Emami was born in Abadeh, near Shiraz, in 1958, and moved to the United States to study aerospace engineering at the University of Oklahoma in 1976. Saeed Hajarain, a Reformist and former intelligence official, says that Emami went to the US before he completed high school. Other sources say that he went to the US after graduating from high school by passing the eazam—the special exam for students with hopes of studying abroad.

In the US, he joined the Confederation of Iranian Students and Muslim  Students Association. After the Revolution, he was hired by the prime minister’s office as the agent in charge of gathering information from the US.  Saeed Hajarian, who interviewed him for the job in 1980, said that although Emami had a green card and good references, he couldn’t be convinced to trust him. Hajarian reported to his superiors that Emami should be employed not as a double agent, but only to collect and transmit information from the US to Iran.

Emami’s family was not a revolutionary or religious one. His father, Akbar Emami, was the head of education administration in Abadeh before the Revolution; his mother, Homa-rokh Etemaad, in her youth was a member of the Organization of Young Tudeh, a branch of Iran’s communist Tudeh Party. His uncle Hossein Etemaad was a military attaché in Washington. Perhaps this family background was the source of Hajarian’s mistrust; regardless, Emami soon became a tool of terror for the Islamic Republic.

At first based in New York, Emami started working as an intelligent agent for the Islamic Republic. Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif states in his memoir that he and Emami participated in sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations to defend the Islamic Republic against charges of human rights violations. Emami also worked in the Interests Section of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The exact date of Emami’s return to Iran is unclear, but he was in Iran in 1984 when the Ministry of Intelligence was established. Hired by the ministry, he would go on to serve as deputy minister under Ali Fallahian (1989–1997), during which time he planned and oversaw many terror projects in Iran and abroad. The years-long terror project known as the Chain Murders in Iran was stopped and revealed only after it accelerated in the second half of 1998: In September, poet and teacher Hamid Hajizade and his nine-year-old son were killed in Kerman, stabbed dozens of times. The spree continued with the killings of sociologist Majid Sharif on November 19; political activist Dariush Forouhar and his wife, Parvaneh Eskandari, on November 22; poet Mohammad Mokhtari on December 2; and translator Jafar Poyandeh on December 9. This series of murders indicated a well-planned and officially endorsed project. Public pressure finally led President Mohammad Khatami, who had campaigned on a platform of reform, to order the Intelligence Ministry to release a statement in January 1999, in which it attributed the Chain Murders to a “group of rogue elements” in the ministry.

Emami and several colleagues were arrested. In jail, he confessed to multiple murders of secular intellectuals and writers, but only a few of them were officially announced. Between 1990 and 1997, at least 66 intellectuals inside Iran were killed. It is widely believed that Emami had a crucial role in organizing the assassinations. According to an investigative journalist, Emadeddin Baghi, Emami is also responsible for the death of Ali-Akbar Saeidi Sirjani (a leading researcher of Persian literature) in jail in 1994 and Ahmad Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeni’s son, in 1995.

In prison, Emami said that he was an obedient soldier of Velayat (the supreme leader) and had done no more than follow orders. Under interrogation, his wife, Fahimeh Dori Nogorani, referred to Emami’s close ties with Khamenei’s oldest son, Mojtaba, and said that Saeed had accompanied the Khamenei family on their trip to London in 1990. Emami died in prison in June 1999, purportedly committing suicide by drinking a depilatory compound in the bathroom. It is widely believed that he was killed or forced to commit suicide to prevent him from revealing secrets about the Chain Murders and other terror projects with which he was involved.

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Yazdi was politically active in the US and with Mostafa Chamran, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, and Ali Shariati established a branch of the Freedom Movement of Iran (FMI; Nehzate Azadi Iran) in 1963 that was known as a radical arm of the movement, due to their advocacy of armed resistance against the Shah. They established an organization in Egypt to coordinate Iranian political activists abroad. Yazdi also made strong connections with Palestinian and Lebanese groups for the training of Iranian activists and, with fellow FMI member Mohammad Tavasoli, established a bureau in Beirut. Because of Yazdi’s activities against the Shah, he couldn’t return to Iran and became a naturalized US citizen in 1971.

Yazdi, in a 1990 letter to Ahmad Khomieni, wrote that throughout his years abroad he had been in touch with Ayatollah Khomeini, collected religious donations from abroad for him, and almost every year traveled to Najaf to see him. Yazdi was the one who proposed that Khomeni move to Paris when he was expelled from Iraq and Kuwait didn’t accept his request for residency. Yazdi traveled to Najaf to accompany the ayatollah to France in 1978. In Paris, he and Ghotbzadeh helped Khomeini to settle in and helped bring his message to the Western media. Serving as Khomeini’s advisor, Yazdi translated his words in a way so as not to be incompatible with the modern world’s modern values. Yazdi, as he wrote in his memoirs, prepared “Khomeini’s political plan” and “power transition” after the Shah went into exile by establishing the “revolutionary Council,” the “revolutionary guard,” and an “interim government.” He also negotiated with US officials on Khomeini’s behalf in Paris while they were in Paris, and he accompained the ayatollah on the Air France flight that brought him back to Iran.

In Iran, Yazdi remained close to Khomeini, continuing to serve as his translator and advisor. He was appointed to the Revolutionary Council and also became the foreign minister in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan in 1979, which resigned amid the hostage crisis in 1980. He was elected to the first Majles in 1981, but FMI members were gradually sidelined from power and some were even physically assaulted in the Majles by mullahs. After Bazargan’s death in 1995, Yazdi became the leader of the FMI and was imprisoned several times. The FMI’s support for and collaboration with the Revolution have never been appreciated by Khomeini’s followers. Yazdi finally confessed that they made a big mistake by choosing “ignorance” over “oppression.” He died in 2017 in Turkey.

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In the US, Chamran, alongside his comrades Ebrahim Yazdi and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh, advocated armed resistance to the Shah. He was a co-founder and first military head of the Special Organization for Unity and Action (SAMA), established in Egypt in 1963. He also maintained close friendships with Iranian sociologist Ali Sharaiati and Musa Sadr, leader of Lebanon’s Shi’a. When Chamran was in Egypt to establish SAMA, he trained in guerrilla warfare for two more years. Chamran returned to the US, and founded Tashayou Sorkh (Red Shi’ism) in San Jose in 1965 and co-founded the Muslim Student Association, an Islamic internationalist group, in 1968. 

Chamran left the US for Lebanon to help the Shi’a community there and create a base for Iranian opposition training. Chamran himself was intensively trained by Palestinian cadres. He also was the headmaster of a high school in Jabal Amel and helped found the Amal movement. Chamran and his family returned to the US in 1973 and he and his wife ultimately divorced. His brother, Mehdi Chamran, former Tehran City Council chairman, has said that Mostafa had trained alongside 400 Iranian partisans who were ready to come to Iran and fight the Shah. Mostafa Chamran did return to Iran after the Revolution and stayed at the request of Khomeini, with whom he had been in touch during the ayatollah’s exile in Najaf.

Chamran was appointed minister of defense in the interim government of Mehdi Bazargan and remained in the position even after the interim government’s resignation. During the Kurdistan crisis that followed the Revolution, Chamran led a military operation to combat armed groups in Paveh. When the Iran-Iraq War started, Chamran participated in guerilla-style operations. He was injured in the conflict, but did not leave the front. He was killed in Dehlavieh in 1981, reportedly by friendly fire.

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Ghotbzadeh was forced to leave the US after he was dismissed from the university because of skipping classes and exams and his passport was revoked. He was helped by Yazdi to travel with a fake passport to the Middle East, where he built connections with political organizations such as the PLO and figures such as Musa Sadr. He was trained by Palestinian militant groups in Lebanon in 1963 and tried to establish an organization to coordinate the activities of the Iranian opposition to the Shah. He also traveled to Iraq and met Ayatollah Khomeini, who was living there in exile. To continue the studies he had left unfinished in the US, he went to Canada in 1969 and, after graduation, moved to Europe.Ghotbzadeh was in France when Khomeini moved to Paris. He helped Khomeini to send his messages to the opposition and lead the new movement against the Shah in Iran. In 1979, Ghotbzadeh accompanied Khomeini on his flight back to Iran. Following the Revolution, he was appointed as head of Iran National Radio and TV. During the hostage crisis, after the resignation of Mehdi Bazargan’s interim government, Ghotbzadeh was appointed to the Foreign Ministry to resolve the situation. His plan was to exchange the American hostages for the Shah, but he failed and ultimately resigned. He then tried his luck in the presidential election, which was won by Abulhassan Banisadr. Two years of political involvement after the Revolution made him aware of the danger of rule by the mullahs, and he started criticizing the new Islamic regime. He was arrested twice; the first time he was released after two days, but the second time he was sentenced to death for planning a military coup against the regime and was executed  in 1982. A lion of the 1979 Revolution, he was devoured by it.

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Najafi was introduced as a candidate to head the Education Ministry by Hassan Rouhani in 2013, but was surprisingly rejected by parliament. He was then appointed to head the Cultural Heritage, Handcrafts, and Tourism Organization. In 2017, he was elected by the Tehran City Council as mayor of Tehran, which would lead to the end of his political career. He courageously revealed the rampant malfeasance in the capital during the tenure of his predecessor in the mayoral office, Mohammad Qalibaf. He talked about the municipality’s soaring debts and also the corruption of the unnamed wives of two Sardars of Sepah (Revolutionary Guard commanders). There were rumours that these were the wives of Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, and Aziz Jafari, chief commander of the Revolutionary Guards. Najafi’s anticorruption campaign brought so much pressure on him that, following the scandal of his relationship with a woman, Mitra Ostad, whom many assumed to be a honeytrap, he resigned in 2018. Ostad became Najafi’s second wife; after publishing photos of the happy couple on social media, she was shot dead in their home in May 2019. Najafi confessed to her murder and claimed that his wife was in communication with security organizations. He was sentenced to death, which was reduced on appeal to a total of seven years and nine months. One of the most accomplished officials of the Islamic Republic is now incarcerated as a murderer.

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In 1997, Larijani was anticipating being given a Foreign Ministry job should Ali Akbar Nategh-Nouri (a principlist cleric and then Majles speaker) win the presidency the following year, but news about his negotiations in London with Nik Brown, a British politician, leaked, ruining his chances to advance further in politics. It was claimed that he was seeking foreign support for Nategh-Nouri in the presidential election, which was won by Mohammad Khatami, who ran on a campaign of reform. Despite the scandal, he has held on to his governmental jobs such as the head of Institute for the Research for Fundamental Science and his teaching position at the University of Sharif.

During the Ahmadinejad presidency, Larijani tried to get close to him, but Ahmadinejad was strongly opposed to the Larijanis and tried to prove that the brothers were corrupt. Ahmadinejad claimed that Mohammad-Javad Larijani had acquired his farm in Kordan virtually for free by using his influence in the government; Larijani denied the claim.

Mohammad-Javad Larijani is now an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and secretary of the judiciary’s human rights council—ironically, as he has vehemently defended human rights violations in Iran. Known for his harsh polemics, he said that the 2009 protests in Iran constituted a coup against the Islamic system (nezam). He also supported arresting human rights lawyer and feminist Nasrin Sotoudeh on the grounds that she was involved in propaganda against the nezam.

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He is considered one of the generation of Islamic Republic technocrats who were supposed to lead the country to self-sufficiency. He is also known for his bizarre and controversial statements. In a recent interview, he said that Ayatollah Khomeini was an undutiful son of the US, which led to his being hauled into court. In May 2020, he said that Khatami, the president of the Islamic Republic between 1987 and 2006, had told him that Khomeini was not opposed to women singing. Khatami denied that he had said this. This January, amid widespread complaints about the pollution in Tehran, he said that “people should choose between not having electricity or breathing burning mazut. To produce electricity, we have to use mazut.”

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Velayati’s ministry was widely criticized for not understanding developments in world politics. Velayati invited Romanian president Nicolae Ceaușescu to Iran even as his situation in his own country had gravely deteriorated; as soon as he returned to Romania, he was executed. The same happened with Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s prime minister, whose government was ousted immediately upon her return from Iran. Velayati was also criticized for his efforts to expand diplomatic relations with the small, strategically inconsequential countries around the world.
Velayati is on the list of Islamic Republic officials who are wanted by Interpol. An international arrest warrant for Velayati was issued by Argentina in 2006, in connection with the bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, which resulted in the death of 85 people. He has also been the target of US sanctions since 2019. Regardless, now at age 76, he has been one of the busiest officials in Iran, having held at least 37 different governmental positions.

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While he was also teaching at the University of Tehran, Kharazi was appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the head of the strategic council on foreign relations. Journalist Jason Osborne claimed that Kharazi and Kerry met in Paris in 2018, but this claim was rejected by the Iranian government. Kamal Kharazi’s niece is married to Khamenei’s son Masoud.

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Zarif reentered the political scene when Hassan Rouhani became president in 2013, appointed as the first foreign minister of the Islamic Republic who had actually studied international relations and international law and served as a diplomat. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 was Zarif’s great achievement, earning him respect across Iranian society. At the same time, however, Zarif was gradually losing popularity as he publicly denied the political problems within Iran. In an interview with US talk-show host Charlie Rose in April 2015, he said that there were no political prisoners in his country. Responding to an Iranian journalist’s question about why there was such international pressure on Iran, he said that it was “because we have chosen to live differently.” Zarif’s words sparked a wave of protest on Twitter, centered around a hashtag translating as “we don’t choose.” In an interview with Etemaad daily in 2021, Zarif acknowledged that “I am the representative of the state and have to defend all the state policies even if I don’t believe in them.”

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