A recently declassified intelligence document from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) argues that the key Iranian figure behind the 1988 downing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland was Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, the former Iranian ambassador to Syria and later Minister of the Interior. The attack led to the killing of 270 innocent civilians. In The Rise of Nuclear Iran, reference is made to this document the relevant sections of which are quoted here for the first time in full:
"Mohtashemi is closely connected with Al Abas (sic.) and Abu Nidal Terrorist Groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid 10 million dollars in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrotist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the US shoot-down of the Iranian Airbus" (emphasis added).
For years there have been suspicions of an Iranian role in Lockerbie. Robert Baer, the former CIA operations agent, has claimed that Iran was behind Lockerbie. According to the London Sunday Times, on August 18, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the Libyan intelligence officer who was just freed by Scotland, instructed his attorneys to produce documentation on the Iranian role. The attorneys had another DIA document that stated that "The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorized, and financed by Ali-Akbar (Mohtashemi)."
As Gold explains in his book, Mohtashemi had also been instrumental in the 1983 attack ordered by Iran against the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, in which 241 American servicemen were killed. Moreover, Mohtashemi helped found Hizbullah, the deadly Iranian-backed international terrorist organization. Gold also discloses that in recent months Mohtashemi worked closely with Iranian opposition head Mir Hossein Moussavi. Mohtashemi was Moussavi's representative to the electoral oversight board for the June 12 presidential elections in Iran.
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