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Iran
Renewed Opposition
In the years that followed the riots of June 1963, there was
little overt political opposition. The political parties that
had been prominent in the 1950-63 period were weakened by arrests,
exile, and internal splits. Political repression continued, and
it proved more difficult to articulate a coherent policy of opposition
in a period of economic prosperity, foreign policy successes,
and such reform measures as land distribution. Nonetheless, opposition
parties gradually reorganized, new groups committed to more violent
forms of struggle were formed, and more radical Islamic ideologies
were developed to revive and fuel the opposition movements. Both
the Tudeh and the National Front underwent numerous splits and
reorganizations. The Tudeh leadership remained abroad, and the
party did not play a prominent role in Iran until after the Islamic
Revolution. Of the National Front parties that managed to survive
the post-1963 clampdown, the most prominent was the Nehzat-e Azadi-yi
Iran, or the Iran Freedom Movement (IFM), led by Mehdi Bazargan.
Bazargan worked to establish links between his movement and the
moderate clerical opposition. Like others who looked to Islam
as a vehicle for political mobilization, Bazargan was active in
preaching the political pertinence of Islam to a younger generation
of Iranians. Among the best known thinkers associated with the
IFM was Ali Shariati, who argued for an Islam committed to political
struggle, social justice, and the cause of the deprived classes.
Khomeini, in exile in Iraq, continued to issue antigovernment
statements, to attack the shah personally, and to organize supporters.
In a series of lectures delivered to his students in An Najaf
in 1969 and 1970 and later published in book form under the title
of Velayat-e Faqih (The Vice Regency of the Islamic Jurist),
he argued that monarchy was a form of government abhorrent to
Islam, that true Muslims must strive for the establishment of
an Islamic state, and that the leadership of the state belonged
by right to the faqih, or Islamic jurist. A network of
clerics worked for Khomeini in Iran, returning from periods of
imprisonment and exile to continue their activities. Increasing
internal difficulties in the early 1970s gradually won Khomeini
a growing number of followers.
In the meantime, some younger Iranians, disillusioned with what
they perceived to be the ineffectiveness of legal opposition to
the regime and attracted by the example of guerrilla movements
in Cuba, Vietnam, and China, formed a number of underground groups
committed to armed struggle. Most of these groups were uncovered
and broken up by the security authorities, but two survived: the
Fadayan (Cherikha-ye Fada- yan-e Khalq, or People's Guerrillas),
and the Mojahedin (Mojahedin-e Khalq, or People's Struggle). The
Fadayan were Marxist in orientation, whereas the Mojahedin sought
to find in Islam the inspiration for an ideology of political
struggle and economic radicalism (see Antiregime Opposition Groups
, ch. 5). Nevertheless, both movements used similar tactics in
attempting to overthrow the regime: attacks on police stations;
bombing of United States, British, and Israeli commercial or diplomatic
offices; and assassination of Iranian security officers and United
States military personnel stationed in Iran. In February 1971,
the Fadayan launched the first major guerrilla action against
the state with an armed attack on an Imperial Iranian Gendarmerie
(the internal security and border guard) post at Siahkal in the
Caspian forests of northern Iran. Several similar actions followed.
A total of 341 members of these guerrilla movements died between
1971 and 1979 in armed confrontations with security forces, by
execution or suicide, or while in the hands of their jailers.
Many more served long terms in prison.
Data as of December 1987
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