CIA curried favor with Khomeini, exiles.
[ 1986 ]The Reagan administration’s secret overtures and arms shipments to Iran are part of a seven-year-long pattern of covert Central Intelligence Agency operations — some dating back to the Carter administration — that were designed both to curry favor with the regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and support Iranian exiles who seek to overthrow it, according to informed sources.
In 1983, for example, the CIA participated in a secret operation to provide a list of Soviet KGB agents and collaborators operating in Iran to the Khomeini regime, which then executed up to 200 suspects and closed down the communist Tudeh party in Iran, actions that dealt a major blow to KGB operations and Soviet influence there, the sources said. Khomeini also expelled 18 Soviet diplomats, imprisoned the Tudeh party leaders and publicly thanked God for “the miracle” leading to the arrests of the “treasonous leaders.”
At the same time, secret presidential intelligence orders, called “findings,” authorized the CIA to support Iranian exiles opposed to the Khomeini regime, the sources said. These included providing nearly $6 million to the main Iranian exile movement, financing an anti-Khomeini exile group radio station in Egypt and supplying a miniaturized television transmitter for an 11-minute clandestine broadcast to Iran two months ago by Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late Shah Mohammad… >>>
