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Mohsen Rafighdoost

Iranian journalist and political figure whom John Kiriakou identifies as a co-founder of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the propaganda voice behind the audio tapes distributed in Iran before the 1979 revolution; interviewed on the PBD Podcast, he conceded that the Shah's regime held only 3,000–3,500 political prisoners rather than the 100,000 opposition figures claimed at the time and that the Shah was, in his own judgment, a better man than Ayatollah Khomeini.

Mohsen Rafighdoost is an Iranian journalist and political figure whom John Kiriakou identifies as a co-founder, alongside Ayatollah Khomeini, of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps after the 1979 Iranian revolution.[1] Kiriakou describes him as the voice that recorded the intro to the pre-revolution propaganda tapes smuggled into Iran to turn the population against the Shah.[2]

On the PBD Podcast, Kiriakou notes, Rafighdoost — brought on as “the propaganda guy” — was asked point-blank whether the opposition’s claim that SAVAK killed 100,000 people had been a lie. In Kiriakou’s account of the exchange he heard on tape, Rafighdoost replied that “many documents have come out” since, and that “it was only 3,000, 3,500” political prisoners under the Shah, not 100,000.[3][4] Rafighdoost went further and offered his personal verdict that “Shah was a better guy than Khomeini,” and that the Shah’s belief in modernisation of Iran was “definitely better than [the] Islamic Republic.”[4][5]

Kiriakou treats the admission as evidence that a founding figure of the Islamic Republic’s security architecture had, four decades on and speaking against interest, effectively conceded that a foundational revolutionary talking point about the Shah’s prison population had been an exaggeration by roughly a factor of thirty.[3]

See also

References

  1. PBD Podcast, 2026-04-2310:49 on YouTube · Transcript
  2. PBD Podcast, 2026-04-2311:22 on YouTube · Transcript
  3. PBD Podcast, 2026-04-2311:54 on YouTube · Transcript
  4. PBD Podcast, 2026-04-2312:24 on YouTube · Transcript
  5. PBD Podcast, 2026-04-2312:56 on YouTube · Transcript

Sourced from John Kiriakou's on-record public statements. See his profile for the full body of his interviews, podcast appearances, and short-form video.