fields in Iran’s Khuzistan region. The Iranians’ military command
structure was in disarray during the revolution and hardly able
to counter Hussein’s forces. Indeed, many of its senior officers
had been executed, accused of loyalty to the deposed shah.
Iran soon managed to halt the Iraqi thrust, however. It did so
with what was in large part a curious people’s army—masses of
untrained militia willing to die for their new republic. The war would
continue for years, with neither country gaining a decisive edge.
President Bani-Sadr was not destined to lead the Islamic
Republic of Iran for long. He curried the support of the
Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, political challengers of the controlling IRP.
In June 1981 in response, the IRP voted to oust Bani-Sadr from
the presidency. Khomeini, the president’s old mentor and idol,
approved the ouster. Bani-Sadr went to France in exile.
In response to being stripped of their political prestige, the
Mujahedeen launched a guerrilla war against the government.
They were a formidable faction, with some ten thousand follow-
ers in the Tehran area. But they faced a formidable enemy: the
Revolutionary Guard, which had been created to ensure by force
that the new Iran kept to the purposes of the revolution.
When a bomb devastated IRP headquarters in June 1981, the
IRP-controlled government blamed Mujahedeen terrorists—
although a French terrorist organization claimed responsibility
for the act. More than seventy people died in the attack. They
included Ayatollah Beheshti, one of the highest government
leaders, and some forty other government officials.
Regardless of who really was behind the bombing, the
Mujahedeen clearly was bent on violence in its antigovernment
campaign. A bomb blast at a government meeting August 30
claimed the lives of President Muhammad Ali Rajai and Prime
Minister Muhammad Javad Bahonar. Both men had only recently
taken office. Some twelve hundred political and religious leaders
had died at the hands of Mujahedeen militants by early 1982,
according to estimates.
Vengeance was far more vicious. Government forces, at Khome-
ini’s bidding, captured and killed some four thousand members of
Khomeini in Power 65