The day after the explosion of the Prime Minister’s office; public mourning and national shock

On 31 August 1981, one day after the explosion at the Prime Minister’s office, Iran was in shock over the assassination of Mohammad-Ali Rajai, the President, and Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, the Prime Minister.

The Interim Presidential Council declared the day a public holiday, and national mourning was observed until the end of the week. The bodies of the victims were carried in a funeral procession attended by a very large crowd. In those same days, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran claimed responsibility for the explosion.

The newspaper Ettela’at, in its issue of 31 August 1981, published a moment-by-moment report of the explosion and wrote that the incident had occurred at three o’clock in the afternoon the previous day. At that time, Masoud Keshmiri, the secretary of the National Security Council, was also listed among the victims and was even introduced as a “martyr,” while it later became clear that he had been an infiltrator and the main suspect in the bombing and had fled the country after the explosion.

This fact was raised more formally a few days later, and the Prosecutor-General of the country, Rabbani Amlashi, in a televised interview on 9 September 1981, identified Keshmiri as the main perpetrator of the explosion.