The MEK carried out terrorist acts in the first days after Iran's 1979 revolution, helping prepare the ground for Baathist Iraq's invasion, according to this account. It then became complicit in Saddam Hussein's crimes against Iran and its people.
Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 1980, expecting to seize parts of the country. The article says the MEK played a treacherous role at the outset and throughout the eight-year war. Cooperation extended to meetings between MEK leader Massoud Rajavi and Saddam Hussein, it says, and senior Iraqi army officers were directed to assist the group.
Mohammad Javad Hasheminejad, secretary-general of the Habilian Association, discussed the group's alleged role in an interview with Mizan. Marking Sacred Defense Week, he said wars launched by aggressive powers often have a prelude of sabotage and terrorism by intermediaries, intended to impose demands on the targeted country.
Attacks began within days and weeks of Iran's revolution, killing people from many walks of life, he said. Hasheminejad asserted that Iraq invaded with extensive Western support and that terrorist acts by the MEK and the earlier Forqan group helped prepare the ground, allegedly at the direction of foreign sponsors.
He accused the MEK of acting for foreign parties before the war and continuing during it by assassinating senior revolutionary figures and fighters returning from the front, identifying people important to the war effort, collecting urban intelligence for the Baath Party, and reporting on the effects of Saddam's strikes on cities and economic facilities. These were assignments in service of Saddam and the Baathists, he said.
In western Iran, Hasheminejad alleged, separatist Komala and Democratic Party groups carried out similar terrorist missions. He described Saddam as acting on behalf of global powers, particularly the United States and other Western countries.
By Seyed Mohammad Javad Hasheminejad, Secretary General of Habilian Association