The MEK to launch Armed Struggle

Terror In The Name Of Democracy: Initiation of Armed Revolt

 

The eruption of riots was actually MKO’s first organized armed revolt to steer the country to the verge of anarchy

The eruption of riots was actually MKO’s first organized armed revolt to steer the country to the verge of a chaotic atmosphere and anarchy and it was followed by daily scattered clashes, bombings and terrorist atrocities. The ousted Bani-Sadr himself used as the pretext to trigger MKO’s armed revolt, encouraged the group to precipitate the created crises by a wave of violent activities including assassination of high-ranking statesmen and personalities. In her confessions after her arrest, Sudabeh Sadifi, an adviser to Bani-Sadr, asserted that Bani-Sadr after his dismissal in a message to Massoud Rajavi, MKO’s leader, urged him to “Start striking their heads. There is no other way.”

Plots to assassinate the key, influential heads in charge hatched just after Bani-Sadr and Rajavi’s hiding in the organization’s secret hideouts. The first perpetrated terrorist act was an attempt to assassinate Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran’s Friday prayers at the time, on 27 June, 1981; a bomb, concealed in a tape recorder, exploded beside him while he was delivering an address in Abu Dhar mosque south of Tehran. He escaped assassination but suffered serious injuries that left his right hand handicapped. The terrorist agent was identified to be a MKO’s central cadre, Javad Qadiri.

Tehran was still under the shock of the attempt assassination when MKO stroke the successive terrorist blow the day after on June 28. Reportedly, two blasts ripped through IRP building as the chief Ayatollah Beheshti was addressing his regular weekly meeting. The death toll rose to 74 including Ayatollah Beheshti, Cabinet ministers, deputy ministers and members of Parliament. The perpetrator was identified to be an infiltrated agent of MKO, Muhammad-Reza Kulahi. It was so heavy a strike for the newly formed regime and both MKO and Bani-Sadr expected complete destabilization and overthrow of the ruling authority. However, the public reaction to such violent, immoral deeds was nothing more than a strong feeling of repulsion towards MKO.

On July 27, 1981, Muhammad-Ali Rajai won a landslide victory in Iran’s second post-revolution presidential election. Deeply disappointed, the sole option before the two fugitives living in secret hideouts was to immediately leave the country. On 29 July, Bani-Sadr accompanied by Rajavi, in disguise and by having shaved off his customary mustache, were driven to a Tehran military base and got on board of a hijacked Iranian air force 707 jet tanker around 10 at night. It seemed unlikely that they could have gotten to the plane and aboard without the cooperation of other military personnel and particularly the pilot who flew the plane to land it at the military airfield of Evreux near Paris. The pilot, Col. Behzad Moesi, was the personal pilot of the ousted Muhammad-Reza Pahlavi whom, along with his family, he had flown out of Iran to Egypt and then to Morocco in December 1978. Unexpectedly, Moesi had returned Pahlavi’s plane, Shahin, to Iran and received a warm welcome as a hero and a revolutionary. He had succeeded to win the trust of authorities and had been appointed to sensitive military positions.

It is reasonable to assume that his return to Iran was a scenario outlined by the states antagonizing the Islamic regime and directed by intelligence agencies to establish a direct contact with the active opposition groups to arrive at an agreement for a variety of collaborative programs to advance political policies and interests inside Iran. And his return aroused nobody’s curiosity in Iran to question controversial aspects of such an easy return; how had he managed to refuel the plane and flew it out of a heavily guarded military base and pass over a few countries’ air borders to make a heroic return?

The Second Terrorist Tragedy

The fugitives’ escape to France postponed MKO’s second appalling terrorist operation scheduled to be perpetrated the month after the explosion at IRP building. Being granted political asylum just after his arrival in France, Bani-Sadr said “we must try to find a quicker way of overthrowing the absolutists”, and Rajavi vowed to “organize the resistance” against the Islamic Republic from France. There they were granted the opportunity of conveniently planning, by abundantly offered external aids, for more destructive and successful operations. The quick way to success had to be involved a variety of violent options including suicide bombing; MKO had enough devoted infiltrated agents as volunteers for these types of operation. Massoud Keshmiri, the agent who detonated the bomb in the Prime Minister’s office, had already volunteered to be a suicide bomber if necessary although he succeeded in his mission without endangering his life and managed to escape through a well-planned trick played by his fellow-mate accomplices.
On August 30, 1981, Mohammad Ali Rajai, the Iranian President, and Mohammad Javad Bahonar, the Prime Minister, were burned beyond recognition by an incendiary that set fire to the Prime Minister’s office. The victims’ bodies were identified only through dental records. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing but there was speculation, proved later, that it was work of MKO. There still remains questions concerning the planted incendiary bomb that just burned the president and his prime minister but leaving others merely injured. The third victim, Abdolhussein Daftarian, the prime ministry’s authority, died of uncontrolled consequences of the blast. The fourth victim, Hushang Dastjerdi, the head of the national police, passed away 6 days later in hospital as a result of the injuries. The bomb was said to have been planted inside a briefcase that Keshmiri carried, but there was a different judgment that it had been planted inside a tape-recorder stationed before the victims. Col. Muhammad Mahdi Katibe, a member of the meeting who survived the blast, states that:
“I believe the appropriate container to plant the bomb inside was the tap-recorder that had a capacity for more than 10 pounds explosives. I think it was a hollow case inside which they had planted a TNT time bomb with alarm clock detonator. I doubt if there was a better vessel.”

Terror In The Name Of Democracy: The Outset of a Phase of Violence

As the bankrupts of democracy, MKO began casting shadows of terrorism over Iran

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country.” (Bertrand Russell)

The number of the word’s presidents and prime ministers assassinated since the mid-twentieth century reaches just about 50. Out of them, those assassinated by the use of the most violent and horrific methods, suicide or bomb blast, hardly outnumber a hand’s fingers. But the concurrent assassination of a president and his prime minister in a terrorist strike has a single record in its kind. And the untold about the event that may never repeat in the history is the key role of an ousted president as an accomplice to erase his successor. And the bare but shocking truth about the event is that almost all people being a high authority to investigate the complicated case or initiate prosecution for the terrorist offense turned to become the target and the victims of terrorism themselves. And it was just one of many shadows of terror that terrorists cast over Iran.

On August 30, 1981, a bomb explosion at a meeting of the National Security Council held at the Prime Minister’s office led to three immediate deaths: Mohammad Ali Rajai, the Iranian President, Mohammad Javad Bahonar, the Prime Minister, and Abdolhussein Daftarian, the prime ministry’s authority. Hushang Dastjerdi, the head of the national police, the fourth victim, passed away 6 days later as a result of the injuries. The terrorist plot, although incomparable with the preceding June 28 explosion quantitatively, the explosion in the Islamic Republic Party IRP killing at least 74 high-profile personalities, has its record as a bloody chapter in Iranian post-revolution history, a mysterious and complicated plot with many aspects still remaining ambiguous and many questions unanswered.

No doubt, the perpetrators of such ruthless, violent plots fail to provide the slightest justification for proven terrorist acts that are tantamount to a declaration of war against a nation. The responsible group, Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO/MEK/PMOI/NCR), after tolerating ultimate failures in winning public trust in two preceding presidential and parliament elections, had already started inventing pretexts to declare its war. In its military communiqué that implied a blatant declaration of a violent warfare against the Islamic Republic and was documented as a clear vindication of the group’s perpetrated terrorist crimes, MKO complained of misbehavior and “illegal and unlawful” undertaking against the still in office president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, whose conspiratorial collaboration with some opposition groups made the Iranian parliament to hold a debate on his presidency competence that finally led to his impeachment.

Sparks of Animosity

The president Bani-Sadr’s close connection and sympathy with a wide range of opposition groups, particularly his direct and strong support of MKO and giving the group a free hand in social and political affairs, as well as his incompetent function as the commander of the armed forces to confront the invaliding Saddam’s army made Ayatollah Khomeini to reclaim the power of Commander-in-Chief on 10 June 1981. Just 10 days later, Ali-Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Parliament Speaker at the time, apprised Ayatollah Khomeini of deputies’ decision about stripping Bani-Sadr of his presidential power. The response was clear; as the leader with the constitutional authority, Ayatollah Khomeini signed dismissal of Bani-Sadr.

In its first political-military issued communique No. 25 dated 17 June 1981, just three days prior to the first violent moves, MKO made references to events that motivated the organization to make a blatant decision to wage an armed warfare against the Islamic Republic:

“… At the same time, we are witnessing illegal arrests of the members of the presidential office whose names and the news of their arrests are not announced in some instances. Of course, they [the regime] are preparing a comprehensive plan of arresting progressive-seeking characters and antagonists of monopoly in the country. Mojahedin Khalq Organization, while protesting such unlawful and counterrevolutionary actions, thereby obtains permission from the hero Iranian people, and by the help of God, to adopt the most decisive revolutionary resistance through any possible means for the preservation of its members, especially those central cadres of the organization that are in fact considered a pivotal part of the people and revolution.”

On the evening of 20 June 1981, when the Parliament resumed its impeachment debate, MKO orchestrated a series of mass demonstrations that shook Tehran and some other Iranian provincial towns. Rioters had orders to carry small arms and cold weapons and soon the demonstrations turned into street battles that lasted more than three hours. The battles reportedly left heavy casualties and MKO rioters overturned buses and set the parked cars and motorcycles on fire. Although MKO’s plot to cause a widespread civil disturbance to lead the country into a serious civil war faced a total failure, the group adopted a different violent tactic since the day after.

To be continued