Iran’s Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf is the ultimate linchpin binding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ wartime command network, its post-war construction monopoly, and the legislative machinery anchoring both. While dominating Tehran as mayor from 2005 to 2017, Ghalibaf systematically funneled no fewer than 23 parcels of land and buildings to the Guard Intelligence Unit under a covert project codenamed “Martyr Shateri.”
Internal documents valued those sites at 645 billion rials, or roughly $15.6 million at the time. Crucially, the regime quietly weaponized many of these properties — originally listed as vacant lots, unfinished commercial complexes, or unused confiscated land — as off-grid detention and interrogation black sites to crush protesters during the domestic uprisings of 2009, 2017, and 2019.
This project’s designation carries a deliberate message. Its namesake, Hassan Shateri (also known as Hessam Khoshnevis), commanded the Quds Force’s engineering arm, driving dual-use infrastructure projects (with the dual-use materials that so-called “Western countries” like Spain supply the regime with) across Syria and Lebanon until his assassination on the Damascus-Beirut road in February 2013. Ghalibaf had already weaponized the domestic counterpart of this model in the mid-1990s as managing director of Khatam al Anbiya Construction Headquarters.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei formalized this Guard engineering arm on Dec. 14, 1989, to absorb surplus wartime engineers into permanent infrastructure monopolies. At Ghalibaf’s direction, the organization aggressively mutated from frontline fortifications into a predatory, dual-use contractor that seized multibillion-dollar dams, pipelines, and urban projects without competitive bidding. During the same period, the notorious Yas Holding racket emerged, plundering about 13 trillion toman from the Tehran Municipality through engineered, Guard-linked construction schemes. Ultimately, these illicit funds and their associated personnel networks did not dissolve when Ghalibaf left city hall; instead, they migrated with him directly into the parliamentary speakership he seized in 2020.
Despite this repulsive trajectory, Western governments foolishly continue to treat Ghalibaf as a legitimate political interlocutor. For instance, U.S. officials warned regional intermediaries that Israel had targeted him during spring ceasefire negotiations, precisely because his liquidation would shatter the remaining Guard-political connective tissue after earlier strikes eliminated other senior commanders. Similarly, European designations of the Guard as a terrorist organization have failed to halt the flow of contracts or disrupt the safe-house network he institutionalized. In response to those Western designations, Ghalibaf branded European armies “terrorist groups” under Iranian law.
He has since repaid Washington’s goodwill gesture for a diplomatic off-ramp — a role emulating the one handed to Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez — by publicly mocking President Donald Trump with “Make America Hungry Again” graphics, taunting Washington with “Operation Trust Me Bro failed” memes, and boasting that American forces await to be “set ablaze.” Consequently, toothless financial penalties and travel restrictions leave the one kingpin who still anchors residual relationships across Khatam al Anbiya subsidiaries, municipal patronage lists, parliamentary budget channels, and Guard terrorists completely untouched.
To shatter this network, Western planners must shift from defensive sanctions to offensive neutralization. First, a joint CIA-Mossad team must embed a hidden, low-power beacon and an AI visual signature into a single dual-use construction component. This object is then placed on a commercial flight route previously used by Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf’s residual network. Next, the team leaks targeted details through a trusted intermediary. This baits someone with his old Khatam al Anbiya access to recognize and claim the item.
As the component moves, the artificial intelligence continuously cross-references live commercial cameras and satellite feeds against Ghalibaf’s unique facial and gait patterns. The system achieves a positive match the instant he takes physical custody of the high-tech Trojan horse device.
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Finally, a pre-staged loitering munition or a micro-drone array deployed inside the transit terminal’s secure cargo bays must trigger automatically. This eliminates Ghalibaf without any operators on-site, instantly cutting the last personal link the Guard uses to turn old construction networks into external operational capacity.
Washington and Jerusalem must recognize that stability in the Middle East requires exploiting the Islamic Republic’s looming succession crisis rather than accommodating its architects. Helping Ghalibaf become a “shahid” decapitates the regime’s economic engine, leaving the supreme leader’s inner circle fractured, bankrupt, and utterly incapable of maintaining control, thus eventually leading to a total regime collapse.
Jose Lev Alvarez is an American–Israeli scholar specializing in international security policy. A multilingual veteran of the IDF special forces and the U.S. Army, he holds three master’s degrees and is completing a Ph.D. in Intelligence and Global Security in the Washington, D.C., area.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
