Ministry of Intelligence (Iran)

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (January 2012) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Persian. (November 2019) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Persian article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 238 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Persian Wikipedia article at [[:fa:وزارت اطلاعات]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|fa|وزارت اطلاعات}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Islamic Republic of Iran Intelligence Ministry

VAJA
Flag of the Ministry of Intelligence
Agency overview
Formed	18 August 1983; 38 years ago (1983-08-18)
Preceding agency	Prime Ministry Intelligence Office
Jurisdiction	Iran
Headquarters	Hirmand Street, Pasdaran, Tehran
Employees	Classified (30,000 by estimation of Magnus Ranstorp)[1]
Agency executive	, Minister
Website	vaja.ir

Politics of Iran
Government of Islamic Republic of Iran
show Leadership Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist Assembly of Experts Chairman: Ahmad Jannati
show Executive President (list) Ebrahim Raisi First Vice President (list) Mohammad Mokhber Supervisor of Presidential Administration Gholamhossein Esmaeili Cabinet Government of Raisi
show Legislative Islamic Consultative Assembly Speaker: Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf Supreme Audit Court Guardian Council Chairman: Ahmad Jannati
show Judicial Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ezhe'i Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri Supreme Court Islamic Revolutionary Court Special Clerical Court General Inspection Office High Council for Human rights Ministry of Justice
show Supreme Councils Supreme National Security Council Secretary: Ali Shamkhani Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution Expediency Discernment Council Chairman: Sadeq Larijani
show Local governments City Council
show Elections Election Office Guardian Council Recent and future elections Presidential: 2017 2021 Legislative: 2020 Experts: 2016 Local: 2017
show Political parties and factions Inside government Reformists Principlists Outside government Monarchism Liberalism Nationalism Pan-Iranism Socialism
show Ideology Islamic Government Propaganda in Iran Anti-capitalism
show Foreign relations Ministry of Foreign Affairs Minister: Mohammad Javad Zarif (list) Diplomatic missions of / in Iran Shanghai Cooperation Organisation Nationality law Passport Visa requirements Visa policy
show Related topics Taxation in Iran Armed forces of Iran
Iran portal  Politics portal Other countries
v t

The Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran (Persian: وزارت اطّلاعات جمهوری اسلامی ایران‎, romanized: Vezarat-e Ettela'at Jomhuri-ye Eslami-ye Iran) is the primary intelligence agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a member of the Iran Intelligence Community. It is also known as VAJA and previously as VEVAK (Vezarat-e Ettela'at va Amniyat-e Keshvar) or alternatively MOIS. It was initially known as SAVAMA, after it took over the Shah's intelligence apparatus SAVAK. The ministry is one of the three "sovereign" ministerial bodies of Iran due to nature of its work at home and abroad.^[2]

History[]

Reliable and valid information on the ministry is often difficult to obtain.^[3] Initially, the organization was known as SAVAMA,^[4] and intended to replace SAVAK, Iran's intelligence agency during the rule of the Shah, but it is unclear how much continuity there is between the two organizations—while their role is similar, their underlying ideology is radically different. It is suspected that the new government was initially eager to purge SAVAK elements from the new organization, but that pragmatism eventually prevailed, with many experienced SAVAK personnel being retained in their roles. Former SAVAK staff are believed to have been important in the ministry's infiltration of left-wing dissident groups and of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party.

The formation of the ministry was proposed by Saeed Hajjarian to the government of Mir-Hossein Mousavi and then the parliament. There were debates about which branch of the state should oversee the new institution, and the other options apart from the presidency were the Judiciary system, the Supreme Leader, and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Finally, the government got the approval of Ayatollah Khomeini to make it a ministry, but a restriction was added to the requirements of the minister: that he must be a doctor of Islam.

The ministry was finally founded on 18 August 1983, either abandoning, silently subsuming, or relegating to hidden existence many small intelligence agencies that had been formed in different governmental organizations. The five ministers since the founding of the ministry, have been Mohammad Reyshahri (under Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi), Ali Fallahian (under President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani), Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi (under President Mohammad Khatami, resigned after a year), Ali Younessi (under President Khatami, until 24 August 2005), Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejehei (under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from 24 August 2005 to 24 August 2009) and Heyder Moslehi (under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, from 29 August 2009 to 15 August 2013).

"Chain" assassinations[]

In late 1998, three dissident writers, a political leader and his wife were killed in Iran in the span of two months.^[5]

After great public outcry and journalistic investigation in Iran and publicity internationally,^[6] prosecutors announced in mid-1999 that one Saeed Emami had led "rogue elements" in Iran's intelligence ministry in the killings, but that Emami was now dead, having committed suicide in prison.^[7] In a trial that was "dismissed as a sham by the victims' families and international human rights organisations",^[8] three intelligence ministry agents were sentenced in 2001 to death and twelve others to prison terms for murdering two of the victims. Two years later, the Iranian Supreme Court reduced two of the death sentences to life.^[9]

Foreign executions[]

Massoud Molavi Verdanjani, an on-line opposition activist, was shot and killed on a street in Istanbul's Shishli neighborhood on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019. A Turkish security official later claimed Verdanjani's suspected killer had confessed to acting under the orders of two Iranian intelligence officers at the Iranian consulate in Turkey.^[10][11][12]

List of Ministers[]

No.	Portrait	Name	Took office	Left office	Party	Head of government
1		Mohammad Reyshahri	18 August 1984	1 August 1989	Independent	Mir-Hossein Mousavi
2		Ali Fallahian	1 August 1989	9 August 1997	Independent	Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani
3		Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi	23 August 2004	24 August 2009	Independent	Mohammad Khatami
4		Ali Younesi	19 December 2000	24 August 2005	Independent
5		Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i	24 August 2005	26 July 2009	Independent	Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
6		Heydar Moslehi	5 August 2009	15 August 2013	Coalition of the Pleasant Scent of Servitude
7		Mahmoud Alavi	15 August 2013	25 August 2021	Resistance Front of Islamic Iran	Hassan Rouhani

See also[]

• The Iran Cables (2019)
• Chain murders of Iran
• Oghab 2
• SAVAK

References[]

Further reading[]

• Yves Bonnet, Vevak, au service des ayatollahs: Histoire des services secrets iraniens, Timée-éditions, Boulogne-Billancourt, 2009. ISBN 978-2-35401-001-0. (in French)

External links[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ministry of Intelligence and National Security of Iran.

• Ministry of Intelligence (MOI) official site

Coordinates: 35°45′04″N 51°27′25″E / 35.751°N 51.457°E / 35.751; 51.457