Coalition forces on Tuesday bombed the bases of the Mujahedeen, which is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and European Union, a spokesman for the British embassy in Tehran told AFP.

"The Mujahedeen are not only a terrorist organisation in the eyes of Britain, (their bases) were bombed because they were part of the Iraqi armed forces and were an obstacle to our operations," he said.

The Muhajedeen, a Shiite and Marxist-inspired movement, took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution to overthrow the shah but were then forced to leave Iran after clashes with the new regime that cost thousands of lives.

They found refuge all over the world and set up an impressive propaganda machine which ensured they would remain Tehran's arch-enemy for decades.

They continued to fight with bomb attacks and assassinations inside Iran, but never posed a serious enough threat to topple the regime.

They stepped up their operations after Mohammad Khatami was elected president in 1997. The People's Mujahedeen claimed the 1999 assassination in Tehran of General Ali Sayad Shirazi, one of the highest-ranking army officers at the time.

After his election, Khatami demanded that Western powers oust the Mujahedeen, while the Iranian opposition movement, for its part, urged these same powers to sever ties with Tehran.

Iran's leadership considers People's Mujahedeen leader Massud Rajavi as "a terrorist with blood on his hands". Exiled in Iraq, Rajavi relentlessly returned the accusation against what he calls "the mullahs' regime."

The opposition organisation was created in 1965 as a splinter group of Mehdi Bazargan's Iran Freedom Movement. All of its founding members died behind bars under the shah.

In the early 1980s, the Mujahedeen joined the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran and former president Abdolhassan Bani Sadr to form the Iranian National Resistance Council (INRC). All of them eventually left the INRC.

After France expelled Massud Rajavi, the Mujahedeen set up base in Iraq in 1986 following an agreement with Saddam Hussein, who was then in the thick of an eight-year war with Iran.

They created the Iranian National Liberation Army (INLA).

According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, it had some 15,000 fighters, including many women, equiped with arms seized from the Iranian army during the war.

The INLA guerrillas lived under stringent rules and revered their leader and his wife, Maryam Rajavi, presented as the "the future first lady of Iran".

Branded "the hypocrites" by Tehran, the Mujahedeen regularly reported attacks against their bases, as well as incurstions of their own into Iran.

In February 2000, Iran had officially urged Iraq to stop harbouring the Mujahedeen in order to start normalising relations.

Since the beginning of the US-led war in Iraq, the Mujahedeen have remained strangely reticent about the fate of Massud and Maryam Rajavi.

SPACE.WIRE