Founded in the early 1960s by a group of radical student activists, the Sazman-e Mojahedin-e Khalq-e Iran, or the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), played a crucial role in the final days of the revolutionary struggle in February 1979. With the collapse of the Shah-regime, the organization experienced a rapid growth and by 1980 it had formed the most formidable national opposition to the ruling Khomeini loyalists. As the interactions between the new revolutionary regime and its opponents turned violent, thousands of PMOI activists were arrested, executed, and forced into underground or exile. By the mid 1980s, the Islamic Republic was able to marginalize its contenders and to consolidate. Now in underground and exile the PMOI looked increasingly inward to find answers for its failure. Not the oppression of the regime but rather the organizational structure and lack of ideological commitments of the members were blamed for its shortcomings. Subsequently, in 1984, a group of the core leadership based in Parisian exile announced the so-called “internal ideological revolution” for the total restructuring of the organization. As a result, a dual leadership replaced the traditionally powerful and more democratic central committee. More importantly, the ranking of all members became contingent on their absolute loyalty to the new leadership proven through a long and exhausting “individual ideological revolution.” Critical to the increasing authoritarianism in the organization, thousands of members have left the PMOI, significantly reducing its social base inside and outside of the country. Scholars who investigate the impact of state repression on opposition activism assume that escalation or deterrence of social resistance depends mainly on the mobilization capacity of the dissident groups or the states’ capability of repression (e.g., Sarah Soule, Hank Johnston, and Christian Davenport). They rarely pay attention to the chosen tactics and strategies of actors involved in protest movements. Drawing on unpublished briefings, statements, and interviews with former and current members of PMOI I illustrate how a once influential and national social movement organization that represented the most powerful opposition to the Islamic Republic has been reduced to a mere exile group with no significant influence inside the country. Moving beyond the traditional assumption, my paper illustrates that the chosen strategies and the growing authoritarian restructuring of the PMOI were key factors in the contraction of protest movements in the 1980s, not the repressive capacity of the at the time weak Iranian state.