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CHAPTER SEVEN My Country Right or Wrong The Exile War Trap Never is the power of the state greater, and never are the forces of political parties of opposition less effective, than at the outbreak of a war. -Robert Michels, Political Parties, 1962 The continuous conflict between political exiles and their home regime on the question of national loyalty and representation reaches its extreme when the exiles' native land becomes involved in a war with another country. In wartime the exiles' perpetual dilemma intensifies : to what extent can they cooperate with foreign powers against their home regime without abdicating their claim to being national loyalists? The political exile is "tom between an almost instinctive desire to see his people spared the agony of death, destruction , and defeat and the wish to see the annihilation of the regime which drove him into exile and which to him represented the incarnation of evil."l Ideological and tactical differences among political exiles about the nature of the war-whether the war is the home nation's war or the home regime's, and how the exiles should react to it-exacerbate the internal divisions already gnawing at the exile's heart. The result is a wide spectrum of responses stretching from the extreme of reconciliation with the home regime and its acceptance as representing the national interest, to the antithetical extreme of collaboration with the state's present enemy. One case demonstrates the complications that can arise. In January 1983 Masood Rajavi, the leader of the exiled Mujahedeen National Council of Resistance (NCR), one of the principal forces of opposition to Khomeini's Islamic regime, met in Paris with Iraqi Vice-Premier Tariq Aziz. The two issued a joint call for peace between their countries . The declaration caused a setback for the NCR and provoked a rupture between its leader, Rajavi, and the exiled former Iranian pres130 CHAPTER SEVEN My Country Right or Wrong The Exile War Trap Never is the power of the state greater, and never are the forces of political parties of opposition less effective, than at the outbreak of a war. -Robert Michels, Political Parties, 1962 The continuous conflict between political exiles and their home regime on the question of national loyalty and representation reaches its extreme when the exiles' native land becomes involved in a war with another country. In wartime the exiles' perpetual dilemma intensifies : to what extent can they cooperate with foreign powers against their home regime without abdicating their claim to being national loyalists? The political exile is "torn between an almost instinctive desire to see his people spared the agony of death, destruction , and defeat and the wish to see the annihilation of the regime which drove him into exile and which to him represented the incarnation of evil."l Ideological and tactical differences among political exiles about the nature of the war-whether the war is the home nation's war or the home regime's, and how the exiles should react to it-exacerbate the internal divisions already gnawing at the exile's heart. The result is a wide spectrum of responses stretching from the extreme of reconciliation with the home regime and its acceptance as representing the national interest, to the antithetical extreme of collaboration with the state's present enemy. One case demonstrates the complications that can arise. In January 1983 Masood Rajavi, the leader of the exiled Mujahedeen National Council of Resistance (NCR), one of the principal forces of opposition to Khomeini's Islamic regime, met in Paris with Iraqi Vice-Premier Tariq Aziz. The two issued a joint call for peace between their countries . The declaration caused a setback for the NCR and provoked a rupture between its leader, Rajavi, and the exiled former Iranian pres130 My Country Right or Wrong 131 ident Bani-Sadr, because the meeting and the joint communique made it easy for the Iranian regime to discredit the Mujahedeen opposition as nationally disloyal and to label the NCR as "Iraqi pawns and collaborators ." Bani-Sadr, who realized the negative effect of Rajavi's move on the exiles' struggle, criticized him publicly and divorced himself from the NCR's activities. He argued that, "while all exiles agree that the war helps keep Khomeini in power, most do not want to be identified with the Iraqis in any way."2 On June 7, 1986, Rajavi and his exile loyalists were forced to flee France las part of the French government's attempted rapprochement with the Iranian...

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