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Iran
Terror and Repression
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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