Iran’s Elite Lead Double Lives: Anti-West Rhetoric at Home, Western Lifestyles Abroad

For decades, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and ruling clerical elite have maintained a strategic dichotomy: publicly denouncing Western values while quietly securing comfortable futures in those same Western nations for their families.

“The Islamic regime in Iran is corrupt to its core,” says Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran. “While regime clerics and IRGC commanders violently Islamize Iranian society and export anti-Americanism globally, their sons and daughters live lavish lifestyles on blood money in Western capitals.”

This contradiction is exemplified by figures like Masoumeh Ebtekar, once the English-speaking spokesperson for the 1979 U.S. embassy hostage crisis who later rose to senior positions in Iran’s government. Iranian journalist Banafsheh Zand remembers Ebtekar as a quiet classmate at Tehran’s elite Iranzamin School, an institution designed for children of diplomats and Iran’s upper class.

Years after defending the embassy takeover as “the best move” for the revolution, Ebtekar’s son, Eissa Hashemi, built an academic career in Los Angeles – a trajectory starkly at odds with his mother’s anti-Western ideology.

“They take the money from corruption inside the country and use it to live a better life elsewhere,” Zand explained. “It’s not a few cases. It’s how they operate.”

The “Aghazadeh” Phenomenon

What Zand describes is widely known inside Iran as the “aghazadeh” phenomenon – a term for children of the Iranian regime’s elite who enjoy privileged lives abroad while their families enforce strict ideological restrictions at home. For many Iranians, these individuals symbolize the profound gap between the regime’s rhetoric and its reality.

Exiled Iranian journalist Mehdi Ghadimi, now based in Canada, argues that this phenomenon is highly structured, operating as a three-tiered system that allows regime-linked individuals to embed themselves throughout Western societies.

“When we talk about the presence of agents of the Islamic Republic, especially the IRGC, here in Canada, we should understand this is not random,” Ghadimi told Fox News Digital. “It operates in layers.”

A Three-Tier Network

The first tier consists of those who arrive as students and academics, often presenting themselves as ordinary immigrants while maintaining ties to the regime or its security apparatus.

“They come as students or professors,” Ghadimi explained, “but many have prior connections to the IRGC, and part of their role is to normalize the Islamic Republic in universities and gather information on activists.”

This category includes individuals identified in recent reporting across U.S. campuses, such as Leila Khatami, daughter of former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami at Union College in New York, and Zeinab Hajjarian, daughter of Saeed Hajjarian, a founder of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence, at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

The second layer is financial, comprising former insiders and trusted affiliates who enter Western countries as investors or business figures, often carrying significant unexplained capital.

“In Iran, a monthly salary might be $100 or $200, while an apartment costs $100,000,” Ghadimi noted. “So when someone arrives with millions, they are not an ordinary individual.”

The third layer involves individuals who receive explicit approval from the regime to move large sums abroad – a process requiring a “green light” from the security apparatus and often carrying expectations in return.

One prominent example is Mahmoud Reza Khavari, former chairman of Bank Melli Iran, who fled to Canada in 2011 after the bank was implicated in a $2.6 billion embezzlement scandal. Public reporting shows that Khavari and his family acquired millions in real estate in Toronto, where he remains more than a decade later.

“It’s a mafia structure,” Zand concluded.

A Global Footprint

The phenomenon extends well beyond North America. Fatemeh Ardeshir-Larijani, daughter of senior Iranian political figure Ali Larijani, held a position at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta until public pressure led to her departure earlier this year.

A February report by The Guardian highlighted how relatives of Iranian elites have built lives not only in the United States but also in Britain and Canada, including members of the Larijani family and other senior officials, even as the regime positions itself in opposition to Western values.

According to a 2022 IranWire report, thousands of relatives of Iranian officials are believed to be living across Western countries, though precise figures remain difficult to independently verify.

“The problem is even more visible in Europe,” Aarabi said. “Governments, not least the UK, have turned a blind eye.”

Power, Assets and the Next Generation

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, has been linked to a network of overseas assets, including high-value real estate in Europe. A March investigation by The Times of London identified two luxury apartments in London’s Kensington neighborhood, acquired through intermediaries in 2014 and 2016, that sit directly adjacent to the Israeli Embassy compound.

These findings are part of a broader investigation into Khamenei’s alleged overseas holdings, with Bloomberg estimating a portfolio spanning multiple countries and totaling approximately $138 million in assets across Europe and the Gulf.

“He has been operating behind the scenes, managing a large part of the Revolutionary Guard’s 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 backing his rise.”

A System Iranians Cannot Escape

The contrast with everyday life in Iran is stark. Women face arrest for violating dress codes, protesters are jailed, and economic hardship has deepened across much of the population. Yet outside Iran, the children of the elite live dramatically different lives.

“They’re telling people how to live, what to wear, what to believe,” Zand said. “But their own families don’t live like that.”

For her, the issue is not only hypocrisy but strategy. “It’s also about influence. They integrate into societies, they build networks, they learn how the West works.”

Aarabi believes Western governments have failed to respond appropriately: “The Islamic regime’s oligarchs should be treated no differently from Putin’s oligarchs,” he said. “The West should identify, sanction and deport these individuals.”