36 years since Operation Mersad

They would attempt to capture the province, as was their objectives from the beginning of the war. Another group would attack forces in Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan, the latter area still within Iranian and Peshmerga hands. When the Iranian armies moved to fight those two major incursions, the renegade Iranian militant group the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK), supported by Iraqi armor and air power, would launch a large scale incursion into the central portion of Iran, aiming towards the heart of Iran. The MEK under their leader Massoud Rajavi harbored the hope that the attack would lead to a general uprising against the Islamic government of Ayatollah Khomeini. Rajavi would lead the Mujahedeen with Iraqi support in an attack on the western borders of Iran.