Shirin’s Sweet Revival and Her Bitter Denial
Open letter From Ms. Mahboubeh Hosseinpour
The Grieving Sister of Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, the Nuclear Scientist Assassinated by the Islamic Republic
To
Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Laureate Los Angeles, California, April 16th 2018
Ms. Shirin Ebadi:
I listened to your recent interview with Bloomberg news agency on the 9th of April of 2018, in which you stated that you regretted your past (Islamic) reformist positions, that your participation in the pro IRI lobby meetings of NIAC was wrong, that the existing regime in Iran was not susceptible to reform, that there should be a regime change (in Iran) and that the West should weaken the (Iranian) regime by imposing smart sanctions and etc.
Without a doubt you have received many positive and negative reactions to the above mentioned interview, among them for sure, people who have lamented many lost opportunities which have in fact brought you to this interview, as well as many ordinary people who have been surprised at their own courage and savvy, realizing that without having been a judge, a lawyer or a Nobel Peace Prize recipient (like you) , they had reached the same conclusions which you have reached today, many years ago.
Very few however, may have found themselves in my present-day situation, bewildered by your new political positions. As someone who has followed your activities and statements with hopes and fears since the day you received your Nobel prize in 2003, I found myself in a predicament where all the burdens of my long years of seeking justice are suddenly felt heavier than before on my shoulders. This is what prompted me to publish this difficult letter which took me a whole week to write following your interview.
Fifteen years ago, on the day when you had received the Peace Prize, and even before you had exited the Nobel venue, I wrote a poem in the honor of that moment, which I named, “Behold a Woman with the Velvet Shoes of Tomorrow”, and which was published in several publications. Back in those days, I was still a young woman with considerable energy and motivation for growth and advancement. I was bound for preserving my individuality and human dignity in the face of a fanatic and religious regime (in Iran), enduring all the hardships in a vicious circle, in

college, at work and within the society. Your new status as the first Iranian woman who had acquired one of the highest honors in the world, ignited a flame of hope in my heart with the goal of breaking the insurmountable obstacles in the way of my civil rights and the development of my society as a whole.
Five years later in the summer of 2008, I met you at your office in Tehran. By then, I was a crushed and devastated woman in mourning, seeking your assistance as the spokeswoman for human rights lawyers in Iran, since I was suffering from the greatest injustice that could have been brought upon a person: The Islamic Republic (of Iran) had assassinated my only brother, a young genius in his own right. Surely you remember that hot August afternoon when I came to your office accompanied by Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani who had arranged the appointment since he was already familiar with the issue. I told you about my brother, Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, the popular and competent university instructor, a senior specialist in the fields of Uranium enrichment and electro magnetics, a young nuclear scientist who had been assassinated on January 16th, 2007 because of his refusal to participate in the 20% (Uranium) enrichment process. He had been murdered in his apartment in Shiraz by the regime, in a conspiracy involving regime agents and his wife’s family members, by the IRGC and the Intelligence Ministry, who later blamed it on Israel. Since this shameless story had not been accepted by my mother, they invented other ridiculous scenarios as well, to cover up the murder.
At the time of the meeting, about a year and a half after the incident, I had been able to overcome my illness and immobility due to catastrophe and was finally able to reach you in order to seek your help in an exceptional judicial procedure, in a matter which was directly connected to the fate of the Iranian people and international security.
Even though our only young man in the family and a unique Iranian asset had been lost out of respect for scientific honor and resistance to the inhuman demands of the regime which were contrary to our national interest (the IRI’s nuclear program), but the evil intents and plans of the Islamic Republic for “exporting the revolution”, “dragging the entire world to heaven by force”, and the construction of weapons of mass destruction were still in place. The exposure of the tearful story of Ardeshir’s assassination would therefore have opened the eyes of the Iranian nation as well as drawing the global attention to the murderous nature of the (IRI) regime. In addition, my mother was still alive at that time, and she could have offered the necessary testimonies and clues legally, as the official head of the family.
On that day we arranged for certain activities and left it at that. Soon after that, you left Iran and my mother passed away with a broken heart and left me with the responsibility for seeking justice. Dr. Soltani was also imprisoned. I was under the impression that you could at least mention this affair, now that you were in the Free World, to at least prevent such atrocities within the nuclear project community, by sounding the warning bells. But alas that the very same insistence on silence about Ardeshir Hosseinpour (on your part) which had prevailed in Iran, continued outside the country as well, while a year and half after my brother’s murder, another assassination of a “martyred nuclear scientist at the hands of Israel” happened again in

January 2009. Unfortunately, the process of manufacturing “scientists” and “martyrs” continued, and several people were murdered because of factional regime infighting and financial conflicts within the Ministry of Defense which were of course blamed on the “Mossad”, in order to cover up their crimes with the smoke screen of anti-Israelism and to continue the catastrophe of their nuclear pride1.
Even today, the Islamic Republic continues to create “nuclear casualties” and to blame Israel for them, whenever necessary: Condemning Dr. Ahmadreza Jalali to death, the horrible dilemma of the (arrested) environmentalists (under the guise of suspicion of espionage), including the killing of Dr. Kavous Seyyed-Emami in jail, while changing their story from the old tale of “assassinated by Israel” to “spying for Israel”, are all examples of the ongoing dirty plans and methods of the IRI.
Don’t you think that if you had exposed the case of my brother Ardeshir Hosseinpour ten years ago, even as a possible narrative based on all the information I had given you, and by using your judicial instincts and research tools that were surely at your disposal, you could have affected the fate of the nuclear dossier as well as the future victims of the nuclear project, minimizing its financial and human costs?
Was it your commitment to “reforms” which justified your silence regarding the nuclear project atrocities – like the similar treatment of the case by Voice of America, BBC and other media – or had you been threatened by the Islamic Republic?
The controversial matter of Hosseinpour’s killing who was a true national and scientific asset- perhaps a couple of years away from receiving a scientific Nobel prize in Physics- was not a simple matter to be easily ignored following the ruses of the Islamic Republic, and without a doubt there were many hidden hands behind the silencing of the media in this case.
In the end, following my mother’s joining with her fallen son, when I was under all kinds of pressures and threats from Iranian government agents, with no one left to extend a helping hand, I decided to leave Iran to seek justice. Five years ago, I was able to escape Iran together with my ailing husband and I took an oath to be a vital component for the exposure of the nuclear project atrocities, the commanders as well as the operators, and to bring these evil behaviors to an end.
I have been asking the following three questions regarding what the Islamic Republic portrays as the assassinations of nuclear scientists by Israel, and I consider responses or non-responses to them as being extremely significant:
1- Why didn’t the Islamic Republic dare to bring forth the issue of the “assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists”, during the nuclear negotiations?
1 Please read the article further below.

2- 3-
Why doesn’t the Islamic Republic take this issue to international tribunals on behalf of the families of the “nuclear martyrs” (except in the case of Hosseinpour’s family who never accepted these lies anyway) and obtain compensation for them?
Why would Israel expend so many resources for assassinating people who possessed neither the scientific expertise, the adequate level of education or even key positions in the nuclear project (except for Ardeshir Hosseinpour who was scientifically qualified but was targeted only because of his dissent) while dozens of experienced experts and specialists – including Dr. Ali-asghar Salehi – have been engaged in illegal nuclear activities and nothing ever happened to them?
In the end, while welcoming you to the anti-regime community, I ask you to consider the cases of the nuclear project atrocities of the Islamic Republic and the need to break up the JCPOA (“nuclear deal”)2 as main pillars of your regime change activities, and to remember that no fighter speaks of regime change while sitting under the anti-Iranian flag3 of the very same regime which is the subject of that regime change!
In case you intend to help me to seek justice in the case of my late brother Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, please feel free to contact me, since I am the sole survivor of our family, with a legal position, with the intent to pursue the case until the end and with the preparedness to provide explanations, facts and arguments, any time and any place.
Respectfully,
Mahboubeh Hosseinpour Los Angeles, United States, April 16th, 2018
Text of the Footnote #1:
Who Assassinated Iranian Nuclear “Scientists”? May 5th, 2016
[ SOURCE of the Article]
Mahboubeh Hosseinpour:
2 At the time of writing the original article, the JCPOA deal had not been broken up yet.
3 Ms. Ebadi was actually sitting under the flag of the Islamic Republic, when speaking about “regime change”.
Ali Khamaneii (the “Supreme Leader”) always talks about “the enemy”, but isn’t it about time to find out to what
extent this “enemy” truly exists? The article by Dr. Reza Taghizadeh titled “Dagan and Engineering the Assassination

of the Nuclear Specialists of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, opened up a window for patriotic researchers to find out
who the people who were assassinated in relation to the Iranian nuclear program were, what were their roles in the
regime’s nuclear program and which elements or countries can be accused of killing them. Attending to these
questions is an essential task for understanding our country’s events and for determining its future .judgement by the
title of Mr. Taghizadeh’s article, apparently the “nuclear experts” of the Islamic Republic were assassinated by Israel
according to the planning of Meir Dagan who headed the Mossad during those years. However, the writer never
specifically explains what the motivations were behind the assassinations and who were exactly involved in them,
even though all the circumstances explained, point towards the conclusion that Israel had been behind these
murders. On the other hand, as a grieving sister of one of the assassinated scientists, and as a person who has been
following this issue, I seriously doubt that the above-mentioned victims were killed by foreigners. I have come to
believe that most of them were victims of murderous tactics of the (Iranian) regime itself or (subjects of) its internal
government conflicts. At least as far as my brother - the late Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour -was concerned, I can say with
certainty that he was killed by the (Iranian) regime itself, because in some cases he had questioned Khameneii’s
legitimacy and had refused to cooperate with the regime for the 20% (Uranium) enrichment and the construction of
weapons of mass destruction. As a nuclear physics scientist, specializing in electromagnetics and Uranium
enrichment, and an assistant professor at the Shiraz University, Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour was faced with the
regime’s decision on the20% enrichment and the construction of the atomic bomb in 2004, but until the morning he
was assassinated on January 16th, 2007, he adamantly refused to submit (to them). The Islamic Republic (of Iran)
which had prepared the “Terror by Israel” scenario beforehand, manufactured false stories about death by gas
asphyxiation, heart attack, pneumonia and even murder by a rival in a love affair, after my mother – as the “owner of
the blood”, the next of kin- strongly resisted the scenario of her son’s martyrdom at the hands of Israel. The
government accused the Mossad, in order to absolve itself from the accusation, but its subsequent behavior and the
warnings which the security officials gave my mother, as well as dozens of other indications, leave me no doubt that
this murder had been designed by the (Iranian) regime itself. On the night before the murder, Ardeshir’s wife had
been told not to go to her husband’s house and to spend it at her parent’s residence. Has the Mossad got so much
power in the city of Shiraz to send its agents to somebody’s house to ensnare him alone, asphyxiate him and
escape? In 1994, twelve years before my brother’s murder, Dr. Reza Sa’adat, a nuclear physics scientist and an
assistant professor at the Shiraz University, in charge of my brother’s thesis at his senior expertise level, was also
killed precisely for the same reason and the assassination was blamed on the “People’s Mujahedin Organization” as
well as “gold and currency smugglers” (!)For a regime which has kept one nuclear physics scientist in jail just
because he is accused of refusing to cooperate in nuclear military efforts, a regime which committed the chain
assassinations (of dissident intellectuals and activists in 1998) and who killed Dr. Saami ( a moderate Islamic leader
early in the Islamic Revolution) with a screw driver in his brain only because of his patriotic activities, would the
murder of Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour and the unfair imprisonment of Dr. Omid Kowkabi be too hard to believe? Not
only Omid Kowkabi’s imprisonment was based on false chargers, but they are (now) trying to kill him and to silence
him forever by preventing medical attention for his cancer. They are doing this in order to make an example of him
among other scientists, so they will not refuse to cooperate with the regime’s demands.
Three years after the murder of my only brother Ardeshir, they killed Dr. Masoud Alimohammadi on January 13th,
2010 in an explosion. He had a doctorate in theoretical physics, he was a member of the “Professor’s Basij” (militia)
who sympathized with the (Islamic) reformists and resolutely supported Mir Hossein Moussavi in the 2008 elections
(the candidate who lost to Ahmadinejad). Doctor Alimohammadi, had many student followers and had raised the ire
of the regime. One week before his assassination he launched the free debate meetings of the physics group at the
Tehran University. He was killed by a magnetic bomb hidden inside a motorcycle chained to a tree, three feet outside
his house door. In order to cover up its own crime, the regime blamed it on a young man named Majid Jamali Fashi,
introduced him to the public as an agent of the Israeli Mossad and even displayed a forged Israeli passport on TV,
apparently to prove that he had been an Israeli spy. How is it possible that a country hires a spy and then gives him
its real passport to take back to his country of origin so that their secret connection would be known upon his arrest?
On the other hand, is it difficult for the Iranian government to forge one of the hundreds of stolen Israeli passports
which they have, under the name of “Fashi” and display it in front of the cameras? The government published a long
story about the “experiences” of Jamali Fashi in Israel, which was in fact copied from an article containing the
memoirs of one Hossein Derakhshan (“Me: The Editor”, weblog in Farsi) of his real travel to Israel. In the eyes of
many informed people, the “execution” of Fashi was also a show. It is rumored that Fashi (is alive) and is serving the
Islamic Republic under a new identity and with an altered face in an African country, possibly Senegal. Simultaneous
attacks on two other nuclear experts named Majid Shahryari and Fereidoon Abbassi Davani, by attaching magnetic
bombs to their cars while moving, by two motorcycle riders who escaped the scene, was also very suspicious. If a

foreign country were the perpetrator of these assassinations, would it endanger its saboteurs in daylight and on busy
streets by attaching two bombs to two cars, (an be certain that) they would get away unscathed and never arrested?
If a foreign country had actually done this, wouldn’t it have been safer to place the bombs at night and under the cars
without endangering the lives of its agents? Weren’t these two assassinations due to internal regime factional
conflicts? In addition, we know that attaching magnetic bombs to cars, is a method used by the agents of the Islamic
Republic against Israeli diplomats on several occasions, and accordingly they are well experienced in it. Another
victim, was Dariush Rezaii Najaad who was killed in his car when shot by two motorcycle ridersin the summer of
2011. He had a masters degree in electrical (engineering) who was barred from a project and was targeted because
of his objection.
Regarding the killing of Mostafa Ahmadi Rowshan (with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry) who is currently the last of
the nuclear martyrs and who was also killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his car by a motorcycle rider on January
11th, 2012, it was found out that almost certainly he had information about massive corruption and was killed by his
rivals. Ahmadi Rowshan, was a deputy purchasing official for the Natanz enrichment facility and had no scientific
activity.
I know that there are still many questions surrounding these murders, but the regime’s dossier is filled with such
black marks of murder, and one should not easily believe in the claims of (Iranian) officials and should not retell them.
Ali Khameneii (the Supreme Leader) has repeatedly stated in the past few months that “the enemies” have caused
the death of the “five nuclear scientists” in Iran. Khameneii’s goal by making such claims, was to say that the regime
is still threatened by foreigners and(in particular) by Israel as well as other countries who want to harm the regime,
and therefore the Islamic regime has the right to brutally suppress the Iranian nation as before .I therefore, challenge
patriotic researchers to exert all their efforts to identify the commanders and the perpetrators of these murders, so
that the people will be informed, will know the real enemy and will rise up to overthrow it.