by REZA KAHLILI
This activity couldn’t have come at a poorer stage in my home life. Somaya was pregnant and I wanted to be with her to share as much of this singular stage in our relationship as possible. Instead, I was spending most of my time at work and attending meetings and gatherings afterward with Kazem, which left me feeling terribly guilty.
For most of her pregnancy, Somaya didn’t utter a word of complaint. In fact, she gave me so little trouble about my long hours that I thought she was fine with it. Until I came home late one night during her third trimester and found her sitting in the living room looking miserable.
“What is wrong, dear?” I asked as I sat next to her.
She immediately burst into uncontrollable tears. For a minute, she couldn’t say anything and I simply held her. Then she pulled back angrily. “What is wrong? Everything is wrong. I barely get to see you. I am here all alone with my big belly and no one to talk to. I am tired of this.” She wiped her nose with the end of her sleeve and I could see that it took a great deal out of her to say what she’d said.
My heart went out to her immediately. The last thing I wanted in the world was to see her upset. “I am sorry that you feel this way, honey. I wish I didn’t have to spend so much time away from you, but I don’t know what I can do. Why don’t you get together with some of your friends and do some fun stuff?”
She shook her head and sniffled. “Like what? Everybody is busy with their own lives and I am stuck here all alone.”
“Then maybe you should go to England and spend some time with your parents. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
I actually thought I was making a productive suggestion, but Somaya saw this very differently. She threw her eyes heavenward and then looked at me in a way I had never seen before. “Your stupid solution to this problem is to get rid of me? You want to send me back to my parents so you can do your nasty Guards stuff with Kazem and those other awful friends of yours? Or maybe it’s so you don’t have to think about me while you do whatever you do during those nights in the den.”
She’d chosen these words to sting me and she accomplished that task. I had no idea she felt this way about what I was doing. Why hadn’t she said anything before this? It was almost as though some other woman now inhabited Somaya’s body.
She stood up to go to bed and delivered another salvo. “Or maybe it isn’t your work at all. Maybe you’re in love with another woman—a woman without a big, ugly belly.”
As much as I sympathized with how upset she was, I found this last comment to be a relief. I almost felt like laughing at the absurdity of the notion that I would seek another woman. I blew out a deep breath, happy to allay her interpretation of what I did at night.
“I would never, ever, ever cheat on you,” I said, hugging her. She resisted at first, but soon leaned into my embrace. “You never have to doubt how much I love you. You are the best thing in my life. And if your belly gets bigger and stays that way even after you give birth, I will adore you even more.”
She let me kiss her and then she went to bed, seemingly worn out by the entire experience. I knew that what I’d just said to her didn’t make her feel completely better, but at least I’d calmed some of her concerns. Still, she’d made it clear that she resented my work with the Guards and that she had some suspicions about what I was doing routinely in the middle of the night. She might believe now that I wasn’t communicating with another lover, but she was smart enough to consider other possibilities. I would need to navigate this carefully with her.
Feeling shaky from this exchange, I probably should have gone to bed with Somaya. But first I needed to write Carol about all that I’d learned recently.
[Letter #—]
[Date:———]
Dear Carol,
1—The Guards are sending hundreds more fighters to Bekaa Valley in Lebanon through Syria.
2—The operations are being coordinated by:
The Revolutionary Guards Commander Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, who is in charge of the forces in Lebanon;
Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi, the Iranian ambassador in Syria; and
Ahmad Vahidi, the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Guards in Iran, who is also charged with expanding the Guards’ extraterritorial activities in Lebanon.
3—Rasool, who works out of the Intelligence Unit at our base, is constantly traveling to Syria. He tells me that the activity is picking up and Guards are transporting arms and ammunition to Syria.
4—Planes loaded with these munitions are regularly flying to Syria in the middle of the night.
5—Imam Khomeini issued an order to Mohsen Rezaei, the Chief Commander of the Guards, that the Guards are to get more involved in Lebanon to fight the Israeli and American forces.
6—Somaya is doing fine. A little emotional, but that’s normal. Thanks again for asking. The baby is due in a few months. They told us it is a boy! I am so excited!
Wally
Over the next few months, the Guards continued to dominate my time, though I tried where I could to get away early to be with Somaya. Then, while I was having lunch in my office, she called with information that pulled me delightedly from my work.
“I had some contractions after you left this morning. They’ve been coming and going. They started twenty minutes apart and now they are down to fifteen. I think it’s time for us to go to the hospital.”
I told Rahim what was going on, jumped into a taxi, and headed home. When I got there, Somaya was already at the door with her little duffel bag and we rushed to the hospital.
I wanted to go into the delivery room with her, but a nurse stopped me. “We will let you know when the baby is here. Then you can come inside.”
“But is there any way I can come in, please? I want to be with her for this.”
“I’m sorry,” the nurse said firmly. “I cannot do anything. It’s the hospital’s policy.” Then her expression softened and she offered me a little smile. “We will take good care of her.”
There was another man sitting in the waiting room when I settled into a chair. He looked up at me when I sat. “Is this your first?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Prepare to be here for a long time. The first one takes the longest. My wife is having our third right now and I have been here for almost ten hours.”
I did not care how long I needed to wait; I just prayed to God that Somaya and my son would be healthy. Thinking of the new baby as my son thrilled me. We’d been talking about names, and after juggling with many, we decided that Omid—which means “hope”—sounded perfect to us.
“I just love it because he will bring hope to our life and we will have big hopes for him,” Somaya said when we agreed upon it.
I took my first glance at the clock fifteen minutes after I sat down. As much as I would have been willing to wait as long as necessary to ensure that everything went well, I also desperately wanted to see Omid. I wanted to touch his little fingers and feel what it was like to be a father. I found dreaming of him and the future he would have to be a welcome diversion as the time passed.
A few hours later, a nurse opened the double doors leading to the delivery room. Behind her was another nurse holding a baby. I looked at the man with me in the waiting room, assuming the child was his. He got up with a big smile and approached the nurse.
“It is not yours,” the first nurse said to the man. Then she turned to me. “Mr. Kahlili, come see your son.”
For the first time all day, I felt nervous. I was about to meet my little baby boy. The other man congratulated me and I just turned my head and smiled. I could not say a word. I stepped through the doors and saw the face that would change my life forever. Omid was beautiful, and magical, and mine.
The nurses allowed me to move to Somaya’s room after they transferred her from the delivery room. They took Omid with them to bathe him and set him up in his little crib.
My wife was all smiles. “Did you see him, Reza? He is so cute. So little.”
I kissed her wet for
ehead. I was still having trouble speaking.
“He was so good, Reza. He came so fast and I didn’t even have to push hard. I just love him.”
They brought Omid in shortly, and we both stared at him and laughed with every little sound or move he made. Later, after they took him back to the nursing room, I stayed by Somaya the whole night. Neither of us could sleep, so we talked about Omid and about what our lives would be like now that he was around. I felt a huge sense of completion, and I knew I needed to strive ever harder to make my home the center of my life.
But this goal would continue to elude me. On October 23, 1983, I woke up to the delightful sound of Omid giggling in Somaya’s arms. I kissed them both and got ready to go to work. Just before leaving, I turned on the radio to catch what I could of the morning news when a breaking report announced that suicide bombers had attacked the U.S. Marine Corps headquarters and the French soldiers’ barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. The bombers detonated twelve thousand pounds of TNT, reducing a four-story cinder-block building to rubble and killing 241 U.S. personnel and 58 French paratroopers.
(Four years after this suicide bombing, Iran’s then–minister of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rafiqdoost, boasted that “Both the TNT and the ideology which in one blast sent to hell four hundred officers, NCOs, and soldiers at the Marines headquarters were provided by Iran.”)
I’d written to Carol about the regime’s flying munitions and arms to Syria and Lebanon, about the Guards and other fighters being inserted into those countries, and about the infusion of capital into these regions to fund Khomeini’s expansion activities. The news of this bombing was shocking not only because of the enormity of the attack, but also because of its possibly devastating consequences. Would the U.S. retaliate? Would it start a war where American forces overwhelmingly outnumbered and outgunned us? If the U.S. didn’t retaliate, would Khomeini feel even more emboldened and generate further attacks? As my wife and son played in the adjoining room, the sounds of their innocent entertainment served as heartbreaking counterpoint to the grim reports on the radio.
I left for work filled with apprehension. I intended to drop off another letter to Carol on the way, feeling a greater sense of urgency to communicate with her and ironically touching on some of the themes the new attack drew to the forefront. This new letter focused on the expansion of the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guards under the command of Ahmad Vahidi—a special force that would later be christened the Quds Force, whose mission was to organize, train, equip, and finance underground militant organizations throughout the world and conduct terrorist activities.
[Letter #—]
[Date:———]
Dear Carol,
1—The Guards’ Special Forces is in contact with several terrorist organizations, among them:
The Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain;
The militant Egyptian Islamist “Gamaat Islamiya”;
The Japanese Red Army;
The ETA Basque nationalist terrorist group; and
The Armenian Secret Army.
2—Kazem told me that Rafiqdoost, the Minister of the Revolutionary Guards, was personally involved in setting up a relationship with the Red Army Faction in Germany.
3—The Revolutionary Guards are recruiting and training candidates from Islamic countries for terrorist activities with training bases in Lebanon, Sudan, and Iran. I witnessed Palestinians helping with the training of those candidates operating out of the Guards’ bases.
4—Through Akbar, a Guard in our unit, I learned that the Foreign Ministry has assigned members of the Revolutionary Guards’ Special Forces to Iranian Consulates and Embassies. These are not political assignments; it is a diplomatic cover for their operations. Their task is to take control of all intelligence activities overseas, including assassinations, abductions, and the transfer of arms and explosives.
5—Akbar is in close contact with several of those agents and is in and out of the Foreign Ministry constantly. Akbar explained that the Special Forces communicate orders to the agents outside the country through the use of radio frequencies. He went as far as talking about the formula. Maybe he will elaborate more so we can break their codes.
6—I have learned through several sources that the Guards’ agents have been placed in and are now working out of Iranian banks and airlines, and in shipping line offices abroad.
7—Rafiqdoost is personally involved in buying arms through the black market. Some of these arms are then shipped to Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad through Syria—with their cooperation.
8—Rafiqdoost will be traveling to Syria soon with Ahmad Vahidi. I will update you when I find out more.
9—The situation here is tense with the war and the Mujahedin conducting assassinations. The Guards are on the lookout for infiltrators because of this.
10—Javad, who works out of the intelligence department in our base and who also knows Kazem, is constantly visiting me in my department trying to start up conversations, and asking questions. I sense he feels uneasy about me working there. However, it’s not a major concern yet.
11—Rasool told me about the Special Forces unit setting up safe houses in many countries, successfully infiltrating the Muslim communities in Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, particularly those of Lebanese descent. He explained that the notorious Triangle there, with no police presence, makes it easy for transferring arms and explosives. Their operation is coordinated through the Iranian Consulates and Embassies.
Wally
(More than a decade later, the Guards’ infiltration of the Muslim communities in Argentina paid off for them. In July 1994, with the assistance of Hezbollah, the Guards conducted a terrorist attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing eighty-five and injuring hundreds more. After the attack, Argentinian intelligence services completed a comprehensive report specifying the Iranian government’s involvement. The report also concluded that the Foreign Ministry of Iran provided diplomatic cover for the Iranian agents that perpetrated the attack with the help of a Hezbollah terrorist mastermind known as Imad Mughniyeh. In late 2006, an Argentinian federal judge issued arrest warrants for Hashemi Rafsanjani, the president of Iran at the time; Ali Fallahian, the head of the Ministry of Intelligence at the time; Ali Velayati, the former foreign minister; Mohsen Rezaei, the commander of the Guard at the time; Ahmad Vahidi; and three other officials from the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires. Interpol also issued red alerts for the arrest of Mohsen Rezaei, Ahmad Vahidi, and several other Iranian officials for their participation in that attack.)
As I dropped off the letter to Carol along with another to my aunt Giti, I felt somebody watching me. I always dropped Carol’s mail with other letters to friends or family members in America or Europe to avoid suspicion. If somebody saw me dropping the mail off and checked the mailbox, they would find the actual letters from me to an actual person, but I was still nervous today. The news of the Beirut suicide bombing had put me on edge.
I decided to go to see Kazem as soon as I got to the office. I needed to maintain a close connection to him. I needed him to continue to be my friend.
“Salam, Baradar Kazem,” I said as I entered his office. “I heard the news on the radio this morning. God is with us.”
“Salam, Reza,” he said as he picked up his phone handset and dialed a number. “Come in. It is great news.”
He gestured with his head for me to take a seat and then spoke into the handset. “Salam, Baradar. It’s Kazem. …”
I couldn’t hear the conversation on the other end.
“This is shahadat,” he said, obviously speaking about the martyrdom of those who’d committed the suicide bombing. He then nodded his agreement as the other party spoke. “Of course … both were successful … they were demolished.”
His expression changed and became serious. “On that … I will explain the details to you tomorrow at our meeting. Congratulations one more time, Baradar. God save our rahbar.”
I needed to ke
ep a bright expression on my face through this. Only God could know how sick I felt at this and every other moment when I had to pretend that I was enjoying the killings, betrayals, suicides bombings, and martyrdoms.
For several minutes after he hung up the phone, Kazem bragged about the Guards’ power and about how soon we would defeat the enemies of Islam.
“Reza, you would be amazed at how much effort intelligence agencies like the CIA, MI6, and the wretched Mossad put into learning about our activities. They are obsessed with us. These evildoers don’t even realize what we get away with right under their noses.”
The mention of the CIA sent a chill up my spine. Then I remembered that he mentioned a meeting tomorrow to the person on the phone.
“Reza, I have to ask you something. It’s very important. I am meeting with Haj Agha Golsari tomorrow. He has some questions about you and I want to be prepared when I meet with him.”
That comment terrified me. What if they knew? I thought again about the feeling that someone had been watching me that morning.
Oh God, if they find out, what are they going to do to Somaya. What about Omid? I want to see him one more time. I want to hold Somaya and tell her I am sorry for everything.
Kazem’s phone rang and he took the call, shifting away from me at the same time. “Alo, salam aleikom…. Good…. Thanks…. It was great news…. I am with Baradar Reza now.”
He spun his chair around to look at me. That’s when I noticed the wide smile on his face. “No, actually I was about to tell him…. We probably leave in about three weeks…. I told Haj Agha Golsari that I will go with Reza…. I know, I have the same respect for him, too. Reza is a gift to our base, Baradar Rahim.”
Only then did I start to breathe normally again. For a few moments, Kazem’s talking on the phone faded into the background as I tried to gather my thoughts. It finally dawned on me that they’d picked me for a special mission. As much as I’d experienced mortal dread just a minute ago, my first thought was More news for Carol and the CIA.