A Former IRGC Minister Bragged About His Involvement in the Assassination of Several Shah-Era Iranian Officials in Europe
The good thing about octogenarians is that so many lose their filter. That holds true even in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Consider the latest interview that Mohsen Rafiqdoust, minister of the Revolutionary Guards from 1982 to 1988, gave with Didban Iran.
Rafiqdoust has been a pivotal figure in Islamic Republic history. During the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he was Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s bodyguard and later joined and, indeed, helped institutionalize the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Many IRGC members resented that he climbed to top ranks without any service in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War. His Didban interview gives insight into what he did instead.
He brags about his involvement in the assassination of several shah-era Iranian officials in Europe, including the 1984 Paris assassination of Gholam-Ali Oveissi, the commander of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces under the shah; the 1991 killing outside of Paris of Shapur Bakhtiar, the shah’s last prime minister; and the murder the following year of Fereydoun Farrokhzad, a prominent intellectual, in Bonn, Germany.
Not every operation was a success. About the Islamic Republic’s first failed attempt on Bakhtiar’s life in 1980, he said, “I was the commander for that attack,” bragging, “They even stated this during the trial [in France].” He then related negotiations with French President François Mitterrand about the release of Anis Naqqash, a Lebanese citizen, arrested in connection with the attempted assassination. When Naqqash began a hunger strike, the French wanted it over to avoid unwarranted attention. Mitterrand offered to release Naqqash after two weeks. Rafiqdoust related how he warned the French president, “Okay, if after two weeks, an embassy of yours blew up or they hijacked one of your planes, don’t complain.” He added, “And then they released them, and they came back.” If Rafiqdoust is telling the truth, then the French surrendered instead of standing up to terrorism and blackmail. Mitterrand pardoned Naqqash and four others on July 27, 1990. The French government then offered two million francs to a police officer who received a disabling injury during the attack.
The Iranian regime succeeded in its effort to murder Bakhtiar in 1991, just over a year after the pardon of Naqqash. Two of the assailants escaped to Iran, but a third—Ali Vakili-Rad—was caught in Switzerland, and tried and imprisoned in France. The French acquitted a fourth suspect who was related to former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Just a few years later, though, the French released him in exchange for a French journalist arrested in Iran. Vakili-Rad received a hero’s welcome in Iran. Extortion worked. When countries like France release Iranians assassins, the Iranian regime interprets the deal as a green light to try again. Rafiqdoust humiliates France by bragging and laughing about how he extorted the French government.
Read the rest in the Middle East Forum Observer.
