How Iran Fears MEK as Its Opposition

Pooya Stone

The regime in Iran has come under immense domestic and international pressure recently. Most vivid are the sweeping sanctions imposed by US Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump.

These developments are sparking an endless stream of reactions from Iran’s senior officials and various media outlets. Over 500 interviews, reports, posts, sessions, book introductions and others events have been discussed in this regime’s official outlets, all regarding the opposition People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).

The reason behind this chorus of remarks and attacks aimed at the MEK is obvious. It is crystal clear for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his entire regime apparatus how the MEK represent the source of all their strategic defeats.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) has recently been classified as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity. This is mainly due to the hundreds of revelations, press conferences, articles, posts and other activities by the MEK and its umbrella group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).

The IRGC blacklisting is considered a strategic setback for Tehran, especially since 40% of the regime’s economy is controlled by the Guards.

The MEK also delivered major blow to Khamenei’s blueprints aimed at unifying his regime through engineering the May 19th presidential election. Conservative cleric Ebrahim Raisi, Khamenei’s preferred candidate, was groomed by the hardliners to replace the incumbent Hassan Rouhani as president.

The MEK’s vast network of activists inside Iran, coupled with a variety of measures abroad, shed light on Raisi’s past as a member of an infamous “Death Commission” in charge of supervising the 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners across the country who mostly were members of MEK.

As Raisi failed to reach the presidency, the mullahs’ entire apparatus suffered a major defeat, understood best by Khamenei himself.