Mohammad Reyshahri

Mohammad Reyshahri (Persian: محمد ری شهری‎‎), also known as Mohammad Mohammadi-Nik, (born 29 October 1946), best known as Reyshahri, is an Iranian politician and cleric who was the first Minister of Intelligence, served from 1984 to 1989 in cabinet of Prime Minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi.

Reyshahri was born into a religious family in Rey on 29 October 1946. He was educated in Qom and Najaf in the field of theology. He and his successor at the ministry of intelligence, Ali Fallahian, are alumni of the Haqqani School in Qom. He began to involve in political activities in June 1963 during the religious revolts after Khomeini's famous speech in Qom.

In 1967, Reyshahri fled to Najaf and stayed there for a while. Upon his return to Iran, he was imprisoned. Until the revolution, he was banned from preaching.

During the revolution, Reyshahri claimed to have discovered two abortive Coup d'état: the Nozheh coup, which was supposed to happen on 8 July 1980 by supporters of Shapour Bakhtiar, and was reported to Reyshahri by Saeed Hajjarian, and the Ghotbzadeh coup, which led to the execution of Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and the removal of grand ayatollah Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari from being a marja by the Society of Teachers of the Qom Hawza. The ayatollah was subsequently put under house arrest, and died in 1986. In his memoirs, Reyshahri reveals that he personally hit grand Ayatollah Shariatmadari during the interrogations.

Reyshahri served as minister of intelligence in the cabinet headed by then prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi from 1984 to 1989. Into his tenure as minister of intelligence falls the case of Mehdi Hashemi. Reyshahri executed Hashemi two days ahead of schedule on 28 September 1987, so that Reyshahri would not need to follow a letter written by Khomeini on 28 September in which he informed Reyshahri that the sentence had been commuted to internal exile.

Reyshahri was appointed chief prosecutor of the Special Court for the Clergy in 1990. It was Reyshahri who drafted the court's 47-article ordinance passed in 1990. Before the Majlis elections in 1996 he established the Society for the Defence of the Values of the Islamic Revolution. Reyshahri was also an unsuccessful presidential candidate in the election on 23 May 1997, which led to the presidency of Mohammad Khatami. Reyshahri ranked fourth among the four candidates approved to run by the Guardian Council. Following the elections, he established

He was appointed representative for Hajj affairs to Ali Khameni. He is the dean of the Dar Al Hadith Scientific Cultural Institute.

Reyshahri married the daughter of Ayatollah Ali Meshkini in 1968, when she was 9. It was Ayatollah Meshkini who first called him Reyshahri ("of the city of Rey"). Reyshahri is generally feared in Iran and sometimes referred to as "the scary Ayatollah" (آيت‌الله مخوف). Reyshahri has written on the sayings of the prophet Mohammad and Shia Imams. His book, Mizan al Hikmah, summarizes thousands of these sayings. He has also published his memoirs.