was found dead in a hotel room in Dubai Friday. Dubai police said it look like a suicide; an aide to the father said the death was “suspicious.”
Ahmad Rezai was 34 at the time of his death. At the age of 21 in 1998, he defected to the United States, saying he was disgusted at the extent of corruption in the Islamic Republic and its resort to terrorism; he said his father told him the Pasdaran had organized the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
He became an American citizen and tried to settle down in the United States. But after seven years, he returned quietly to the family fold in Tehran.
In February 2007, the father, Mohsen Rezai, was asked in a television interview why his son was living in the United States. Rezai said, “My son has returned home.” He said the prodigal son returned the previous year, but otherwise gave no details.
There was no further news about the son until Sunday when Dubai police said the body of an Iranian man was found late Friday night by the staff of the Gloria Hotel in his 18th floor room. The police said his left wrist was slit, there was no evidence of an attack and the death was being investigated as a probable suicide.
In Tehran, the Tabnak website, believed sponsored by Mohsen Rezai, said the body was that of Ahmad Rezai. It said an aide to Rezai called the death “suspicious.”
The hardline website Ammariyun later said Ahmad Rezai had been “assassinated by Mossad,” the Israeli intelligence agency. But it provided neither evidence nor any rationale for that theory.
The Mehr news agency said the son died of an electric shock, ignoring what the Dubai police said. Mehr reported that the son had been living in Dubai for some time and would travel to Europe for medical treatment; it didn’t say what kind of medical treatment.
Mohsen Rezai was commander of the Pasdaran for almost all of the Iran-Iraq war. He took command in 1981 and served in that post until a few months after Mohammad Khatami became president in 1997. Since then, Rezai has been the secretary to the Expediency Council chaired by former President Ali-Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani. Rezai was the one conservative allowed to run against incumbent President Ahmadi-nejad in the 2009 elections. He also ran in 2005. He was in the low single digits both times.
When the younger Rezai revealed his defection in a VOA interview four months after arriving in the United States in 1998, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted family members as saying the youth had been kidnaped by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Later, IRNA changed stories and quoted the boy’s mother as explaining Ahmad’s presence in the United States as a result of depression suffered from an auto accident and a failed marriage.
But Ahmad said he defected in disgust over a failed revolution. He specifically cited resort to terrorism and massive corruption, which he said was as bad as under the monarchical regime.
In a series of interviews, he said his father told him the Islamic Republic organized the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires that killed 29 people. He said flatly, “The attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was planned in Tehran. This is what my father told me when he was commander of the Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards).”
The younger Rezai also described Iranian backing for the Lebanese Hezbollah, saying he accompanied his father on several visits to Hezbollah bases in Lebanon.
Rezai said there was a fixed chain of command for organizing terrorist attacks. He said they were planned in Tehran and executed by the Hezbollah with the knowledge and approval of Syria.
His implication of Syria was a new element. “Everything was done with the full knowledge of the Syrian president,” he said.
Rezai said the Pasdaran had a handpicked group of men who supervised the preparations for terrorist acts. Each man had a specialized area of expertise ranging from flying helicopters to making explosives.
He said the liaison officer between Iran and the Hezbollah is the intelligence officer assigned to the Iranian embassy in Damascus.
The decision to approve any particular attack was made by a group of senior officials known as Markaz, “The Center,” Rezai said. He said this group included then-President Rafsanjani, the intelligence minister, a military representative and a Pasdar representative. Any proposals from The Center required the approval of Supreme Leader Ali Kha-menehi.
This description is close to that given by another defector in the 1996 trial of the men convicted of murdering four dissident Kurds in Berlin’s Mykonos restaurant.
In repeated interviews, Ahmad denied being a member of any political group. He criticized the monarchy as corrupt; he did not echo the Mojahedin-e Khalq rhetoric; and he did not speak in terms reminiscent of the National Front.
He came across as a believing Muslim who felt betrayed. “This is a government that . . . has exploited the people by means of the Qoran, God and God’s prophets. It is using Islam as a toy and has made the people hate religion. . . . They have turned God’s prophet into a capricious person so that they can carry on with their own capriciousness. They are destroying Islam.”
General Rezai did not appear to suffer politically as a result of his son’s defection, which was the talk of the town. If he truly told his son all the things the young men described in his interviews, however, it would be a major violation of Iran’s security system, since children, who tend to be talkative, are not supposed to be told any sensitive information.
A few years into the defection, the father said his son defected in part because dad had been a neglectful father.
Addressing a gathering of Basiji in Tehran, Rezai said that during the Iran-Iraq War, his son “frequently would complain about my absence, but I, like most commanders, deliberately avoided forming close emotional ties with family members so as to prevent doubt and weakness during battles.”
Rezai did not put all the blame on himself for his son’s defection to the land of “the Great Satan.” He also noted his son had been distressed by a divorce and overly impressed by a visiting Iranian expatriate, Majid Tavana, who worked at the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA). However, unlike other members of his family, he did not charge that the NASA official had “kidnaped” his son.
In an interview with the Los Angles Times after his defection, Ahmad said he thought for a year before leaving Iran “to find spiritual tranquility.” He left Iran February 5, 1998, midway through his sophomore year in college, with just $1,000, and went to the UAE. In the UAE, he said he received financial aid and visa help from Iranian contacts. Ahmad said it took him 13 days to get a visa to Cyprus and then 23 days in Cyprus to get a visa for Austria. In Vienna, he said, he went to the US embassy and sought political asylum based on fear of prosecution.
He said US consular officers initially did not believe he was General Rezai’s son. He said three officials were flown out from Washington, and they verified his identity. In an interview with the Farsi service of Radio Israel, he said, “I showed them pictures of myself with my father, also some letters.” He said he told the Americans he had no military information to share but could provide “a lot of knowledge about political, economic and social matters in Iran.”
In many interviews, while speaking frequently of a regime that he described as corrupt to the core, he said nothing about his father.
The only allusion to his family and corruption came when he was asked by VOA if he had any material reasons for defecting. He said, “If my intention was material, there would be no need to come to the United States. I’m nobody in the United States, but in Iran I’m somebody. I could easily get my hands on treasure and loot like the others.”