over many of the high-profile trials resulting from the failed Nuzhih coup attempt in July 1980 – perhaps the most significant of the early challenges to the new regime.[39] On April 10, 1982, it was also Reyshahri who announced the discovery of the so-called Ghotbzadeh Plot. Sadegh Ghotbzadeh was a former non-clerical aide of Khomeini’s who had been Foreign Minister in Banisadr’s government. He was accused of plotting a coup with a loose coalition of ‘counter-revolutionary’ confederates who had allegedly secured the backing of Saudi Arabia and the United States, as well as the support of Khomeini’s old clerical rival Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari.[40]Ghotbzadeh was executed on September 15, 1982.[41] In December 1983 and January 1984, Reyshahri also presided over the trials of more than 100 members of the Tudeh Party accused of plotting within the armed forces.[42] As he noted at the time, his court had previously tried “the servants of the West” and was now judging “the servants of the East.”[43] By 1984, there were few members of the clerical establishment who could match his credentials to be head of the Ministry of Intelligence. Reyshahri ran the Ministry from 1984 until 1989.[44]
President Rafsanjani replaced Reyshahri in September 1989 with his deputy, Hojjatoleslam Ali Fallahian. Fallahian ran the Ministry until 1997 and was remarkably frank about the role it played in hunting down opponents of the regime both at home and abroad. In an interview broadcast by the Iranian television (IRIB) on August 30, 1992, Fallahian explained that his Ministry had been successful in disrupting the activities of opposition groups in many ways:
Overall, no opposition groups can be found in this nation at present. They have been forced to flee_… We are currently following them and are constantly watching them outside of this nation. We have infiltrated their central organizations and are informed of their activities. We have been able, thanks to God, to keep their activities under our constant control… Furthermore, we have been able to strike a blow at many of these opposition groups outside or close to our boundaries. As you know, one of these active opposition groups is the Kurdish Democratic Party [of Iran], which through two organs, the main group and the auxiliary department, operates in Kurdistan … we have been able to strike decisive blows at their cadres. The respective main group and auxiliary department suffered severe blows and their activities shrank.[45]
Fallahian is currently the subject of no less than three international arrest warrants. In addition to his alleged role in the bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in July 1994, for which an Interpol Red Notice was posted in November 2007, warrants for his arrest have also been issued by Germany in March 1996 and Switzerland in March 2006 for the leadership role he played in the murder of Iranian dissidents in both countries.[46] Fallahian currently serves on the Council of Experts responsible for selecting Iran’s Supreme Leader and remains an influential figure in Iranian politics as a security advisor to Ayatollah Khamenei.
The monthly journal Payam-i Imruz concluded that Ali Fallahian could be linked to more than eighty assassinations that occurred inside Iran while he was Head of the Ministry, as well as the series of overseas assassinations documented in this report.[47] In 1999, an official Iranian investigation into Fallahian’s activities as Intelligence Minister was suddenly halted after Fallahian hinted publicly that he would name names if the investigation was allowed to continue.[48]
Fallahian was succeeded by Ayatollah Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi who served under President Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2000.[49] Najafabadi was replaced in 2000 by Hojjatoleslam Ali Younesi. Younesi was replaced in 2005 with the accession of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by Hojjatoleslam Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei.
3.5. The Revolutionary Guards
In March 1979, the Revolutionary Council, a body comprised of Ayatollah Khomeini’s closest advisers, recommended the creation of a new military force, the Revolutionary Guards (Sipah-i Pasdaran-i Inqilab-i Islami). In a public statement, the Council laid out the new force’s proposed mission as follows:
Keeping order in cities and provinces, preventing instigations and conspiracies, preventing sabotages in the government and national offices, public places, and embassies, preventing the penetration of opportunist and anti-revolutionary elements in the society, executing the interim government’s orders and the verdicts of the Special Islamic Courts.[50]
Emblem of the IRI Revolutionary Guards
Ayatollah Khomeini adopted the Revolutionary Council’s recommendation in an edict issued in April 1979.[51] Khomeini also invested the Revolutionary Guards with a mission to export the Islamic revolution to oppressed Muslims throughout the world and, as a result, the Guards have been associated with the logistical support and military training of diverse Shi’ite opposition groups from Iraq, Bahrain, Lebanon, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.[52] Ironically, the Revolutionary Guards established their command center in the old headquarters of the Shah’s much feared internal security agency, SAVAK.[53]
Mohsen Riza’i was appointed Head of the Revolutionary Guards in 1981, and he held this post until June 1997.[54] In November 2006, the Argentinean authorities issued an international arrest warrant for Riza’i, along with former Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian and eight other suspects, for the alleged role played by the Revolutionary Guards in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires.[55] Riza’i is currently Secretary of the IRI’s Expediency Council.[56]
Ayatollah Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, has also appointed other former Revolutionary Guards commanders to top political posts, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.[57] The Revolutionary Guards also currently control the country’s strategic missile forces, the public morality force known as the Basij and are responsible for securing the Iranian capital.[58] The Revolutionary Guards exercise a great deal of influence over Iranian society in a manner which goes far beyond their avowed role as the ‘guardians of the revolution.’ One of the founders of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Sazegara, now living in exile in the United States, has described its modern incarnation as being “something like the Communist Party, the KGB, a business complex, and the mafia.”[59]
The Quds Force
The Quds[60] Force (Sipah-i Quds) is a specialized unit of elite members of the Revolutionary Guards – in the words of Abbas Milani, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, “the handpicked elite of an already elite ideological army.”[61] The unit’s title reflects the ideological ambition of the Islamic Republic to force the state of Israel out of Palestinian territory. As an organ of the Revolutionary Guards, the force officially answers to the Supreme Leader, not the President.[62]
The Quds Force was formed in 1980 during the Iran-Iraq war. As a clandestine unit, details of its size, strength, budget, and mission are classified, and are even withheld from the Majlis.[63]However, there is wide scholarly consensus that its primary role is to conduct operations outside Iranian territory. Mahan Abedin of the London-based Center for the Study of Terrorism and editor ofIslamism Digest states:
Its essential function is to conduct special operations outside of Iran, and historically – over the past 25 years or so – it’s been involved in the following theaters: involved in Afghanistan in the 1980s; it had extensive involvement in Lebanon; extensive involvement in Iraq throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, when they were working with Iraqi dissident groups and the Kurdish faction in the north to undermine Saddam [Hussein’s] regime. [The Quds Force] was extensively involved in Bosnia in the early 1990s; it was in charge of supplying arms to the Bosnian Muslims. Their operations – which have rarely received any coverage – [included] their involvement in southern Sudan in the early 1990s, when they worked with the Sudanese army. So it’s been involved in various theaters.[64]
The Quds Force is the main partner used by the Ministry of Intelligence in its overseas operations. Typically, the Quds operates autonomously in the Middle East and Asia but will provide support to missions further afield when required, as in the case of Dr. Abdol Rahman Ghassemlou’s assassination in Vienna.[65] Indeed, the current commander of the Quds Force Intelligence Directorate, Guards Corps Brigadier General Muhammad-Jafar Sahraroudi, was briefly detained by the Austrian authorities in connection with the Ghassemlou assassination (see 4.4. below). The Quds Force reportedly maintains offices in many Iranian embassies and has a strong operational presence in Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, and several North African countries.[66]
On October 25, 2007, the United States government designated the Quds Force and the Revolutionary Guards as supporters of terrorism for “providing material support to the Taliban, Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)” and also “providing lethal support in the form of weapons, training, funding, and guidance to select groups of Iraqi Shi’a militants who target and kill Coalition and Iraqi forces and innocent Iraqi civilians.”[67]
3.6. Lebanese Hezbollah
The Islamic Republic of Iran has enjoyed a close relationship with Lebanese Hezbollah since its inception. A small force of approximately 170 Revolutionary Guards was deployed to Lebanon during the summer of 1982 in response to the Israeli incursion.[68] The Revolutionary Guards initially worked with the Islamic Amal militia, while Ayatollah Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, Iran’s Ambassador to Syria, worked behind the scenes to mediate the merger of Islamic Amal with both Lebanese al-Da’wa and the Association of Muslim Students to create Hezbollah.[69] In 1985, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Mohtashemi was promoted to Interior Minister in the government of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, a position he held until 1996.[70] In the words of former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analyst Kenneth M. Pollack: “Iran was the principal moving force behind Hizballah [sic], providing it with an organizational structure, training, material support, moral guidance, and often operational direction.”[71]
The Revolutionary Guards were the conduit through which the Islamic Republic managed its relationship with Hezbollah. In April 1991, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Forces in Lebanon, Hadi Reza Askari, characterized the relationship thus in an interview with the Voice of Lebanon: “The Guards is not a militia; our mission is to train the people to fight Israel.”[72] On October 18, 1987, Hezbollah Secretary-General Abbas al-Mussawi asserted that the Revolutionary Guards were not merely seen by Hezbollah as “a normal part of our Islamic body, but as the head.”[73] Al-Mussawi had been among the first group of Hezbollah members to receive military training from the Revolutionary Guards in 1982.[74]
Lebanese Hezbollah accepts the concept of vilayat-i faqih and acknowledged first Ayatollah Khomeini and then Ayatollah Khamenei as the faqih.[75] Article 5 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran defines the faqih as a just and pious jurist who is recognized by the majority of the people as best qualified to lead the nation. The constitution vests supreme authority in the faqih.Many devout Shi’as consider the faqih to be the divinely ordained and inspired deputy of the Twelfth Imam during his occultation.[76] Hezbollah first publicly pledged its loyalty to Ayatollah Khomeini in a manifesto issued in February 1985.[77] This pledge of loyalty was publicly renewed to Ayatollah Khamenei in March 1997.[78] Speaking during a television interview in May 1996, Hezbollah Secretary General al-Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah[79] drew an important distinction between the organization’s veneration of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei as religious authorities and their role as successive heads of the Iranian state.[80] In this sense, it can be said that Lebanese Hezbollah’s special relationship is with the Islamic Republic’s conservative clerical establishment, rather than the Iranian government itself.[81] A good example of this special relationship is the instrumental role played by Ayatollah Khomeini’s personal envoy, Fazlollah Mahallati, in the establishment of Hezbollah’s consultative assembly, the Majlis al-Shura.[82]
4. Individual Cases
From the first overseas assassination in December 1979, senior officials within the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) have demonstrated a commitment to seeking and eliminating sources of opposition to clerical rule, wherever they may be found overseas. Although it is not possible to compose a definitive list of all the victims claimed by this policy,[83] the IHRDC has identified 162 cases in which exiled opponents of the regime were murdered in circumstances where the involvement of the Iranian government was either explicit or strongly suspected.[84].
For the purposes of this report, we have selected nine cases that illustrate different aspects of how the Iranian regime’s assassination program operated. The victims involved all shared one common characteristic – they were actively opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. They come from across the political spectrum and include both boldface names and less well-known activists. Taken together, and in conjunction with the IHRDC’s Murder at Mykonos report, they provide powerful evidence of a coordinated and extended policy of state-sponsored assassination that showed a complete disregard for national legal regimes across several continents, and was designed with only one objective in mind: the eradication of opposition to clerical rule in Iran.
4.1. Shahriar Shafiq
Shahriar Shafiq
Shahriar Shafiq,[85] the Shah’s nephew, was assassinated in Paris on December 7, 1979. He was the first opponent of the revolutionary regime living outside Iran to be killed. Like the rest of the Shah’s family, Shafiq had been living under a death sentence imposed by Khomeini’s Islamic revolutionaries after they had driven the Shah into exile. [86]
From the earliest days of the revolution, Khomeini and his supporters had been apprehensive about the possibility of a counter-coup mounted by elements still loyal to the Shah. The Revolutionary Courts announced the execution of more than 600 people associated with the previous regime, including former Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveida, three successive heads of SAVAK and numerous military and SAVAK officers.[87] Some former regime figures who had been unable to escape into exile went underground inside Iran, further fueling fears of conspiracy. The regime was particularly concerned by the potential threat posed by the Shah and his extended family:
The wretched Pahlavi Family and their associates, who have an execution verdict issued against them, are being pursued by us inside and outside of the country. If we cannot arrest them, we will assassinate them.[88]
Prince Shahriar Shafiq appeared to represent a particular threat. An energetic thirty-four-year-old former officer captain in the Imperial Iranian Navy, he had been the only member of the Pahlavi dynasty to stay inside Iran after the revolution and continue fighting against the Islamic revolutionaries before being forced into exile. After arriving in Paris he took active steps to start organizing resistance inside Iran.[89]
Prince Shafiq was shot dead twice as he was on his way to visit his mother, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi.[90] He was hit in the neck and head by two bullets fired by an unidentified man who fled the scene.[91] Ettella’at, quoting an eyewitness, stated: “A young man, wearing a motorcycle helmet to cover his face, came close to Shafiq and shot him in his neck from a close distance. As Shafiq fell, the gunman leaned over him and fired a second bullet into his head and immediately ran away.”[92] The French Police said that they found two 9mm cartridge casings at the scene.[93]
According to French reports, an anonymous caller took responsibility for the assassination, declaring that Prince Shahriar had been killed as an enemy of the faith, the revolutionaries and the people of Iran, and for aiding international Zionism, before concluding, “long live Khomeini!”[94]Meanwhile, in Tehran, Ayatollah Sadegh Khalkhali, the leader of Fadaiyan-i Islam [Islam’s Devotees] and the first religious magistrate of the revolutionary courts,[95] issued a statement published in Kayhan that claimed members of Fadaiyan-i Islam were responsible for the attack.[96]
Khalkhali stated that Shafiq had been killed because he was preparing a plot against the Islamic Republic to bring the Shah back to power.[97] Shafiq and his sister Azadeh had been acting as the royal family’s principal spokesmen.[98] Khalkhali said: “We were lucky … We were after his mother but we got him instead.”[99] He later added that his guerrillas would continue to hunt down former regime figures: “This will continue until all these dirty pawns of the decadent system have been purged.”[100] In 2005, Khalkhali was prompted by a French journalist to reflect on his role in ordering the killing of opponents of the Islamic Republic. He responded: “If I had acted wrongly, Imam Khomeini would have