12 Facts About Cyrus Hashemi

Cyrus Hashemi was an Iranian arms dealer linked to the Iran-Contra affair, Brokers of Death arms case, and 1980 October Surprise theory.

Robert Dreyfuss claimed Hashemi was a CIA and Mossad agent; Hashemi sued Dreyfuss and Lyndon LaRouche, whose Executive Intelligence Review had accused Hashemi of being linked to the alleged "funding of Iranian terrorism in the United States," with the case dismissed in June 1983 due to Hashemi's failure to respond to legal documents.

Cyrus Hashemi died from acute myeloblastic leukemia July 1986 in London.

Cyrus Hashemi said he was a cousin to Akbar Cyrus Hashemi Rafsanjani, an aide of the Ayatollah Khomeini who was elected Speaker of the Iranian Parliament in 1980.

From November 1980 to January 1981 wiretaps were placed in the New York offices of the First Gulf Bank and Trust Company, of which Cyrus Hashemi was the head.

Cyrus Hashemi later returned $290,000 to Cogan, via the office of John Stanley Pottinger, after Cogan had determined that less than $100,000 had been spent for its intended purpose.

In June 1985 Cyrus Hashemi approached William Casey with a new arms-for-hostages plan.

The Times said in 1988 it had discovered that Cyrus Hashemi was meeting with Adnan Khashoggi and Manucher Ghorbanifar, and that Cyrus Hashemi's efforts to arrange a deal collapsed in August 1985 due to Kashoggi's competing efforts to arrange US access to Ghorbanifar via Robert McFarlane.

In 1986 Cyrus Hashemi acted as a government informant in a four-month sting operation for the US Customs Service, resulting in the Brokers of Death arms case, which the Los Angeles Times described in 1988 as "the largest arms conspiracy prosecution ever brought by the Justice Department".

Cyrus Hashemi had agreed to act as an informant in exchange for the dropping of arms smuggling charges against him.

Cyrus Hashemi died on 21 July 1986 after becoming ill with a rare and "virulent" form of leukemia diagnosed only two days earlier.

West reported that Cyrus Hashemi died of acute myoblastic leukemia, and said that the condition could not have been induced in Cyrus Hashemi through drugs or other means.