THE US GOVERNMENT THOUGHT THERE MIGHT be a danger in the Iranian diaspora: communist infiltrators. It was November 1962, a US-backed monarch ran Iran, and Iranian students abroad were organising against him. Working on tips from the Iranian embassy and informants in the community, the FBI gathered a massive dossier on Iran’s exiled “subversives”.
After becoming aware of how thorough the surveillance was, Iranian Students Association treasurer Sadeq Qotbzadeh called the FBI, offering to clear up any issues they might have with him. In the interrogation room, he explained that there was no way he could support Communistic atheism as a good Muslim boy. Qotbzadeh described his vision for Iran as a “Jeffersonian democracy”. Other informants (including his ex-girlfriend) told the FBI that Qotbzadeh was an unserious person, certainly not capable of any violence. The U.S. government seemed to agree.
In 1979, Qotbzadeh flew back to Iran at the right hand of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. First as Khomeini’s translator, then as foreign minister, Qotbzadeh became the international face of a revolution that chanted “death to America” and held US diplomats hostage. Then, less than three years into the revolution, Qotbzadeh was tortured and executed. He stood accused of plotting a coup d’état that would involve blowing Khomeini up with a rocket launcher.
Soviet intelligence helped bring about Qotbzadeh’s downfall, by forging documents that tied the foreign minister to CIA conspiracies. KGB defector Vladimir Kuzichkin later claimed that Qotbzadeh had worked as a Communist agent while in the US, before a bitter falling-out with his handlers. Just as likely, Qotbzadeh was a hardheaded nationalist whom neither the US nor the Soviet Union knew how to deal with.
I've requested the FBI files of several Middle Eastern leaders who studied in America. The bureau has sent back over a thousand pages on anti-Shah protests,US government interacted with Iranian dissident circles.
