By Kayhan Life Staff
Foad Pashaei, secretary-general of the Constitutionalist Party of Iran (Liberal Democrat), was seriously injured in what the exiled political group described as an assassination attempt at his home in Los Angeles on Aug. 17.
Pashaei was taken to the hospital after the attack and admitted to intensive care.
Kayhan Life spoke with Pashaei and his wife at the hospital on the evening of Aug. 18. They said the FBI was investigating the attack alongside local law enforcement authorities.
Kayhan Life was also told that Pashaei had been warned approximately two weeks before the attack that he could be targeted and had been advised to take additional security precautions.
The attack occurred at about 7:45 p.m. local time. The security cameras at Pashaei’s private residence had been disabled before the assault, according to information obtained by Kayhan Life.
Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer, human-rights advocate, and 2003 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, strongly condemned the attack and directly accused the Islamic Republic of responsibility. In a statement titled “Assassination Attempt in the Heart of America: How Far Must the Islamic Republic Go Before the World Wakes Up?” Ebadi said that, given what she described as the Islamic Republic’s “long and bloody history” of targeting opponents, she believed the assault was politically motivated and had been ordered from Tehran.
“The question is no longer whether the Islamic Republic engages in transnational terrorism,” Ebadi said. “The question is: after more than four decades of assassinations, killings, bombings, kidnappings, and intimidation of its opponents, when exactly will the world decide to take serious action to stop this killing machine?”
Ebadi pointed to repeated warnings by Western governments and security agencies about Iranian state-linked threats abroad, including a 2025 joint statement by 14 Western countries condemning alleged attempts by Iranian intelligence services to kill, kidnap and harass people in Europe and North America. She also cited allegations that criminal networks have been used as intermediaries in operations outside Iran.
She described Pashaei as a man who had devoted his political life to “an Iran free from tyranny, terrorism and crime.” She added, “Iran must be a land of life — not a state that sends death across oceans in pursuit of its opponents.”
The circumstances of the attack have drawn particular attention because of Pashaei’s prominent role in Iran’s exiled political movement and amid longstanding concerns about threats and violence directed at Iranian dissidents abroad.
Los Angeles and Southern California are home to one of the largest Iranian communities outside Iran and have for decades served as major centers for Persian-language media, political organizations, and activists opposed to the Islamic Republic.
The Constitutionalist Party of Iran, founded in exile in 1994 by prominent Iranian journalist and politician Dariush Homayoun, is one of the longest-established organizations within Iran’s monarchist political movement, with branches across the U.S. and Europe. The party advocates secular democracy and constitutional government and supports restoring a constitutional monarchy associated with Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi.
Homayoun, who served as the Minister of Information and Tourism under Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, later became an influential political thinker and opposition figure in exile.
The attempt on Pashaei’s life prompted expressions of concern from Iranian activists and political figures abroad.
Nazanin Boniadi, the Iranian-born British actress and prominent human-rights advocate, said she was “horrified” by the news. Boniadi has campaigned for Iranian human and women’s rights for more than a decade and is an ambassador for Amnesty International UK.
Writing in X, Boniadi described Pashaei as “a kind and decent man who loves Iran deeply,” and hoped that “those responsible be brought to justice.”
Authorities are continuing to investigate the attack. No evidence has yet been made public identifying those responsible.
