‘You did not bear the shame. You resisted.’ [1]

 

 

Introduction

Eighteen years ago today, on 18 Tir 1359 (9 July 1980 CE), Iranian military officers and civilians prepared to rise against the Islamic regime. The operation was called Neqāb, an abbreviation of the Persian title ‘نجات قیام ایران بزرگ’ (Rescue of Iran’s Great Uprising). Its participants belonged to the military and civilian networks associated with the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance (NAMIR), led by Dr Shapour Bakhtiar. Their immediate purpose was to overthrow Khomeini’s theocratic-totalitarian rule; their political purpose was to return the decision about Iran’s future to the Iranian people.

 

The operation was exposed and crushed before its principal objectives could be carried out. The regime answered it with arrests, revolutionary trials, executions, and a further assault upon the Iranian armed forces. We remember today the 240 patriotic men and women whose courage and sacrifice form part of the history of that resistance. Their defeat was a disaster for the movement. It was not a vindication of the regime that destroyed them.

 

I write about Neqāb with knowledge acquired as a member of NAMIR. The internal organisational and military information available to me was not material assembled from newspaper reports or the later recollections of those who served Khomeini. It came from within the movement itself. That distinction matters most when examining how the operation was betrayed, whose names became known to the regime, and whose identities we kept from it.

 

 

The Operation and Its Political Purpose

Neqāb was conceived as a coordinated national uprising, not an isolated adventure by a handful of disgruntled officers. Its military plan required separate groups, operating in different regions, to act at an agreed moment and deprive the Islamic regime of the time and concentration of force needed to defend its position.

 

In the days preceding Wednesday, 9 July 1980, uprisings were to be organised in western Iran, particularly among sections of the Bakhtiari, Qashqai, and Boyer-Ahmadi tribes. Their function was to compel the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other forces loyal to Khomeini’s regime to direct personnel and attention away from Tehran. While those forces were occupied elsewhere, the main military phase would begin.

 

Hundreds of special forces paratroopers from the Army’s Ground Forces and dozens of Air Force pilots were to travel in separate groups to the air base near Hamadan. Formerly known as Shahrokhi, the installation had been renamed Nodzeh (also Nojeh) after the sedition of 1979. Its earlier name gave rise to the alternative designation Operation Shahrokhi. The regime called the undertaking the “Nodzeh Coup”, a label that expressed its own view of the attempt to remove it from power.

 

The participating military personnel were to secure the base and take control of its combat aircraft. Air operations had been planned against designated centres of political command and coercive power, including Jamaran, Khomeini’s residence; the Prime Minister’s Office; the Presidency; the Feyziyeh School in Qom; the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran; major IRGC installations; Revolutionary Committee headquarters; and the runways of Air Force fighter bases. Targets were also designated in other cities. These were the planned targets of an operation that was stopped before the campaign could proceed, not an account of attacks successfully carried out.

 

At the same time, Army commandos and Ground Forces personnel in Tehran were to move against the institutions through which the regime exercised effective control: National Radio and Television, ministries, Mehrabad International Airport, and other strategically important centres. The seizure of these positions was intended to prevent the regime from coordinating a response and to enable a transfer of authority to a provisional national government led by Dr Bakhtiar.

 

The projected settlement is essential to understanding the operation. Dr Bakhtiar and the political leadership of the resistance envisaged a transitional government that would prepare a referendum on Iran’s future constitutional order. The Iranian people were to decide whether they wished to restore a constitutional monarchy, establish a secular democratic republic, retain an Islamic system, or choose another form of government. The military operation was not intended to settle that question by decree.

 

His Imperial Highness Prince Reza Pahlavi, the Crown Prince and heir to the Imperial throne, was expected to return to Iran alongside Dr Bakhtiar. If the people chose a constitutional monarchy, he could then assume his position in accordance with that decision and take the imperial oath. Nothing in this arrangement deprived republican or other constitutional preferences of their place on the ballot. The principle was plain: Iranians, rather than the religious establishment or a military command, would determine the form of the state.

 

No one can pretend that the use of military force raises no hard questions. The question, however, is what that force was intended to accomplish. Neqāb sought to end the rule of a tyrannical regime that had appropriated the revolution and closed the path to genuine national choice. Its declared objective was a transitional authority and a popular decision, not a permanent dictatorship dressed in the language of salvation.

 

 

Who Exposed Neqāb?

The operation failed because its secrecy was penetrated before the uprising could begin. In the years since, several officials and political organisations associated with the Islamic regime have claimed credit for uncovering it. The spectacle has been instructive: what was regarded as an act of treachery towards Iran was presented as an honourable service to Khomeini.

 

Mohammad-Ali Amouei, a leading member of the Tudeh Communist Party, claimed that his party, and he personally, supplied information about Neqāb to Khomeini. Saeed Hajjarian gave an account of learning of the operation while serving within the Army’s intelligence apparatus, including through Tudeh Party contacts. He claimed to have involved security personnel and Mohammad Mohammadi Reyshahri, then the religious judge presiding over the Army’s revolutionary courts. Reyshahri’s own account acknowledged Hajjarian’s role in bringing information to him.

 

Abolhassan Banisadr, then regime’s President; Mohsen Rezaei, then associated with the leadership of IRGC Intelligence; and Ali Khamenei, then a deputy minister of defence, have likewise sought recognition for their roles in alerting the regime. Mehrān Kolbadi maintained that Mousa Khiabani, a senior figure in the People’s Mojahedin Organisation (MKO), passed information about the operation to Banisadr, who in turn informed Khomeini.

 

These accounts describe, or claim to describe, channels through which the regime acquired information. They should not be confused with an explanation of the original penetration of NAMIR’s planning. The distinction between the first disclosure of operational intelligence and the later identification of individual participants is decisive. It is at precisely this point that the internal record of the resistance becomes indispensable.

 

NAMIR initially attributed the exposure to the intelligence organisations of two unnamed foreign countries. Suspicion centred upon Mossad, the British intelligence services, and the CIA. The internal organisational and military documents subsequently revealed to identify Mossad as the service that obtained information about the operation and conveyed it to the Islamic regime. Those records describe the use of espionage and listening devices placed in Dr Bakhtiar’s office in Paris. Through that surveillance, Israeli intelligence acquired knowledge of the military preparations and passed it to Khomeini’s authorities. The significance is not diminished by the public language of Israeli hostility towards the Islamic regime. If a state’s intelligence service helps a regime destroy those preparing to overthrow it, its practical conduct matters more than its professed antagonism.

 

I regard the Islamic regime as a puppet of foreign interests, installed and sustained with the assistance of Western powers and Israel. That broader political judgement is mine, formed through experience and observation. The narrower account of the exposure of Neqāb rests upon the specific NAMIR material to which I had access. It is important not to confuse the two grounds of judgement, even when they lead towards the same political indictment.

 

 

The Names the Regime Still Needed

Information acquired in Paris did not give the regime everything it needed. The organisation of the operation, including the recruitment and assignment of officers, had largely taken place inside Iran. Knowledge of the plan was therefore not equivalent to possession of the names of those who would execute it. The authorities still had to identify the people they intended to arrest.

 

NAMIR’s information identified a former senior SAVAK officer, known as Riahi, who had played a part in the establishment of SAVAMA after the events of 1979. He learnt that his brother-in-law, Colonel Houshang A. M., was involved in Neqāb. Colonel A. M. was also connected by marriage to Ayat Mohaqeqi, the officer commanding the operation’s Air Force component.

 

Riahi informed Colonel A. M. that the regime knew about the planned uprising. He then persuaded him that the surest way to preserve his life was to disclose the identities of the participating officers and the operation’s leaders. Colonel A. M. supplied those names. This account does not rest upon an invented reconstruction of their motives; it is the account held within the movement concerning the betrayal that made the regime’s arrests possible.

 

There is no respectable euphemism for selling the names of comrades to authorities prepared to execute them. Fear for one’s life may explain such conduct. It cannot alter what was done to the men and women whose lives were thereby placed in the hands of the revolutionary courts.

 

The regime moved against the exposed network. Military officers, non-commissioned personnel, and civilians were detained, tried, and executed by firing squad. Others were dismissed or driven from service in the purges that followed. An organisation preparing to free the country found its own personnel delivered to those it had sought to remove. The failure was military and political; the betrayal was personal.

 

According to information preserved within NAMIR, Colonel A. M. was rewarded by the regime with money and an apartment. The account also records that he later suffered a stroke and lost his ability to speak. The latter detail may be remembered by those who knew the story, but it is not the measure of his responsibility. The measure is the information he handed over and the fate of those whom that information exposed.

 

 

The Purge of the Armed Forces and the Cost to Iran

The destruction of the Neqāb network was followed by a wider assault upon the armed forces. The regime treated professional competence as no defence against political suspicion. Officers trained to defend Iran were imprisoned, executed, or expelled because their loyalty to Khomeini could not be taken for granted. The Army was already suffering the dislocation produced by the upheaval of 1979. The purges deepened that weakness.

 

Only weeks later, Iraq invaded Iran. The Army faced war while its command structures and morale had been damaged by internal repression. Khorramshahr fell to Iraqi forces less than six weeks after the invasion began. That catastrophe cannot be explained by the purges alone; nevertheless, to ignore the destruction of trained personnel would be to absolve the regime of a responsibility it plainly bears.

 

The ruling clerics and their allies claimed to act in the name of Iran while subordinating the country’s defence to the preservation of their own authority. They demanded loyalty to the revolution from men whose professional duty was loyalty to the nation. In that inversion lay one of the most damaging consequences of religious despotism: the survival of the ruling apparatus was made more urgent than the security of Iran.

 

 

Eighteen Years On: Betrayal, Memory, and Judgement

I do not describe the failure of Neqāb as a foregone conclusion. Its participants had a plan, experienced military officers, and a political alternative to the regime they intended to overthrow. The operation might have succeeded; it was denied the opportunity to test its strength by the disclosure of its preparations and the identification of its personnel. No serious account of its failure can omit the part played by the people and intelligence organisations that brought about that exposure.

 

Had the operation succeeded, today might have marked eighteen years since the end of Khomeini’s rule rather than the eighteenth anniversary of the sacrifice of those who sought to end it. That is a judgement about the historical possibility we lost, not a claim to know a future that never occurred. I remain convinced that Iran was deprived of an opportunity to escape a regime whose tyranny would exact an appalling price from the nation.

 

Nor do I accept that the allegation of Israeli involvement must be softened merely because it contradicts the familiar public account of hostility between Israeli and the Islamic regimes. NAMIR’s internal records identified Mossad’s part in the disclosure; the subsequent betrayal of names enabled the regime to destroy the network. Those are the matters for which I hold the responsible parties accountable. A public posture of enmity does not erase an intelligence service’s conduct.

 

The tribute owed to the men and women of Neqāb is not sentimental praise followed by political silence. They attempted to return Iran to its people. Some were betrayed by compatriots, and others fell to a regime whose preservation mattered more to its rulers than the lives of Iranian patriots. Their names belong to the national record. So does the responsibility of those who helped destroy them.

 

May those who gave their lives rest in peace. May their memories remain honoured, and may the cause for which they struggled be carried forward until Iran is free of religious despotism. We neither forgive nor forget the crimes of the Islamic regime and the Israeli state. In the destruction of Neqāb, their interests converged at Iran’s expense.

 

 

The Military Commands and Roll of Honour

These are the names preserved in our commemorative record of the operation. They must be remembered as individuals, not buried beneath the regime’s convenient collective description of a ‘coup’. The names and ranks are reproduced in the groupings in which they were recorded.

 

 

The Operation’s Military Commands

• Lieutenant General (Pilot) Saeed Mahdiyoun (Overall Commander of Operation Neqāb and Commander of Ground Forces Operations)

• Brigadier General (Pilot) Ayat Mohaqeqi (Commander of Air Force Operations in Operation Neqāb)

• Brigadier General Houshang Bahrami (demoted to Colonel; Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 92nd Armoured Division, Ahvaz)

• Colonel Ali Moradi (Deputy Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 92nd Armoured Division, Ahvaz)

 

Air Force Officers

• Colonel (Pilot) Dariush Jalali

• Major (Pilot) Iraj Soltani-Ji

• Major (Pilot) Farrokhzad Jahangiri

• Major (Pilot) Omid-Ali Boyeri

• Captain (Pilot) Bijan Iran-Nejad

• Captain (Pilot) Ali-Asghar Soleimani

• Captain (Pilot) Ali Shafiq

• Captain (Pilot) Karim Afrouz

• Captain (Pilot) Mohammad Behrouz-Fard

• Captain (Pilot) Mohammad Malek

• Captain (Air Force Technical Officer) Nasser Zarandi

• Captain (Air Force Technical Officer) Nasser Rokni

• First Lieutenant (Pilot) Mohammad Mehdi Azimi-Fard

• First Lieutenant (Pilot) Nejat Yahya

• First Lieutenant (Pilot) Mohammad-Ali Saghafi

• First Lieutenant (Pilot) Jalal Askari

• Second Lieutenant (Pilot) Jafar Rastgoo

• Second Lieutenant (Pilot) Hossein Shokri

 

Air Force Homafars (Technical Personnel)

• Homafar Yousef Pour-Rezaei

• Homafar Jafar Mazaheri Kashani

 

Air Force Non-Commissioned Officers

• Sergeant Bakhshali Karimian

 

Army Officers

• Colonel Gholam-Ali Varesteh-Pour

• Colonel Ahmad Azmoudeh

• Colonel Iraj Khalaf-Beygi

• Colonel Hossein Mostafavi Qazvini

• Colonel Rahmatollah Khalifeh-Beygi

• Colonel Saeed Amiri

• Colonel Ali Faria

• Colonel Gholam Mohsen Beygdelo

• Colonel Manouchehr Sadeghi

• Colonel Mohammad-Reza Naderi (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Colonel Nader Vahdati-Pour

• Colonel Hadi Izadi

• Lieutenant Colonel Khosrow Zarineh

• Lieutenant Colonel Khalifeh Soltani

• Major Esmail Nouri-Moqaddam

• Major Iraj Khalaf-Beygi

• Major Bahman Partovi

• Major Sirous Sotoudeh

• Major Hassan Gohari

• Major Kavous Alizadeh

• Major Mohammad-Hossein Azizian

• Major Mohammad-Hashem Sabouhi-Moqaddam

• Major Kourosh Azartash

• Major Mohsen Jalali Qajar (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Captain Esmail Asghari

• Captain Sirous Dehghan

• Captain Ali Heydar Ariana

• Captain Gholam-Reza Sabeti-Azad

• Captain Fazlollah Raeisi

• Captain Mohammad Barati

• Captain Nourollah Najaf-Nejad

• Captain Hormoz Zamanpour

• First Lieutenant Ebrahim Ostad Mohammad Nazari

• First Lieutenant Mohammad Tajdari

• Second Lieutenant Mohammad-Reza Javadi

• Second Lieutenant Ayoub Habibi

• Warrant Officer First Class Shokrollah Ahmadi

• Warrant Officer First Class Manouchehr Rahbar-Nejad

• Warrant Officer First Class Hossein Halaki

• Warrant Officer Third Class Siavash Pour-Fahmideh

• Warrant Officer Third Class Asghar Almasi

• Warrant Officer Third Class Rasoul Yahya-Pasand Kaboujani

• Warrant Officer Third Class Mohammad-Reza Ghorban Najafabadi

• Warrant Officer Third Class Moharram-Ali Zahedi

• Warrant Officer Third Class Fereydoun Javahernia

• Warrant Officer Third Class Firouz Azarian

 

Army Non-Commissioned Officers

• Master Sergeant Enayatollah Azad-Yeganeh

• Master Sergeant Habibollah Ahmadi

• Master Sergeant Mohammad Bahrami

• Master Sergeant Jamshid Bakhtiar

• Master Sergeant Ali-Pour Karbasi

• Master Sergeant Ebrahim Javadzadeh

• Master Sergeant Mohammad-Taghi Khatounabadi

• Master Sergeant Iraj Derakhshandeh

• Master Sergeant Khodadad Rahmati

• Master Sergeant Nasser Sajedi

• Master Sergeant Yekam Salamat

• Master Sergeant Mohammad Abedini-Moqaddam

• Master Sergeant Khalil Atri

• Master Sergeant Ali-Akbar Eyvaz-Zadeh

• Master Sergeant Asadollah Ali-Pour Karbasdehi

• Master Sergeant Mohammad-Ali Farzam

• Master Sergeant Mohammad-Hossein Farnejad

• Master Sergeant Jahangir Fateh-Pirouz

• Master Sergeant Jahanbakhsh Fateh-Jou

• Master Sergeant Manouchehr Fattahi Noudehi

• Master Sergeant Mansour Sajedi

• Master Sergeant Ali Kompani

• Master Sergeant Lotf-Ali Lotfollahi

• Master Sergeant Iraj Marvdashti

• Master Sergeant Mohammad-Ali Mehrabi

• Master Sergeant Rasoul Yahya-Pasand

• Master Sergeant Hassan Kazemi (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Master Sergeant Hassan Karimpour-Tari (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Master Sergeant Qassem Naqibzadeh (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Master Sergeant Gholam-Hossein Hamadani (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Master Sergeant Mojtaba Moradi (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Master Sergeant Mohsen Asgarian (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Master Sergeant Gholam-Hossein Ghayegh-Rou

• Sergeant First Class Siavash Nowrouzi

• Sergeant First Class Mohammad Abadchi

• Sergeant First Class Ali Saadati (Airborne, Paratrooper)

• Sergeant Ahmad Mohammadi

• Sergeant Mohammad Abedini-Moqaddam

• Sergeant Mohammad-Bagher Eftekhari

• Sergeant Mohammad-Rasoul Abrishami

• Sergeant Mostafa Hejazi

• Sergeant Khalil Khabbaz Hashemi

• Sergeant Gholam-Hossein Kharghani-Khoub

• Sergeant Morteza Farahpour

• Sergeant Jahanbakhsh Fateh-Jou

• Sergeant Mansour Kasirlou

• Sergeant Mahmoud Kianifar

• Sergeant Ali Morvarid

• Sergeant Mohammad Tigh-Tiz

• Sergeant Mohammad-Javad Mir-Maleki

• Sergeant Khosrow Mohammadi Koubai

 

National Police Force

• Colonel Saeed Amiri

 

Civilians

• Zabihollah Momeni (Student)

• Mohammad Deh-Pahlavan (Medical Assistant)

• Maryam Hejazi (Ground Forces Employee)

• Jalil Soltani

• Mohammad Harouni

• Abd-Mohammad Harouni

• Siavash Momzaei

• Ali Rahm-Salehi

• Omidvar Atashparvar

• Kamal Same’

• Rahman Mojaver-Soufi

• Khalil Darvish

• Mohammad-Karim Rokni-Vala

• Ebrahim Sotoudeh

• Manouchehr Karimi

• Siavash Hemmati

• Asghar Allahverdi

• Ebrahim Karimi

• Hossein Karimi

• Ebrahim Biglari

• Jamshid Shomali

• Morteza Souhanki

• Bibi Nikbakht (aged 67, mother of Nasser Rokni, an Air Force Technical Captain)

• Jafar Hemmati

 

 

The Thirty-Two Names Withheld

There are 32 other military and civilian participants whose names have never been released publicly. Their identities are not unknown to NAMIR. Three of them were senior officers of the Imperial Iranian Armed Forces, and I know the identities of the others. Their exclusion from a published list is deliberate, not a gap to be filled by speculation.

 

A paper recording their names and assigned responsibilities was accidentally lost or destroyed. The loss prevented the regime from recovering that list and identifying those participants through it. We did not repair the omission by publishing their names for Khomeini’s security apparatus to read. Most were still living in Iran, where disclosure could expose them to arrest or worse.

 

They remain part of the history of Neqāb whether or not their names are printed here. Their identities will be made public when Iran has been liberated and their safety can be assured. Until then, honour requires discretion.

 

 

Footnote

1 – On 20 July 1944, a group of German military officers and civilian conspirators, led by figures including Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, attempted to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow the National Socialist regime. The uprising, conducted under Operation Valkyrie, failed, and many of those involved were subsequently executed. On 20 July 1953, a memorial designed by the sculptor Richard Scheibe was unveiled in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock in Berlin, where Stauffenberg and several fellow conspirators had been executed. Its inscription, composed by the German art historian Edwin Redslob, begins: ‘You did not bear the shame. You resisted,’ (Ihr trugt die Schande nicht. Ihr wehrtet Euch). The inscription goes on to honour their sacrifice for freedom, justice, and honour. These words commemorate those who refused to submit to tyranny and whose resistance survived their military defeat (Rommerskirchen, 1954).

 

 

References

• Rommerskirchen, J. (1954) ‘Aufstand des Gewissens’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 42/54 (20 October), p. 553.