Sadegh Ghotbzadeh

Sadegh Ghotbzadeh (, 24 February 1936 – 15 September 1982) was an Iranian politician who served as a close aide of Ayatollah Khomeini during his 1978 exile in France and was foreign minister (30 November 1979 – August 1980) during the Iran Hostage crisis following the Iranian Revolution.

Ghotbzadeh was born in Isfahan in 1936.

He had a sister and a brother.

His father was a wealthy lumber merchant.

As a student, he was active in the student branch of the National Front following the toppling of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953.

He left Iran in 1959 after being detained twice due to his opposition activities to the Shah's regime; he lived in Europe, the US and Canada.

Ghotbzadeh was a supporter of the National Front of Iran.

He attended Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service from 1959 to 1963.

He contributed to the Freedom Movement from the US.

He was part of the more radical wing of the movement together with Ebrahim Yazdi, Mostafa Chamran and Ali Shariati.

However, he was dismissed from the school before graduating due to his skipping studies and exams to lead protests against the government of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, including storming a posh party hosted by the then Iranian ambassador to the United States, the son-in-law of the Shah, Ardeshir Zahedi.

In addition he was one of the senior members of the Freedom Movement of Iran led by Mehdi Bazargan in the 1960s.

In the late 1960s, Ghotbzadeh went to Canada for higher education and graduated from now defunct Notre Dame University College in Nelson, BC, in 1969.

Next he settled in Paris using his Syrian passport which he obtained through the help of Musa Al Sadr.

There he worked as a correspondent for the Syrian government daily, Al Thawra.

The job, in fact, was fake and covered his opposition activity in the city.

Ghotbzadeh left the US when his passport was revoked and moved to Algeria, Egypt, Syria and finally to Iraq, where he met Ayatollah Khomenei in 1963.

In December of the same year Ghotbzadeh along with Chamran and Yazdi met the Egyptian authorities to establish an anti-Shah organization in the country, which was later called SAMA, special organization for unity and action.

Chamran was chosen as its military head.

Ghotbzadeh also developed a close relation with Musa Al Sadr, an Iranian-Lebanese Shia cleric.

During his stay in the Middle East, Ghotbzadeh was trained in Lebanon together with Iranian revolutionary militants and Palestinians.

Ghotbzadeh left the Freedom Movement in 1978.

He became a close aide of Ayatollah Khomeini when the latter was in exile in France.

Ghotbzadeh along with Mostafa Chamran was part of the faction, called "Syrian mafia", in the court of Khomeini, and there was a feud between his group and the Libya-friendly group, led by Mohammad Montazeri.

Ghotbzadeh was an Amal sympathizer and close to Lebanese Shii cleric Musa Al Sadr.

Khomeini appointed him a member of the follow-up mission to search for fate of Al Sadr following the latter's disappearance in August 1978.

Ghotbzadeh accompanied Khomeini on his Air France flight back to Iran on 1 February 1979.

It was Ghotbzadeh, who translated the Ayatollah's infamous response "Hichi (Nothing)" to journalist John Simpson's question: "Ayatollah, would you be so kind as to tell us how you feel about being back in Iran?"

He was also Khomeini's translator in the press conference held in Tehran on 3 February 1979.

Following the Iranian Revolution Ghotbzadeh became a member of the revolutionary council when Bazargan and others left the council to form an interim government.

In addition, he served as spokesperson of the Ayatollah.

He was also appointed managing director of National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT) on 11 February 1979.

He tried to overhaul it to be in line with Islamic teachings, purging royalists, women, and leftists.

This was criticised by a group of Iranian intellectuals and also the interim government.

On 13 March, two women, one with a gun and the other with a knife, attacked Ghotbzadeh protesting the fundamentalist policies of the Islamic regime.

Nearly 15,000 women also gathered outside the headquarters of the NIRT to protest his Islamist policy.

He was appointed foreign minister in late November 1979 after Abolhassan Banisadr resigned as acting foreign minister amid heated disputes on the fate of the American hostages.

In early 1980 Ghotbzadeh was involved in early Iran Hostage crisis negotiations in Paris with Carter aide Hamilton Jordan, which led to "a complex multi-stepped plan" which was torpedoed by Khomeini announcing the hostages' fate would be decided by the new Iranian parliament.

Ghotbzadeh wrote an open letter to the Majlis in August 1980 arguing for the quick release of the hostages, and told Reuters five days later that "United States presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, supported by Kissinger and others, has no intention of solving the problem. They will do everything in their power to block it."

In 1982, he was executed for allegedly plotting the assassination of Ayatollah Khomeini and the overthrow of the Islamic Republic.