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Nor did the Mujahedin flinch. On the day of the Raja'i and Bahonar funerals, Mujahedin gunmen assassinated two more ranking Khomeini supporters. One was Hojjatoleslam Seyed Nasser Banijamal, director of internal affairs at Tehran's Court for Combatting Sin. Three days later, Khomeini's Revolutionary Guards fought an eight-hour gun battle with Mujahedin in Tehran's streets. According to the government's own reports, more than 100 similar shootouts with Mujahedin and other leftist guerrillas have erupted in cities as far flung as Bandar Abbas on the gulf and Astara on the Soviet border. As a result, mosques, Islamic Republic Party offices and Revolutionary Guard headquarters throughout the country are heavily fortified. "The reactionary regime has already receded into a bunker mentality," Tehran-based Mousa Khiabani, chief of staff of anti-Khomeini guerrillas, told TIME last week. "We dominate the streets. Khomeini's lackeys cannot even protect themselves, let alone enforce their authority."
Exaggerated though such claims may be, the Mujahedin have eclipsed all other groups in Iran's fragmented opposition. Last month's hijacking of a French-built, Iran-bound missile boat off the coast of Spain demonstrated that the small royalist faction led by former General Bahram Aryana remains alive, but it proves little else: the ship was surrendered to France and ultimately sent to the Iranian government, after bobbing around off the port of Cadiz for a week. Shahpour Bahktiar, the French-educated politician who was jailed by the Shah but then served as his last Prime Minister, lives in exile outside Paris; he has no sizable following. Within Iran, most opposition groups now tacitly support the Mujahedin. The pro-Soviet Tudeh (Communist) Party has discredited itself for the moment by supporting Khomeini.
The Ayatullah's single most prominent opponent is Banisadr, forced out as President of Iran because he opposed the mullahs' attempts to impose a theocratic state. Banisadr, however, has never enjoyed a strong personal power base: his 75% landslide in the January 1980 presidential election resulted largely from his strong identification with Khomeini. Having relied on Rajavi to escape from Iran and subsequently forming an alliance with the Mujahedin leader, Banisadr may have compromised his independence, though he rejects that view. "In a struggle everyone is beholden to the others," he told TIME Paris Bureau Chief Jordan Bonfante. "I am beholden to the Mujahedin. They are beholden to me. And all of us are beholden to the martyrs who have been executed. I was elected President by the people, and the people have not retracted their confidence. Thus I am in a position to represent all of the different fronts of the opposition that are in favor of liberty and independence."