Insurgents, informers and infighters: inside the Iranian diaspora

MATTHEW PETTI pieces together the way in which the US government and the FBI dealt with Sadeq Qotbzadeh and other opponents of Tehran in the time of the Shah

THE US GOVERNMENT THOUGHT THERE MIGHT be a danger in the Iranian diaspora: communist infiltrators. It was November 1962, a US-backed monarch ran Iran, and Iranian students abroad were organising against him. Working on tips from the Iranian embassy and informants in the community, the FBI gathered a massive dossier on Iran’s exiled “subversives”. After becoming aware of how thorough the surveillance was, Iranian Students Association treasurer Sadeq Qotbzadeh called the FBI, offering to clear up any issues they might have with him. In the interrogation room, he explained that there was no way he could support Communistic atheism as a good Muslim boy. Qotbzadeh described his vision for Iran as a “Jeffersonian democracy”. Other informants (including his ex-girlfriend) told the FBI that Qotbzadeh was an unserious person, certainly not…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, June 2023

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