The Fedaian began as a radical leftist guerilla group, established in 1971 as the Organization of the Iranian People's Fedai Guerillas.^[15] By the 1960s the Shah's ability to repress dissent was decreasing. The establishment of the OIPFG can be contextualized in the growing global unrest towards imperialism and colonial rule.

The regime had used harsh violence to repress opposition in 1963, paving the way for more radical groups to form. The army's growing tendency to gun down protestors forced opposition into guerilla groups.^[16] The OIPFG was formed and influenced by three different activist groups. The first was founded by Bijan Jazani, an activist and Marxist intellectual, in 1963. A student of political science, he had been in and out of prisons since the 1950s.^[17] The second was an offshoot of the growing student movement in 1967, led by Ahmadzade and A.P. Pouyan.^[18] The third group was formed in 1965 in Tabriz by a group of intellectuals. Included in the founders is the poet Ali Reza Nabdel, who would go on to write pamphlets for the organization. ^[19] All three groups merged in 1971, when both came to the conclusion that armed struggle was the only way to defeat the Shah's regime and American influence.^[20]

The groups started to overlap in 1970, with the first armed attack being a robbery of a bank in Tehran in order to bankroll the new organization. By the end of the year, the group was unified and had a three-cell structure. An "urban team," a "publication team," and a "rural team."^[21]

Ideologically, the group pursued an anti-imperialist agenda and embraced armed propaganda to justify its revolutionary armed struggle against Iran's monarchy system,^[22] and believed in Materialism.^[8] They rejected reformism, and were inspired by thoughts of Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and Régis Debray.^[5]

They criticized the National Front and the Liberation Movement as "Petite bourgeoisie paper organizations still preaching the false hope of peaceful change".^[4] Fedai Guerrillas initially criticized the Soviet Union and the Tudeh Party as well, however they later abandoned the stance as a result of cooperation with the socialist camp.^[5]

Bijan Jazani, known as the "intellectual father" of the organization, contributed to its ideology by writing a series of pamphlets such as "Struggle against the Shah's Dictatorship", "What a Revolutionary Must Know" and "How the Armed Struggle Will Be Transformed into a Mass Struggle?". The pamphlets were followed by Masoud Ahmadzadeh's treatise "Armed Struggle: Both a Strategy and a Tactic" and "The Necessity of Armed Struggle and the Rejection of the Theory of Survival" by Amir Parviz Pouyan.^[4]

The group was governed by collective leadership. Before the Iranian Revolution, its six-members leadership did not use the term 'central committee'.^[23]

• Guerrilla groups of Iran