Mostafa Chamran Save'ei () (2 October 1932 – 21 June 1981) was an Iranian physicist, politician, commander and guerrilla fighter who served as the first defense minister of post-revolutionary Iran and a member of parliament as well as the commander of paramilitary volunteers in Iran–Iraq War, known as "Irregular Warfare Headquarters". He was killed during the Iran–Iraq War. In Iran, he is known as a martyr and a symbol of an ideological and revolutionary Muslim who left academic careers and prestigious positions as a scientist and professor in the US, University of California, Berkeley and migrated in order to help the Islamic movements in Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt as a chief revolutionary guerilla, as well as in the Islamic revolution of Iran. He helped to found the Amal Movement in southern Lebanon. Early life and education Chamran was born into a religious family on 2 October 1932 in Tehran. He received religious education from Ayatollah Taleqani and Morteza Motahari. He studied at Alborz High School and then graduated from Tehran University with a bachelor's degree in electro mechanics. In the late 1950s, he moved to the United States for higher education, obtaining a M.S. degree from the Texas A&M University. He then went on to obtain his PhD in electrical engineering and plasma physics in 1963 from the University of California, Berkeley. In the book Self-construction and development he said he was hired as research staff scientist at Bell Laboratories and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. Career and activities Chamran was one of the senior members of the Freedom Movement led by Mehdi Bazargan in the 1960s. He was part of the radical external wing together with Ebrahim Yazdi, Sadegh Ghotbzadeh and Ali Shariati. Following graduation, Chamran went to Cuba to receive military training. In December 1963, he along with Ghotbzadeh and Yazdi left the US for Egypt where he was trained in guerilla warfare. They met the Egyptian authorities to establish an anti-Shah organization in the country, which was later called SAMA, special organization for unity and action. Chamran was chosen as its military head. Upon his return to the US in 1965 he founded a group, Red Shiism, in San Jose with the aim of training militants. His brother, Mehdi, was also part of the group. In 1968, he founded another group, the Muslim Students' Association of America (MSA), and it was led by Ebrahim Yazdi. The