In the months leading up to Operation Epic Fury, Mossad Chief David Barnea laid it out plainly to Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump: the Mossad would “likely be able to galvanise the Iranian opposition – igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government”.
In the theatre of regime change, corruption is a powerful galvanising force. It is a tried-and-tested tool for mobilising mass resentment against any government. Enter the perfect script: a flashy headline proclaiming, ‘How Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei’s Son Built a Global Property Empire’. Published months before Donald Trump declared war, this article was designed to set the stage. Coming from the ‘reputed’ Bloomberg News, it quickly became a favourite among pro-monarchist Iranians who danced as US and Israeli bombs rained down on Iran to clear a path for the return of the ‘baby Shah’ to his father’s throne.
Published in January of this year, the Bloomberg piece paints Mojtaba Khamenei (since elevated as Supreme Leader) as a corrupt political operator who has amassed “some kind of rainy day fund in case the family needed to leave Iran”. The article purports to be the culmination of a yearlong investigation. Yet it reads less like journalism and more like an opinion brief, leaning heavily on interested parties with a clear axe to grind against the Iranian government.
The piece includes photographs, addresses of various properties, and the names of offshore companies tied to Iranian businessman Ali Ansari, who was sanctioned last year for allegedly providing financial support to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a British-Iranian solicitor named Moris Mashali. What the article conspicuously lacks is any actual connection between these individuals or their companies and any Iranian government official, let alone Mojtaba Khamenei.
Bloomberg’s author leans heavily on the authority of anonymity. No fewer than 16 times, the article relies on unnamed sources to advance its central allegation. Readers are expected to accept the premise of high-level corruption based on formulations like “people who have direct knowledge”, “people who requested anonymity”, “people said”, “according to the people”, “according to some of the people”, “according to people familiar with the matter”, and “two of the people said”. It is a masterclass in circular sourcing, dressed up as investigative rigour.
Bloomberg does parade a star witness: Farzin Nadimi, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Nadimi provides the magical thread linking Ali Ansari (the alleged frontman) to Mojtaba Khamenei. “Mojtaba has major stakes or de facto control in various entities throughout Iran and abroad”, Nadimi claims. “When you analyse his financial network, Ali Ansari is the main account holder for him. This positions Ansari as one of the most influential oligarchs in the country today”.
Not a single piece of evidence accompanies Nadimi’s assertions. The article meticulously documents Ansari’s assets, then simply grafts Nadimi’s words onto those records to manufacture a connection to the country’s supreme leader.
But who is Farzin Nadimi? On paper, he is a credible academic with training from King’s College London. Yet he is also an Iranian dissident whose political leanings are no secret. His previous work for the Washington Institute consistently campaigns for US military action to topple the Iranian government. He is not an independent researcher; he is a pro-monarchist activist operating out of Washington, DC, with a clear axe to grind. And yet, the entire edifice of Bloomberg’s investigation rests on his shoulders.
Nadimi’s host think tank is not without issues. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy was founded by AIPA– the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful political action committee dedicated to advancing Israeli interests in the US. The organisation has long been a hub for advocates of a hardline US policy against Iran.
Bloomberg’s ownership compounds the credibility problem. The outlet is owned by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in support of Israel.
None of this is to suggest that Iranian politics is free of corruption or that the country’s leadership should be immune from scrutiny. But when a major Western news outlet publishes an article riddled with anonymous sourcing, devoid of evidentiary links and reliant on a partisan witness from a think tank tied to foreign lobbying just months before a military assault, it ceases to be journalism. It becomes a pretext.
The playbook is familiar. Demonise a leader, fabricate a corruption narrative, launder it through anonymous sources and partisan ‘experts’ and let allied media amplify the story until it leads to what the Mossad chief claimed to deliver: “galvanise the Iranian opposition – igniting riots and other acts of rebellion that could even lead to the collapse of Iran’s government”.
The question for readers is not whether Iranian government officials are without blame. It is whether we will once again allow a selectively sourced, anonymously attributed, politically motivated article to serve as the moral foundation for another catastrophic war to destroy yet another sovereign nation.
The writer is an advocate of the Supreme Court. Twitter: @zfebrahim
