Comrades in Arms: The Mujahidin, Fatah, and Iran’s Transnational Guerrilla Movement

Abstract

Throughout the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), particularly Fatah, cultivated a global network of solidarity rooted in worldwide anti-imperialism and advocacy for the Palestinian cause. Among its allies was the People’s Mujahidin Organization of Iran (MEK), which dispatched dozens of fighters to Fatah training camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq from 1970 to 1979 and emerged as one of the leading opposition groups to the Iranian shah. Examining the individual trajectories of MEK members who established ties and trained with the PLO provides insight into both organizations. For the MEK, this relationship not only embedded the group into a global revolutionary network centered on Palestine but also shaped its organizational trajectory by influencing its conception and practice of armed struggle. Further, the informality through which their ties emerged—and the central role played by rank and file MEK members in forging them—exemplifies a distinctive mode of transnational alliance-building for the PLO, one that complemented its formal diplomatic efforts. Finally, after the Iranian Revolution, this relationship positioned the MEK, the primary Iranian opposition in the early 1980s, to contest the Islamic Republic’s claim to the Palestinian cause.