The Bureau for Intelligence and Security of the State, shortened to as SAVAK or S.A.V.A.K. was the secret police of the Imperial State of Iran. It was established in Tehran in 1957 and continued to operate until the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when it was dissolved by Iranian prime minister Shapour Bakhtiar.
The People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) or Mojahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), is an Iranian dissident organization that was previously armed but has now transitioned primarily into a political group. Its headquarters are currently in Albania. The group's ideology is rooted in "Islam with revolutionary Marxism", and offered a revolutionary reinterpretation of Shia Islam influenced by the writings of Ali Shariati. After the Iranian Revolution, the MEK opposed the new theocratic Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, seeking to replace it with its own government. At one point the MEK was Iran's "largest and most active armed dissident group", and it is still sometimes presented by Western political backers as a major Iranian opposition group. It is known to be deeply unpopular today within Iran, largely due to its siding with Iraq in the Iran–Iraq War.
The Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic of Iran is the primary intelligence agency of the Islamic Republic of Iran and a member of the Iran Intelligence Community. It is also known as VAJA and previously as VEVAK or alternatively MOIS. It was initially known as SAVAMA, after it took over the Shah's intelligence apparatus SAVAK. The ministry is one of the three "sovereign" ministerial bodies of Iran due to nature of its work at home and abroad.
Saeed Emami (1958–1999) was the Iranian deputy minister of intelligence under Ali Fallahian, and adviser to the Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi. He was appointed as deputy minister in security affairs and the second person of intelligence ministry when he was 32 years old. He is also considered as the designer and leader of many internal and extraterritorial intelligence operations during the 1990s, especially in the case of western countries, Israel and anti-revolutionary units. He was accused of having independently organized the assassinations of dissidents.
In the Mykonos restaurant assassinations, Iranian-Kurdish opposition leaders Sadegh Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and their translator Nouri Dehkordi, were assassinated at the Mykonos Greek restaurant in Berlin, Germany on 17 September 1992. The assassination took place during the KDPI insurgency (1989–96), as part of the general Kurdish separatism in Iran. The assassins were believed by German courts to have links to Iranian intelligence. Kazem Darabi, an Iranian intelligence service employee, was tried and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Berlin Supreme Court.
Kurdish Hezbollah or Hizbullah, is a Kurdish Sunni Islamist militant organization, active against Turkey, and the PKK. It is derogatorily known by its critics as Hizbulkontra, Hizbulvahşet, and Hizbulşeytan. They are also derogatorily known as Sofik, which is a diminutive of "Sofu", which means "devout" or "practicing".
The Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK, is a Kurdish leftist anti-Islamic Republic of Iran armed militant group. It has waged an intermittent armed struggle since 2004 against the Iranian Government, seeking self-determination through some degree of autonomy for Kurds in Iran.
Ali Fallahian is an Iranian politician and cleric. He served as intelligence minister from 1989 to 1997 under the presidency of Ali Akbar Rafsanjani.
The 1991 Iraqi uprisings were ethnic and religious uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq that were led by Shia Arabs and Kurds. The uprisings lasted from March to April 1991 after a ceasefire following the end of the Gulf War. The mostly uncoordinated insurgency was fueled by the perception that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become vulnerable to regime change. This perception of weakness was largely the result of the outcome of the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War, both of which occurred within a single decade and devastated the population and economy of Iraq.
The chain murders of Iran were a series of 1988–98 murders and disappearances of certain Iranian dissident intellectuals who had been critical of the Islamic Republic system. The murders and disappearances were carried out by Iranian government internal operatives, and they were referred to as "chain murders" because they appeared to be linked to each other.
Numerous civilians, including men, women, children, government officials, activists, secular intellectuals and clerics have been victims of assassination, terrorism, or violence against non-combatants, over the course of modern Iranian history. Among the most notable acts of terrorism in Iran in the 20th century have been the 1978 Cinema Rex fire and the 1990s chain murders of Iran.
The Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahwaz is an Arab nationalist and separatist insurgent group which advocates the secession of an area in southern Iran including all of Khuzestan Province and Bushehr Province and parts of Ilam Province, Hormozgan Province, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari Province and Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province from Iran and the establishment of an Arab state, a goal which it is attempting to achieve by waging a direct and violent conflict against Iran. The claimed area is shown in the group's logo as well.
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran has been accused by several countries of training, financing, and providing weapons and safe havens for non-state militant actors, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, and other Palestinian groups such as the Islamic Jihad (IJ) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). These groups are designated terrorist groups by a number of countries and international bodies such as the EU, UN, and NATO, but Iran considers such groups to be "national liberation movements" with a right to self-defense against Israeli military occupation. These proxies are used by Iran across the Middle East and Europe to foment instability, expand the scope of the Islamic Revolution, and carry out terrorist attacks against Western targets in the regions. Its special operations unit, the Quds Force, is known to provide arms, training, and financial support to militias and political movements across the Middle East, including Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen.
The Iran–PJAK conflict is an armed conflict between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kurdish rebels of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), which began in 2004. The group has carried out numerous attacks in the Kurdistan Province of Iran and provinces of Western Iran. PJAK is closely affiliated with the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the primary opponent of the Republic of Turkey in the Kurdish–Turkish conflict. PJAK has been designated as a terrorist organization by Iran, Japan, Turkey, and the United States.
Kurdish separatism in Iran or the Kurdish–Iranian conflict is an ongoing, long-running, separatist dispute between the Kurdish opposition in Western Iran and the governments of Iran, lasting since the emergence of Reza Shah Pahlavi in 1918.
The insurgency by the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran surged in 1989, lasting until 1996, as part of the Kurdish separatism struggle. The eruption of the conflict in July 1989 was caused by the assassination of KDPI leader Abdul Rahman Qassemlou by suspected Iranian government agents. The most violent episodes took place in 1990 and 1991, when Kurdish soldiers launched massive attacks on Iranian military bases in Kurdish areas of Iran. This brought heavy retaliation from the Iranian government, aiming to eradicate the KDPI leadership by assassinating Sadegh Sharafkandi and other KDPI leaders in 1992 in order to disable the Kurdish party's ability to function. The conflict faded with the effective targeted assassination policy of Iran and by 1996 KDPI was no longer able to function militarily and announced a unilateral ceasefire. The conflict claimed hundreds of lives, mostly Iranian government troops and Kurdish militants.
2016–present clashes in West Iran refers to the ongoing military clashes between Kurdish insurgent party Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, which began in April 2016. Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) and Komalah expressed their support to the Kurdish cause of PDKI as well, with both clashing with Iranian security forces in 2016 and 2017 respectively. In parallel, a leftist Iranian Kurdish rebel group PJAK resumed military activities against Iran in 2016, following a long period of stalemate.
Mohammad-Reza Kolahi was a member of the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) who, according to Iranian authorities, was suspected of planting a bomb at the headquarters of the Islamic Republican Party (IRP) that killed more than 70 officials on 28 June 1981. Kolahi was assassinated on 15 December 2015. The Islamic Republic of Iran is believed to have been behind the assassination. He reportedly was a freshman student of electrical engineering who worked as an electrician in the IRP.
On 8 September 2018, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) launched seven Fateh-110 missiles at the headquarters of two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in the town of Koya, in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish region 300 km north of Iraq's capital, Baghdad. Initial reports from Iranian news agencies listed 11 killed people. Later reports indicated 18 people were killed.
The following is a timeline of the Syrian civil war for 2021. Information about aggregated casualty counts is found at Casualties of the Syrian civil war.
