Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

452 • MUJAHIDEENThe MKO undertook armed struggle following an abortive revoltinstigated by the Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini in 1963. The groupbecame influenced by the syncretistic quasi-Islamic, quasi-Marxistteachings of the Iranian sociologist ‘Ali Shariati, who had beendirectly influenced by Frantz Fanon while studying in Paris. On 13August 1972 the MKO assassinated General Taheri, the police chiefof Tehran and former warden of the Komiteh Prison in which MKOmembers had been held and tortured and who had also crushed thecivilian uprising in Qum during June 1963. On 2 June 1973 theykilled U.S. Air Force Colonels Turner and Sheafer in Tehran, and inAugust 1976 they killed three U.S. technicians associated with theU.S. military aid program to Iran. In 1975, however, the group splitwith a more secularist wing defecting to the Fedayan-i Khalq.While the group’s members participated in the street fightingthat brought down the Pahlavi monarchy in 1978–1979, afterwardKhomeini rejected their credentials as Islamic revolutionaries dueto their refusal to accept his principle of leadership by the Shi’iteulama (specialists of religious law) and also due to the Marxistcontent they had incorporated into their eclectic understanding ofIslam. The MKO allied itself with the more liberal and nationalisticpoliticians led by President Abul-Hassan Bani-Sadr, who, however,was later deposed from the Iranian presidency by Khomeini on 20June 1981. Following Bani-Sadr’s ouster, the MKO carried out a terroristcampaign against the Khomeini regime. On 28 June 1981 theIslamic Republic Party headquarters was bombed, killing at least 72high-ranking functionaries of the regime. A bomb that killed the nextIranian president, Muhammad Ali Rajai, and prime minister, MuhammadJavad Bahonar, on 30 August 1981 was also believed to bethe work of the MKO. The Islamic Republic retaliated with its owncampaign of state terror against the MKO and its known supporters.In the months that followed, the MKO conducted suicide bombingsin which individuals would approach Friday prayers leaders and thendetonate explosives hidden on their bodies, killing themselves andtheir victim. Often a motorcycle driver and passenger team wouldconduct drive-by machine-gun attacks on government offices. On 8February 1981, Musa Khiabani, the operational head of the terroristcampaign within Iran, was tracked down and killed by the IslamicRevolutionary Guards Corps, and the MKO campaign within Iransputtered into relative insignificance. The official Iranian state media