Today marks the 44th year since the bombing that claimed the lives of then-President Mohammad Ali Rajaee, Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, and six other senior Iranian officials.
The attack was carried out by the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MKO) terror group.
The days leading to this tragic anniversary are marked in Tehran as “Government Week,” a time to pay tribute to these visionary leaders who shaped the country’s path after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Eyewitnesses recount that on the afternoon of August 30, 1981, a deadly explosion shook the Prime Minister’s office on Pasteur Street in central Tehran. President Rajaee, Prime Minister Bahonar, and several military and security leaders had gathered there for a meeting.
Masoud Keshmiri, an operative of the MKO terror group, which is now headquartered in Albania and enjoys the support of Western countries, had infiltrated the office under the guise of a security officer and placed a briefcase loaded with explosives beneath the meeting table.
Investigators later confirmed that the device, packed with over a kilogram of TNT, was similar in design to the one used in the Hafte Tir bombing just two months earlier.
At the time, technical details of the operation were unknown, leaving security forces unable to prevent another strike of this scale and magnitude.
After planting the bomb, Keshmiri briefly spoke with Khosrow Tehrani, the intelligence chief at the Prime Minister’s office, then quietly excused himself and slipped out. Meeting his accomplices in nearby Pasteur Square, he fled to safety.
Moments later, the briefcase was opened and detonated, unleashing a devastating blast that leveled the first and second floors of the building.
The explosion left eight dead and 23 wounded. Reports noted that the remains of Rajaee and Bahonar were burned beyond recognition, and their identities had to be confirmed through dental records.
Who were Rajaee, Bahonar, and other victims?
The primary targets of the attack were President Rajaee and Prime Minister Bahonar, who had assumed office less than a month earlier, only 28 days before their assassination.
Rajaee, a mathematics teacher and graduate of Tarbiat Moallem University, was 48 when he was martyred. Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, he first became Education Minister, serving for seven months.
He later won a seat in the Islamic Consultative Assembly as a Tehran representative before being appointed Prime Minister. After the dismissal of Abolhassan Banisadr, he was elected as Iran’s second president by a landslide.
In his memory, many institutions now bear his name, including a major university in Tehran, a power plant in Qazvin, a port in Hormozgan, and a dam in Mazandaran.
Bahonar, an Islamic scholar educated at Qom Seminary and later at the University of Tehran—where he earned a doctorate—was 47 at the time of his martyrdom.
After the revolution, he also served as Education Minister and represented the people of Kerman and Tehran in parliament.
Bahonar became Secretary General of the Islamic Republican Party after Ayatollah Hossein Beheshti’s assassination and contributed to drafting the new constitution as part of the Assembly of Experts.
Both leaders, alongside the victims of the Hafte Tir tragedy, were laid to rest at Behesht-e Zahra cemetery in Tehran. Among the other martyrs of the August 30 bombing were Abdol-Hossein Daftarian, the Prime Minister’s financial officer, and police commander Vahid Dastjerdi.
What other MKO bombings took place?
Although no group publicly took responsibility for the August 30 attack, investigations identified the culprit as Masoud Keshmiri of the MKO, disguised as a government security official.
This bombing came only two months after the Hafte Tir massacre, in which MKO agents bombed the Islamic Republican Party’s headquarters in Tehran, killing scores of officials.
The attack targeted a gathering of over 90 high-ranking figures, including MPs and cabinet ministers, who were attending a session chaired by then-judiciary chief Ayatollah Seyyed Mohammad Beheshti.
Just a day earlier, on June 27, 1981, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, then-Tehran’s Friday prayer leader, was seriously injured in another MKO attack, in which the bomb was hidden inside a tape recorder while he delivered a sermon at Abuzar Mosque.
The precision and sophistication of the explosives strongly suggested the involvement of foreign intelligence services alongside the MKO terror group.
Following the August 30 bombing, Keshmiri escaped Iran using a forged passport, while many of his collaborators were captured, tried, and convicted.
A sweeping review of government employees followed. His exact fate remains unclear, though reports suggest he still resides in a European country.