People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran
The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq or Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization, is an Iranian dissident organization. It was an armed group until 2003, afterwards transitioning into a political group. Its headquarters is currently in Albania. The group's ideology was influenced by Islam and revolutionary Marxism; and while it denied Marxist influences, its revolutionary reinterpretation of Shia Islam was shaped by the writings of Ali Shariati. After the Iranian Revolution, the MEK opposed the new theocratic Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, seeking to replace it with its own government. At one point the MEK was Iran's "largest and most active armed dissident group", and it is still sometimes presented by Western political backers as a major Iranian opposition group. The MEK is known to be deeply unpopular today within Iran, largely due to its siding with Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War and continued ties with the government of Saddam Hussein afterwards.
The MEK was founded on 5 September 1965 by leftist Iranian students affiliated with the Freedom Movement of Iran to oppose the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The organization contributed to overthrowing the Shah during the 1979 Iranian Revolution. It subsequently pursued the establishment of a democracy in Iran, particularly gaining support from Iran's middle class intelligentsia. The MEK boycotted the 1979 constitutional referendum, which led to Khomeini barring MEK leader Massoud Rajavi from the 1980 presidential election. On 20 June 1981, the MEK organized a demonstration against Khomeini and against the ousting of President Abolhassan Banisadr and the protest was violently suppressed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which shot into the crowds, killing fifty and injuring hundreds, before later executing 23 further protesters who had been arrested, including teenage girls. On 28 June, the MEK was implicated in the blowing up of the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party in the Hafte Tir bombing, killing 74 officials and party members. A wave of killings and executions led by Ruhollah Khomeini's government followed, part of the 1981–1982 Iran Massacres.
Facing the subsequent repression of the MEK by the IRP, Rajavi fled to Paris. During the exile, the underground network that remained in Iran continued to plan and carry out attacks and it allegedly conducted the August 1981 bombing that killed Iran's president and prime minister. In 1983, the MEK began meeting with Iraqi officials. In 1986, France expelled the MEK at the request of Iran, forcing it to relocate to Camp Ashraf in Iraq. In 1987, it founded the "National Liberation Army of Iran", with the sole objective of "toppling the Islamic Republic through military force from outside the country". During the Iran–Iraq War, the MEK then sided with Iraq, taking part in Operation Forty Stars, and Operation Mersad. Following Operation Mersad, Iranian officials ordered the mass execution of prisoners said to support the MEK. The group gained significant publicity in 2002 by announcing the existence of Iranian nuclear facilities. In 2003, the MEK's military wing signed a ceasefire agreement with the U.S. and was disarmed at Camp Ashraf.
Between 1997 and 2013, the MEK was on the lists of terrorist organizations of the US, Canada, EU, UK and Japan for various periods. The MEK is designated as a terrorist organization by Iran. Critics have described the group as exhibiting traits of a "personality cult", while its backers describe the group as proponents of "a free and democratic Iran" that could become the next government there.
History
Early years (1965–1970)
The Mojahedin-e-Khalq was founded in 1965 by a group of Tehran University students who had opposed the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1950s. They considered the mainstream Liberation Movement too moderate and ineffective, and aimed to establish a socialist state in Iran based on a modern and revolutionary interpretation of Islam that originated from Islamic texts like Nahj al-Balagha and some of Ali Shariati's works. MEK founders included Mohammad Hanifnejad, Saeed Mohsen, and Ali Asghar Badiazadegan, and it attracted primarily young, well-educated Iranians. While MEK publications were banned in Iran, in its first five years, the group primarily engaged in ideological work.Schism (1970–1978)
By August 1971, the MEK's Central Committee included Reza Rezai, Kazem Zolanvar, and Brahram Aram. Arrests and executions carried out by the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's security services between 1971 and 1972, compounded by internal factional infighting, shattered the organisation.During the 1970s, the MEK opposed the Shah and SAVAK, whom they described as "anti-patriotic, anti-Islamic, and collaborative with Imperialist and anti-popular oppressors".
Between August and September 1971, SAVAK arrested and executed many MEK members including its co-founders. Some surviving members restructured the group by replacing the central cadre with a three-man central committee. Each of the three central committee members led a separate branch of the organization. Two of the original central committee members were replaced in 1972 and 1973, and the replacing members were in charge of leading the organization until the internal purge of 1975.
By 1973, MEK members that declared themselves Marxist–Leninist launched an "internal ideological struggle", and by 1975 two opposing MEK factions had formed, one being Muslim and the other Marxist. The Marxist offshoot asserted that "they had reached the conclusion that Marxism, not Islam, was the true revolutionary philosophy". Members who did not convert to Marxism were expelled or reported to SAVAK.
This led to two rival Mojahedin, each with its own publication, its own organization, and its own activities. The Marxist offshoot was initially known as the Mojahedin M.L.. A few months before the Iranian Revolution, the majority of the Marxist Mojahedin renamed themselves Peykar in 1978. From 1973 to 1979, the Muslim MEK including Massoud Rajavi were mainly in prison.
"Rajavi, upon release from prison during the revolution, had to rebuild the organization". In May 1972, there was an assassination attempt on Brig. Gen. Harold Price in Tehran, and in 1973 Lt. Col. Louis Lee Hawkins was shot dead in Tehran, though it remains unclear whether the MEK itself or its Marxist offshoot were responsible.
Between 1973 and 1975, the Marxist–Leninist offshoot escalated their militant activities in Iran. In 1973, they engaged in two street battles with Tehran police and bombed ten buildings including Plan Organization, Pan-American Airlines, Shell Oil Company, Hotel International, Radio City Cinema, and an export company owned by a Baháʼí businessman. In February 1974, they attacked a police station in Isfahan and in April, they bombed a reception hall, Oman Bank, gates of the British embassy, and offices of Pan-American Oil company in protest of the Sultan of Oman's state visit. A communiqué by the organization declared that their actions had been to show solidarity with the people of Dhofar. On 19 April 1974, they attempted to bomb the SAVAK centre at Tehran University. On 25 May, they set off bombs at three multinational corporations. In August 1976, a car carrying three American employees of Rockwell International - William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard - was attacked, resulting in their deaths. While some sources suggest the MEK was responsible, the Marxist offshoot, which at the time had retained the organization's name, claimed responsibility for the killings in their "Military Communique No.24", concluding that the murders were in retaliation for recent death sentences.
1979 Iranian Revolution and subsequent power struggles
The MEK supported the revolution in its initial phases, and became "a major force in Iranian politics" according to Ervand Abrahamian. However, it soon entered into conflict with Khomeini, and became a leading opposition to the new theocratic regime. By early 1979, the MEK had organized themselves and recreated armed cells, especially in Tehran and helped overthrow the Pahlavi regime. In January 1979, Massoud Rajavi was released from prison and rebuilt the MEK together with other members that had been imprisoned. Also in January 1979 the MEK released a program advocating for increased rights for ethnic minorities in Iran, the introduction of welfare-state policies, and gender equality; while the Khomeini regime perceived these demands as a threat.Its candidate for the head of the newly founded Council of Experts was Massoud Rajavi in the referendum of August 1979. He was not elected. The MEK further launched an unsuccessful campaign supporting the total abolition of Iran's standing military, the Islamic Republic of Iran Army, in order to prevent a coup d'état against the system. They also claimed credit for infiltration against the Nojeh coup plot. The MEK was one of the supporters of the occupation of the American embassy in Tehran after the Iranian revolution, although MEK has denied this.
The MEK refused to participate in the December 1979 Iranian constitutional referendum organized by the Islamic Republican Party to ratify the Constitution drafted by the Assembly of Experts, arguing that the new constitution had failed in many aspects "most important of all, accept the concept of the 'classless tawhidi society'". Despite the opposition, the 3 December 1979 referendum vote approved the new constitution. Once the constitution had been ratified, the MEK proposed Rajavi as their presidential candidate. In his campaign, Rajavi promised to rectify the constitution's shortcomings. The conflict surrounding the Constitution intensified when the Assembly of Experts added numerous clauses that transferred sovereignty from the Iranian population to the ulama, shifting the power to senior clerics and away from the president and elected representatives. In the years that followed, the clerics strengthened their grip on the republic, eventually gaining control over all branches of government and fully establishing a theocratic state. As a result of the boycott, Khomeini subsequently refused to allow Massoud Rajavi and MEK members to run in the 1980 Iranian presidential election. Khomeini declared that "those who had failed to endorse the Constitution could not be trusted to abide by that Constitution". In the March and April 1980 parliamentary elections, the MEK secured the second-highest number of votes. Massoud Rajavi garnered 500,000 votes, while his wife Maryam received over 250,000. However, Khomeini restricted both of them from entering the parliament. Rajavi then allied with Iran's new president, Abolhassan Banisadr, elected in January 1980.