1981 Iranian Prime Minister's office bombing | |
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![]() The Iranian PM building after the explosion | |
Location | Tehran, Iran |
Date | 30 August 1981 15,[1] 14:45[2] (+3:30) |
Target | Iranian officials |
Attack type | Bombing |
Deaths | 8 |
Injured | 23 |
Assailants | Masoud Keshmiri (agent of MEK) |
The office of Mohammad Javad Bahonar, Prime Minister of Iran, was bombed on 30 August 1981 by the People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK),[3][4] killing Prime Minister Bahonar, President Mohammad Ali Rajai, and six other Iranian government officials.[5] The briefcase bombing came two months after the Hafte Tir bombing, which killed over seventy senior Iranian officials, including Chief Justice Mohammad Beheshti, then Iran's second-highest official. It is also reported that the director general of the prime minister's administration (as a result of suffocation in the elevator) and an elderly woman bystander outside the building were killed.
According to sources, nobody "knew exactly who had been in the room at the time of the detonation." Eventually, there were three participants that had been unaccounted for that including Masoud Keshmiri, Rajai, and Bahonar. It was later revealed that both Rajai and Bahonar had died in the explosion.[6] According to author Albert Benliot, Ayatollah Khomeini charged the MEK with responsibility for the bombing, "however, there has been much speculation among academics and observers that these bombings may have actually been planned by senior Islamic Republican Party (IRP) leaders, including later Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani, to rid themselves of rivals within the IRP."[7]
Afterward, the interim presidential council announced five national days of mourning, and Iran's Parliament selected Ayatollah Mahdavi Kani as the next prime minister. Parliament held an election on 2 October 1981 to elect Bahonar's successor;[5]
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