Khamenei: The Code Name of an Assassination

Rastinews — The world and the Kurdish public are talking about Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, who died in the strikes the United States and Israel launched against Iran yesterday morning. Khamenei ruled the clerical regime for 37 years after Khomeini's death. Few know that his name once served as the code word for an assassination that targeted a Kurdish leader.

On the night of September 17, 1992, gunfire erupted at the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin's western Wilmersdorf district. It killed Dr. Sadegh Sharafkandi, secretary-general of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I), and three companions — Fattah Abdoli, Nouri Dehkordi and Homayoun Ardalan. The attack did more than end four lives. It set off a historic legal process that would enshrine the term "state terrorism" against the Islamic Republic of Iran in international law.

In my book, "The Mykonos Trap," I traced the background and planning of the assassination through 16 face-to-face interviews conducted in six countries and more than 4,000 pages of court rulings, investigation files and press clippings. I laid out in detail how the attack — a severe blow to the Rojhilat people's freedom struggle — was ordered by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, himself.

Khamenei's death warrant for Dr. Sharafkandi, one of the 20th century's most important figures in Kurdish politics, carried such weight for the team Iranian intelligence assembled for the killing that the kill order was coded "Faryad Bozorg Alavi" in communications between Tehran and Bonn.

Iranian state forces were certain the KDP-I would send its secretary-general to the Socialist International Congress, and they moved as soon as the Berlin program was announced. In the summer of 1991, Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (VEVAK) sent its most experienced officer on the Kurdistan file to Germany: Mohammad Hadi Moghadam.

His selection was no accident. Moghadam ran the Kurdistan desk at VEVAK and had taken an active role in operations against the Kurdish opposition since the second half of the 1980s. Handing him the job of planning the Berlin assassination was almost a foregone conclusion.

Special team moves on Khamenei's order

Moghadam had played a similar role before, in the killing of KDP-I leader Dr. Ghassemlou in Vienna. The idea of killing Ghassemlou "at the negotiating table" was his own. "We can't easily reach Dr. Ghassemlou," he reportedly said. "Let's open a dialogue and invite him to talks." That reasoning laid the groundwork for the July 13, 1989 assassination. Moghadam would go on to target Dr. Sharafkandi, who succeeded Ghassemlou as KDP-I secretary-general.

To cover his activities in Germany, Moghadam posed as the "trade director" of a front company called Samsam Kala. On paper, it traded between Iran and Germany; in practice, VEVAK used it for covert operations across Europe.

Moghadam spent three months in Germany, gathering intelligence through contacts with Iranian-Kurdish opposition circles. The identities of those contacts remain among the darkest secrets of the Mykonos file to this day. Moghadam's own true identity was also never fully established.

After his mission in Germany, Moghadam forwarded his report through the Intelligence Ministry to the Special Affairs Committee. The body has no formal place in Iran's constitution; it was set up after Ayatollah Khomeini's death. It held authority over critical state decisions, and its chairman was the new supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

At the time of the Mykonos assassination, the committee — known by its original name, Komitey-e Omour-e Vizheh — had, besides Khamenei, these permanent members: President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati, former Intelligence Minister Mohammad Rey Shahri, Revolutionary Guards commander Mohsen Rezaei, security forces intelligence-protection commander Reza Seyfollahi, and Guardian Council member Abolqasem Khaz'ali.

Ghassemlou was killed on the 40th day after Khomeini's death

The committee was responsible for planning, approving and coordinating political assassinations. The Vienna killing of Dr. Ghassemlou — deliberately timed to the 40th day after the death of Islamic Republic founder Khomeini — went down as one of the committee's first actions. Austrian authorities never conducted a thorough, effective investigation, and that emboldened the Iranian regime further. Political killings followed across Europe, one after another.

In the two years after 1989, many more figures were targeted the same way. Two killings drew the most attention in Europe: human rights advocate Dr. Kazem Rajavi, gunned down with machine guns as he drove home in Switzerland in April 1990, and Iran's last prime minister, Shapour Bakhtiar, stabbed to death at his home near Paris in August 1991.

All of these killings were carried out by VEVAK's Special Operations Council — known by its original name, Shoray-e Amaliyat-e Vizheh — after approval from the Special Affairs Committee under Khamenei's chairmanship.

Back to the Mykonos Trap targeting Dr. Sharafkandi: the same process played out for the Berlin assassination. After Moghadam's reconnaissance report, the Special Affairs Committee put Intelligence Minister Ali Fallahian directly in charge of the operation in early 1992, and the assassination was set in motion.

While preparations for the Mykonos assassination were under way, the Iranian state activated a specially developed password system. It let field agents reach local contacts, and it doubled as the operation's code name.

Code name: the call of the Shia leader

The code — roughly "the Call of the Shia Leader" — was picked up in the summer of 1992 by Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, which was monitoring conversations at the Iranian embassy in Bonn. At the time, its true meaning went undeciphered.

That was because the phrase "Bozorg Alavi" was mistaken for the name of an Iranian writer who had lived for years in East Germany and was known for his ties to the Khomeini government. As a result, BND reports logged it simply as "the Call of Bozorg Alavi."

Like several other missing pieces of the Mykonos case, the password's true meaning surfaced only during the court proceedings and investigation. "Faryad Bozorg Alavi" referred to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It meant: "Carrying out the Berlin assassination is Khamenei's own call and wish."

In other words, the password signaled that the attack would go forward with the knowledge and approval of Iran's highest religious and political authority. It was also a highly personal message to the gunmen sent to Berlin, concealing Khamenei's own wish within it…

Photo: This photograph, taken two days before the assassination at the Socialist International's opening reception on September 15, 1992, was published for the first time with permission from Salah Rashid, then the PUK's representative in Germany, for the book "The Mykonos Trap."

Pictured (left to right): Salah Rashid, Dr. Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli and Nouri Dehkordi.