Mehdi Hashemi

Mehdi Hashemi (1944 – 28 September 1987) was an Iranian Shi'a cleric who after the 1979 Iranian Revolution became a senior official in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. He was defrocked by the Special Clerical Court and executed by the Islamic Republic in September 1987. Officially he was guilty of sedition, murder, and related charges, but others suspect his true crime was opposition to the regime's secret dealings with the United States (see Iran–Contra affair). Background Hashemi was born in Qahderijan, near Isfahan, in 1944 to a well-established clerical family. Hashemi was the brother of Hadi Hashemi, Ayatollah Montazeri's son-in-law. In addition, he was the close confidant of Ayatollah Montazeri's son, Mohammad. Hashemi first became known to the Iranian public during the closing days of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1977 when SAVAK arrested him for the vigilante murder of "prostitutes, homosexuals, and drug traffickers". He was also accused of murdering a conservative cleric who had publicly insulted cleric Khomeini, the Grand Ayatollah. During this time he was supported by opponents of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as an innocent victim framed by SAVAK, in an attempt "to tarnish the reputation of the clerical establishment." Upon his release from prison by the successor security agency SAVAMA, following the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Hashemi was celebrated as a "religious hero." He remained associated with Ayatollah Montazeri, and after the Ayatollah's son and his friend, Mohammad died in the bombing of the Islamic Republican Party headquarters in 1981, Mehdi Hashemi took control of Montazeri's armed followers. He followed Montazeri's visions on the interpretation and implementation of the Islamic revolution during a time of contradictory and increasingly fractious understandings within the ruling elite which sought to circumscribe Montazeri's influence in Lebanon and tighten the Iranian government's grip on its Lebanese Shi'a clients. This led to factional conflicts, as different Iranian factions promoted Hezbollah or Amal, another Shi'a group associated with the Lebanese government.