Bloodshed in the Streets Again

By Henry Muller

Despite hundreds of executions, the guerrillas press on

"This is the month of blood. Khomeini will fall." Chanting that refrain, throngs of young men and women opposed to the repressive theocratic regime of Ayatullah Ruhollah Khomeini began marching in the streets of Tehran one morning last week. Acting on government orders to "exterminate the heathens," members of the Islamic Guards quickly went after the protesters. But the Guards were trapped by leftist Mujahedin-e Khalq guerrillas who had positioned themselves on rooftops along the streets. The government conceded that 36 Islamic Guards were killed in the ensuing battle, which raged over a 6-sq.-mi. area for more than seven hours.

The urban shootout was the latest escalation in the well-organized Mujahedin's struggle to topple Khomeini. It demonstrated that the guerrillas have retained their command structure, organizational efficiency and firepower despite the purges by the embattled regime. Including the 195 people shot last week, 2,150 opponents of the government have been executed since deposed President Abolhassan Banisadr and Mujahedin Leader Massoud Rajavi escaped to France in July. This kind of bloodbath, Rajavi declared last week, will not deter his guerrillas. Said he: "The Resistance is prepared to pay the heaviest price possible to liberate Iran from the shackles of reaction ary rule."

The guerrillas, who are said to number 100,000, are commanded in Iran by Mousa Khiabani, who operates from a bunker in Tehran. They keep in touch with walkie-talkies, shortwave radios, "safe" phone lines and even carrier pigeons. Their strength also comes from a 5,000-member intelligence network that has penetrated every level of Khomeini's hierarchy. One example: Massoud Keshmiri, the top government aide who carried a bomb right into a meeting with President Ali Raja'i and Prime Minister Mohammed Javad Bahonar, killing them and six others last month.

The highest echelons of Khomeini's command were further decimated last week when Defense Minister Mousa Namju, acting Staff Chief Valiollah Fallahi and two other ranking commanders were killed in the crash of a C-130 returning from the Iranian-Iraqi front. Although a spokesman for a group of former officers loyal to the Shah claimed to have sabotaged the plane, both the government and Mujahedin leaders believed the crash was most likely an accident. Only days earlier, Iran had claimed its "biggest victory" in the year-long border conflict when its forces broke the Iraqi siege of Abadan, a key oil-refining center. Later, the Kuwaiti government protested that Iranian jets had attacked an oil installation in Kuwait. The Iranians denied the charge, but in Washington, Secretary of State Alexander Haig confirmed that U.S.-manned AWACS reconnaissance planes flying above Saudi Arabia had spotted the Iranian fighters as they set off on their mission.

In a week of bad news, the Ayatullah's government hoped to recoup, psychologically at least, by claiming a massive turnout in the country's third presidential election. Though results will not be official until midweek, it was a foregone conclusion that the Islamic republic's third President would be the clerics' approved candidate: Hojjatoleslam Ali Khamene'i, 42, a Majlis (parliament) representative still partly paralyzed from the explosion of a Mujahedin-planted bomb last June.

Despite the ever rising level of violence in Iran, Washington feels the Khomeini regime is in no serious peril. "There is no evidence that it has lost either popular support or control over the mechanism of government," said one source. Banisadr and Rajavi were more optimistic. From their headquarters in Auvers-sur-Oise, France, they announced a program for the transitional government they hope to form "when Khomeini falls and before new elections are held." Predictably, Banisadr would be President, and Rajavi Prime Minister. Boasted a Mujahedin leader: "We are already a state within a state." --By Henry Mutter. Reported by Raji Samghabadi/ New York and Adam Zagorin/ Beirut

With reporting by Raji Samghabadi, Adam Zagorin

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