In 1930, Mohammad Mahdi Haj Ebrahim Iraqi was born in one of the neighbourhoods south of Tehran. He spent his primary education in Hafez Primary School and his secondary education in Marvi High School and Dar al-Fonun; but due to poverty, he did not study at higher levels.
At the age of sixteen, Iraqi became acquainted with the devotees of Islam. Sometime later, he took over the Central Council against the Shah’s regime. During Mosaddeq’s rule, he was the active liaison of Navvab Safavi and Ayatollah Kashani with the government.
Iraqi was one of the designers of the Fadaiyan-e Islam community in Baharestan Square on the afternoon of March 7, 1951, to expose the reasons for the revolutionary execution of Razmara. While communists and nationalists attributed this action to themselves.
During the arrest of Navvab Safavi in 1952, Mahdi Iraqi, along with 52 other people, entered the Qasr prison in protest and surrounded the prison grounds. But with the attack of the agents, many sit-ins were arrested, including Mahdi Iraqi. Iraqi was imprisoned for six months until July 16, 1952.
After the death of Ayatollah Sayyed Hoseyn Boroujerdi on March 29, 1961, Iraqi became fascinated by the character of Imam Khomeini. With the guidance of Imam Khomeini and with the aim of creating unity in the ranks of militant groups, he was able to form several Islamic groups and provide the basis for the formation of a group called the “Islamic Allied Society.”
He also took care of the Imam’s house during the attack of the Shah’s regime commandos on Feyzieh in March 1963, along with a number of fighters.
Iraqi then came to Tehran and organized the great Ashura demonstrations of Hoseyni against the Shah’s regime on June 4, 1963. At that time, he was the main decision-maker in closing the Tehran bazaar and played an effective role in the movement of the scholars and authorities from the seminaries to the centers of cities and towns.
Haj Mahdi Iraqi was arrested along with dozens of others during a large demonstration on the first anniversary of the June 6 incident in Tehran and spent two months in prison. After preparing the Imam for Turkey to pursue the struggle against the Shah’s regime, he organized the military branch of the Mutalifah community, which in the first act killed the then Prime Minister Hasan Ali Mansour in February of that year, less than three months after Imam Khomeini’s deportation.
Iraqi had previously played a role in the execution of Abdul-Hoseyn Hazhir (1949) and Haji Ali Razmara (1950). Following the assassination of Hasan-Ali Mansour, many members of the Mutalifa community were arrested, including Iraqi, who was arrested on February 8, 1965, and after being tortured, he was sentenced to death along with five other people.
In protest of the Iraqi death sentence, the seminary in Qom was closed and students sat in the house of the authorities. As a result, the death sentences of Iraqi and another of his comrades, Hashem Amani, were commuted to life imprisonment, and they were transferred to Qasr Prison. But four other convicts named Sadeq Amani, Mohammad Bokharaei, Reza Saffar-Harandi and Mortaza Niknejad were shot dead on June 16, 1965.
Haj Mahdi Iraqi remained in prison for thirteen years. In prison, in a confrontation with the convicts of the National Front of Iran and the People’s Mojahedin Organization, he clarified the line of “eclecticism” and exposed their intellectual deviations in prison. Once in 1969, along with Mohiyeddin Anvari and Habibollah Askar-Oladi, they were transferred to Borazjan Prison for some time on charges of disturbing order and disobeying regulations. Iraqi was released from prison in February 1977.
With the height of the Islamic Revolution, on the advice of Ayatollah Dr. Mohammad Beheshti, he travelled to Neauphle-le-Château in Paris. He took over the internal management of the Imam’s house and returned to Tehran in 1979 to participate in the organization of the Tasu’a and Ashura demonstrations. After the successful demonstration, he left for France again and returned to Tehran with Imam.
After the victory of the revolution, Iraqi was first appointed to director of Qasr Prison. He then became the chairman of the Central Council of the Foundation for the Underprivileged, and it was in this position that he was in charge of the financial affairs of the Keyhan Institute for some time.
He was assassinated by three members of the Forqan group on the morning of August 26, 1979, when he was on his way to work with his son, Hesam and was martyred along with his son. Her body and that of her son were buried in the city of Qom, next to Lady Fatimah al-Ma’sumah.
Following his martyrdom, Imam Khomeini, in a message referring to the 20-year history of his acquaintance with Iraqi and the weight of his martyrdom, emphasized that it is small for him to die in bed.
Haj Mahdi Iraqi got married in 1956. The result of this marriage is three sons named Amir, Mahmoud and Hesam.
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