On the anniversary of the martyrdom of Brigadier General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam — the scientist and commander known as the father of Iran’s missile program — a handwritten letter he addressed to the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Grand Ayatollah Martyr Sayyid Ali Khamenei, has been published by KHAMENEI.IR. It is not a report on weapons or a memo on strategy. It is a love letter: the outpouring of a soldier who understood his life’s work as nothing less than service to the representative of the Imam of our Time (may God hasten his reappearance).
Tehrani Moghaddam founded the IRGC’s missile command in the early years of the imposed war and spent nearly three decades turning a nation under bombardment into one that could answer. Yet those who knew him insisted that his missiles were the smallest part of him. The larger part was his faith — a faith that poured out, unguarded, in this letter, written in the years before his martyrdom, after his family was granted a private meeting with the Leader. He opens with thanks, then makes a pledge that reads less like a military commitment than like a vow of discipleship:
In the Name of the Most Gracious God
To the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei
Peace be upon you. Please accept my respectful greetings.
With all my heart, I thank you for accepting my family and granting us a personal meeting. I and my family are ready to give our lives for you, O representative of the Imam of the Time (AJ) and light of Ali. You are our love! By God, I swear that everything we have, we dedicate to the cause you serve, striving to earn your approval. This cause is the embodiment of pure Islam and follows the example of the Ahl al-Bayt (AS).
At every stage of this path, we have seen the boundless grace of God and His help:
“Embark on the path and ask for nothing. The path itself will guide you on how to proceed.”
Praise be to God! How generous and merciful is our Lord! In truth, His boundless grace and generosity have given us courage and determination. Our Lord and mentor, I want to give everything necessary into your capable hands and become an even more reliable support for you.
For the sake of God, we want to come to the aid of the Ali of our time. We were not fortunate enough to live in the time of our master Ali (AS) to defend him and give our lives for Hussein ibn Ali (AS). This pain remains in my heart. We want to make up for what was lost by serving alongside you, the representative of the Imam of the Time (may God hasten his arrival). May our chest become your shield, O son of Zahra, spark of the light of the Commander of the Faithful!
In short, my lord, we have reached the final stage of the project. Its completion will be the pinnacle of strengthening the power and deterrent potential of this structure, based on faith in God. We are talking about the creation of a hypersonic rapid-response missile capable of reaching targets in “Israel,” as well as a launch vehicle for placing a satellite into orbit.
Help from God and a near victory.
Everything that the Most Gracious God has given us, we are ready to give for you, O representative of the Imam of the Time (AJ).
Your humble soldier,
Brigadier General Hassan Moghaddam, IRGC
Read today, the letter is striking for what it reveals about the soul of Iran’s deterrent. The “final stage” he describes — a super-fast, rapid-response missile able to reach the occupied territories, and a carrier to place a satellite in orbit — was not, for him, an end in itself. It was the means by which a believer “fills the hands” of the Leader and stands as a shield before him. The technology was an act of devotion.
History would bear out the pledge. The solid-fuel satellite-carrier work he pioneered matured into the Qased launcher, which in 2020 carried the Noor military satellite into orbit — a launch commentators described as honouring Tehrani Moghaddam. The rapid-response, high-speed missile he dreamed of found its echo in the Fattah hypersonic missile unveiled in 2023. The men he trained carried the path forward after he was gone.
And he was gone soon enough. On 12 November 2011 (21 Aban 1390), Tehrani Moghaddam was martyred alongside more than a dozen of his colleagues in an explosion at a missile research base at Bidganeh, west of Tehran. He was killed, his brother said, in the final testing phase of the very work he had described to the Leader.
Imam Khamenei, who visited his home and stood at his grave, paid him a tribute that answers the letter directly: “Every promise Haj Hassan made to us, he kept.” The soldier who wrote “may our chest become your shield” had, in the end, given exactly that.
His celebrated motto — “I will either find a way, or I will build one” — is often quoted as the secret of Iran’s missile program. But this letter suggests a deeper secret beneath it: the path he refused to abandon was, for him, the path of the Ahl al-Bayt (AS), walked in the company of the Leader, toward the Imam of the Time (AJ). “Embark on the path and ask for nothing,” he wrote, quoting the old verse. “The path itself will guide you.”
He embarked. The path carried him to martyrdom. And the love he poured onto the page — “You are our love!” — remains, for those who walk it still, the truest description of what he was.
