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Formed in the 1960s by the college-educated children of Iranian merchants, the MKO sought to counter what it perceived as excessive Western influence in the Shah's regime. The MKO's ideology mixes Marxism and Islam. It has developed into the largest and most active armed Iranian dissident group. Its history is studded with anti-Western activity, and, most recently, attacks on the interests of the clerical regime in Iran and abroad.

In the 1980s the MKO's leaders were forced by Iranian security forces to flee to France. Most resettled in Iraq by 1987. In the mid-1980s their terrorist operations inside Iran were carried on at a lower level than in the 1970s. However, in recent years the organization has claimed credit for a number of operations in Iran.

The organization now has several thousand members based in Iraq with an extensive overseas support structure. Beyond support from Iraq, the MKO uses front organizations to solicit contributions from expatriate Iranian communities. Most of the fighters are organized in the MKO's National Liberation Army (NLA).

The MKO's worldwide campaign against the Iranian Government stresses propaganda and occasionally uses terrorist violence. During the 1970s the organization staged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several US military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran. The MKO supported the takeover in 1979 of the US Embassy in Tehran. In April 1992 they conducted attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, demonstrating the group's ability to mount large-scale operations overseas. Recent attacks in Iran include three explosions in Tehran in June 1998 that killed three people and the assassination of Asadollah Lajevardi, the former director of the Evin Prison.

Mujahedeen-e-Khalq
Iranian rebels

What is Mujahedeen-e-Khalq?
Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) is the largest and most militant group opposed to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Also known as the People’s Mujahedeen Organization of Iran, MEK is believed to have several thousand members operating from Iraq, as well as a network of sympathizers in Europe, the United States, and Canada. MEK was added to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist groups in 1997 because its attacks have often killed civilians. Despite its violent tactics, MEK’s strong stand against Iran—part of President Bush’s “axis of evil”—and pro-democratic image have won it support among some U.S. and European lawmakers.

How was MEK formed?

MEK military commander Masud Rajavi speaking before portrait of group leader Maryam Rajavi, 1996.
(AP Photo/Mujahedin)

MEK was founded in the 1960s by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists who thought the country’s then ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, was too open to Western influence. The group participated in the 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the shah with a Shiite Islamist regime led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. But MEK’s ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, barred the group from joining the postrevolutionary government, and its original leadership was soon executed by the Khomeini regime. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Khomeini’s Iran. In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq, which uses MEK to take swipes at neighboring Iran.

Does MEK have ties to Saddam Hussein?
Yes. Iraq is MEK’s primary benefactor. Iraq provides MEK with bases, weapons, and protection, and MEK harasses Saddam’s Iranian foes. Experts say MEK’s attacks on Iran traditionally intensify when relations between Iran and Iraq are strained. Iraq encourages or reins in MEK according to its own interests.

Who is MEK’s leader?
Maryam Rajavi, who hopes to become president of Iran, is MEK’s principal leader; her husband, Masud Rajavi, heads up the group’s military forces. Both live in Iraq. Maryam Rajavi, who was born in 1953 to an upper-middle-class Iranian family, joined MEK as a student in Tehran in the early 1970s. After relocating with the group to Paris in 1982, she was elected its joint leader and later became deputy commander in chief of its army. Experts say that MEK has increasingly come to resemble a cult that’s devoted to Masud Rajavi’s secular interpretation of the Koran and is prone to sudden, dramatic ideological shifts.

Has MEK targeted Americans?
Yes. In the early 1970s, angered by U.S. support for the pro-Western shah, MEK members launched an attack that killed several U.S. soldiers and civilians working on defense projects in Iran. (Experts say the attack may have been the work of a Maoist splinter faction of MEK operating beyond the control of the Rajavi leadership.) MEK members may also have participated in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

What are MEK’s targets?
Iranian officials, as well as Iranian military and government facilities in Iran and abroad. While the group says it does not intentionally target civilians, it has often risked civilian casualties. It routinely aims its attacks at government buildings in crowded cities; MEK attacks on security posts in central Tehran, for example, have caused several civilian deaths.

Recent MEK attacks include the assassinations of Asadollah Lajevardi, the director of Iran’s prison system, in 1998, and Ali Sayyad Hirazi, the acting director of Iran’s army, the following year. In 2000, on the twenty-first anniversary of the Iranian revolution, MEK fired mortars at the palace of Iranian President Muhammad Khatami, killing one civilian and injuring five. Khatami was unharmed. It’s unclear how many attacks MEK has carried out: according to experts, the group’s claims of responsibility for attacks in Iran are often exaggerated, and sometimes it’s blamed by the Iranian government for attacks it didn’t stage.