Ali Akbar Tabatabaei


Ali Akbar Tabatabaei was an Iranian exile and former press attache to the Iranian embassy in the United States during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
After the Iranian Revolution, he went into exile in the United States criticizing the regime of the Iranian Revolution. He became president of the Iran Freedom Foundation in Bethesda, Maryland.

Death

A major Iranian critic of Ruhollah Khomeini, Tabatabaei was shot on 22 July 1980 on the front door of his Bethesda, Maryland home by Dawud Salahuddin, an American Muslim convert who was associated with an Iranian militant group. Tabatabaei's murder is allegedly considered the last successful Iranian assassination plot on American soil. Salahuddin disguised himself as a postman with a borrowed mail truck.
Salahuddin stated he was paid $5,000 by Iranians to kill Tabatabaei. He is currently on the FBI fugitives list. He escaped to Iran via Paris and Geneva, reaching Tehran on 31 July 1980. In a 1996 interview with ABC's 20/20, Salahuddin again confessed to killing Tabatabaei. He further stated that he thought the killing was "an act of war". In 2009, it was discovered that Salahuddin had been using a new name, Hassan Abdulrahman, and that he had been running the website of Press TV.