Mohammad Montazeri

Mohammad Montazeri Persian: محمد منتظری (1944–28 June 1981) was an Iranian cleric and military figure. He was one of the founding members and early chiefs of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was assassinated in a bombing in Tehran on 28 June 1981.

Then he and Hashemi joined the Guards. Montazeri headed a faction of the Guards in Tehran that functioned as a strong arm of the Supreme Leader Khomeini. It was called Freedom Movements Unit. In 1981 this faction was transformed into the office of liberation movements (OLM) which was first led by him and after his death, by Hashemi. An account with the name liberation movements was opened in the Melli Bank to get financial support from Iranians. The OLM put into practice the Iranian support for the Shi‘a movements in Iraq and the Gulf as well as those in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

Montazeri was killed in a bombing at the central headquarters of the then ruling party, Islamic Republican Party, in Tehran on 28 June 1981. The Islamic Republic of Iran suspected various organizations and individuals, including SAVAK, the Iraqi regime, the People's Mujahedin of Iran, the United States, royalist army officers, and "internal mercenaries". The death toll in the attack was 73, including Behesti, cabinet ministers and the members of the Majlis. A state funeral was held for the victims on 30 June and a week of mourning was proclaimed. Montazeri was buried in the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Qom where his father would also be buried on 21 December 2009.

Montazeri joined and led the Muslim People's Republic Party and became a member of the first Majlis in March 1980. On the other hand, his party was disbanded after its members were either arrested or executed. In addition, Montazeri served at the supreme defense council and was the prayer leader in Tehran until his death.

During the revolutionary process, he was called "Ayatollah Ringo" and "Red Sheikh". In order to export Islamic revolution to other countries he and Mehdi Hashemi founded one of the earliest groups, the SATJA, in the spring of 1979. In December 1979 he organized a campaign to support and join the Palestinian militants, fighting in the Lebanese civil war. His activities in the SATJA caused conflicts with the government, and he was forced to disband it.

At the founding and institutionalization phase of the Guards Montazeri became a member of the Revolutionary Guards Leadership Council in 1979 which was formed by the Revolutionary Council to oversee the future tasks of the Guard. He publicly declared in 1980 that the IRGC personnel "were awaiting deployment from Damascus."

In 1978 he occupied the Mehrabad airport of Tehran with his 200 armed followers and demanded to go to Libya to search for Musa Al Sadr, a Lebanese Shia cleric who disappeared in Libya in August 1978. He visited Ayatollah Khomeini when the latter was in exile in Paris. Before the 1979 Iranian revolution he was one of the people who promoted the idea of the establishment of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.

In 1963 Montazeri attended religious seminars in Qum together with his long-term confidant Mehdi Hashemi and Mehdi's brother Hadi Hashemi who future husband of Montazeri's sister.

Montazeri was a low-ranking and radical cleric. He began opposition activities against Mohammad Reza Pahlavi after the June 1963 events that led to the exile of Khomeini. His father and he were both arrested by the Shah's security forces in March 1966. In prison Mohammad was tortured and released in 1968. He left Iran for Pakistan. Then he settled in Najaf, Iraq, in 1971 and stayed there until 1975. Next he lived in Afghanistan and in other cities of Iraq.

Born in Najafabad in 1944, Montazeri was the oldest son of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri. He had two brothers and two sisters.