Millions of dollars flow through my networks every month to pay for weapons and training and salaries and operations in Lebanon.

I became one of the most important financial links in the chain that connected Thran to Beirut.

I was the invisible hand that kept the money flowing and the resistance alive.

And I believed with all my heart that I was doing the will of God.

The first major operation that my money helped to fund was the bombing of the United States Marine barracks in Beirut on October 23rd, 1983.

A truck loaded with explosives drove into the building where American peacekeeping soldiers were sleeping.

The blast was so powerful that it collapsed the entire fourstory structure into a pile of rubble and dust.

and 241 American servicemen were killed in that single attack.

It was the deadliest single day death toll for the United States Marine Corps since the battle of Evoima in World War II.

When the news reached Thran, there was celebration among the men I worked with.

They congratulated each other and praised Allah for this great victory against the American enemy.

I sat among them and accepted their congratulations because my money had helped make this attack possible.

I had funded the purchase of the explosives that had killed those young men while they slept in their beds.

And I felt nothing but pride.

I tell you this now with deep shame burning in my chest because I need you to understand what kind of man I was.

I was not someone who accidentally stumbled into evil.

I was not a man who was tricked into doing bad things without understanding what he was doing.

I knew exactly what my money was being used for.

I knew that the funds I sent to Lebanon were buying explosives and weapons that would be used to kill people.

I knew that innocent civilians would die as a result of the operations I was financing.

And I did not care.

I had convinced myself so completely that I was doing God’s work, that I could watch hundreds of people die and feel nothing except satisfaction that the mission had been accomplished.

That is what happens when you allow religious fanaticism to take root in your heart.

It turns you into a monster while making you believe you are a saint.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, my role as Hezbollah’s chief financeier grew larger and more complex with each passing year.

But the organization was expanding rapidly from a small militia into a powerful military and political force in Lebanon.

It needed more money than ever before to pay for its growing army of fighters, its weapons stockpiles, its social services programs that won the loyalty of the Shia population and its increasingly sophisticated operations against Israel.

I provided a significant portion of this funding through my networks.

I worked directly with the IRGC Kutz force and its legendary commander who would later become known to the world as General Kasm Solmani.

In the early days, Solmani was just a young officer rising through the ranks of the IRGC.

But I could see even then that he was different from the others.

He was brilliant and ruthless and completely dedicated to the cause.

The he and I developed a working relationship that would last for decades.

In 1994, my money helped finance another devastating attack.

A car bomb exploded outside the MIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Iris, Argentina, killing 85 people and injuring hundreds more.

This attack was carried out by operatives connected to Hezbollah and Iran, and it was planned with meticulous precision.

The target was chosen to send a message to the Jewish community worldwide that no one was safe from the reach of the resistance.

When I learned about the attack, I felt the same cold satisfaction I had felt after the Beirut bombing.

85 innocent people were dead, men and women and young people who had nothing to do with the conflict in the Middle East.

uh they were just ordinary people going about their ordinary lives in a country thousands of miles away from Lebanon and Iran and my money had helped to murder them.

I accepted this as the cost of the holy war I believed I was fighting.

The years passed and my wealth continued to grow at a staggering rate.

The Iranian government rewarded my loyalty and my service with access to the most lucrative business opportunities in the country.

I was given exclusive contracts to trade Iranian oil on the international black market, bypassing the sanctions that were supposed to prevent such trade.

I was allowed to import goods that were banned under international restrictions and sell them at enormous markups to the Iranian market.

I invested in real estate and construction and telecommunications.

Tate, I built a hidden empire worth billions of dollars that was scattered across dozens of countries in shell companies and secret accounts that no international investigator could ever trace back to me.

Forbes magazine and the other organizations that track the wealth of the world’s richest people had no idea I existed.

I was invisible to them because my entire fortune was designed to be invisible.

I met Hassan Nasalla for the first time in the mid 1990s after he became the leader of Hezbollah.

He was a small man with a thick black beard and round glasses who spoke softly but carried an authority that made everyone around him listen carefully to every word he said.

I traveled to Beirut secretly several times over the years to meet with him and discuss the financial needs of the organization.

We would sit together in safe houses that were moved regularly to avoid Israeli intelligence.

He would thank me for my generosity and tell me that the resistance could not survive without the support of faithful men like me.

He would look into my eyes and tell me that I was earning my place in paradise with every dollar I gave.

His words reinforced everything I already believed about myself.

I was a holy warrior.

I was a servant of God.

I was one of the chosen few who had been given the privilege of funding the most important struggle in the history of Islam.

The 2006 Lebanon war was another turning point in my involvement with Hezbollah.

When Israel launched its military offensive against southern Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s crossber raid, then the organization needed massive amounts of money to sustain its fight against one of the most powerful armies in the world.

I worked around the clock with my networks to funnel emergency funds to Hezbollah during those 33 days of intense fighting.

Millions of dollars flowed through my channels to pay for rockets and missiles that were fired at Israeli cities.

Millions more went to pay the fighters and support their families.

When the war ended with Hezbollah still standing and declaring victory, I felt an enormous sense of accomplishment.

My money had helped the resistance survive the full might of the Israeli military.

I was praised by the IRGC and by Hezbollah’s leadership as one of the heroes who had made this possible.

I accepted their praise with a humble smile while inside I felt like the most important man in the world.

But somewhere during those decades of funding death and destruction, something small and quiet began to stir inside me.

I cannot tell you exactly when it started because it was so gradual that I barely noticed it at first.

It was like a tiny crack appearing in a massive dam, so small that you would miss it if you were not looking carefully, but it was there.

And over time, that crack grew wider and deeper.

Even as I tried to ignore it and pretend it did not exist, the crack was doubt.

It was a faint whisper in the back of my mind asking questions that I did not want to answer.

Questions like why does God need my money to kill innocent people? Questions like why are women and children dying because of my financial support? uh questions like, “Is this really what the God who created the heavens and the earth wants me to do with the wealth he gave me?” These questions came to me late at night when I was alone in my mansion in Thrron.

They came to me when
I read news reports about the victims of the attacks I had helped to finance.

I pushed these questions away every time they appeared.

I reminded myself of the Quran verses that the clerics had read to me in that meeting with Kmeni back in 1982.

I reminded myself that funding jihad was a sacred obligation.

I reminded myself that the scholars and the ayatollus and the supreme leader himself had all told me that what I was doing was right and holy.

Who was I to question the wisdom of men who had spent their entire lives studying the word of God? Or who was I to doubt the teachings of the greatest religious minds in the Shia world? I was just a businessman.

I was not a scholar.

I was not qualified to interpret scripture or to make judgments about right and wrong.

My job was to obey and to serve and to tr that the people above me knew what they were doing.

So I silenced the doubts and I continued doing what I had always done.

I continued sending money to Hezbollah.

I continued funding the resistance.

I continued telling myself that I was serving God.

By the time General Kasim Solmani was killed by an American drone strike in January 2020, the doubts that I had been suppressing for years had grown into something I could no longer ignore.

Solmani’s death shook me deeply because I had known him personally for decades.

We had worked together on countless operations.

We had shared meals and conversations and secrets that could never be spoken in public.

And now he was dead.

Blown apart by a missile fired from a drone flying high above Baghdad.

The man who had been the architect of Iran’s entire regional strategy was gone in an instant.

I attended the massive funeral ceremonies in Iran where millions of people poured into the streets to mourn him.

I watched as grown men wept and beat their chests and swore revenge against America.

But I did not feel what they felt.

I felt empty.

I felt hollow.

I looked at the faces of the mourers and I saw genuine grief and rage.

But all I could feel was the growing weight of doubt pressing down on my soul like a stone that was getting heavier with every passing day.

When Hassan Nasallah was killed by an Israeli air strike in September 2024, uh, whatever was left of my old certainty crumbled completely.

Nasallah had been the face of Hezbollah for over 30 years.

He had been the man who told me I was earning my place in paradise.

He had been the voice that reassured me that my money was being used for a holy purpose.

And now he was dead.

Just like Solmani, buried under the rubble of a building in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

The leaders I had served and believed in were being eliminated one by one.

The cause I had devoted my life and my fortune to was being dismantled piece by piece.

And the questions I had been running from for decades were now screaming in my ear so loudly that I could not silence them anymore.

Is this really what God wants? Has any of this been worth the suffering it has caused? Uh, have I spent my entire life serving God or have I been serving something else entirely? I did not know the answers, but I knew that I could not continue living the way I had been living.

Something had to change.

I just did not know what.

It happened on a cold night in late November 2022.

I was alone in my mansion in the Navaran district of northern Thran.

My wife Sora had gone to bed early and the house was quiet except for the sound of wind blowing through the garden outside.

I was sitting in my study surrounded by shelves of expensive books that I had collected over the years but rarely read.

I was drinking tea and staring at the wall thinking about everything that had been weighing on my mind.

The debts of Solmani and the growing sense that everything I had built my life around was crumbling at the doubts that I could no longer push away.

The emptiness that had settled into my chest like a permanent guest that refused to leave.

I felt tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep.

I felt tired in my soul, tired of pretending, tired of justifying, tired of running from the truth that was chasing me.

Then, without any warning, a sharp pain exploded in my chest.

It felt like someone had driven a hot iron rod straight through my rib cage and into my heart.

I gasped for air, but my lungs would not work properly.

The teacup fell from my hands and shattered on the marble floor.

I tried to stand up from my chair, but my legs collapsed beneath me and I fell to the ground.

The pain was unlike anything I had ever experienced in my entire life.

It was not just physical pain.

It was as if my entire body was shutting down all at once.

I could feel my heart beating erratically inside my chest.

It would pound hard three or four times and then stop for what felt like an eternity before pounding again.

I knew immediately that I was having a heart attack.

I tried to call out for my wife, but my voice came out as nothing more than a weak whisper that could not possibly reach her bedroom upstairs.

I do not know how long I lay on the floor of my study before someone found me.

It could have been minutes or it could have been much longer.

Time had lost all meaning.

The pain came in waves, each one worse than the last.

I felt cold sweat pouring down my face and soaking through my shirt.

My vision was blurring and darkening at the edges.

I thought about my children.

I thought about my wife sleeping peacefully upstairs, not knowing that her husband was dying on the floor beneath her.

I thought about all the money I had accumulated over my lifetime.

Billions of dollars hidden in accounts and shell companies around the world.

None of it could save me now.

Not a single dollar of it could stop the pain or restart my failing heart.

All the wealth and power and influence I had spent my life building meant absolutely nothing in that moment.

I was just a 70-year-old man lying on a cold floor waiting to die.

Eventually, my wife woke up and came looking for me when she noticed I had not come to bed.

She found me unconscious on the floor of my study and she screamed so loudly that the guards posted outside the mansion came running in.

Uh they called for an ambulance immediately and within minutes I was being rushed through the dark streets of Thran toward a private hospital that treated only the elite members of Iranian society.

Dr.

Yousef Shahabi, one of the best cardiac surgeons in the country, was called in from his home to operate on me.

They wheeled me into the operating room where a team of doctors and nurses worked frantically to save my life.

They hooked me up to machines that monitored my heart and my blood pressure and my oxygen levels.

They injected me with medications designed to stabilize my condition.

But my heart was failing.

The muscle was damaged and it could not pump blood effectively anymore.

My body was dying from the inside out.

Then it happened.

The machines connected to my body began screaming with alarm signals.

Then the steady beeping that indicated my heartbeat suddenly turned into a long continuous tone.

My heart had stopped beating completely.

The doctors began performing emergency resuscitation.

They pressed on my chest with their hands, trying to manually restart my heart.

They used electrical pedals to shock my chest, hoping to jolt my heart back into rhythm.

But nothing worked.

For several minutes, that felt like an eternity to the medical team working over my lifeless body.

I was clinically dead.

My heart was not beating.

My lungs were not breathing.

My brain was receiving no oxygen.

By every medical definition, I was a dead man lying on an operating table in a hospital in Thran.

But something extraordinary was happening to me in those minutes between life and death.

Something that no medical textbook could ever explain.

I found myself standing in a place that was not the hospital.

I was no longer lying on an operating table.

I was no longer surrounded by doctors and machines.

I was standing upright in a vast open space that stretched in every direction as far as I could see.

The ground beneath my feet was solid, but I could not tell what it was made of.

It was not earth or stone or anything I recognized.

The air around me was warm and clean and filled with a piece so profound that it made my chest ache with longing.

Above me was not a sky in any normal sense.

It was a canopy of light that pulsed with colors I had never seen before.

Colors that do not exist in the natural world.

Colors that seemed alive and conscious as if they were aware of my presence.

I stood there in complete silence trying to understand where I was and what was happening to me.

My heart attack and the hospital and the pain all seemed like distant memories from another lifetime.

Then I saw a figure approaching me from within the light.

He walked slowly and deliberately like someone who had all the time in the world and would never need to hurry for any reason.

As he came closer, I could see that he was dressed in white robes that shone with a brightness that should have been blinding but was not.

His face was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life.

Not beautiful in the way that humans use that word to describe physical attractiveness.

Beautiful in a way that transcended everything I understood about beauty and goodness and truth.

His eyes held a depth of love and compassion that I had never encountered in any human being I had ever met.

When he stopped in front of me and looked into my eyes, I knew exactly who he was.

This was Jesus.

The one the Christians called the son of God.

The one I had been taught my entire life was just a prophet and nothing more.

He was standing before me now in a glory and majesty that left no room for doubt about who he truly was.

Jesus spoke my name.

He said, “Kazm.

” And the way he said it broke something inside me that I did not even know was there.

He said my name with a tenderness and a familiarity that told me he had known me before I was born.

He had watched me take my first breath.

He had watched me grow from a child into a man.

He had watched me make every choice and every decision throughout my entire life.

He had watched me walk deeper and deeper into darkness for 40 years.

And through all of it, he had loved me.

I could feel his love washing over me like waves crashing on a shore.

It was overwhelming and terrifying and beautiful all at the same time.

I fell to my knees before him because I could not stand in the presence of such holiness and such love.

My legs simply gave way beneath me and I collapsed onto the ground weeping like a child.

Then Jesus began to show me things that shattered my heart into a million pieces.

He showed me the bombing of the marine barracks in Beirut.

But he did not show it to me the way I had seen it before on news reports.

He showed it to me through the eyes of the young American soldiers who had died that morning.

I felt their fear as the building collapsed around them.

I felt their pain as the rubble crushed their bodies.

I heard them crying out for their mothers in the darkness.

I saw their faces, young faces.

Boys who were barely old enough to shave.

Boys who had families waiting for them back home in America.

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