ASHRAF CAMP, Iraq, June 1 - At the age of 34, Saddieghah Hosseini is a graduate in mathematics and the mother of a 7-year-old daughter. She has also learned to drive the Soviet-made T-55 battle tank in combat against the Revolutionary Guards of Iran, taking a glancing blow in March from a rocket-propelled grenade.
"Being a tank driver," she said, "is a full-time job."
Mrs. Hosseini and thousands of other Iranians belong to the National Liberation Army of Iran, a dissident force set up by the Iranian People's Mujahedeen opposition group, which is based in Iraq and which is committed to the overthrow of the Islamic revolution in Tehran.
With the end of the Persian Gulf war, the army has found itself in an ambiguous position: over the last three years, its officers say, it has transformed itself from an infantry force to a conventional, if small, army, with tanks, artillery, anti-aircraft batteries and mobile missile launchers. ...
"There are times when people look at our army as an appendix of the Iran-Iraq war," Mohammad Towhidi, a senior Mujahedeen official, said. "Quite frankly, that is not true....
"In all the operations the NLA has carried out," said Hossein Abrishamchi, the commander of this base-said to be one of five along the Iran-Iraq-"we have had complete military independence...
But because the cease-fire is unstable and Iran will not ultimately respect it, Mr. Towhidi said, "there is a realistic and viable chance" for the army to resume the cross-border strikes it last launched in July 1988....
Depicting itself as the only alternative to Iran's Islamic rulers, [the Mujahedeen] offers a vision of Islam without coercion but with free-market economic policies and democracy.
"Islam will not be the basis for privilege or distinction" . "For us it's very simple: the objective is to overthrow the Khomeini regime," [Mrs. Hosseini] said, using the label Mujahedeen attach to the Iranian leadership despite the Ayatollah's death two years ago.
When the allied bombing of Iraq began last January, she said, she sent her 7-year-old daughter, Azar, whose father is also a Mujahedeen fighter, to relatives in London for safety. Before that, she said, like other working women she would rise and dress and feed her daughter and send her to day care before she went to work in the T-55. "They have great day care," she said. Mr. Towhidi said....