| rdfs:comment | - The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran was founded in September 5, 1965 by six former members of the Liberation or Freedom Movement of Iran, students at Tehran University, including Mohammad Hanifnejad, Saied Mohsen and Ali-Asghar Badizadegan. The MEK opposed the rule of Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, considering him corrupt and oppressive, and considered the Liberation Movement too moderate and ineffective. Its membership has been described as part of the Iranian generation "shaken by the events of June 1963" and the radical generation Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Vo Nguyen Giap, the Tupamaros in South America, the Algerian Mojahedin, and the Palestinian fedayeen. They were more "religious, radical, anti-American" than the earlier generation of Iranian leftists.
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| abstract | - The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran was founded in September 5, 1965 by six former members of the Liberation or Freedom Movement of Iran, students at Tehran University, including Mohammad Hanifnejad, Saied Mohsen and Ali-Asghar Badizadegan. The MEK opposed the rule of Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, considering him corrupt and oppressive, and considered the Liberation Movement too moderate and ineffective. Its membership has been described as part of the Iranian generation "shaken by the events of June 1963" and the radical generation Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Vo Nguyen Giap, the Tupamaros in South America, the Algerian Mojahedin, and the Palestinian fedayeen. They were more "religious, radical, anti-American" than the earlier generation of Iranian leftists. In its first five years, the group primarily engaged in ideological work. Their thinking aligned with what was a common tendency in Iran at the time – a kind of radical, political Islam based on a Marxist reading of history and politics. Although the MEK are often regarded as devotees of Ali Shariati, in fact their pronouncements preceded Shariati's, and they continued to echo each other throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. The group's main sources of inspiration were the Islamic text Nahj al-Balagha (a collection of analyses and aphorisms attributed to Imam Ali), and the works of Iranian and international Marxists, such as Karl Marx's Das Kapital; Vladimir Lenin's The State and Revolution and What is to be Done?; Liu Shaoqi's How to be a Good Communist; and books on guerrilla warfare and urban combat. Despite this heavy Marxist influence, the group never used the terms "socialist" or "communist" to describe themselves, and always called themselves Muslims – arguing along with Ali Shariati, that a true Muslim – especially a true Shia Muslim, that is to say a devoted follower of the Imams Ali and Hossein – must also by definition, be a revolutionary. Its first military activities, a bombing of the Tehran electrical works and an unsuccessful airplane hijacking, were conducted in August 1971 in protest against the Pahlavi's extravagant 2,500 year celebration of Iran's monarchy. Nine Mujahedin were arrested, and under torture one member gave out information leading to the arrests of another 66 members. Within a few months SAVAK had eliminated what it though was "the whole of its original leadership through executions or street battles." Other members remained incarcerated for many years with the last group, including Massoud Rajavi. They were released during a general amnesty at the peak of the 1978-9 revolution shortly before the Shah's regime collapse and Khomeini's arrival in Tehran in January 1979. From 1971 till the 1979 revolution, the group had survived and its members continued to carry out violent attacks on the regime. They kept a friendly relationship with the only other major Iranian urban guerrilla group, the Organization of Iranian People's Fedai Guerrillas (OIPFG).
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