After more than two decades, the issue of the 1999 attempted assassination of then-President Mohammad Khatami by one of his bodyguards recently resurfaced.
The bodyguard, Farshad Toulabi, has come forward to share his account of the events and requested a meeting with Khatami, a reformist politician who served as the fifth president of the Islamic Republic from 1997 to 2005.
An “Extremist” within the Revolutionary Guards
Two years after the incident, the bodyguard and his family staged a protest outside parliament to denounce the cancellation of his record of service in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the termination of his rights.
Toulabi told media outlets that he was detained for some time and then fired from the IRGC after 11 years of service.
Toulabi claimed to have been a member of the IRGC’s Khorramabad Corps and that the commanders of this unit knew about his extremist tendencies. During Khatami's visit to Khorramabad, the capital of Lorestan province, he was not included in the team set up to protect the president.
After his arrest, Toulabi claimed that the commanders of the Ansar Protection Corps, which is responsible for protecting Islamic Republic officials, and the Vali Amr Guards, a unit in charge of protecting Supreme Leader Khamenei, were aware of his plan to assassinate Khatami.
Despite that, Toulabi was transferred to the Ansar Protection Corps. Some of its members serve as bodyguards of high-ranking officials, while others are dealing with the security of government agencies, parliament and the judiciary system.
Reports said Toulabi was not specifically assigned to protect Khatami.
News of Toulabi's arrest was not widely reported at the time, possibly due to media distractions during parliament elections or Khatami's relatives' desire to keep the news under wraps.
Two years after the arrest, Toulabi's account of events was briefly reported in a few newspapers.
In subsequent years, there were reports of foiled plots to kill Khatami during his provincial trips.
In 2009, during the peak of the presidential election, a news report surfaced regarding an attempt to bomb a plane carrying Khatami.
“The passengers were searched, but it was not clear who was responsible,” Safar Ali Mousavi, the commander of the Aviation Protection Corps, said in 2017. “The bomb was homemade, had a timer, and was discovered during the plane's inspection."
A new account of Khatami's assassination
The Jamaran website recently quoted a former member of Khatami's protection team as saying that Toulabi planned to assassinate the president upon his return from his trip to France in October 1999.
The plan was to kill the president after a meeting with Khamenei. Toulabi was a security guard stationed between the offices of the president and the supreme leader.
According to Jamaran, Toulabi asked religious authorities to obtain a fatwa or religious permission for the assassination, and they subsequently informed Khatami's office and security agencies about the plan.
"After we were informed of this intention through one of the authorities and we identified the person in question, we sent him on leave,” the website quoted the former bodyguard as saying.
“However, during his leave, when [Sayyid Ata'ollah] Mohajerani was still serving as minister of culture and some groups were opposed to his policies, Toulabi detonated a sound bomb in front of the Department of Culture and Islamic Guidance in Lorestan, located in Khorram Abad, and he was subsequently arrested,” he added.
In an interview with the Etemad newspaper, Toulabi revealed that he sent threatening letters to Khatami on two occasions.
He went on to say, "If I wanted to, I could have assassinated Khatami using methods... However, the most beautiful form of terror for me would have been to embrace Khatami and blow him up with myself."
The Failed Assassination Attempt against Hashemi
Elements within the Islamic Republic’s establishment were also responsible for the failed assassination of Rafsanjani during a ceremony in 1994, as well as the plot to kill Saeed Hajjarian, a reformist strategist, journalist and advisor to Khatami.
"A few minutes after I spoke, four gunshots were heard in the distance,” Rafsanjani wrote in his memoirs. “First, I thought the light bulbs had exploded, but the slogans of the people, the death of the hypocrite and the gathering of people on the western side of the shrine made it clear that a bullet had been fired."
Rafsanjani identified the attacker as Korosh Nik Akhtar, a former member of the Revolutionary Committee and of the police force at the time.
Some suggested that this incident was a warning sent to Rafsanjani from within the establishment amid conflicts between different factions of power.
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