An Autopsy of MKO August Terrorist Atrocity

Mojahedin.ws

Compared with other similar perpetrated terrorist deeds, MKO’s bombings of

the Iranian main ruling headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party and Prime
Minister’s Office in June and August 1981 that resulted in bloody killing of
high ranking and top members of the regime, including the Party’s leader,
the President, Prime Minister and many ministers, have effectively
reverberated throughout the Iranian society. The bombings erupted to
resume a decade-long latent strategy of armed struggle, curbed by Pahlavi’s
regime, because of many reasons and primarily because they had failed to
secure a position in the new regime’s political structure. But, the two
incidents, among many other terrorist atrocities of MKO following its
declared war against the regime, reveal notable facts about the morphology
of the group’s terrorist nature and its manipulation of terrorism that draw
attentions to the group among other notorious terrorist groups and
dangerous cults. A study of some aspects of the two terrorist acts will give
much more details on the group’s disputed ethical vision in manipulation of
means in its claimed political struggle. What are notable about these two
terrorist deeds to be discussed can be outlined as:
 1. Exploiting infiltrated agents
2. The fate of the perpetrators
3. Deferring to accept the responsibility
4. The extent of the employed violence
5. The international reactions
6. The internal, public reactions

Advocating an unethical tactic of hypocrisy in its struggle strategy, MKO

justifies any means for the accomplishment of the ends. From the very
victory of the Iranian revolution, MKO’s agents infiltrated numerous key
administrative organizations to conduct its own unnoticed control and to
take necessary measures in case of facing any confrontation. The
organization, observing many existing disagreements that made it
impossible to walk on the same path with the Islamic Republic, prefigured an
inevitably subsequent conflict with the regime. Thus, an infiltrated agent
proved to be of great advantage in confrontation with a mighty foe.

So, MKO commenced a military phase in its struggle. Despite Mojahedins

claim that the military phase was imposed on the group by the regime,
many members and even the leadership have reiterated that from the very
first days of the victory of the revolution the organization planned for some
members to penetrate ruling and key security bodies and wait for the orders
to carry out. Massoud Keshmiri, the agent who blasted the Prime Minister’s
office on 30 August 1981, was the devotee who was much trusted by the
both sides. Saeed Shahsavandi, a MKO ex-member well acquainted with
Keshmiri and with whom he had lived in the group’s safe-houses for some
time, states that he was the group’s infiltrated agent much trusted by the
regime:

In 1982 the Islamic Republic established the Second Security Committee

aiming to safeguard the top confidential documents and Keshmiri,
through a man I will name, was recommended and it was the first step
to infiltrate. … Massoud Keshmiri who had been employed in the office
through the Second Security Committee was a much trusted personnel
who even proposed and executed plans for the further control of the
members of the National Security Council to block any infiltration. 1

But, who was Keshmiri? As Shahsavandi gives some details on his character:

Here is the story. Massoud Keshmiri was first a sympathizer who was
later recruited as a member. Instructed by the organization’s military-
security section he soon penetrated the Islamic Republic’s security
bodies and was fast promoted as the country’s Secretary of the National
Security Council. He played a key role in this post and would invite the
permanent members and counselors for security decision-makings. 2
 Massoud Keshmiri

Operating at the head of a serious, national organization, a post hardly

anybody but the most trusted ones could be appointed, Keshmiri was an
inferior under the command of Mehdi Eftekhari, a high-ranking member of
the organization:

Mehdi Eftekhari was at the head of the organization’s military-security

section. He was the person in charge of the members infiltrating
different organs of the regime. Only those infiltrators of high ranking
could see him since he was present in none of the public meetings of
the organization and even used different entrances and exits closed on
ordinary insiders. At the time he was the person in command of many
forces including Massoud Keshmiri. … Keshmiri was much trusted by the
President, Muhammad-Ali Rajai, who even did his prayers behind him. 3

Such a hypocritical behavior was among the instruction these members

received. In fact, they were devotees of the organization and Rajavi himself
and blindly submitted to whatever terrorist mission to carry out. In a letter
addressed to Massoud Rajavi following the ideological revolution, Keshmiri
points to a number of the government organizations he had penetrated:

I have been active in important posts in a variety of the regime’s

serious, key security organs. A number of them which I penetrated at
the time were the country’s Security Council, different committees, the
Guards Corps, Ministry of Education, Construction Jihad, University Jihad,
Ministry of Islamic Guidance, Radio and TV Network. 4

Talking of the early plans and preparations for blasting the Prime Minister’s
Office, Keshmiri in the same letter has stated:
 Long later, my brave brother Mehdi Eftekhari came to my house. We
were much delighted to see him in so repressed atmosphere that
compelled us to live in isolation. I did not know what precious present he
had brought to offer. He said: ‘if the organization decides to carry out
the plan [meaning blasting the Prime Minister’s Office], what is your own
proposal?’ I had no better plan than suicide operation and immediately
proposed it. Although the organization never consented to such a plan, I
proposed it at the time. I was much exited. I had already thought of
launching such an operation and considered it a priority atop of my
responsibilities. 5

There are controversies about the fate of the two agents of the blasts in the
headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party and Prime Minister’s Office.
Despite escalated friction between the two and the leadership, as was the
cause for many others to detach from the organization, they came to doubt
accuracy of their bloody deeds. Giving some details on the fate of the two
agents, Mohammad-Reza Kolahi and Massoud Keshmiri, as well as Mehdi
Eftekhari, Sahsavandi has stated:

Some here and there say that Massoud Keshmiri along with Muhammad-
Reza Kolahi, who blasted the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party,
is an outcast living incognito in isolation. I know that is true about
Muhammad-Reza Kolahi because we were in close contact as we were
colleagues in radio section for a while. But I am not certain about
Keshmiri. Once I saw him while living in Turkey for a short time and he
was also there living with his wife in a house just behind the Mosque of
the King Muhhamad Fatih. We would see each other as we were
neighbors but of course we hardly talked about the past as it was not
organizationally permitted. Nothing is clearly known about Massoud
Keshmiri before he blasted Prime Minister’s Office and information about
him are those recorded in different organs where he used to work. 6

Although definitions of terrorism vary widely and are usually inadequate, the
U.S. Department of State’ definition of terrorism suffices to prove MKO’s
shocking, and brutal violence against the targets exceed the basic norms of
a terrorist group. As defined by the State Department, terrorism is
"premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against
noncombatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually
intended to influence an audience". The extent of violence utilized by MKO,
as a result of the amount of the detonated explosives, in bombing the
headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party and Prime Minister’s Office in June
and August 1981calls the operation by MKO into question that was it really
necessary to use so much violence and whom were the audience the group
intended to influence.
Compared with other similar terrorist atrocities of the contemporary history,
MKO’s use of anarchism is blind and hysteric even if we consider the group
as idealistic terrorist fighters that struggled for a radical cause and political
ideology that advocates anarchism. Of course, not all details of the bombings
were disclosed to the public but the same very details reported heightened
the already upsurged public despise. Explaining the consequent of unneeded
fury of MKO, an ex-member active at the time of bombing recounts:

The blast in Prime Minister’s Office with the consequent death of the
President Rajai and his Prime Minister Bahonar was so devastating that
their corpses were unrecognizable. They had gathered some scattered
flesh but could hardly say to whome they belonged. The teeth helped to
identify them. Even Massoud Keshmiri, a member of the National
Security Council and the agent of bombing, who had escaped the scene
before the blast, was believed to be among the perished. Keshmiri
leaves the office immediately after he places the briefcase containing
the bomb next to Rajai and joins the group’s headquarters. The wreck
after the explosion and the consequent conflagration made it impossible
to identify the bodies. 7

The reported testimonies by eyewitnesses precisely corroborate the above

given accounts:

I saw the corpses laid in the hall. Totally burned. Rajai and Bahonar
could be identified only by their teeth. Nothing further could help. There
was some flesh in a bag they said belonged to the meeting’s secretary,
Massoud Keshmiri. 8

The impact of MKO’s brutality on the public and the political climate was so
great that the group did not throw the caution into the wind to accept the
responsibility of the operation. However, the group indirectly and in spoken
statements of the leaders has accepted the responsibility. But there is one
instance in specific published by MKO putting the blame on them. In an
article published in Mojahed No. 219, three years after the incident, in
reaction to a memorial ceremony held in Iran’s Embassy in Paris, the group
refers to the ceremony as the anniversary of the Iranian masses’ retaliation
against the regime through the late President and Prime Minister whose
death is claimed to be the regime’s coup de grace.
In another instance, following Massoud Rajavi’s flight to Iraq and in the
meetings held between the two sides to exchange information, Rajavi tried
to exhibit as a potential military group with terrorist, espionage talents. In a
meeting with Gen. Habush, Rajavi explicitly admitted the responsibility for
the operations:

As you know, I was in Paris in years 1981-1986. In those years we were

not so challenged and nobody called us terrorists. Although the White
House and the Elysee Palace knew, we had contacts with the Elysee
Palace, who had done operation against the Islamic Republic Party and
Prime Minister’s Office in Iran, and they knew well, still they did not call
us terrorists. 9

And he was telling the truth because the group’s Western supporters knew
well who had conducted the bloody operations. However, none of them took
any immediate position. As disclosed later in the US State Department’s
Report on the group in 1992, the responsibility of the two operations is
unquestionably directed at MKO:

The Mojahedin initiated a wave of bombings and assassinations against

the Khomeini regime that reverberates today. The most spectacular
attack occurred June 28, 1981, when two bombs tipped apart the
headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party (IRP, the party of the clerics),
 killing 74 members of the regime's top leadership, including the URP's
leader, Ayatollah Beheshti,(14) ministers, and 27 Majles deputies. On
August 30, the Mojahedin reportedly bombed a meeting of the regime's
National Security Council, killing the new president, Ali Raja'i, and his
new Prime Minister, Mohammad Javad Bahonar. 10

References:

1. Saeed Shahsavandi’s interview with the Voice of Iran; sessions

88 & 89.
2. Ibid.
3. Massoud Keshmiri’s letter addressed to Massoud Rajavi;
Mojahed No. 250.
4. Ibid.
5. Saeed Shahsavandi’s interview with the Voice of Iran; sessions
88 & 89.
6. ibid
7. Saeed Shahsavandi’s interview with the Voice of Iran; session
89.
8. Keyhan Daily, August 31, 1981.
9. For the judgment of the history; secret documents of Rajavi’s
deal with Saddam.
10. The State Department’s Report on MKO, 1992.