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In part, Banisador had himself to blame for his fall from power. Elected President in January 1980 with 15% of the vote, he failed to mobilize a political base among his disparate backers that could match the ruthless efficiency of the mullahs' Islamic Republican Party. He confused supporters by exhorting them to battle against fanatical clergy while simultaneously displaying unflinching fealty to Khomeini. Banisadr's hope was to forge a loose alliance linking the armed forces, intellectuals and some 100,000 urban guerrillas known as the Mujahedine Khalq (People's Crusaders), a socialist Islamic faction disaffected with the rigid fundamentalists. But the main problem, scoffs an embittered Iranian civil servant, is that "the linchpin of this unachieved coalition, Banisadr himself, is made of jelly." With the moderates apparently swept from power and the military preoccupied with a possible Iraqi offensive, Iran's mullahs now need only eliminate subversive opposition from the left to fulfill their dream of turning Iran into a theocratic Muslim state.