New Delhi: The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation has released posters seeking information on Reza Amiri Moghadam, Iran’s current ambassador to Pakistan, in relation to the diplomat’s alleged role in the kidnapping of retired FBI special agent Robert A. “Bob” Levinson from Kish Island on 9 March, 2007. The notice offers a $5 million reward for information leading to the “location, recovery and return” of the missing former agent.
The showdown, two diplomatic sources told ThePrint, is unprecedented in modern diplomatic history. Not only are ambassadors protected from criminal liability, but diplomatic premises are to be protected against “any disturbance of the peace of the mission or impairment of its dignity”. Mogadham has served as Tehran’s envoy to Pakistan since 2023.
“The ambassador of Iran is widely respected for his role in the promotion of Pakistan-Iran relations,” Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said Wednesday. ““He is entitled to all the privileges, immunities and respect due to an ambassador.”
FBI officials claim extraterritorial jurisdiction over all crimes committed against American citizens anywhere in the world, and the agency could, in theory, claim the right to act against Ambassador Moghadam in Pakistan, an Indian intelligence official said.
“The release of the FBI’s wanted lists is clearly meant to mount pressure on Pakistan, but Islamabad cannot be seen as caving in,” a second Indian diplomat said. “There might be some effort to explore via media, like asking Tehran to recall its ambassador after a decent length of time.”
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CIA’s contractor
Levinson, who served as a Drug Enforcement Administration officer from 1970 to 1976, and then the FBI from 1976 to 1988, had disappeared in 2007 from Kish Island—a free trade zone in Iran, which does not require Americans to hold a visa to visit.
The retired FBI agent was said to have been working on a freelance assignment for the Central Intelligence Agency, acting on behalf of a group of officers without the authority to order the mission. Levinson’s family, the Associated Press reported, was paid an $2.5 million annuity in order to stop it from initiating legal proceedings, while several officers were disciplined.
Little insight has emerged on the nature of Levinson’s actual mission to Kish. Levinson is known to have contacted Dawud Salahuddin, an American fugitive living on the island and accused of the killing of former Iranian diplomat Ali Akbar Tabatabaei in 1980. The exiled Tabatabaei was holding meetings of a counter-revolutionary group in Bethesda, Maryland, at the time.
Following his retirement from the FBI, Levinson had set himself up as a private-sector investigator specialising in the activities of Russian organised crime. US officials privately insisted that he had travelled to Kish to look into a cigarette smuggling cartel. Later, it was said Levinson was also investigating means used by Iran officials to move funds into the UAE.
The hunt for Levinson eventually expanded to include several figures with alleged links to the Russian mafia, including Sarkis Soghanalian, a one-time arms dealer, and one of Russia’s most powerful businessmen, Oleg Deripaska.
Iranian negotiators, for their part, claimed that Levinson was being held by a “radical splinter group”, and that efforts were being made to secure his freedom. The issue was directly raised by former US president Barack Obama with his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani. No commitments were, however, given.
Then, in March this year, the US Treasury Department sanctioned three intelligence officers—Gholamhossein Mohammadnia, Targi Daneshvar, and Ambassador Moghadam—on charges of responsibility for “Mr. Levinson’s abduction, probable death, and Iran’s efforts to cover up or obfuscate their responsibility”.
The FBI claimed that Daneshvar, who it said had the alias “Sayyed Taghi Ghaemi”, was a senior MOIS (Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security) counter-espionage officer, who reportedly supervised Mohammad Baseri—another person in the Bureau’s most wanted list—around the time Levinson disappeared.
Mohammadnia, the FBI said, served as Iran’s ambassador to Albania in 2016. He was expelled from Albania in December 2018 for allegedly “damaging its national security”—a move hailed by the US. The FBI claims he led efforts to shift blame for Levinson’s disappearance to a terrorist group in Baluchistan.
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