Iran is marking the National Day of Fight Against Terrorism on August 29, a day on which the MKO detonated Prime Minister’s Office in Tehran, martyring President Mohammad Ali Rajai and PM Mohammad Javad Bahonar.
August 29 is commemorated in Iran as the National Day of Fight Against Terrorism.
On August 29, 1981 the Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO) detonated a bomb at the office of Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar in Pasteur Street in downtown Tehran, martyring senior Iranian officials including the Prime Minister Bahonar, the President Mohammad Ali Rajai as well as some other officials including Tehran Police chief Hooshang Vahiddastjerdi who had a security meeting there.
This terrorist attack came nearly two months after another massive deadly bombing on 28 June 1981 known as Haft-e Tir bombing at the headquarters of Islamic Republic Party in Tehran which martyred more than seventy senior Iranian officials, including the Chief Justice of Iran Mohammad Beheshti. The MKO was blamed for the Haft-e Tir bombing as well.
the MEK bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party in 1981
Since the 1979 revolution, Iran has suffered a lot from terrorism, while the MKO has been spearheading the terrorism campaign against Iranian civilians and government officials.
According to Iranian government officials, the terrorist organization has so far killed over 17,000 Iranian citizens since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In the early years after victory of revoltion, the newly established Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) managed dismantle the MKO internally by discovering their hideouts and sleeper cells and neutralizing them.
The notorious MKO had to flee from Iran to neighboring Iraq during Saddam Baath regime as well as European countries including France, Germany, and the United Kingdom as well as the United States and Canada.
Meeting between Abbas Davari; Head of the MKO Central Committee and officials from Saddam Hussein’s Secret Intelligence Service
Its members are now freely operating and plotting against their homeland with the backing of governments of the western countries where they are residing in with the United States and France on the top.
While in Iraq in 1980s, the MKO terrorists were armed by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. They fought alongside Baathist army against their fellow Iranians and their agents carried out lots of assassinations against Iranian civilians and government officials throughout the 8-year Iraqi-imposed war on Iran between 1980 and 1988.
The Baathist regime of Saddam had provided them with a camp called Camp Ashraf in Diyala Province where they were trained and plotted terror attacks against both Iraqis and their fellow Iranians.
After the Saddam regime was toppled after the US invasion in 2003, the remaining MKO members faced massive anger from many Iraqis for their previous cooperation with the former Saddam regime so that their American and European backers had to relocate them to a new camp in Albania to use them as proxies in the future against the Islamic Republic.
Subsequently, the US and the European Union gradually removed the MKO from their lists of foreign terrorist organizations despite the fact the MKO elements were walking freely in Europe and US even when the terror group’s name was still on their terror lists.
Over the recent years, the US and France have publicly shown their support for the MKO. The MKO current head Maryam Rajavi, who had taken the lead over the organization after the suspicious unannounced death of her husband, has held meetings with high-ranking US officials including former National Security Advisor John Bolton and former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. They have also held gatherings in France with high-ranking US officials in attendance.
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Most recently, on Sunday July 11, 2021, the MKO held a gathering at their camp in Albania with the attendance of US senators, British MPs and French lawmakers.
Western officials including Mike Pompeo and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa delivered speeches in the anti-Iranian event organized by the MKO terrorist group in Tirana.
The US and its western allies behavior towards the terrorist group is a clear example of their double standards towards terrorism.
From assassinating the second Iranian president, Mohammad Ali Rajaei, and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar to Judiciary head Mohammad Beheshti, the MKO terrorists stand out as number one enemy of Iran.