Former Indian Foreign Service officer elaborated the anti-Iran rhetoric about the late 1980s incidents.
In a piece published on Indian Punchline, M. K. Bhadrakumar wrote, “some skeptics might say Raisi is under US sanctions for his involvement in the 1988 mass execution of prisoners.” “In the anti-Iranian folklore, hundreds of detainees were executed. But few would know what really happened.”
“It is no secret that Washington encouraged Saddam Hussein to wage his war on Iran, taking advantage of the apparent disorder and isolation of the new Islamic government in Tehran —then at loggerheads with the US over the seizure of the American embassy —and of the demoralisation and dissolution of Iran’s regular armed forces,” he added.
“But the revolutionary regime fought back and Saddam was finally forced to seek a peace agreement with Iran. It was a brutal war. Estimates of total casualties range from 1-2 million.”
“But then, after Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini accepted a UN-brokered cease-fire in 1988, members of the terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), based in Iraq and heavily armed by Saddam, and enjoying the backing of the CIA, stormed across the Iranian border in a surprise attack,” Bhadrakumar wrote, adding “Iran smashed the MEK assault and that set the stage for the so-called ‘death commissions’ of the prisoners, terrorists and others.”