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Sunday, 12 June 2005 |
 The President and official spokesman of the National Council of
Resistance is Massoud Rajavi. Massoud Rajavi was born in 1948 in the
town of Tabas in the northeastern province of Khorassan.The youngest of
five brothers, he is a graduate of political law from Tehran
University. His brothers completed their higher education in France,
Switzerland, Britain and Belgium. The eldest, Professor Kazem Rajavi,
was assassinated in April 1990 in Geneva. His only sister, Monireh, was
executed in 1988 after enduring six years of imprisonment with her two
small children. Asghar Nazemi, her husband, had been executed two years
earlier.
Mr. Rajavi's elderly parents were arrested and imprisoned by the
mullahs in 1981. His first wife, Ashraf, was also a Mojahedin prisoner
during the time of the shah. She married Mr. Rajavi in summer 1979, and
was slain in Tehran in February 1982 when the Pasdaran attacked her
residence.
In high school Mr. Rajavi was a sympathizer of Ayatollah Taleqani and
Mehdi Bazargan's Freedom Movement. He became acquainted with the
Mojahedin at the university and became a member in 1967. He was in
direct contact with the organization's founder, Mohammad Hanifnejad,
and later became a Central Committe member.
Mr. Rajavi was arrested in 1971 and sentenced to death. His elder
brother, Professor Kazem Rajavi, organized a worldwide campaign to save
his life, and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. SAVAK,
unable to execute him because of international pressure, kept Rajavi
under torture throughout his incarceration. Amnesty International, the
International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as distinguished
European personalities such as François Mitterrand, intervened to save
his life many times. He was released among the last group of political
prisoners in January 1979.
Despite the difficult conditions of prison, Mr. Rajavi had to fill the
vacuum of the Mojahedin's executed leaders and revive the organization,
shattered by Marxists in an internal coup. He spent thousands of hours,
under extraordinarily restrictive conditions, formulating and teaching
the Mojahedin's positions. All his activities had to be kept hidden
from the eyes of the SAVAK and the prison guards. Illness and
systematic torture aggravated the difficulties of his task.
Every time SAVAK got wind of efforts, he was returned to the torture
chambers, but he continued his discussions with his fellow cell-mates.
Afterwards, the imprisoned Mojahedin passed on these positions to those
members still outside. Mr. Rajavi described the Marxist current, which
had shattered not only the Mojahedin organization, but also the unity
and trust among opposition forces, as treacherous and deviant. He
censured their misappropriation of the name "Mojahedin" stressing that
the ideology of the Mojahedin was Islam, and their goal to overthrow
the shah and establish an independent, popular government. These
decisive positions forced the Marxists to stop using the Mojahedin's
name in 1977. He warned that the blow to the Mojahedin would give rise
to backward interpretations of the religion, and advised the Mojahedin
to keep their distance from the reactionaries, whose ideologue he
identified as Khomeini.
From the roof of Qasr Prison on the last day of his captivity, he spoke
as the representative of the last group of political prisoners to
thousands of Tehran residents who had come to secure his freedom. He
expressed the hope that the prisons would be closed forever, and
political freedoms established in Iran.
Several days prior to Khomeini's arrival in Tehran, his son, Ahmad,
called Mr. Rajavi from Paris, telling him, "You have a lot of support
in Iran and if you form a political party, millions will join you."
Several weeks later, in a meeting in Tehran, Ahmad Khomeini told
Rajavi, "If you support the Imam and oppose his opponents, all doors
will be open to you, and you will be given all that you need." Rajavi
rejected Khomeini's proposal, saying that the Mojahedin sought a
nationalist, democratic government.
A year later, in spring 1980, Mr. Rajavi met with Hashemi Rafsanjani,
then a member of the Revolutionary Council and Minister of the
Interior, to file a complaint on the multitude of cases of fraud and
rigging by the regime's operatives during the parliamentary elections.
Rafsanjani told him: "Forget about all this. You have an organization,
a very good reputation and a lot of respect. If you had accepted the
Imam and the velayat-e faqih, all doors would have been open to you.
You have forced us to bring ministers and Majlis deputies from abroad."
Mr. Rajavi replied: "You should not expect us to accept club-wielding
and monopoly of power under the banner of Islam."
Soon after the revolution, the Mojahedin launched their own cultural,
ideological campaign among intellectuals and the younger generation to
counter Khomeini's despotic and reactionary interpretation of Islam. In
late 1979, Rajavi began a series of lectures in philosophy at Sharif
University of Technology. Every week, 10,000 students took part in
these classes, and more than 100,000 others watched the video
recordings of them across Iran. The transcripts were published weekly
by the hundreds of thousands, and distributed throughout Iran. After
just 16 weeks, Khomeini shut down the universities, his regime's
leaders stressing that the universities had become a base for the
Mojahedin.
- Khomeini's Fatwa Against Rajavi
By 1980, Rajavi's speeches in Tehran and provincial centers drew crowds
of hundreds of thousands. The turning-point in the meteoric rise of
Mojahedin's popularity came in January 1980 presidential elections.
Rajavi's candidacy received a flurry of support from the democratic
opposition to the mullahs' regime.
American historian Ervand Abrahamian wrote in his account of those
years: "Rajavi's candidacy was not only endorsed by the
Mojahedin-affiliated organizations...; but also by an impressive array
of independent organizations including the Feda'iyan, the National
Democratic Front, the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Kurdish Toilers
Revolutionary Party (Komula), the Society of Iranian Socialists, the
Society for the Cultural and Political Rights of the Turkomans, the
Society of Young Assyrians, and the Joint Group of Armenian,
Zoroastrian and Jewish Minorities. Rajavi also received the support of
a large number of prominent figures: Taleqani's widow; Shaykh Ezeddin
Hosayni, the spiritual leader of the Sunni Kurds in Mahabad; Hojjat
al-Islam Jalal Ganjehi...; fifty well-known members of the Iranian
Writers' Association, including the economist Naser Pakdaman, the
essayist Manuchehr Hezarkhani and the secular historians Feraydun
Adamiyyat and Homa Nateq; and, of course, many of the families of the
early Mojahedin martyrs, notably the Hanif-nezhads, Rezais, Mohsens,
Badizadegans, Asgarizadehs, Sadeqs, Meshkinfams, and Mihandusts. The
Mojahedin had become the vanguards of the secular opposition to the
Islamic Republic."
Fearing that Rajavi's victory would upset the emergence of the
totalitarian religious state that he was shaping, Khomeini reneged on
his earlier promise not to intervene in the elections and issued a
fatwa (religious decree) to veto Rajavi's nomination for presidency.
The move only increased the Mojahedin's popularity. In the first
parliamentary elections in March and April 1980, the Mojahedin received
the second highest vote tally nationwide, second only to Khomeini's own
Islamic Republican Party, despite huge riggings and electoral fraud by
the ruling mullahs.
A candidate from Tehran, Rajavi received 550,000 votes, but Khomeini prevented him from entering the Majlis.
In a speech in June 1980 at Tehran's Amjadieh Stadium, Mr. Rajavi
criticized the regime's leaders about the suppression of liberties. The
gathering in tribute to the victims of club-wielding was itself
attacked, creating a major political scandal for the regime. Twenty
deputies from the newly convened parliament issued the body's first
statement, condemning the attack.
Political observers were by then unanimously describing Massoud Rajavi
as the leader of the anti-Khomeini opposition. Several days later,
Khomeini made his strongest speech against the Mojahedin, candidly
expressing his concern at Rajavi's popularity, who had begun a campaign
to unite the democratic opposition forces.
The daily Mojahed, with a circulation of 500,000, had the largest
readership in Iran at the time. It allocated a section, entitled Showra
(Council), to other opposition groups and personalities to put across
their views.
In early 1981, in a series of lengthy interviews, Rajavi explained the
Mojahedin's viewpoints about Khomeini and other political trends at the
time, and proposed the formation of a front against religious
backwardness.
- A Democratic Alternative to Mullahs' Tyranny
The rapid rise of the Mojahedin was not something Khomeini could
tolerate. The first few months of 1981 witnessed a sharp rise in armed
attacks on Mojahedin rallies, assassination of Mojahedin sympathizers
while they were selling the organization's newspapers, and fatwas by
various mullahs across the country, declaring that it was "religiously
permissible" to kill the Mojahedin and confiscate their properties,
because they were "renegades" and would not accept the mullahs' version
of Islam.
On June 20, Khomeini issued a public order to the Revolutionary Guards
to quash a huge demonstration by half-a-million residents of Tehran,
who had responded to the Mojaehdin's call to demonstrate against the
mullahs' tyranny. Dozens were shot dead and hundreds arrested. On the
same day, mass executions began. Tens of thousands of Mojahedin members
and supporters and other opposition activists were executed in a few
months in the bloodiest political purge in Iran's history.
Rajavi announced the formation of the National Council of Resisance of
Iran in Tehran on July 21, 1981. A few days later, he left Tehran from
France on board an Iranian miitary jet poilted by a team of
pro-Mojahedin air force officers.
In Paris, Rajavi introduced the NCRI to the world public opinion and
exposed the mullahs' atrocities. He met many foreign leaders and
political dignitaries, and was interviewed by hundreds of journalists
from all over the world
- A Courageous Breakthrough for Peace
In 1983, after Iraq's withdrawal from Iranian territories, Rajavi
launched a massive campaign for peace, because there was no need to
continue the fratricidal war. He presented a peace plan based on the
1975 Algiers Treaty in March 1983. The plan won the support of many
governments, political parties and 5,000 parliamentarians and political
dignitaries around the world.
Under pressure from the French government in 1986 after the latter's
secret deals with the mullahs over the release of French hostages in
Lebanon, Rajavi moved his headquarters from Paris to the Iran-Iraq
border region in June 1986. A year later, he announced the formation of
the National Liberation Army of Iran, as the military arm of the
Iranian Resistance.
Under Rajavi's overall command, the NLA scored significant victories in
more than 100 military operations against the Revolutionary Guards and
elite units of the mullahs' military forces. Shortly after NLA forces
liberated the city of Mehran in June 1988, Khomeini was forces to
accept the cease-fire despite his earlier vows to continue the war
"until the last erect building in Iran."
A year after the cease-fire, Khomeini's death deprived the mullahs'
regime of its principal mainstay. Since then, during eight years of
Khamenei-Rafsanjani duo at the top of the regime and particularty after
the triumvirate leadership that emerged when Khatami became president
in 1997, the mullahs' regime has been plagued with factional
infighting, chronic instability, and numerous polticial, economic and
social crises. In the face of this regime, Rajavi has capably led the
resistance movement toward its strategic goal of toppling clerical rule
in Iran.
Despite Mr. Rajavi's decisive role in the history of the Resistance
movement, all important decisions within the movement have been taken
collectively after long discussions and democratic debate. Through this
process, new members assumed greater responsibilities. Most members of
the Mojahedin's Leadership Council and more than 90 percent of the
organization's current Central Council joined the Mojahedin after 1979.
Since 1989, Mr. Rajavi has had no executive responsibilities in the
Mojahedin organization. His role in safeguarding the principles of the
Mojahedin as a Muslim, democratic, nationalist and progressive
organization in the 1970s, and more importantly against Khomeini's
all-out assault to destroy the Mojahedin, has made him a historical and
ideological leader for the Mojahedin.
Since the formation of the NCRI, most of Mr. Rajavi's efforts have been
devoted to the Council. His patient, democratic manner of managing the
NCRI's affairs has been instrumental in the Council's expansion and
resilience, and has earned him the trust of the NCRI's members.
Mohammad Hossein Naqdi, an Iranian diplomat, joined the Council in
1982. He was assassinated by the regime's terrorists in 1993 in Rome.
Mr. Naqdi said of Massoud Rajavi in a December 1992 interview,
following the Council's expansion: "We in the Council are hesitant to
highlight the role of individuals, but complements aside, I really
think that in the world of politics, (Mr. Rajavi's) presence has, more
than anything else, been the cause of the advances of the NCRI and
Iranian Resistance. If we theorize about what would have happened if he
had not been the NCRI's President, I believe if the Iranian Resistance
existed at all, it would certainly be far less than it is today."
In the same series of interviews, Dr. Manouchehr Hezarkhani, a
distinguished Iranian writer and Chairman of the Council's Culture and
Art Committee, commented on the procedures of NCRI meetings:
" When we arrive at the meetings, we do not share the same views...
When we meet in session, sometimes we have serious arguments about
certain matters, about political solutions. It is generally well
understood that the point is to hold such meetings, where differences
can be talked about and a consensus reached, but the individual capable
of chairing such meetings and keeping the delicate balance of
cooperation between different groups, none of whom are professional
politicians, is gifted with the art of leadership... We have this
leadership, and I think that to a large extent, it smoothes out the
bumps."
Whenever the interests of the Iranian people and democracy have been at
stake, political considerations or concerns about protecting his
personal prestige have never prevented Mr. Rajavi from making sensitive
decisions. Launching the campaign for peace in the Iran- Iraq war in
1983, when Khomeini's belligerent nature had not been fully exposed,
generated venomous propaganda by the regime and its internal and
external allies. It was one of many examples of risks that few are
willing to take. The formation of the National Liberation Army of Iran,
as the most precious achievement of Iran's history and best guarantee
and lever to overthrow the mullahs' regime, was another.
Rajavi has always stressed that there is no insistence upon the NCRI or
Mojahedin. "If at any time, any group or alternative is found to be
better equipped to overthrow the regime and guarantee Iran's
independence, democracy and popular sovereignty, we will definitely and
wholeheartedly support it, even if it is opposed to our way of
thinking," he says.
At one of the most sensitive junctures of Iran's history, Khomeini
sought to revive an Ottoman-like empire by taking advantage of special
circumstances and usurping both temporal and spiritual power. Massoud
Rajavi launched an all-out resistance against him and prevented him
from achieving his evil goal. This is the essence of the historical
role that has turned Rajavi into the national leader of the Iranian
people in their quest to end mullahs' tyranny and establish lasting
freedom and popular sovereignty in Iran. |
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العربيّة
NCRI President 
