Iran Dissidents Seek Help From Ex-Enemy U.S. : Moujahedeen Drops Cry of ‘Death to America’ but Washington Is Unreceptive

Armed with charts, maps and reports of increasingly successful military engagements that would have done credit to Robert S. McNamara in the early days of the Vietnam War, a small corps of Iranian dissidents is roaming the United States to drum up support for the overthrow of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Like McNamara, secretary of defense from 1961 to 1966, the well-barbered and impeccably tailored Iranians hope to overwhelm Congress and the American public with facts, figures and reports from the front intended to show that their policy is the only one with any chance of success.

During the last year and a half, scores of congressmen have signed letters condemning Khomeini’s anti-American regime in Tehran and praising the opposition group, which calls itself the National Council of Resistance. A council spokesman contended that more than 130 lawmakers have signed such statements, although it is believed that that figure may be somewhat exaggerated.

Hidden Past

The organization’s anti-Khomeini line finds a willing audience in the United States, where the ayatollah and his government of mullahs is high on the hate list of a broad cross section of the nation. However, the polished lobbying effort obscures a rough history.

The council is dominated by the Moujahedeen, a left-leaning faction that once included “Death to America” in its book of slogans and enjoyed close ties to the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Moujahedeen is led by Massoud Rajavi, a one-time supporter of Khomeini who broke with the ayatollah and fled Tehran in 1981, along with former Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr.

Since 1981, the Moujahedeen has waged a determined battle against the Tehran regime, using a variety of techniques inside Iran ranging from leaflets and graffiti to bombs and sabotage. Hundreds of its members have been shot by Khomeini’s firing squads.

The guerrilla campaign has been buttressed by a public relations campaign in the United States and Europe. The Moujahedeen’s representatives in the United States emphasize the human rights abuses of the Tehran regime, while glossing over the organization’s own past.

However, the National Council’s success in telling its story on Capitol Hill has generated a remarkable backlash from the Reagan Administration, which usually accepts any organization--no matter how unsavory--that opposes regimes Washington considers enemies.

The State Department issued a white paper denouncing the National Council of Resistance, and one U.S. official said that a regime run by the Moujahedeen “would be far worse than Khomeini.”

Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy, the Administration’s top Middle East expert, recently told a congressional subcommittee that the Moujahedeen “remains a militantly Islamic, anti-democratic, anti-American and anti-Western collectivist organization which continues to employ terrorism and violence as standard instruments of policy.”

The department’s attack appears to have hit home. A spot check of congressmen who a year ago signed letters endorsing the National Council of Resistance revealed a near-total reversal of opinion.

For instance, on June 8, 1984, California Rep. Fortney H. (Pete) Stark (D-Oakland) signed a letter addressed to Rajavi that included these sentences: “I admire your efforts on behalf of regional peace and democratic rule. The nature of the Khomeini regime is well known. Courage such as yours is not.”

But, an aide now says, “After we checked this group out, we didn’t sign any more letters like that one.”

Mohammad Sedaghat, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance, conceded that some drop in congressional support has occurred, but he insisted that many congressmen still endorse the organization’s objectives.

When a reporter said that many lawmakers have disavowed the council, Sedaghat suggested a call to California Rep. Mervin M. Dymally (D-Compton). However, a Dymally aide said that the congressman “has changed his mind--he was misled by this group.”

The Moujahedeen’s anti-American past is well documented.

The Feb. 25, 1980, issue of the organization’s magazine was replete with praise for Khomeini (“Fired by the inspiration of Imam Khomeini, the masses call out for a people’s army”) and attacks on the United States (“We behold the mounting urge and burning fervor of the masses insisting that we take up arms and pursue the battle against American imperialism. . . . After the Shah, the turn of America. . . . America and its puppets, the King Hassans, the Sadats and so forth, will be buried in the debris of history. . . . Death to America.”).

The same issue extols the Moujahedeen’s revolutionary partnership with the Polisario Front in the Western Sahara and the PLO. It quotes Rajavi: “We will always consider ourselves the apprentices of Palestine’s revolutionary camps.”

When Rajavi announced his candidacy for president of Iran in early 1980, his campaign biography described him as one of the first non-Palestinian revolutionaries to join Fatah, the PLO’s mainline faction.

Ali Safavi, a former University of Michigan doctoral student who acts as spokesman for the Moujahedeen in Washington, said that the quotations were accurate but now should be considered nothing more than historical curiosities.

“Let’s be candid--the Iranian people did not have much liking for the Americans at that time,” he said. “The Moujahedeen used the very same slogans that Khomeini used to organize themselves. What they said then had nothing to do with their attitude toward the outside world.”

Deeds, Not Words

He added: “One should not be so concerned about the war of words--one should be concerned about the deeds of the war of resistance.”

He said that the Moujahedeen is the only resistance movement putting up an active fight in Iran. Besides, he added, the Moujahedeen’s enemies should be reassuring to Americans. Both the Iranian Communist Party and the ayatollah’s political allies are bitter foes of the Moujahedeen.

The State Department disputes that, however. One official said, “There are literally hundreds of Iranian resistance and opposition groups, all of which say they are going to save the country.”

An Iranian emigre, now on a U.S. university faculty, dismissed as hyperbole the official’s talk of hundreds of opposition groups.

The emigre, who declined to be identified, said: “Among the opposition groups, they (the Moujahedeen) are the best organized--of that there is no doubt. They are cooperating with the Iraqis (in the Iran-Iraq gulf war) and are committing sabotage. This is not going down well with the Iranian public. I don’t think they would be capable of governing if Khomeini fell, but they are a legitimate group that needs to be taken into account on the Iranian political scene.”

The emigre said there are two basic strains in Iranian opposition politics: the Moujahedeen’s brand of left-oriented and Islamic revolution, and the monarchists who rally behind the son of the overthrown Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the self-proclaimed Shah Reza II.

“Like many other leftist elements, they became the victim of their ideology,” the emigre said. “They cooperated with Khomeini at first because they really believed the ‘progressive forces,’ as they termed themselves, would triumph. Since 1981 (when they broke with Khomeini), they have tried to change their image. How much of this is opportunistic and how much results from Iran’s realities, it is hard to say.”

Aligned With Other Groups

The National Council of Resistance, which handles the movement’s contacts with Congress, describes itself as a coalition joining the 20-year-old Moujahedeen with 11 other opponents of the Khomeini regime. However, none of the “little 11” is well known, and some have only one member. Rajavi, the founder of the Moujahedeen who now lives in exile in Paris, is the head of the council.

Sedaghat, the council spokesman, declined to say how many people were on the staff. He cited “security” as the reason for keeping the information secret and said that the group’s activities are primarily “educational,” an effort to impress upon the lawmakers the council’s version of life in Iran.

Sedaghat was contemptuous of the State Department’s criticism, saying that much of the department’s information came from the Iranian monarchist faction, the political heirs of the shah.

“In the past, information supplied by the monarchists misled U.S. foreign policy,” he said. “There was too much reliance placed on the shah to provide information. The State Department was wrong about the shah. Now they are wrong about Rajavi. It is as simple as that.”