President Mohammad-Ali Rajai; From Sarvan and Zabul to New York

Rajai assumed the presidency at a moment of great upheaval. Iran was just one year into its catastrophic war with Iraq, and pro-Khomeini forces were engaged in an armed struggle against rival revolutionary groups, notably the People’s Mujahedin Organization, which had begun carrying out terrorist attacks against the government. Rajai himself had escaped a bombing at the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party that killed Beheshti, along with 70 other people, most of them government officials, on June 28, 1981.