How the Family of Iran’s Most Feared Agent Ended Up in California

Saeed Emami's legacy is not just one of individual crime but a reflection of a systemic approach to dissent. He was the face of a security culture that viewed intellectualism as a contagion that needed to be surgically removed. By targeting poets, translators, and activists, Emami and his associates sought to hollow out the cultural and political discourse of Iran. The "Chain Murders" effectively decapitated a generation of thinkers, leaving a void in the Iranian civil society that took decades to even begin to fill, and the shadow of those events still looms over the relationship between the Iranian state and its critics today.