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The Iran Brief®

Policy, Trade & Strategic Affairs

An investigative tool for business executives, government, and the media.

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Issue Number 48, dated 7/6/98

Exclusive: Son of ex-IRGC chief defects to U.S. (Serial 4812)

by Kenneth R. Timmerman
The 22-year old of former Rev. Guards chief Mohsen Rezai has defected the United States, and told interviewers on Voice of America and the Los Angeles based opposition Radio Sedaye Iran that he had left Iran of his own free will, contrary to accounts published in the Tehran press on July 3.

Margin: The FBI will want to question Ahmad Rezai about his knowledge of Iranian involvement in the Dhahran bombing

He said he had reached the United States after slipping across the Persian Gulf to Dubai last February, where an Iranian-American friend who worked at NASA helped him obtain a visa with the U.S. Embassy in the United Arab Emirates.

In his first broadcast interview, he strongly denounced the Islamic Republic, saying "the count down of the downfall of this authoritarian regime has begun." He also defended his father, who resigned as head of Commander-in-Chief of the Pasdaran shortly after last year's presidential elections, reportedly because he had sided with losing candidate Nateq-Nouri. "The Basij took sides, not my father," said Ahmad Rezai.

Despite his father's appointment as chief aide to outgoing president Hashemi-Rafsanjani in his new post at the head of the Expediency Council, he said relations between his father and Rafsanjani were not good. "Rafsanjani has no morals, no religion. He does not believe in anything. He is a charlatan like the others who have ruined this great nation", he told the radio.

The younger Rezai was a sophomore studying mathematics at Tehran's Teacher Training University when he defected. Despite his young age, he also served as a "special inspector" in the Guards Corps.

After his July 3 interview, his younger brother Ali Rezai told the official news agency IRNA that he had been kidnapped. Ali said his brother phoned him on July 4 claiming he had fallen into a trap laid by Majid Tawana, the friend who worked at NASA, nearly one year ago. According to Ali's account, Tawana lured him to the UAE with a job offer that turned out to be a sting set up by the opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq. Ali claimed the MEK "kidnapped" his brother once he realized the job offer was a fake and he tried to return to Iran.

This version was dropped in the Iranian press on July 5, when Salam newspaper acknowledged that Ahmad had applied for political asylum in the United States. The Iran Brief has learned that the FBI has put the younger Rezai in the witness protection program, and has sent a team of debriefers to examine any information he might have of use to the U.S. government.

Ahmad said he had voted for Khatami in the last presidential elections, but he had harsh words for other regime leaders. "The incompetents, impostors who are ruling over Iran under the name of religion are ruining the country and taking it to a catastrophe," he told Radio Sedaye Iran. He called Rafsanjani and Supreme Leader Ali Khamene'i "butchers and executioners... Because of the incompetence of the rulers, the economic situation is on the brink of collapse. People are dying of hunger and malnutrition. I know people who are dying because of food and medicine shortages", he said.

He said he fled Iran in protest with the aim of mounting a resistance movement He also harshly criticized the way the regime's ruling clerics were manipulating religion. "The clerics who are now in charge are using religion for their own purposes," he said. "They have changed the nature of the religion by presenting to the people a religion which does not exist. They lie. They have dishonored Iran and the Iranians. They have religion's sanctity by a faked religion. They have played with the religion. This regime is going to fall faster than one may think."

After speaking for four hours on the Los Angeles radio, whose studios were placed under armed guard during the interview, Ahmad Rezai turned around and gave a telephone interview to the Farsi Service of Radio Israel, which was beamed into Iran on July 4.

Former president Abolhassan Bani Sadr, who lives in exile outside of Paris, said the defection was "the strongest blow ever to a corrupt, mischievous regime." In an interview published on the Internet by the opposition Iran Press Service, Bani Sadr called the defection "the end of a myth. This is much more important than if the son of Khamene'i would have defected, since his father, Mohsen, is directly involved in the execution of thousands of young Iranians, some of them half the age of Ahmad, accused of being agents of the Great Satan and look that now his own son is taking refuge in the arms of the same Satan. What a terrible vengeance of Iranian people over the oppressors", Bani Sadr said.

Ahmad Rezai said he had decided to leave Iran more than a year ago. "If I could have carried out my struggle from inside, I would have stayed," he said, "but I decided I could do more if I came out."

He said young Iranians like himself had voted for Khatami "for his ideals, their ideal, and not for him as a person," and that "the process of liberalization, democratization, freedom is irreversible, for the people, the young generation knows very well what it wants, has plans, is organized, determined, and prepared for the worst. But it will succeed, whatever the hardships."