“Report 176,” he said. “You are not accused of any sin, brother. But you are listed.”
Mehdi Kashani still prays at Imam Zadeh Saleh. He still helps the janitor with his phone. But now, when he walks home, he glances at the traffic cameras differently.
In the sealed archives of Qom, under the jurisdiction of the Special Clerical Oversight Committee, Report 176 bore a name that had not been uttered aloud in forty years: Rijal Al Kashi . Rijal Al Kashi Report 176 -2021-
“If Al Kashi were alive today, would he trust you—or track you?”
On a rainy night in February 2021, Mehdi received a private message on a legacy encrypted platform—one that intelligence had quietly tagged as “under observation, no action.” The message contained three lines: “Report 176,” he said
Traditional rijal divides narrators into thiqa (reliable) and dha’if (weak). But Report 176 proposed a third category, which the clerical committee had not yet ratified:
Mehdi kept silent.
“Al-Muwakkal” — the entrusted.