SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA (ANS) -- As a member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard he witnessed horrific acts that caused him to question his faith in Islam and the regime he served. After he became a CIA spy and later escaped to the West, he found a new revolutionary to follow who offered a love that overwhelmed his soul.

Reza Khalili

“In childhood, I always prayed in my heart to God,” says Reza Khalili, a pseudonym taken by the ex-spy for safety reasons. “I always tried to find a way to get close to him.”

Educated in the United States at USC, he returned to Iran immediately before the revolution in 1979. His experience in the U.S. gave him a respect for American democratic traditions. “The founding fathers were so courageous,” he notes, “providing humanity with democracy and freedom, sacrificing their lives.”

He had high ideals when he returned to Iran. “I wanted to help my country progress, hopeful that there would be full democracy. I believed that Ayatollah Khomeini would be true to his promise of freedom for all.”

A childhood friend persuaded him to join the Revolutionary Guard because of his expertise with computers, but he was unprepared for what he soon observed under the banner of Islam.

“The mullahs forced Iranians to adhere to a strict Islamic dress code and subjected them to amputation as the punishment for stealing, lashing for drinking, stoning for adultery,” he notes. Young people who sought new freedoms they thought had been promised by the revolution were arrested and taken to Evin prison.

“Many were raped, tortured and executed, among them my best friend and his siblings. Teenage girls as young as 13 were raped prior to execution because in Islam a virgin can go to heaven, and the ‘men of God’ wanted to deny them that reward. Others were slowly lowered in tanks of acid so they would die painfully.

“Khomeini and the clerics announced themselves as representatives of Allah on earth and declared anyone opposing them to be an enemy of God. The punishment was execution. Tens of thousands were executed.”

These excesses of the Islamic revolution turned his stomach. Who can do that? he wondered. They claim to believe in Allah and that Islam is the last religion and a superior religion – that everybody needs to convert.

“This broke my heart,” he says. “I was searching for God, so I prayed to him and I said, ‘This can’t be from you. This is not you.’” Khalili couldn’t imagine a God of love could foster these horrible crimes.

MORE