the Mujahedeen, including ten who held government positions.
This massive vendetta effectively crushed the opposition party,
although the Mujahedeen continued operations on a minor scale.
Other political parties, including the leftist Tudeh, also suffered
repression. The more moderate Islamic People’s Republican
Party, established by Ayatollah Shariatmadari and his followers in
1979, was disbanded and some of its leaders killed. As we will see,
the days were numbered for Shariatmadari himself. Reviewing
the situation in the mid-1980s, author Said Amir Arjomand
wrote, “In sum, since their direct seizure of power in November
1979, the militant ayatollahs have ruthlessly dealt with all its
organized political opponents, and have by and large succeeded
in destroying them.”^43
At the same time, Iran was turning the tide against the Iraqi
invaders. Hordes of Iranians—many of them young civilians
or religious leaders believing themselves to be martyrs in the
service of the ayatollah—threw themselves into a bloody
counterattack. They drove back the occupation forces and
reclaimed most of their lost territory.
Just as importantly, Iran’s economy was beginning to stabilize
after two years of breakdown. Three million working-class
Iranians had been unemployed, skilled laborers and managers
had fled the chaos, inflation had spiraled, and food shortages
had been devastating. Now things were improving. The economic
base, as before the revolution, was the sale of oil.
Not so stabilized, on the other hand, was the political situation.
A high-ranking official and former aide to Khomeini, Sadiq
Qotbzadeh, was accused of joining a coup attempt in April 1982.
Qotbzadeh, seventy military officers, and about a hundred
others were arrested and put to death. Although his involvement
in the plot was questionable (he denied the accusation),
Qotbzadeh in fact had come to oppose Khomeini’s new govern-
ment. A letter written shortly before his execution revealed
his remorse at having supported “the satanic regime of the
mullahs.”^44 Qotbzadeh and Bani-Sadr had urged an early end to
the American hostage crisis, in contrast to the IRP leadership.66 AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI
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