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WI: the MEK leads the Iranian Revolution instead of Khomeini

N

NotDavidSoslan

Active member
Today, the Mujahedeen El-Khalq is a bizarre cult, but during and shortly before the Iranian revolution, they were one of the major threats to the Shah, supporting a mix of revolutionary socialism and Shia Islam.
Assuming the Ayatollah Khomeini got killed by SAVAK agents in Paris years earlier, and Massoud Rajavi led a popular uprising of unemployed working-class Iranians that overthrew and exiled the Shah, how would Iranian and world history be affected? What policies and government structure would the MEK Pursue?
 
I see a relationship forming between Tehran and Beijing. Maybe the new regime is close to Yugoslavia or Albania also. Depending on how overtly Shia the new regime is, there could be reverberations across the region. Perhaps an Iran aligned to Beijing sees things go differently with Iraq and Syria, as well as with the Palestinian cause.
 
Wendell said:
I see a relationship forming between Tehran and Beijing.
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Hmm, MEK Iran turns Beijing favorable pretty early, and doesn't waste any time feeling sore over Beijing's coziness with the Shah in the 70s?

Iran did not take too long into the 80s to get over it, as Beijing was a promiscuous arms seller who did not ask a lot of questions during the Iran-Iraq War.

By this point, Deng's China sold arms for the mercenary profit motive, it no longer had a commitment to revolutionary factions for being revolutionary factions...as such.

Wendell said:
Perhaps an Iran aligned to Beijing sees things go differently with Iraq and Syria, as well as with the Palestinian cause.
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Hmm, perhaps. With the Palestinians, how so in particular? What the OTL Islamic Republic had in common with the Palestinian cause and PLO was identification of Israel as the enemy, the Little Satan. I think it handed over Israeli diplomatic properties immediately post-revolution to the PLO. It was not ideologically intimate with any PLO factions, but via the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon, Iran before the late 80s began to sponsor the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which I think had links to Imad Mughniyah's Lebanese Islamic Jihad Organization (Suspected of being the Marine Barracks bombers) and the terrorist strike for of Hizballah. If having a different approach to Palestinians, what is it? Just support for one of the PLO factions instead of PIJ and later Hamas (founded 1987)?
 
raharris1973 said:
Hmm, MEK Iran turns Beijing favorable pretty early, and doesn't waste any time feeling sore over Beijing's coziness with the Shah in the 70s?

Iran did not take too long into the 80s to get over it, as Beijing was a promiscuous arms seller who did not ask a lot of questions during the Iran-Iraq War.

By this point, Deng's China sold arms for the mercenary profit motive, it no longer had a commitment to revolutionary factions for being revolutionary factions...as such.


Hmm, perhaps. With the Palestinians, how so in particular? What the OTL Islamic Republic had in common with the Palestinian cause and PLO was identification of Israel as the enemy, the Little Satan. I think it handed over Israeli diplomatic properties immediately post-revolution to the PLO. It was not ideologically intimate with any PLO factions, but via the Palestinian refugee community in Lebanon, Iran before the late 80s began to sponsor the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, which I think had links to Imad Mughniyah's Lebanese Islamic Jihad Organization (Suspected of being the Marine Barracks bombers) and the terrorist strike for of Hizballah. If having a different approach to Palestinians, what is it? Just support for one of the PLO factions instead of PIJ and later Hamas (founded 1987)?
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It could go any number of ways with the MEK in power. I'm not sure where they stood on Israel and Palestine, but I could see the new regime emphasizing ideology over religiosity per se in its chosen faction(s) to support.
 
Wendell said:
It could go any number of ways with the MEK in power. I'm not sure where they stood on Israel and Palestine, but I could see the new regime emphasizing ideology over religiosity per se in its chosen faction(s) to support.
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The original MEK borrowed from neo-Marxist notions of revolution and armed struggle (Guevara et al), so they probably suported the PLO, since Arafat had not yet renounced armed struggle.
 
Loriori said:
I can see America funding Iraq more during the war due to it being against a now-communist country
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MEK would have enough Marxism in its ideology to harmonize with the Islamism in its ideology that it would not feel compelled to regard the USSR as an enemy or object of suspicion as Khomeini and co. did? Although of course the MEK would monopolize power for itself and still exclude the Iranian Communist Party, the Tudeh, from power and decisionmaking. But that didn't stop countries before from being seen as de facto Soviet/Communist aligned, like, at times, Nasser's Egypt, Ben Bella's Algeria, Arab nationalist and later Baathist Syria, Arab nationalist Iraq. So nothing new there.
 
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