through the help of Musa Al Sadr. There he worked as a correspondent for the Syrian government daily, Al Thawra. The job, in fact, was fake and covered his opposition activity in the city. Career and activities Ghotbzadeh left the Freedom Movement in 1978. He became a close aide of Ayatollah Khomeini when the latter was in exile in France. Ghotbzadeh along with Mostafa Chamran was part of the faction, called "Syrian mafia", in the court of Khomeini, and there was a feud between his group and the Libya-friendly group, led by Mohammad Montazeri. Ghotbzadeh was an Amal sympathizer and close to Lebanese Shii cleric Musa Al Sadr. Khomeini appointed him a member of the follow-up mission to search for fate of Al Sadr following the latter's disappearance in August 1978. Ghotbzadeh accompanied Khomeini on his Air France flight back to Iran on 1 February 1979. It was Ghotbzadeh, who translated the Ayatollah's infamous response "Hichi (Nothing)" to journalist John Simpson's question: "Ayatollah, would you be so kind as to tell us how you feel about being back in Iran?" He was also Khomeini's translator in the press conference held in Tehran on 3 February 1979. Following the Iranian Revolution Ghotbzadeh became a member of the revolutionary council when Bazargan and others left the council to form an interim government. In addition, he served as spokesperson of the Ayatollah. He was also appointed managing director of National Iranian Radio and Television (NIRT) on 11 February 1979. He tried to overhaul it to be in line with Islamic teachings, purging royalists, women, and leftists. This was criticised by a group of Iranian intellectuals and also the interim government. On 13 March, two women, one with a gun and the other with a knife, attacked Ghotbzadeh protesting the fundamentalist policies of the Islamic regime. Nearly 15,000 women also gathered outside the headquarters of the NIRT to protest his Islamist policy. He was appointed foreign minister in late November 1979 after Abolhassan Banisadr resigned as acting foreign minister amid heated disputes on the fate of the American hostages. In early 1980 Ghotbzadeh was involved in early Iran hostage crisis negotiations in Paris with Carter aide Hamilton Jordan, which led to "a complex multi-stepped plan" which was torpedoed by Khomeini announcing the hostages' fate would be decided by the new Iranian parliament. Ghotbzadeh wrote an open letter to the Majlis in August 1980 arguing