BEHIND THE IRAN HEADLINES Series, September 4, 2024, Alireza Jafarzadeh, NCRI-US Deputy Director
September 5 marks the anniversary of the founding of Iran’s most enduring and best-organized opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as the Mojahedin-e Khalq or the MEK.
As the main component of the democratic alternative, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MEK, entering its 60th year, has played a pivotal role in the fight for democracy in Iran and in contributing to peace in the Middle East.
Founded in 1965 by three young engineers, followers of Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, Iran’s legendary democratic Prime Minister, the MEK was at the forefront of opposition to the despotic rule of the Pahlavi monarchy and has since been struggling for the establishment of a democratic pluralistic, secular republic.
Hundreds of its members and supporters were arrested and tortured, and many, including all its founders, were later executed by the Shah’s notorious secret police, the SAVAK. The sole survivor of the MEK leadership was Mr. Massoud Rajavi, whose death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment as a result of his brother’s international campaign in France and Switzerland, and was released from prison just days before the Shah’s fall in 1979.
Since its inception, the MEK has rejected the reactionary, outdated, and anti-democratic interpretations of Islam and has adhered to a democratic and tolerant interpretation based on the separation of religion and state and equality for women as its guiding principles.
The organization is committed to freedom of religion, thought, press, and association, a free market economy, peace in the Middle East, and the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It opposes Sharia law and the death penalty.
Women have played a significant role in the MEK’s leadership over the past 40 years. The past nine successive secretary generals of the MEK have all been female.
The MEK has, for decades, viewed Islamic fundamentalism and the mullahs ruling Iran as a global threat. Iran’s rulers view the MEK as an existential threat due to its pivotal role in exposing the clerics’ misuse of religion, in waging nationwide Resistance against the regime, including the uprisings since 2017, its formidable organizational strength, and its resilient network of Resistance Units within Iran.
The MEK has been the primary target of repression in Iran and terrorism abroad. Over 100,000 of its members have been killed since 1981, including the massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners in 1988, most of whom were MEK members.
After having failed to eliminate the MEK through executions and terrorism, Tehran waged an international effort to have the MEK designated as a terrorist organization. Tehran eventually failed after all the designations were overturned in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Australia, with the help of over 20 court rulings.
The Iranian regime started an extensive demonization campaign four decades ago against the MEK, both domestically and internationally, using its network of journalists, academics, and pundits to spread propaganda, labeling the MEK as a terror cult. This campaign was designed to justify a policy of appeasement and murder of MEK members. Despite spending billions of dollars, the campaign has badly failed.
The MEK has been instrumental in exposing the regime’s nuclear weapons program. Its revelations of the nuclear facilities in Natanz and Arak in 2002, based on a vast network inside Iran, triggered, for the first time, the inspections of Iranian nuclear sites by the UN nuclear watchdog, known as the IAEA. In July 2011, the MEK exposed a new organization run by the military, known by its Farsi acronym, SPND, which oversees the nuclear weapons program.
The MEK has also exposed terrorist networks and operations conducted by the IRGC and its Quds Force over the past four decades. More recently, it exposed Tehran’s terror network in Europe and the Quds Force’s support for proxy terror groups across the Middle East, providing them drones, missiles, and rockets, and relevant training, including naval terror training.
In sum, MEK’s unwavering commitment and willingness to pay the price for freedom have increasingly appealed to the younger generation, including Gen Z, in Iran. That is why the expansion of the MEK’s Resistance Units aimed at toppling the regime and establishing a free republic of Iran has become a nightmare for the ruling clerics in Iran. Indeed, with this historical treasure, achieving freedom, independence, and popular sovereignty for Iran and peace in the region is imminent.