Manucher Ghorbanifar

Manucher Ghorbanifar
Born (1945-05-09) 9 May 1945 (age 79)[1]
Iran
NationalityIranian
Espionage activity
Service branchSAVAK
Service yearsUnknown–1979
OperationsNEQAB
Iran–Contra affair
Other workArms dealer

Manucher Ghorbanifar (Persian: منوچهر قربانی‌فر; nicknamed Gorba, born May 9, 1945) is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer and former SAVAK agent.

According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Ghorbanifar was a double agent for Iran and Israel.[2] The CIA director William Casey believed that Ghorbanifar was an Israeli agent.[3]

He is best known as a middleman in the Iran–Contra Affair during the Ronald Reagan presidency.[4] He re-emerged in American politics during the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq during the first term of President George W. Bush as a back-channel intelligence source "in order to report on any interaction and attempts at negotiations between Iranian officials and US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad".[5]

  1. ^ http://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/documents/d-all-31.pdf [bare URL PDF]
  2. ^ Bahram Alavi (April 1988), "Khomeini's Iran: Israel's Ally", Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, pp. 4–6
  3. ^ "NORTH ON CASEY'S ROLE".
  4. ^ Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer, American Prospect, 20 March 2005, The Front Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  5. ^ Larisa Alexandrovna, 20 April 2006, Raw Story, Cheney has tapped Iranian expatriate, arms dealer to surveil discussions with Iran, officials say Archived August 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine