After completing his elementary education, he moved to Germany along with his uncle, Musa al-Sadr and began studying in chemistry at Ruhr University Bochum.

[citation needed] In 1967, he handed Ulrike Meinhof material about Iran, which was used in a column in Konkret magazine opposing the Shah's visit to West Germany that year and drew wide attention.

[citation needed] Tabatabaei was with Khomeini during his exile in Paris, in the suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau, serving in numerous coordination meetings.

He accompanied Khomeini on his return to Iran on the Air France plane on 1 February 1979, along with Sadegh Khalkhali and Peter Scholl-Latour, a Franco-German journalist.

After the victory of the Iranian Revolution, he became Head of Department of Political and Social at Ministry of Interior and assumed the task of holding the 1979 referendum which resulted in the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

On 21 March 1980, Tabatabaei met Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in Bonn, to discuss a possible ending of the hostage crisis in Tehran.

On 16 and 18 September 1980 Tabatabaei met Foreign Minister Genscher and US Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher in Bonn to discuss the next steps in the hostage issue.

In 1982, Tabatabaei retracted to his own statements from the policy, but on 8 January 1983, he was held with 1.65 kg of raw opium in his suitcase at Düsseldorf airport by customs officials, and released on bail.