He looked at me, then looked at the charge in his hand, then looked back at me.

“Impossible,” he muttered.

He reached out and touched my wrist.

He felt the pulse.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, strong, steady, a rhythm of victory.

He dot dot dot.

He has a pulse.

The doctor announced to the room.

His voice cracked.

He is warm.

The hallway erupted into chaos.

Some people were praying.

Some were filming with their phones.

My wife had fainted this time for real.

and nurses were attending to her.

I stood in the middle of the storm, closing my eyes, and I just let the memory of his face wash over me.

I wasn’t in the hospital.

I was back in the light.

I was holding on to the hem of his garment.

They kept me in the hospital for another 24 hours.

They ran every test known to modern medicine.

Brain scans, heart scans, blood work.

They were looking for a mistake.

They were looking for a coma, a catalpsy, a misdiagnosis, but the death certificate was already signed.

The rigger mortise had been documented.

The settling of the blood was visible on my skin.

There was no scientific explanation.

The only explanation was the one I kept singing about.

When they finally released me, the news had already spread.

The dead imam is alive.

It traveled through WhatsApp groups, through the tea houses, through the neighborhood.

Going home was the hardest part.

My wife, Fatima, was silent in the car.

She wouldn’t look at me.

She sat in the passenger seat, staring out the window, her hands gripping her purse so tightly, her knuckles were white.

She was afraid of me.

Her husband had died.

And this man who came back, he looked like Hassan.

He sounded like a son, but he felt different.

She could feel the change in my spirit.

She could feel that the authority of Islam, that heavy, stern mantle I used to wear, was gone, replaced by something she didn’t recognize yet, replaced by joy.

When we pulled up to our house, the street was full.

The funeral tent had been set up.

The large green coffin was sitting there on a stand, waiting for a body that was currently sitting in the backseat of a taxi.

I stepped out of the car.

Hundreds of men stopped talking.

The silence of the mosque courtyard was nothing compared to this silence.

These were my neighbors, my congregation, the butcher, the baker, the school teacher.

They looked at me as if I were a monster.

In their minds, there are only two reasons a man comes back from the dead.

Either it is a miracle of Allah or it is black magic.

And because I was an among they, they wanted to believe it was a miracle.

One of the elders, a man named Uncle Ysef, stepped forward.

He had tears in his eyes.

He reached out and touched my arm.

He has returned our imam to us.

The crowd erupted.

Allah Akbar.

Allahu Akbar.

They surged forward to kiss my hands.

They wanted to touch the man who had seen death.

They wanted me to lead the prayer.

It was time for the Maghreb prayer.

The sun was setting.

“Lead us, Imam,” they shouted.

“Take us to the mosque.

Lead the prayer of thanksgiving.

” They lifted me up on their shoulders.

They carried me towards the mosque, the very place where I had fallen.

But as they carried me, panic seized my heart.

I couldn’t lead the prayer.

I couldn’t stand on that minbar and recite the words I used to recite.

I couldn’t say that God has no son.

I couldn’t say that Jesus was just a prophet.

I couldn’t say those words because I had seen the scars.

I had seen the truth.

If I spoke the old words, I would be betraying the man of light.

I would be betraying the one who pulled me out of the freezer.

Put me down, I shouted.

Put me down.

They lowered me near the entrance of the mosque.

I stood there trembling.

The adhan began to sound from the speakers, the recorded voice of the muesin since I wasn’t there to do it live.

Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar.

The call to prayer that used to fill me with pride now filled me with a deep aching sorrow.

It sounded empty.

It sounded like a call to a room where no one was home.

I looked at the faces of my people.

These men I had led for 15 years.

They were hungry.

They were desperate for God.

That’s why they were cheering.

They thought my resurrection proved their religion.

They didn’t know yet that my resurrection was the end of it.

I opened my mouth to speak.

I wanted to tell them.

I wanted to scream, “It’s him.

It’s Jesus.

He is the one.

” But as I opened my mouth, I saw my wife standing at the edge of the crowd.

She was looking at me with pleading eyes.

Don’t, her eyes, said.

Don’t destroy us.

Don’t say it.

She knew.

Somehow she knew that whatever I was about to say would tear our lives apart.

She knew that in our culture to leave Islam is not just a change of mind.

It is a betrayal of blood.

It is a crime.

I closed my mouth.

I swallowed the truth.

Not out of cowardice, but out of a sudden overwhelming realization of the cost.

I was alive.

But my life as I knew it was over.

If you are watching this and you are standing on the edge of a decision that you know will cost you everything, maybe your family, your job, your reputation, I want to speak to you.

I stood in that courtyard surrounded by people who love the old me, knowing that if I introduced them to the new me, they might kill me.

It is a terrifying place to be.

The pressure to conform, to just go back to the way things were, is enormous.

Just be the imam.

The voice in my head whispered.

Just fake it.

You can believe in Jesus in your heart, but stay am Hassan on the outside.

It’s safer.

It’s easier.

But here is the thing about the light I saw in the morg.

You cannot hide it under a basket.

It burns through.

Have you ever felt that burning? That feeling that you can no longer pretend, that you can no longer live a lie even if the truth destroys your comfort, that is the Holy Spirit.

And he is disrupting your life for a reason.

If you are tired of pretending, if you are tired of the mask, I want you to subscribe to this channel because the rest of this story, what happened when I finally opened my mouth is going to show you that while the cost of truth is high, the reward is worth more than life itself.

I looked at Uncle Ysef.

I looked at the crowd.

I cannot lead the prayer today, I said, my voice shaking.

I am dot dot dot tired.

I need to rest.

They nodded sympathetically.

Of course, of course.

He has been dead.

Let him rest.

They let me go.

I walked back to my house through the parting crowd.

I walked past the green coffin.

It was meant for me.

I went into my bedroom and locked the door.

I fell to my knees on the prayer rug, but I didn’t face Mecca.

I didn’t check the compass.

I just looked up.

Lord,” I whispered, using the word ra, but meaning the man with the scars.

“You sent me back.

But they will kill me if I speak.

What do I do? What do I do?” The room was silent.

But then, inside my chest, the melody started again, softly at first, then louder.

It wasn’t just a song of comfort anymore.

It was a song of war.

It was a song of preparation.

I reached into my pocket.

My hand brushed against something cold and metal.

The key.

The key to the mosque.

I pulled it out.

It was heavy iron.

For 15 years, this key had been the symbol of my authority.

It was the key to the minouette, the key to the main doors.

I looked at the key and I remembered the vision in the morg.

Unlock the door.

Tell them I am alive.

I realized then that this key wasn’t just for opening a wooden door.

It was for opening the spiritual prison of my city.

But I also knew that the moment I turned that key for Jesus, the key to my own home, the key to my marriage, the key to my safety might be taken away forever.

I gripped the key in my fist until it hurt.

I will do it, I whispered.

But you have to be with me.

And just like that, the plan was born.

I wasn’t going to run away.

I wasn’t going to hide.

I was going to use the platform I had.

I was going to use the Friday sermon, the most important speech of the week, to drop a bomb that would shatter 600 years of tradition.

Tomorrow was Friday.

That Friday sermon, the one I gave the day after I decided to speak dot dot, it did not end with applause.

It ended with silence, then confusion, then anger.

I stood on the minar, the very place where I had preached Islamic law for 15 years.

And I told them about the man in the light.

I told them about the scars.

I told them that the tomb of Jesus is empty.

And because he lives, I live.

They did not kill me that day, though some wanted to.

God protected me, but they did cast me out.

I lost my title.

I lost my salary.

I lost my status in the community.

My own brother stopped speaking to me.

For a while, it seemed I had lost everything.

But look at this key.

They took away the key to the physical mosque.

They changed the locks.

They tried to erase my name from the history of that building.

But they could not take away the key that the man in the light had placed in my heart.

And do you know what the greatest miracle is? It is not just that my heart started beating again in a morg.

It is what happened to this building behind me years later through a series of events that only God could orchestrate legal battles, miraculous provisions, hearts softening in the government.

This old building, this former fortress of Islam was legally granted to our small community of believers.

A mosque became a church.

The place where I once led prayers to a distant master is now the place where I lead worship to a loving father.

The walls that once heard only Arabic recitations now echo with the songs of the lamb.

The very same melody I heard in the gap between life and death.

God did not just resurrect the imam.

He resurrected the sanctuary.

I am holding this key now not as a guardian of a religion but as a servant of a person.

And I want to ask you a question.

What door is locked in your life right now? Maybe it is the door of fear.

You are afraid of death just like I was.

You are trying to build a fortress of good works, of rituals, of being a good person, hoping it will be enough to protect you from the darkness.

Maybe it is the door of hopelessness.

You feel like you are in a morg, emotionally dead, cold, forgotten.

You think your mistakes are too great, your past is too heavy, and that God could never look at you with anything but anger.

Maybe it is the door of skepticism.

You have heard these stories before, and your mind is fighting them.

You are saying, “This is scientifically impossible.

” You are right.

It is impossible.

But the God I met specializes in the impossible.

I am standing here as a witness.

I am a man who has seen the other side.

I have seen the darkness that waits for those who trust in their own righteousness.

And I have seen the light that waits for those who trust in Jesus.

You do not have to wait until your heart stops beating to meet him.

You do not have to fall from a minouette.

You can meet him right now.

Right where you are sitting.

He is knocking.

Can you hear him? That fluttering in your chest, it’s not indigestion.

It’s not anxiety.

It is the author of life calling your name just like he called mine.

Hassan dot dot come home.

He is calling you.

Sarah dot dot dot dot dot dot domar dot doaria dot come home.

You don’t need a ritual washing to approach him.

You don’t need to memorize a holy book first.

You just need to be broken.

You just need to be willing to say, “I am empty.

Fill me.

” If you want to know this Jesus, if you want the assurance that when you close your eyes in this world, you will open them in his presence, I invite you to take a step of faith today.

It doesn’t have to be a big step, just a whisper.

Jesus, if you are real, show me.

That is a dangerous prayer.

It is the prayer that got me kicked out of my mosque.

But it is the prayer that got me into the kingdom of heaven.

And we want to help you on this journey.

This channel exists for one reason, to share the stories of people who have found the light in the unlikeest of places.

We are building a family here.

A family of former skeptics, former atheists, former Muslims, former broken people who have been put back together by the man with the scars.

If this story has touched you, if you felt the weight of the light while watching this, please do three things for me.

First, subscribe to this channel.

Not because we want numbers, but because every week we share another testimony of a life changed.

You need these stories.

They are fuel for your faith in a dark world.

Click that button and join us.

Second, share this video.

Send it to someone who is afraid of death.

Send it to someone who thinks they are too far gone for God to save.

Be the key that unlocks the door for them.

You never know, your share might be the push they need to fall into the arms of God.

And third, look at the comment section below.

I want you to write one word.

If you believe that God can do the impossible, just type alive.

Let that word be your testimony today.

Let it be a declaration that death does not have the final word.

Let it be a signal to anyone reading the comments that there is hope beyond the grave.

I am Hassan Demir.

I was dead for 48 hours, but because of Jesus Christ, I have never been more alive.

Thank you for watching.

And until next time, keep your eyes on the

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I was the one Iran run to when they need funds to sponsor Hezbollah.

But after I met Jesus, I discovered I was doing the wrong thing.

>> There are billionaires in Iran that the world does not know about.

Men whose fortunes are hidden behind shell companies and secret bank accounts in countries across the globe.

Men whose wealth cannot be tracked by Forbes or any international organization because of sanctions and deliberate concealment.

men who have made their money from arms deals and oil and funding terrorism across the Middle East.

I know this because I was one of them.

My name is Kasm Muhammadi Nijad.

I am 73 years old.

For 40 years, I was the invisible hand that moved billions of dollars from Thran to Beirut to fund Hezbollah’s war machine.

I financed bombings that killed hundreds.

I funded rockets that destroyed homes and orphaned children.

I sat in private meetings with Ayatollah Kmeni himself and with Hassan Nasalla and with General Kazam Solmani and I did it all believing I was doing the will of Allah.

Then one night in 2020 motou my heart stopped beating in a hospital in Thran.

I was clinically dead for four minutes.

And in those four minutes, I stood face to face with Jesus Christ.

He asked me one question that destroyed everything I believed.

He said, “Kazm, why have you been funding the destruction of my children? Today, for the first time in my life, I am going to answer that question live on television before the entire world.

I was born in the spring of 1952 in the city of Tehran, the capital of Iran.

In those days, Thran was a different place than it is today.

The Sha was on the throne and the country was trying to become modern and western.

Uh there were cinemas and restaurants and women walking in the streets without covering their hair.

The mosques were still full of worshippers, but religion did not control every aspect of life the way it would later.

I grew up in a wealthy neighborhood in the northern part of the city where the air was cleaner and the houses were larger than anywhere else in Thran.

My family had money and status and connections to powerful people.

I never knew what it was like to be hungry or poor or desperate.

I never understood the struggles that ordinary Iranians faced every day.

I was born into privilege and I accepted it as my natural right without ever questioning where it came from or what it cost others.

My father was a man named Mustafa Muhammad Najat.

He was one of the most successful merchants in Thran during the time of the Sha.

He traded carpets and textiles and antiques with buyers all over the world.

He had warehouses in the bazar district and offices in Europe and connections to the royal court itself.

The Sha’s family bought carpets from my father for their palaces.

Foreign diplomats and wealthy tourists came to his showrooms to purchase the finest Persian rugs that money could buy.

My father was a proud man who believed that success was a sign of God’s favor.

He taught me that wealth was not something to be ashamed of but something to be celebrated and increased with every opportunity.

He taught me that a man’s worth was measured by the size of his fortune and the respect he commanded from those around him.

These lessons would shape everything I became in the years that followed and would lead me down a path that I could never have imagined.

When I was 18 years old in 1970, my father began teaching me the secrets of his trade.

He took me to his warehouses in the Grand Bazar and showed me how to judge the quality of a carpet by examining its knots and colors and patterns with careful eyes.

He took me to his offices and showed me how to negotiate with buyers and sellers from different countries who spoke different languages and followed different customs.

He introduced me to his context in the government who helped smooth the way for his imports and exports across international borders.

He taught me that business was not just about buying and selling goods in the marketplace.

It was about building relationships with powerful people who could protect you and help you grow.

It was about knowing which palms to grease and which favors to trade and which secrets to keep.

It was about understanding that the rules that applied to ordinary people did not apply to men with money and connections.

I absorbed every single one of these lessons eagerly because I wanted to make my father proud and prove myself worthy.

By the mid 1970s, I had become my father’s right hand in running the family business.

I traveled to London and Paris and New York to meet with buyers and established new markets for our carpets and textiles.

I negotiated deals worth millions of dollars with collectors and dealers and interior designers who wanted authentic Persian rugs for their wealthy clients in the West.

I was only in my early 20s, but I was already richer than most men would ever be in their entire lives.

I wore expensive suits tailored in London.

I drove expensive European cars through the streets of Thrron.

The I stayed in the finest hotels wherever I traveled around the world.

I ate at restaurants where a single meal cost more than what an ordinary Iranian family earned in a month.

I thought I had the world figured out.

I thought I understood exactly how everything worked and how to get whatever I wanted from life.

But I understood nothing at all.

I did not know that the comfortable world I had grown up in was about to be completely destroyed.

The first signs of trouble appeared in 1977 when protest began breaking out in cities across Iran.

People were angry at the sha for many different reasons.

Some were angry about corruption and inequality that left millions in poverty while the elite lived in luxury.

Some were angry about political repression and the Savak secret police who tortured anyone who dared to speak against the government.

Some were angry about Western influence and the way traditional Islamic values were being abandoned in favor of American culture.

The protests grew larger and more violent throughout 1978 as more and more people joined the movement.

The Sha tried to crush them with military force, but nothing worked because the people were no longer afraid.

They poured into the streets by the millions chanting slogans and demanding change and burning pictures of the sha.

And leading them from exile was a man whose name would become synonymous with revolution itself.

His name was Ayatollah Ruhola Kmeni and he was calling on the people to rise up and establish an Islamic government.

My family watched the revolution unfold with a mixture of deep fear and cautious hope.

In my father was worried about what would happen to his business empire if the sha fell from power.

He had built everything under the old system and he did not know if it would survive under a new government with new rules and new leaders.

But my mother was filled with excitement about the possibility of an Islamic government coming to power.

She believed with all her heart that Kmeni was a holy man sent by God himself to restore true religion to Iran.

She prayed for the success of the revolution every single day and encouraged all of us to support it as well.

When the sha finally fled Iran in January 1979 and kain returned in triumph on February 1st, my mother fell to her knees and wept with joy.

She said that a new and glorious era had begun for our country.

She said that God had answered the prayers of the faithful and that Iran would now become a shining beacon of Islam for the entire world to see and follow.

The revolution changed everything for my family and for every family in Iran.

The old elites who had been connected to the sha were swept away like leaves in a storm.

Some were dragged before revolutionary courts and executed.

Some fled the country with whatever they could carry and never returned.

Some lost everything they had worked their whole lives to build.

My father was terrified that we would be targeted because of his known connections to the old regime and the royal court.

But my father was clever and adaptable and he understood how to survive in dangerous times.

He quickly reached out to the new revolutionary leaders and offered his services and his loyalty to the Islamic government.

He donated large amounts of money to Islamic charities and foundations that supported the revolution.

He made sure that the right people in the new government knew that he was a faithful supporter of Kmeni and the new Islamic order that was being established.

His strategy worked brilliantly.

Instead of being destroyed by the revolution like so many other wealthy families, our business survived and actually grew stronger under the new regime.

The revolutionary government needed people who knew how to run businesses and manage large amounts of money.

it.

They needed people who had international connections and who could help them navigate the complex world of global trade, especially as Western countries began imposing sanctions on the new Islamic Republic.

My father was ready and more than willing to serve these needs.

He positioned himself as an indispensable ally to the new rulers of Iran.

He taught me that survival was always more important than principles or ideals.

He taught me that a smart man adapts to whatever system is in power and finds a way to profit from it regardless of who sits on the throne.

I learned this lesson well, perhaps too well, because the adaptability that my father taught me would eventually lead me into a darkness so deep that only a miracle could pull me out of it.

In September 1980, Saddam Hussein sent his army across the border and invaded Iran.

The war that followed would last for eight terrible years and would kill nearly a million people on both sides.

It would destroy entire cities and leave scars on the land and the people that would never fully heal.

But for men like me, the war was something else entirely.

It was an opportunity.

The new Islamic government desperately needed weapons and military equipment to fight the Iraqis.

They needed bullets and rockets and tanks and spare parts for their aging Americanmade fighter jets that the Sha had purchased years before.

International sanctions made it nearly impossible for Iran to buy weapons through normal channels.

The Western countries that had sold arms to the Sha now refused to do business with the Islamic Republic.

So the government turned to men like me, men who had international connections and who knew how to move goods across borders without attracting attention.

Men who understood how to make deals in the shadows where no rules applied.

My father was the one who first introduced me to the world of arms dealing.

He had been approached by contacts within the new revolutionary government who asked if he could use his trading network to help acquire military supplies from foreign sources.

My father saw the opportunity immediately.

The profit margins on weapons were far greater than anything he had ever made selling carpets and textiles.

A single shipment of rifles or ammunition could earn more money than a year of carpet sales.

He brought me into these deals because I was young and energetic and I spoke English and French fluently, which made it easier to negotiate with foreign suppliers.

Together, we began building a new kind of business, a business that dealt not in beautiful Persian rugs, but in instruments of debt and destruction.

We sourced weapons from China and North Korea and Eastern Europe and smuggled them into Iran through secret roads that bypassed international sanctions.

The money poured in faster than I could have ever imagined.

Within two years of entering the arms trade, I had made more money than my father had earned in his entire career selling carpets.

I opened secret bank accounts in Dubai and Switzerland and Hong Kong to hide the profits from international investigators.

I set up shell companies in countries with weak regulations to move money around the world without leaving traces.

I learned the dark art of sanctions evasion and money laundering from experts who had been doing it for decades.

I became one of the most important suppliers of weapons to the Iranian military during the war.

Generals and I, our RGC commanders, called me personally to place orders for equipment they needed on the front lines.

Government ministers invited me to private dinners where deals were made over plates of saffron, rice, and kebabs.

I was becoming one of the most powerful men in Iran, even though almost nobody outside the inner circles of power knew my name.

It was in the spring of 1982 that everything changed in a way I could never have predicted.

I received a message through one of my government contacts telling me that I had been summoned to a private meeting at a secure location in Thran.

The message said that the meeting was being organized by the office of the supreme leader himself and I was told to come alone and to tell no one about the invitation.

My heart was pounding when I arrived at the location which was a large house surrounded by revolutionary guards with machine guns.

I was escorted through several checkpoints and searched thoroughly before being led into a room where some of the most powerful men in Iran were already seated.

There were senior IRGC commanders in military uniforms.

There were government ministers in suits.

There were high ranking clerics in turbans and robes.

And at the center of it, all sitting on a simple cushion on the floor, was Ayatollah Rouola Kmeni himself, the supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

I had never been in the same room as Kmeni before that day.

I had seen him on television and heard his voice on the radio countless times.

But being in his physical presence was something entirely different.

He radiated an authority and a power that I had never felt from any other human being.

The room fell completely silent when he spoke.

Every man in that room, including generals and ministers who commanded thousands of people hung on his every word, like children listening to their father.

Kmeni looked at me with those deep piercing eyes, and I felt like he could see straight into my soul.

He knew who I was.

He knew what I had been doing for the war effort and he had something specific that he wanted me to do next.

Something that would bind me to the Islamic Republic and its mission for the next 40 years of my life.

Kmeni began by speaking about the situation in Lebanon.

He talked about how the Shia Muslim population in southern Lebanon had been oppressed and marginalized for decades.

He talked about how Israel had invaded Lebanon earlier that year and was occupying the southern part of the country.

He said that this was an attack not just on Lebanon but on all of Islam.

He said that it was the duty of every Muslim to fight against the Zionist enemy and to protect the oppressed believers in Lebanon.

Then he revealed his plan.

Iran was going to create and support a new armed movement in Lebanon.

A movement of faithful Shia Muslims who would fight against Israel and defend the honor of Islam.

This movement would be trained and equipped and funded by Iran through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard course guard.

It would become the tip of the spear in Iran’s resistance against Israel and American influence in the Middle East.

The name of this movement was Hezbollah, the party of God.

Kmeni turned his attention directly to me.

He told me that building this movement would require enormous amounts of money.

He said that my skills in moving money across borders and evading international sanctions made me the perfect person to help finance this sacred project.

He told me that funding the resistance against Israel was not just a political act but a religious obligation.

Then one of the senior clerics in the room opened a Quran and began reading verses that he sayeth proved that supporting jihad with your wealth was one of the highest forms of worship in Islam.

Uh he read verse after verse about how those who spend their money in the path of Allah will be rewarded with paradise.

He read about how the believers who fund the fighters are equal in reward to the fighters themselves.

He read about how Allah loves those who sacrifice their wealth for the defense of the faith.

Each verse hit me like a hammer driving the message deeper and deeper into my heart and my mind.

By the time the cleric finished reading, I was completely convinced.

I believed with absolute certainty that what they were asking me to do was not just acceptable but holy.

I believed that God himself was calling me to use my wealth for this sacred purpose.

I believed that funding the fight against Israel would earn me a place in paradise that no amount of prayer or fasting could ever achieve.

And I would be lying if I said that the religious argument was the only thing that convinced me.

There were other incentives as well.

The government promised me protection from any legal troubles.

They promised me exclusive access to lucrative oil contracts and government deals that would make me even wealthier than I already was.

They promised me influence and status within the highest levels of the Islamic Republic.

They were offering me everything a man could want, wealth and power and religious salvation, all wrapped up in one package.

How could I say no? What kind of fool would turn down an offer like that? I said yes to Kmeni that day.

I pledged my wealth and my resources and my networks to the cause of Hezbollah and the resistance against Israel.

So I shook hands with IRGC commanders who would become my partners in this enterprise for decades to come.

I left that meeting feeling like I was walking on air.

I felt chosen and special and important in a way I had never felt before.

I was no longer just a wealthy businessman making money from arms deals.

I was now a soldier of God fighting the greatest battle of our time.

I was a warrior for Islam using my wealth as my weapon.

I drove home that night and prayed with more passion and conviction than I had ever prayed in my entire life.

I thanked Allah for choosing me for this sacred mission.

I asked him to bless my efforts and to accept my sacrifice.

I had no idea that I was not serving God at all.

I had no idea that the path I had just chosen would lead me into 40 years of darkness and blood and destruction that would cost thousands of innocent people their lives.

Over the following months, I threw myself into the work of financing Hezbollah with everything I had.

I set up new shell companies specifically designed to funnel money from Iran to Lebanon without being detected by international authorities.

I created networks of trusted couriers who carried cash across borders, hidden in shipments of goods and merchandise.

I opened secret accounts in banks across the Middle East and Africa and Asia that could receive and distribute funds without leaving traces.

I worked closely with the IRGC secrets force which was responsible for coordinating Iran’s support for Hezbollah and other proxy groups across the region.

The amounts of money I moved were staggering.

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.

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.

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