Open letter From Ms. Mahboubeh Hosseinpour
The Grieving Sister of Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, the Nuclear Scientist
Assassinated by the Islamic Republic
To
Ms. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Laureate
Los Angeles, California, April 16th 2018

Ms. Shirin Ebadi:
I listened to your recent interview with Bloomberg news agency on the 9th of April of 2018, in which you stated that you regretted your past (Islamic) reformist positions, that your participation in the pro IRI lobby meetings of NIAC was wrong, that the existing regime in Iran was not susceptible to reform, that there should be a regime change (in Iran) and that the West should weaken the (Iranian) regime by imposing smart sanctions and etc.
Without a doubt you have received many positive and negative reactions to the above mentioned interview, among them for sure, people who have lamented many lost opportunities which have in fact brought you to this interview, as well as many ordinary people who have been surprised at their own courage and savvy, realizing that without having been a judge, a lawyer or a Nobel Peace Prize recipient (like you) , they had reached the same conclusions which you have reached today, many years ago.
Very few however, may have found themselves in my present-day situation, bewildered by your new political positions. As someone who has followed your activities and statements with hopes and fears since the day you received your Nobel prize in 2003, I found myself in a predicament where all the burdens of my long years of seeking justice are suddenly felt heavier than before on my shoulders. This is what prompted me to publish this difficult letter which took me a whole week to write following your interview.
Fifteen years ago, on the day when you had received the Peace Prize, and even before you had exited the Nobel venue, I wrote a poem in the honor of that moment, which I named, “Behold a Woman with the Velvet Shoes of Tomorrow”, and which was published in several publications.
Back in those days, I was still a young woman with considerable energy and motivation for growth and advancement. I was bound for preserving my individuality and human dignity in the face of a fanatic and religious regime (in Iran), enduring all the hardships in a vicious circle, in college, at work and within the society. Your new status as the first Iranian woman who had acquired one of the highest honors in the world, ignited a flame of hope in my heart with the goal of breaking the insurmountable obstacles in the way of my civil rights and the
development of my society as a whole.
Five years later in the summer of 2008, I met you at your office in Tehran. By then, I was a crushed and devastated woman in mourning, seeking your assistance as the spokeswoman for human rights lawyers in Iran, since I was suffering from the greatest injustice that could have been brought upon a person: The Islamic Republic (of Iran) had assassinated my only brother, a young genius in his own right. Surely you remember that hot August afternoon when I came to your office accompanied by Mr. Abdolfattah Soltani who had arranged the appointment since
he was already familiar with the issue. I told you about my brother, Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, the popular and competent university instructor, a senior specialist in the fields of Uranium enrichment and electro magnetics, a young nuclear scientist who had been assassinated on January 16th , 2007 because of his refusal to participate in the 20% (Uranium) enrichment process. He had been murdered in his apartment in Shiraz by the regime, in a conspiracy involving regime agents and his wife’s family members, by the IRGC and the Intelligence Ministry, who later blamed it on Israel. Since this shameless story had not been accepted by my mother, they invented other ridiculous scenarios as well, to cover up the murder.
At the time of the meeting, about a year and a half after the incident, I had been able to overcome my illness and immobility due to catastrophe and was finally able to reach you in order to seek your help in an exceptional judicial procedure, in a matter which was directly connected to the fate of the Iranian people and international security.
Even though our only young man in the family and a unique Iranian asset had been lost out of respect for scientific honor and resistance to the inhuman demands of the regime which were contrary to our national interest (the IRI’s nuclear program), but the evil intents and plans of the Islamic Republic for “exporting the revolution”, “dragging the entire world to heaven by force”, and the construction of weapons of mass destruction were still in place. The exposure of the tearful story of Ardeshir’s assassination would therefore have opened the eyes of the Iranian nation as well as drawing the global attention to the murderous nature of the (IRI) regime. In addition, my mother was still alive at that time, and she could have offered the necessary testimonies and clues legally, as the official head of the family.
On that day we arranged for certain activities and left it at that. Soon after that, you left Iran and my mother passed away with a broken heart and left me with the responsibility for seeking justice. Dr. Soltani was also imprisoned. I was under the impression that you could at least mention this affair, now that you were in the Free World, to at least prevent such atrocities within the nuclear project community, by sounding the warning bells. But alas that the very
same insistence on silence about Ardeshir Hosseinpour (on your part) which had prevailed in Iran, continued outside the country as well, while a year and half after my brother’s murder, another assassination of a “martyred nuclear scientist at the hands of Israel” happened again in January 2009. Unfortunately, the process of manufacturing “scientists” and “martyrs” continued, and several people were murdered because of factional regime infighting and financial conflicts within the Ministry of Defense which were of course blamed on the
“Mossad”, in order to cover up their crimes with the smoke screen of anti-Israelism and to continue the catastrophe of their nuclear pride1.
Even today, the Islamic Republic continues to create “nuclear casualties” and to blame Israel for them, whenever necessary: Condemning Dr. Ahmadreza Jalali to death, the horrible dilemma of the (arrested) environmentalists (under the guise of suspicion of espionage), including the killing of Dr. Kavous Seyyed-Emami in jail, while changing their story from the old tale of “assassinated by Israel” to “spying for Israel”, are all examples of the ongoing dirty plans and methods of the IRI.
Don’t you think that if you had exposed the case of my brother Ardeshir Hosseinpour ten years ago, even as a possible narrative based on all the information I had given you, and by using your judicial instincts and research tools that were surely at your disposal, you could have affected the fate of the nuclear dossier as well as the future victims of the nuclear project, minimizing its financial and human costs?
Was it your commitment to “reforms” which justified your silence regarding the nuclear project atrocities – like the similar treatment of the case by Voice of America, BBC and other media – or had you been threatened by the Islamic Republic?
The controversial matter of Hosseinpour’s killing who was a true national and scientific assetperhaps a couple of years away from receiving a scientific Nobel prize in Physics- was not a simple matter to be easily ignored following the ruses of the Islamic Republic, and without a doubt there were many hidden hands behind the silencing of the media in this case.
In the end, following my mother’s joining with her fallen son, when I was under all kinds of pressures and threats from Iranian government agents, with no one left to extend a helping hand, I decided to leave Iran to seek justice. Five years ago, I was able to escape Iran together with my ailing husband and I took an oath to be a vital component for the exposure of the nuclear project atrocities, the commanders as well as the operators, and to bring these evil
behaviors to an end.
I have been asking the following three questions regarding what the Islamic Republic portrays as the assassinations of nuclear scientists by Israel, and I consider responses or non-responses to them as being extremely significant:
1- Why didn’t the Islamic Republic dare to bring forth the issue of the “assassination of Iran’s nuclear scientists”, during the nuclear negotiations?

1 Please read the article further below.
2- Why doesn’t the Islamic Republic take this issue to international tribunals on behalf of the families of the “nuclear martyrs” (except in the case of Hosseinpour’s family who never accepted these lies anyway) and obtain compensation for them?
3- Why would Israel expend so many resources for assassinating people who possessed neither the scientific expertise, the adequate level of education or even key positions in the nuclear project (except for Ardeshir Hosseinpour who was scientifically qualified but was targeted only because of his dissent) while dozens of experienced experts and specialists – including Dr. Ali-asghar Salehi – have been engaged in illegal nuclear
activities and nothing ever happened to them?
In the end, while welcoming you to the anti-regime community, I ask you to consider the cases of the nuclear project atrocities of the Islamic Republic and the need to break up the JCPOA (“nuclear deal”)2 as main pillars of your regime change activities, and to remember that no fighter speaks of regime change while sitting under the anti-Iranian flag3 of the very same regime which is the subject of that regime change!
In case you intend to help me to seek justice in the case of my late brother Dr. Ardeshir Hosseinpour, please feel free to contact me, since I am the sole survivor of our family, with a legal position, with the intent to pursue the case until the end and with the preparedness to provide explanations, facts and arguments, any time and any place.
Respectfully,
Mahboubeh Hosseinpour
Los Angeles, United States,
April 16th, 2018
Text of the Footnote #1