Shootout

Wounding the Mujahedin

The chilly gray dawn was just breaking over Tehran as Mousa Khiabani, 35, operational commander of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, the leftist guerrilla organization seeking to overthrow the Iranian government, was moving to a new hideout. With him were his pregnant wife Azar Reza'i and Ashraf Rabi'i, the wife of Paris-based Mujahedin Leader Massoud Rajavi, and the Rajavis' year-old son. When Khiabani stepped out of his bulletproof Peugeot, a plainclothes Islamic Guard spotted him and radioed for help. Within minutes hundreds of government security forces converged on the scene.

Shooting began, and when it was over hours later, Khiabani and 21 other Mujahedin were dead. Scores of government forces were also killed or injured. According to witnesses, Khiabani's own seven-man detail of bodyguards managed to hold the government gunmen at bay until the guerrilla leader got back into the car. Another heavily armed Mujahedin squad blasted a corridor through the government forces to provide an escape route for the auto. Khiabani, though wounded, managed to drive off, but an Islamic Guard scored a direct hit on the Peugeot with a Soviet-made RPG-7 antitank rocket launcher. All of the Mujahedin, including the bodyguards and the two women, died. Rajavi's son survived.

From Paris, where he has been in exile since fleeing Iran last summer with former President Abolhassan Banisadr, Rajavi acknowledged that the Mujahedin had suffered a damaging blow. But he vowed that "the battle for freedom and democracy will continue." He denied government reports of other shootouts with the Mujahedin, saying they were "useless psychological warfare." He also said he had appointed a new commander in chief, but did not divulge his name. Mujahedin sources said, however, that the new chief gave his first order the day after Khiabani's death. "Take no rash retaliatory action," he told his cadres. "This is a revolution, not a street brawl."

A well-organized underground movement founded in 1965, the Mujahedin was active in the overthrow of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. But it later split with the clergy-dominated regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini. Over the past eight months it has launched a bloody campaign of insurrection that culminated in the assassination of President Mohammed Ali Raja'i and many other top government figures. In the wake of severe government reprisals, Mujahedin activities have tapered off. The Mujahedin say they have merely switched tactics from assassinating political leaders to attacking government security forces. Government sources claim that, in fact, the rebels made an average of 20 raids a day on government posts in Tehran this winter. Three weeks ago, they attacked security-force headquarters in the Caspian city of Amol, capturing weapons and documents. More than 120 government troops were said to have been killed in the siege.

Meanwhile, an explosion and fire last week destroyed the house in the Paris suburb of Neauphle-le-Chateau from which the Ayatullah directed the Iranian revolution. The next morning police found an effigy of Khomeini hanging from a tree in the garden. qed

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