Exiled Iranian Has Another Run as US Informant
Mr. Ghorbanifar Resurfaces With Material on Tehran
After His Iran-Contra Role Concern He’s a New Chalabi
As tensions rise between the U.S. and Iran, Manucher Ghorbanifar has been fanning the flames.
Twenty years after gaining brief notoriety during the Iran-Contra scandal, the France-based Iranian exile has once again found an audience in Washington for insights into his native country — to the dismay of some U.S. officials who dealt with him in the past.
The Central Intelligence Agency blacklisted Mr. Ghorbanifar in 1984 for providing allegedly bogus information on threats against President Reagan. It soured on him further after the exiled Iranian businessman helped set up an arms-for-hostage deal with Iran that in 1986 rocked the Reagan administration and embarrassed the CIA.
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, as Washington has focused more on Iran’s role in the Middle East and beyond, Mr. Ghorbanifar, now 61 years old, has bounced back. He met envoys from the Pentagon in Rome with the blessing of the White House, and shared his views with Republican and Democratic congressmen who traveled to France to meet him and his longtime confidant, Fereidoun Mahdavi, a former Iranian minister, according to American intelligence and congressional officials.
His message: Iran’s weapons programs and terrorism connections are expanding, and Tehran is directly targeting the U.S.
CIA operatives have spent hundreds of hours since 2003 trying to corroborate information passed on by Messrs. Ghorbanifar and Mahdavi, former officials involved with the effort say. They say the tips are no better than they were during the Reagan era.
wsj.com
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