For decades, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards and ruling clerical elite have relied on a system that critics say is as strategic as it is cynical: publicly denouncing the West while quietly securing a future for their own families there.
Iranian journalist Banafsheh Zand still remembers the girl from her school, a memory that only becomes meaningful years later when a familiar face reappears in a completely different context.
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Iranian women walk past a mural of Iranian flags in Tehran on November 26, 2024. (Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
They sat together in classrooms at Tehran’s elite Iranzamin School, an institution designed for the children of diplomats and Iran’s upper class, where students spoke multiple languages and moved easily between cultures. The girl was quiet and studious, shaped in part by the years she had spent in the United States, where she had lived as a child and learned the fluent English that would later define her public role.
Years later, Zand would see her again, not behind a desk or in a school hallway, but on television screens around the world. Her former classmate had become the voice of the 1979 U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.
The girl was Masoumeh Ebtekar, the English-speaking spokesman for the extremists who held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, and who would go on to defend the takeover of the American embassy, later describing it as “the best move” for the revolution.
And yet, decades later, the story did not end in Tehran. Things continued quietly and almost predictably in California.
Masoumeh Ebtekar, the English-speaking face of the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis, later rose to senior positions in the Iranian government as her family built ties to life in the West. (Vahid Salemi/AP Photo)
A life far from the revolution
Ebtekar’s son, Eissa Hashemi, lived in the United States, attended college and eventually built a career in academia in Los Angeles. Zand unveiled ‘Iran So Far Away’ on her substack – a trajectory that stands in stark contrast to the ideology his mother helped convey to the world.
For Zand, this is not an anecdote or isolated irony, but a window into how the system itself functions.
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“They take the money from corruption in the country and use it to live a better life elsewhere,” she said. ‘It’s not about a few cases. It’s about the way they work.’
What Zand describes is commonly referred to in Iran as the phenomenon of “aghazadeh,” a term used to describe the children of the Iranian regime’s elite who live privileged lives abroad while their families impose ideological restrictions at home, and who have come to symbolize for many Iranians the gap between the regime’s rhetoric and its reality.
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Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami (L) presents a certificate of appreciation to leading reformist politician Saeed Hajjarian during the annual congress of the Islamic Iran Participation Front in Tehran on December 4, 2008. (Caren Firouz/Reuters)
A three-part network within the West
Exiled Iranian journalist Mehdi Ghadimi, who now lives in Canada, claims that this phenomenon is structured.
The system functions as a three-tiered structure that allows regime-linked individuals to embed themselves in Western societies, Ghadimi said, starting with those who arrive as students and academics, who often present themselves as ordinary immigrants, while maintaining ties to the regime or its security apparatus.
“They come as students or professors,” he said, “but many have previous ties to the IRGC, and part of their role is to normalize the Islamic Republic in universities and gather information on activists.”
A billboard depicting Iran’s supreme leaders since 1979: (from left to right) Ayatollahs Ruhollah Khomeini (until 1989), Ali Khamenei (until 2026) and Mojtaba Khamenei (incumbent) is shown above a highway in Tehran on March 10, 2026. Iran marked the appointment of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei in March to replace his father as supreme leader. 9, 2026. (AFP/via Getty Images)
That category includes individuals identified in recent reporting on U.S. campuses, such as Leila Khatami, daughter of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami at Union College in New York, Zeinab Hajjarian, daughter of Saeed Hajjarian, a founder of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, according to a March 18 report New York Post report.
The second layer, Ghadimi explained, is financial in nature and consists of former insiders and trusted affiliates who enter Western countries as investors or businessmen, often with significant capital that raises questions about its origins.
“In Iran, a monthly salary can be $100 or $200, while an apartment costs $100,000,” he said. “So if someone arrives with millions, he is not an ordinary individual.”
These individuals, he said, often serve as conduits for moving money out of Iran, operating under the guise of private companies while maintaining ties to the system that made their wealth possible. “They are changing their professional status and entering as private sector investors,” he said. “But they are trusted by the system.”
The third layer includes individuals who receive explicit approval from the regime to move large amounts of money abroad, a process that Ghadimi says requires a “green light” from the security apparatus and often comes with expectations. “To move that amount of money you need permission,” he said, “and in return they help fund networks linked to the regime.”
A woman holds an Iranian flag during the funeral of Ali Shamkhani in Imamzadeh Saleh in northern Tehran, Iran, on March 14, 2026. (Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
One of the most prominent examples is Mahmoud Reza Khavari, the former chairman of Bank Melli Iran, who fled the country in 2011 after the bank was involved in an embezzlement scandal worth about $2.6 billion, one of the largest corruption cases in Iran’s history.
Khavari later settled in Canada, where public reports indicate he and his family acquired millions of dollars in real estate, including properties in Toronto, where he still resides more than a decade later.
For Zand the pattern is unmistakable.
“It’s a mafia structure,” she said.
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Ali Larijani addresses a press conference in Tehran, Iran. Larijani, a top Iranian official and a conservative force within the Iranian theocracy, was killed in an Israeli attack on March 17, 2026. (Henghameh Fahimi/AFP via Getty Images)
A global footprint: from Atlanta to London
At the same time, a February 2026 Guardian report highlighted how relatives of Iran’s elites have built lives not only in the United States but also in Britain and Canada, including members of the Larijani family and relatives of other senior officials, even as the regime continues to position itself in opposition to the West.
Thousands of relatives of Iranian officials were believed to be living across Western countries, IranWire reported in 2022, although precise figures remain difficult to independently verify, underscoring both the scale of the phenomenon and the opaqueness of the system behind it.
“The problem is even more visible in Europe,” Aarabi said. “Governments, not least Britain, have turned a blind eye.”
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In this photo obtained by Iran’s ISNA news agency, Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, looks on in Tehran on October 13, 2024. (Hamed JAFARNEJAD/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Power, possessions and the next generation
Mojtaba Khamenei, who will become the country’s new supreme leader, is linked to a network of overseas assets, including high-end real estate in Europe.
A March 2026 investigation by The Times of London identified two luxury apartments in London’s Kensington district, acquired in 2014 and 2016 through intermediaries, which are directly adjacent to the Israeli embassy grounds.
The findings are part of a broader probe into Khamenei’s alleged foreign assets, with a Bloomberg investigation estimating a multi-country portfolio totaling around $138 million in assets in Europe and the Gulf, pending verification of full ownership structures.
“He operated behind the scenes and headed much of the Revolutionary Guards’ security and economic cartel,” Ghadimi said. “His hands are deeply stained with corruption and crimes, and the same Revolutionary Guard is now the main force supporting his rise.”
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A person holds an image of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iranian demonstrators protest the US-Israeli attacks in Tehran, Iran, February 28, 2026. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)
A system that the Iranians themselves cannot escape
Within Iran the contrast with everyday life is great. Women are being arrested for violating dress codes, protesters are being jailed and economic problems have worsened for much of the population. Outside Iran, the children of the elite live differently.
“They tell people how to live, what to wear, what to believe,” Zand said. “But their own families don’t live like that.”
For her, it’s not just about hypocrisy, but also about strategy. “It’s also about influence,” she said. “They integrate into societies, they build networks, they learn how the West works.”
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Pro-government protesters burn an American flag at the University of Tehran on June 19, 2009 in Tehran, Iran. (Getty Images)
Aarabi believes that Western governments have failed to respond accordingly. “The oligarchs of the Islamic regime should not be treated differently from Putin’s oligarchs,” he said. “The West must identify, punish and deport these individuals.”
