Mostafa Chamran

Engineer, guerrilla fighter, and political figure. Helped organize the Freedom Movement of Iran from the United States. In 1971 he left the US for Lebanon, where he became the close associate and military right-hand man of Musa al-Sadr. Together they co-founded the Amal Movement in 1975 as the military wing of the Movement of the Deprived. Chamran established training camps in southern Lebanon near the Israeli border, where he trained hundreds of Shia fighters — and, by his own account, Iranian volunteers as well. His training infrastructure, fighter networks, and organizational methods in Lebanon laid critical groundwork for the later emergence of Hezbollah after the 1982 Israeli invasion. After the Iranian Revolution, Chamran returned to Iran and served as the first post-revolution Minister of Defence. He fought on the front lines in the Iran–Iraq War and was killed in action on 21 June 1981 in Dehlavieh, Khuzestan.