Word: shah
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...faction led by former General Bahram Aryana remains alive, but it proves little else: the ship was surrendered to France and ultimately sent to the Iranian government, after bobbing around off the port of Cadiz for a week. Shahpour Bahktiar, the French-educated politician who was jailed by the Shah but then served as his last Prime Minister, lives in exile outside Paris; he has no sizable following. Within Iran, most opposition groups now tacitly support the Mujahedin. The pro-Soviet Tudeh (Communist) Party has discredited itself for the moment by supporting Khomeini...
...removing Banisadr, Khomeini eliminated the last channel for peaceful opposition to his regime. He certainly invited the violence of the Mujahedin, a tightly structured group that had helped Khomeini come to power by organizing huge street demonstrations on his behalf in the last months of the Shah's rule. The movement dates from the mid-'60s, when it was formed to oppose the Shah. By 1969 some members of the Mujahedin, organized in cells, were receiving military training from Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon and Jordan. From the start, the group integrated Islam into an ideology favoring a classless...
From his new base in France, Rajavi is now making statements designed to gain broader acceptance outside Iran. He says that he would govern with a national council including representatives of all the forces "who agree with our line of independence and freedom, except the allies of the Shah and Khomeini." Asked why his promises should be more credible than those of Khomeini, who also pledged free speech and a pluralist society during his exile in France, Rajavi answers: "We are not just a group of intellectuals without any responsibility. We have been a popular movement for 17 years...
...bring down Khomeini or, if it does, that Rajavi will be the beneficiary. Rouhollah K. Ramazani, an Iran watcher at the University of Virginia, suggests that "Khomeini still has a tenacious hold on the people, especially the lower classes." French experts, who were among the first to predict the Shah's demise, contend that the Mujahedin may have suffered more at the Khomeini government's hands than they are willing to admit. Some Western intelligence sources doubt that the Mujahedin, though superbly organized, have as many followers as they claim. "They are not a popular movement," one analyst...
...residence-in-exile of Mujahedin Leader Massoud Rajavi. Both the setting and the air of expectancy that pervaded last week were reminiscent of another place and time-when an exiled Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini held forth in the little village of Neauphle-le-Château just before Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overthrown in 1979. As half a dozen visitors waited under the fruit trees outside the blue-and-white tent that serves as his office at Auvers-sur-Oise, Rajavi, speaking English, talked with TIME Correspondent Sandra Burton. Excerpts...