As Khomeini Government Disintegrates, Iranian Opposition Groups Revive

By Bahram Alavi

"Everywhere they are saying that we are murderers, that we are killing people. Until now, not one person has been killed. We are faced with enemies bent on destroying our nation, our humanity, and our religion. We have tried to refine their manners. If we do not succeed, then we imprison them. if this does not work, then we refine them for good. This has been done by all the prophets since the beginning of time."

—Ayatollah Khomeini on opposition in Iran

Ten years after the revolution which overthrew the dictatorial regime of the shah, Khomeini's Iran has turned into a nightmare of oppression, torture, war, and destruction. Determined to impose its own version of Shi'ite Islam on Iranian society, the Islamic Republic has systematically adopted, since 1979, policies aimed at crushing all individuals and organizations which refuse to conform with its totalitarian ideology.

All political parties, trade unions, workers and peasants councils, women's organizations, writer's associations, independent professional guilds, and newspapers have been banned by the state. Since June 1988 a new wave of mass executions has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of political activists and intellectuals.

Ever since mid-1979, popular opposition to the Islamic dictatorship has been gathering strength and momentum. The political leadership to translate this popular opposition into mass action, however, is still plagued by ideological fragmentation, organizational disarray, and personal rivalries.

Because of the speed with which the Iranian government is deteriorating, it is difficult, yet all the more urgent, to identify the major political forces and ideological tendencies within the Iranian opposition. The opposition forces to the Khomeini regime can be divided into five main categories. The five are: 1) the monarchists, 2) the liberal nationalists, 3) the Organization of the People's Mojahedin of Iran, 4) the left, and 5) the national autonomy movements.

The Monarchists

The monarchists consist of all organizations and politicians who favor the restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy headed by Reza, the shah's oldest son. While the monarchist organizations range from right-wing extremists to conservative nationalists, the majority of the monarchist leaders claim that they are committed to a constitutional monarchy based on the Iranian constitution of 1906. It simultaneously guarantees the preservation of the Iranian monarchy and a parliamentary system of government.

The most prominent political figures in the monarchist camp are Ali Amini (prime minister of the shah from 1960-62) and Shahpur Bakhtiyar (the last prime minister of the shah before the collapse of the monarchy in 1979). Since 1981 Amini, with financial backing from the United States, has organized a coalition of various monarchist factions and politicians based in Paris. The coalition calls for "restoration of law and order" in Iran through the implementation of the 1906 constitution.

Amini, a personal friend of the Kennedy family, is a member of the traditional Iranian land-owning oligarchy, which ruled Iran until 1925. His program appeals to the members of the privileged classes, namely big landowners, wealthy industrialists, and well-to-do professionals who fled Iran either before or immediately after the 1979 revolution and who reside presently in Western European countries and the United States.

The other monarchist leader with some political influence is Shahpur Bakhtiyar. The head of the National Resistance Movement of Iran which is also based in Paris, Bakhtiyar is a member of the powerful Bakhtiyari tribe. Like Amini, he enjoys very little popularity with the Iranians inside the country and his support base is confined largely to a group of Iranian exiles in Western Europe and the United States.

The Liberal Nationalists

The liberalnationalists are the politicians and intellectuals who have been mostly members of the National Front, a loose coalition of organizations and individuals who supported the government of Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, who was overthrown in 1953 by the CIA. The National Front politicians residing in Western European countries have quarreled with one another in their exile for the past 10 years, trying to rebuild their shattered organization. They insist that the only viable and democratic alternative to the present regime is a national parliamentary system through which all political forces, regardless of their ideology, would be able to participate.

The only remaining National Front politician in Iran is Mehdi Bazargan, the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic whose organization, the Liberation Movement of Iran, maintains a precarious existence under the Khomeini dictatorship. Bazargan has criticized Khomeini's policies on several occasions but has proved too feeble to organize a strong movement which would support his political platform.

The Organization of the People's Mojahedin of Iran

The Organization of the People's Mojahedin of Iran (OPMI) is a nationalist Islamic organization now headquartered in Iraq. The OPMI constitutes the main guerrilla group in opposition to the Khomeini regime. Last year the Mojahedin carried out several successful military campaigns against the Khomeini regime, occupying several Iranian villages and one important town. The political and military impact of the Mojahedin, however, has been reduced since late last year, when the government inflicted several major defeats on OPMI forces. The organization itself appears to have been weakened as a result of the brutal suppression of the organization by the Khomeini regime, and the end of the Iran-Iraq war, which might motivate Iraq to withdraw its support from the OPMI.

The Mojahedin continue to enjoy considerable popularity among Iranians in exile. There are however, no adequate means to determine the political support they enjoy inside Iran, particularly among major social classes. Although the Mojahedin have already broken away from former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr and their principal organizational ally, the Kurdish Democratic Partyof Iran (which enjoys considerable following among the Kurdish population in western Iran), they continue to be the largest and perhaps the strongest opposition force.

The Left

The leftist organizations began going underground as early as 1980 and 1981 when the Islamic Republic decided that their activities would pose a major challenge to the existence of the regime. Since then, many leftist activists have been executed and many await trial in Khomeini's jails. As a result of harsh suppression by the regime, the ranks of the leftist organizations are depleted and their morale is extremely low.

Besides the suppression, the failure of the Iranian left can also be attributed to other factors. First, when the revolution began, the Iranian left consisted of small, secret, intellectual circles with no strong links to either the working class or the peasantry. Having become accustomed to life in underground teamhouses and having been trained politically in military confrontations with the shah's secret police, the left found itself faced with a completely new set of political conditions and ideological problems in 1978 and in 1979 after the revolution.

Leftist leaders, young and politically inexperienced, failed to utilize the relatively democratic conditions created by the revolutionary process in order to establish links with the working class, the urban poor, and the peasantry. Instead, leftist intellectual leaders expended their energies in sectarian infighting. Hence, no serious attempt was undertaken to create a united front to coordinate the actions of all leftist forces.

Second, the Khomeini regime used the so-called "hostage crisis" and the Iran-Iraq war to mobilize popular support, divert attention from real socioeconomic problems, and to crush the internal opposition. A section of the left disarmed itself voluntarily at the same time the regime was laying plans to destroy the opposition. With one section of the left supporting the regime, and another section opposing it, the rift within the left intensified. Hence, the leftist forces failed to defend themselves against the government's attacks.

The National Autonomy Movements

The national minorities and their political organizations frequently create major political problems for the Iranian government. Iran is a mosaic of many ethnic and linguistic groups. As long as the central government in Tehran refuses to recognize the basic rights of the many ethnic groups, there will be conflict between the center—dominated by the Persian speaking ruling elite—and the periphery—populated by non-Persian speaking ethnic groups.

In the past 10 years, the Kurds, Kurdish Baluchis, Turkomans, and Azaris have demonstrated dissatisfaction with the central government's policies on many occasions. The Kurdish political organizations, in particular, continue to engage government forces. The two principle Kurdish organizations active in Iran are the Democratic Party of Kurdistan and the Komeleh, which is one of the constituent forces within the Communist Party of Iran.

Although these two organizations continue to carry out guerrilla attacks against the Khomeini regime, they seem to have been kept off balance by government forces. As early as September 1986, Omar Ilkhani, a member of the Central Committee of the Komeleh, admitted that the Iranian government forces "control the entire province of Kurdistan."

Until now, the Iranian regime has demonstrated sufficient internal unity to prevent the opposition from organizing a major challenge to its rule. But this is largely due to the weakness of the opposition forces and their political and ideological fragmentation.

Mullahs Losing Support

While the opposition outside the power structure may be too feeble to pose a challenge, the conflicts between various factions within the ruling elite and the worsening socio-economic conditions may have important repercussions for the regime. The Islamic regime has already lost much of its support base among the traditional lower middle class and the urban poor. The industrial working class has already been alienated by the government's anti-labor practices, including harsh suppression of the trade unions and workers' councils.

The Islamic regime can only maintain power through mass repression and a resolution of internal conflicts between factions within the government. The new wave of executions of thousands of Iranian activists is an indication that the policy of mass repression will continue to be a main characteristic of the present regime.

The secular intelligentsia and the various strata of the middle class remain outside the power structure and resentful of economic insecurity, food and power shortages, high inflation, and the monopoly of power in the hands of "a few uneducated, fanatical, and ignorant mullahs." In the countryside, the Iranian peasantry has remained hungry for land and mistrustful of a government which has reneged on its promise of a nationwide land distribution program. The ethnic and linguistic groups remain unimpressed by a Persian speaking ruling elite which, as under the shah's regime, has systematically excluded the non-Persian speaking population from the decision-making process.

In this critical historical juncture, the Islamic regime can only maintain power through mass repression and a resolution of internal conflicts between factions within the government. The new wave of executions of thousands of Iranian activists is an indication that the policy of mass repression will continue to be a main characteristic of the present regime. The continuation and intensification of factional infighting, on the other hand, clearly demonstrate that as long as one faction has not completely purged the other existing factions, the Islamic Republic will remain an internally fragmented entity with no hope for long-term political stability.

Bahram Alavi is the pseudonym of an Iranian-born political scientist teaching at a US university. It is against Washington Report on Middle East Affairs policy to publish articles or letters without the correct name of the author. However, this article, and two earlier ones published by the author covering the factions and ideological currents within the Khomeini government, are of such value that the editors have made an exception to the policy in order to protect the author's relatives in Iran. The three articles will be available as an American Educational Trust White Paper later this year.