The Iranian regime bowed to pressures in naming a substitute United Nations ambassador on Wednesday, withdrawing its first choice, whom was involved in 1979 hostage taking at U.S. Embassy in Tehran and assassination of the representative of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in Rome in 1993.
The announcement of the appointment by the Foreign Ministry in Tehran came nine months after the U.S. administration had made clear that the regime’s first choice, Hamid Aboutalebi, would never get a visa.A broad range of American politicians, and Iranian communities described the naming of Aboutalebi as provocative and disgraceful move by the regime.
Abutalebi was a key member of the student group, known as “the followers of the Imam’s Line” that stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
Although he has insisted that his role was limited to translation and negotiation, many U.S. lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have described Abutalebi as a terrorist and a key conspirator in the hostage crisis.
Abutalebi was also an active participant in the 1993 assassination of Mohammad Hossein Naghdi, the representative in Rome of Iran’s parliament-in-exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).
In the early hours of March 16, 1993, Mr. Naghdi was assassinated in the streets of Rome by two assailants on his way to his office.
Naghdi was formerly the Charge d’Affaires of Tehran in Rome (the most senior Iranian diplomat in Italy at the time).
He defected in April 1982 in protest against a wave of executions and the intensifying suppression of political dissident in Iran.
He joined the NCRI and played an instrumental role in exposing the atrocities and nefarious geopolitical intentions of the mullahs, and in promoting recognition of the Iranian resistance in Italian political circles.
Naghdi’s assassination was one in a series of killings of Iranian dissidents outside of Iran under the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Other targets included Dr. Kazem Rajavi, the NCRI’s representative in Geneva, who was shot to death in broad daylight in April 1990. Rajavi was also Iran’s first ambassador to the UN in Geneva following the overthrow of the Shah, and, like Naghdi, had resigned to join the resistance in protest against the mullahs’ crimes.
During an investigation into Naghdi’s assassination by the Italian Police, a former head of the Western European Branch of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), gave authorities the name of the man who organized and oversaw the hit on Naghdi: Hamid Abutalebi.