Top Iranian Officials Accused Of Shah-Era Assassination – Analysis – Eurasia Review

By Mohammad Zarghami

Two senior Iranian officials have been accused of killing an oil executive weeks before the Islamic Revolution in 1979 that toppled the US-backed shah and brought the country’s current clerical rulers to power.

Malek Boroujerdi, an Iranian oil official, was shot dead by gunmen in the southwestern city of Ahvaz in December 1978. The perpetrators were never found.

Boroujerdi’s son, Mehrzad, a US-based academic, has accused Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, and Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), of carrying out the assassination.

Boroujerdi alleges that the clandestine Islamist group Mansouroun — which Shamkhani and Rezaei belonged to — planned his father’s killing. American oil ex