Family of Late Shiite Cleric Reportedly Confirms: Iran Hid Explosives in Hajj Pilgrim Bags

Iran’s hard-line Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) placed explosives in the bags of unsuspecting Iranian pilgrims bound for Hajj in Saudi Arabia in 1986, the family of a prominent Shiite cleric reportedly confirmed this week.

Shiite Cleric Hossein Ali Montazeri, known by some as the Islamic Republic’s “dissident Mullah,” was one of the top leaders of the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

According to media outlets from Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia, the late Shiite cleric’s son, Mullah Ahmed Montazeri, made the explosive revelation about IRGC troops hiding bombs in the bags of Hajj pilgrims while speaking to an Iranian TV program called “Khasht Kham.”

The program discussed the role of the Islamic Republic radical Mehdi Hashemi who snuck explosives onto an airplane bound for Saudi Arabia in 1986.

On Monday, Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya news noted:

Mullah Ahmed sought to point out that Hashemi was at that time a senior official in the Revolutionary Guards, and he carried out the terrorist act within this capacity.
Hashemi had become the head of the liberation movements unit in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards in 1983 and “by order of Ali Khamenei, the shipment of explosives was packed into the bags of pilgrims in 1986,” Mullah Ahmed said.

Ahmed’s remarks reportedly stem from a letter addressed to Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei by the late mullah.

Montazeri wrote:

The Revolutionary Guards made an unacceptable mistake during Hajj and used the bags of 100 Iranian pilgrims, including elderly men and women, without their knowledge. They lost the dignity of Iran and the Iranian revolution in the eyes of Saudi Arabia and during the Hajj season and forced [Iranian official] Mehdi Karroubi to ask King Fahd for a pardon.

Saudi security forces thwarted the potential attack, ultimately seizing the shipment of explosives.

Montazeri is one the most prominent leaders of the Iranian Revolution.

Citing Ulrich von Schwerin’s biography about the cleric — The Dissident Mullah — the Guardian reported in 2015, “Montazeri was at the heart of this evolution, first as a principal architect of the constitutional system after the 1979 Revolution, secondly as the planned successor to Khomeini, and thirdly as an opposition figure widely seen as the spiritual guide of the reformists and even the ‘green movement.'”
Montazeri passed away in 2009 at age 87.