Manucher Ghorbanifar
Iranian arms trader / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Manucher Ghorbanifar (Persian: منوچهر قربانیفر; nicknamed Gorba, born May 9, 1945) is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer and former SAVAK agent.
Manucher Ghorbanifar | |
---|---|
Born | (1945-05-09) 9 May 1945 (age 78)[1] |
Nationality | Iranian |
Espionage activity | |
Service branch | SAVAK |
Service years | Unknown–1979 |
Operations | NEQAB Iran–Contra affair |
Other work | Arms dealer |
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]
Prior to the Iraq War, Ghorbanifar had passed allegations to the Bush administration that "enriched uranium was smuggled from Iraq into Iran and some may remain hidden in Iraq" which the CIA later discovered to be a fabrication created by Ghorbanifar.[6][7] Ghorbanifar was linked to the Niger uranium forgeries which were forged documents initially released by SISMI that would later be used partly as justification for the Iraq War.[8]