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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
Following the fall of Bani Sadr, opposition elements attempted
to reorganize and to overthrow the government by force. The
government responded with a policy of repression and terror. The
government also took steps to impose its version of an Islamic
legal system and an Islamic code of social and moral behavior.
Bani Sadr remained in hiding for several weeks. Believing he
was illegally impeached, he maintained his claim to the presidency,
formed an alliance with Mojahedin leader Masoud Rajavi, and in July
1981 escaped with Rajavi from Iran to France. In Paris, Bani Sadr
and Rajavi announced the establishment of the National Council of
Resistance (NCR) and committed themselves to work for the overthrow
of the Khomeini regime. They announced a program that emphasized a
form of democracy based on elected popular councils; protection for
the rights of the ethnic minorities; special attention to the
interests of shopkeepers, small landowners, and civil servants;
limited land reform; and protection for private property in keeping
with the national interest. The Kurdish Democratic Party, the
National Democratic Front, and a number of other small groups and
individuals subsequently announced their adherence to the NCR.
Meanwhile, violent opposition to the regime in Iran continued.
On June 28, 1981, a powerful bomb exploded at the headquarters of
the IRP while a meeting of party leaders was in progress.
Seventy-three persons were killed, including the chief justice and
party secretary general Mohammad Beheshti, four cabinet ministers,
twenty-seven Majlis deputies, and several other government
officials. Elections for a new president were held on July 24, and
Rajai, the prime minister, was elected to the post. On August 5,
1981, the Majlis approved Rajai's choice of Ayatollah Mohammad
Javad-Bahonar as prime minister.
Rajai and Bahonar, along with the chief of the Tehran police,
lost their lives when a bomb went off during a meeting at the
office of the prime minister on August 30. The Majlis named another
cleric, Mahdavi-Kani, as interim prime minister. In a new round of
elections on October 2, Hojjatoleslam Ali Khamenehi was elected
president. Division within the leadership became apparent, however,
when the Majlis rejected Khamenehi's nominee, Ali Akbar Velayati,
as prime minister. On October 28, the Majlis elected Mir-Hosain
Musavi, a protégé of the late Mohammad Beheshti, as prime minister.
Although no group claimed responsibility for the bombings that had
killed Iran's political leadership, the government blamed the
Mojahedin for both. The Mojahedin did, however, claim
responsibility for a spate of other assassinations that followed
the overthrow of Bani Sadr. Among those killed in the space of a
few months were the Friday prayer leaders in Tabriz, Kerman,
Shiraz, Yazd, and Bakhtaran; a provincial governor; the warden of
Evin Prison, the chief ideologue of the IRP; and several
revolutionary court judges, Majlis deputies, minor government
officials, and members of revolutionary organizations.
In September 1981, expecting to spark a general uprising, the
Mojahedin sent their young followers into the streets to
demonstrate against the government and to confront the authorities
with their own armed contingents. On September 27, the Mojahedin
used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers against
units of the Pasdaran. Smaller left-wing opposition groups,
including the Fadayan, attempted similar guerrilla activities. In
July 1981, members of the Union of Communists tried to seize
control of the Caspian town of Amol. At least seventy guerrillas
and Pasdaran members were killed before the uprising was put down.
The government responded to the armed challenge of the guerrilla
groups by expanded use of the Pasdaran in counterintelligence
activities and by widespread arrests, jailings, and executions. The
executions were facilitated by a September 1981, Supreme Judicial
Council circular to the revolutionary courts permitting death
sentences for "active members" of guerrilla groups. Fifty
executions a day became routine; there were days when more than 100
persons were executed. Amnesty International documented 2,946
executions in the 12 months following Bani Sadr's impeachment, a
conservative figure because the authorities did not report all
executions. The pace of executions slackened considerably at the
end of 1982, partly as a result of a deliberate government decision
but primarily because, by then, the back of the armed resistance
movement had largely been broken. The radical opposition had,
however, eliminated several key clerical leaders, exposed
vulnerabilities in the state's security apparatus, and posed the
threat, never realized, of sparking a wider opposition movement.
By moving quickly to hold new elections and to fill vacant
posts, the government managed to maintain continuity in authority,
however, and by repression and terror it was able to crush the
guerrilla movements. By the end of 1983, key leaders of the
Fadayan, Paykar (a Marxist-oriented splinter group of the
Mojahedin), the Union of Communists, and the Mojahedin in Iran had
been killed, thousands of the rank and file had been executed or
were in prison, and the organizational structure of these movements
was gravely weakened. Only the Mojahedin managed to survive, and
even it had to transfer its main base of operations to Kordestan,
and later to Kurdistan in Iraq, and its headquarters to Paris
(see Antiregime Opposition Groups
, ch. 5).
During this period, the government was also able to consolidate
its position in Kordestan. Fighting had resumed between government
forces and Kurdish rebels after the failure of talks under Bani
Sadr in late 1980. The Kurds held parts of the countryside and were
able to enter the major cities at will after dark. With its
takeover of Bukan in November 1981, however, the government
reasserted control over the major urban centers. Further campaigns
in 1983 reduced rebel control over the countryside, and the Kurdish
Democratic Party had to move its headquarters to Iraq, from which
it made forays into Iran. The Kurdish movement was further weakened
when differences between the Kurdish Democratic Party and the more
radical Komala (Komala-ye Shureshgari-ye Zahmat Keshan-e
Kordestan-e Iran, or Committee of the Revolutionary Toilers of
Iranian Kordestan), a Kurdish Marxist guerrilla organization,
resulted in open fighting in 1985. The government also moved
against other active and potential opponents. In April 1982, the
authorities arrested former Khomeini aide and foreign minister
Qotbzadeh and charged him with plotting with military officers and
clerics to kill Khomeini and to overthrow the state. Approximately
170 others, including 70 military men, were also arrested. The
government implicated the respected religious leader Shariatmadari,
whose son-in-law had allegedly served as the intermediary between
Qotbzadeh and Shariatmadari. At his trial, Qotbzadeh denied any
design on Khomeini's life and claimed he had wanted only to change
the government, not to overthrow the Islamic Republic.
Shariatmadari, in a television interview, said he had been told of
the plot but did not actively support it. Qotbzadeh and the
military men were executed, and Shariatmadari's son-in-law was
jailed. In an unprecedented move, members of the Association of the
Seminary Teachers of Qom voted to strip Shariatmadari of his title
of marja-e taqlid (a jurist who is also an object of
emulation). Shariatmadari's Center for Islamic Study and
Publications was closed, and Shariatmadari was placed under virtual
house arrest.
In June 1982, the authorities captured Qashqai leader Khosrow
Qashqai, who had returned to Iran after the Revolution and had led
his tribesmen in a local uprising. He was tried and publicly hanged
in October.
All these moves to crush opposition to the Republic gave freer
rein to the Pasdaran and revolutionary committees. Members of these
organizations entered homes, made arrests, conducted searches, and
confiscated goods at will. The government organized "Mobile Units
of God's Vengeance" to patrol the streets and to impose Islamic
dress and Islamic codes of behavior. Instructions issued by
Khomeini in December 1981 and in August 1982 admonishing the
revolutionary organizations to exercise proper care in entering
homes and making arrests were ignored. "Manpower renewal" and
"placement" committees in government ministries and offices resumed
widescale purges in 1982, examining officeholders and job
applicants on their beliefs and political inclinations. Applicants
to universities and military academies were subjected to similar
examinations.
By the end of 1982, the country experienced a reaction against
the numerous executions and a widespread feeling of insecurity
because of the arbitrary actions of the revolutionary organizations
and the purge committees. The government saw that insecurity was
also undermining economic confidence and exacerbating economic
difficulties. Accordingly, in December 1982 Khomeini issued an
eight-point decree prohibiting the revolutionary organizations from
entering homes, making arrests, conducting searches, and
confiscating property without legal authorization. He also banned
unauthorized tapping of telephones, interference with citizens in
the privacy of their homes, and unauthorized dismissals from the
civil service. He urged the courts to conduct themselves so that
the people felt their life, property, and honor were secure. The
government appointed a follow-up committee to ensure adherence to
Khomeini's decree, to look into the activities of the revolutionary
organizations, and to hear public complaints against government
officials. Some 300,000 complaints were filed within a few weeks.
The follow-up committee was soon dissolved, but the decree
nevertheless led to a marked decrease in executions, tempered the
worst abuses of the Pasdaran and revolutionary committees, and
brought a measure of security to individuals not engaged in
opposition activity.
The December decree, however, implied no increased tolerance
for the political opposition. The Tudeh had secured itself a
measure of freedom during the first three years of the Revolution
by declaring loyalty to Khomeini and supporting the clerics against
liberal and left-wing opposition groups. But the government showed
less tolerance for the party after the impeachment of Bani Sadr and
the repression of left-wing guerrilla organizations. The party's
position further deteriorated in 1982, as relations between Iran
and the Soviet Union grew more strained over such issues as the war
with Iraq and the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. The government
began closing down Tudeh publications as early as June 1981, and in
1982 officials and senior clerics publicly branded the members of
the Tudeh as agents of a foreign power.
In February 1983, the government arrested Tudeh leader Nureddin
Kianuri, other members of the party Central Committee, and more
than 1,000 party members. The party was proscribed, and Kianuri
confessed on television to spying for the Soviet Union and to
"espionage, deceit, and treason." Possibly because of Soviet
intervention, none of the leading members of the party was brought
to trial or executed, although the leaders remained in prison. Many
rank and file members, however, were put to death. By 1983
Bazargan's IFM was the only political group outside the factions of
the ruling hierarchy that was permitted any freedom of activity.
Even this group was barely tolerated. For example, the party
headquarters was attacked in 1983, and two party members were
assaulted on the floor of the Majlis.
In 1984 Khomeini denounced the Hojjatiyyeh, a fundamentalist
religious group that rejected the role assigned to the faqih
under the Constitution. The organization, taking this attack as a
warning, dissolved itself.
Data as of December 1987
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