"Brother Hassan": A Man for All Seasons of Repression

Hassan Shayanfar, a prominent figure in the repressive apparatus of the Islamic Republic, passed away after 38 years of tireless activity in cultural control and quasi-security fields. Shayanfar was a strange and mysterious figure who, despite appearing in public in recent years and giving interviews, carried important secrets that he may have taken with him, resulting in restricted access to them. Throughout most of his career, he sought to remain in the shadows, ensuring that his real name was not associated with his political and security activities. His insistence on anonymity and shrouding himself in ambiguity was an unnatural state, surpassing the usual desire of intelligence and quasi-security forces to conceal their true identities. Some of his defenders have called him a treasure trove of the revolution's secrets, and he can accurately be considered a treasure trove of the secrets of the repressive apparatus. Shayanfar was, in the truest sense, a cultural police officer who, utilizing the capabilities of detectives and positioning himself as a hero in detective novels, turned a blind eye to conscience and fairness, sacrificing them at the altar of ideology, and made no distinctions in scripting scenarios for cultural figures and intellectuals, relentlessly working to defame and fabricate cases against them. The sixty-volume series "The Semi-Hidden" published by Kayhan is the result of his extensive activities and conspiratorial mindset, which published reports using various tricks, making unfounded allegations, linking unrelated issues, citing writings and statements without regard to historical context, and selectively editing materials to align with desired goals, setting traps for cultural and political limitations in the 70s and 80s. The series includes elements such as the "Cultural NATO Knights," the "Muslim People's Party," the "Semi-Hidden of Mossadegh," and the "Dark Shadow of Bahaism." Shayanfar viewed the Supreme Leader as the main center of political maneuvering and governance, believing that any means necessary should be employed to maintain his dominant position against opponents and critics, even if they were major figures like Ayatollahs Kazem Shariatmadari and Hossein Ali Montazeri. In fact, the compass of Shayanfar's activities was the positions of the Supreme Leader, particularly Khamenei. His working style revolved around bulletins centered on the quartet of "Zionism," "Bahaism," "CIA," and "Pahlavi government" to associate opponents and dissatisfied cultural, religious, and political figures. His bulletin writing and the approach based on case fabrication and scenario writing can be seen as a product of his early activities in the Revolutionary Guards, where he became familiar with this type of work and acquired the necessary skills. This approach to political and cultural issues, characterized by intense suspicion and conspiratorial thinking, is common among some of the forces in the Guards who worked in ideological and research sections, and even some who later had problems with the regime and joined the opposition were still influenced by the so-called bulletin writing method. Shayanfar's past is unclear and shrouded in ambiguity. Only the memories of his friends and followers clarify that he participated in the religious meetings of Haj Agha Mojtaba Tehrani in the Tehran Bazaar before the revolution. Although Haj Agha Mojtaba Tehrani taught ethics and refused to accept government positions after the revolution, he was one of the few traditional clerics who had a positive view of Dr. Ali Shariati, but his sessions and gatherings became one of the main gathering places for hardline intelligence and Guards figures. In fact, before and after the revolution, Haj Agha Mojtaba Tehrani's lessons and sermons became a central hub for the religious fundamentalist movement. Shayanfar's revolutionary background is not clear. He claimed to have been imprisoned for a short time. However, after the revolution, he joined the Revolutionary Guards in Tehran. During the 60s and the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, he did not play a significant role in political and security matters. In 1984, at the invitation of his longtime ally, Hossein Shariatmadari, he went to Evin and Qezel Hesar prisons to work in the ideological and cultural section. At that time, the cultural section was relatively more moderate compared to other sections of political prisons, especially the behavior of Asadollah Lajevardi's team. However, Brother Hassan's more open methods aimed at rehabilitating political prisoners and recruiting some of them for the regime's cultural and political projects. The memories of one political prisoner in this regard are enlightening, explaining: "Shayanfar was in charge of the cultural section of the prison under Hossein Shariatmadari. The two adopted the same policy in the prison during the years 1984 and 1985 that later reformists pursued regarding cultural openness in society. Their first action was to organize a large book fair in prison. They brought and sold all the books available outside the prison. Books that, if found in someone's home, would become evidence of their crime... The transformation that Shariatmadari and Shayanfar created in the prison environment during those years was unbelievable. They engaged in Q&A sessions with prisoners and inquired about their demands, and the conversations were recorded. In fact, these two initiated the cultural invasion project in Qezel Hesar prison." According to the memories of some political prisoners of that era, he had already created a file for the prisoners he was in contact with and meticulously documented their personalities and positions. Memories from some members of the Tudeh Party also clarify that Shayanfar participated in the rehabilitation and televised interviews of Nouraddin Kianouri and other Tudeh leaders. However, Hassan Shayanfar's rehabilitative activities and the memories he gathered from political prisoners and their revisions, along with Hossein Shariatmadari, contributed to their rise within the power structure. After welcoming the books from the cultural center of the prisons, they went to Kayhan newspaper at the suggestion of Feizollah Arab-Sorkhi, the then head of the Ministry of Culture's security. Changes and developments after Ayatollah Khomeini's death at the top of the power pyramid created a special opportunity for both of them. Shortly after Khamenei's leadership, the management of Kayhan newspaper was entrusted to Hossein Shariatmadari, who appointed Shayanfar to the editorial board and as the head of the prison research center. From this point on, Shayanfar played a more significant role in the repressive apparatus. His duty was to control the media within the desired framework and conduct security actions within the context of authoritarianism based on media activities. Participation in identity programs and dealing with intellectuals and producing content to make the cultural invasion appear real marked the beginning of his aggressive activities in his new position. These actions enabled him to enter the inner circle of the leadership and made monitoring the Supreme Leader and attacking and undermining critical and opposing movements his main goal. His relationship with the leadership was so close that just days before his death, during a meeting with Taghi Dezhakam, another cultural police officer, he recounted the story of his last meeting with the leadership, which remained unfinished. In a detailed interview he had in Esfand 1394 with Fars News Agency, he stated that since the 1990s, his priority had been identifying infiltration lines and countering soft warfare. In the 1980s, he was more active in the context of fighting against the Cold War opponents and the West. In the case of the chain murders and the accusation of Saeed Imamii's connections with Israel and the counter-revolution, Shayanfar's traces can be observed. He also provided propaganda material for the closure of reformist media and the crackdown on journalists. In the 1990s, due to illness, he was not as active as before, and some of his work was performed by others, but he did not abandon his role as a cultural police officer until the end of his life. His last interview contains a strange claim. Throughout various sections of this lengthy interview, he makes contradictory statements but claims that he played the role of the bad cop and implicitly introduces reformists and moderates, centered around Khatami and Rouhani, as the good cops. He states that he and aligned forces, under the guise of revolutionary media, cause critical and secular forces to tactically move closer to Rouhani and Khatami through their attacks and the atmospherics they create. He describes this situation as follows: "In general, this is a scenario where one person plays the bad cop and another plays the good cop, and it doesn't matter if the product ends up benefiting the revolution." Contrary to Hossein Shariatmadari, he considers reformists mainly as revisionists who, due to their deviation from the regime's classical positions, have paved the way for enemy infiltration, but have no connection with Western governments and intelligence systems. In this interview, he also delineates himself from intelligence agencies and claims he did not cooperate with them. He sees the main thrust of attacks directed at the policies of the Reconstruction and Reformist governments, which made the cultural front of the revolution vulnerable. The above statements may represent another form of his scenario crafting to disrupt the open cultural space and free flow of information and to undermine the moderate faction of the regime. However, the contradictions in his last public statements are noteworthy. On the one hand, he says that forces close to Rouhani's government have, with indifference, taken the sleep from Khamenei's eyes in the face of the infiltration movement, and on the other hand, he praises the leadership's art, stating: "Ultimately, this is the management of the revolution and the art of its leadership that brings those who once boycotted the elections to the scene and allows them to have a list. The art of the revolution is that it has been able to transform the opposition and adversarial movement into a demand-making movement within the framework of the law and within the system." Similar to the usual approach of the loyalist forces, Shayanfar's associates seek to construct a spiritual image of him as if he had knowledge of divine secrets! Hossein Shariatmadari claimed, "Our Haj Hassan, while his physical condition indicated improvement, announced his departure and, to our astonishment, also referred to the Arbaeen of Imam Hussein." These undocumented claims, whose accuracy is uncertain, and in an exaggerated manner, seek to create a sacred aura around the subject in question, are a targeted effort to make young generations supporting the institution of the Supreme Leader view figures like Shayanfar as role models. A complete understanding of Shayanfar's activities and the decoding of the secrets he sought to conceal play a crucial role in revealing the nature of the shadow government and how it operates in Iran.