DEMONIZATION AND PROPAGANDA
Why does the regime use propaganda against the MEK or tries to demonize the MEK? What does the regime gain from this campaign? What is the nature of this campaign? How would you describe it from your perspective?
Propaganda and misinformation have long been used as aggressive weapons, exploited to demoralize the morale of the enemy and to wear down the will of an opponent to fight. By manipulating the news, successes on the side of the propagandist can be exaggerated or even invented. The moral superiority of the cause against which the opponent is fighting can be falsified and lies and demonization of the opponent’s leaders can be spread to disintegrate resistance by producing evidence that the mass of the people who support the opponent have been deceived and misled. Throughout history, such tactics have been commonplace, with the Nazis even appointing Joseph Goebbels as their Second World War Propaganda Minister. The Iranian regime has borrowed heavily from the Nazi playbook, using propaganda and the tactics of demonization to traduce the MEK, whom it regards as an arch enemy, and to confuse the public at home and abroad.
An example of this is taking place in Iran right now. Last summer the notorious judiciary of the Iranian regime announced the establishment of a special court to prosecute 104 members of the MEK in absentia, including many leaders of the Iranian Resistance, and many who are in Ashraf 3 in Albania. During the bogus proceedings, numerous regime officials supporting these sham trials have cited the objective as neutralizing the PMOI's influence, particularly among the younger generation, and initiating legal actions against the MEK abroad. However, past experiences reveal that beyond these stated goals, the regime harbours a more sinister objective, namely, laying the groundwork for terrorist activities against the MEK in Europe. Particularly egregious is the framing of the MEK in this bogus trial in absentia for crimes such as “waging war against God” and “corruption on earth,” offenses punishable by death.
What are the tactics or the different forms of this campaign against the MEK, as long as you have experienced?
In the UK, both Channel 4 News and the Guardian have run smear stories targeting the Iranian refugees in Albania, likening them to a cult and claiming they live in a tightly secured military compound. One ludicrous article even alleged the MEK had kidnapped and murdered some of their own supporters. The claims were preposterous and easily disproved. Indeed, the fact, three weeks before the reports appeared on Channel 4 News and in the Guardian, the same reports appeared almost word for word in a website created by Massoud Khodabandeh and Anne Singleton, two trained MOIS agents. This exposed the sinister source of the prejudicial fake news. But after working closely with the MEK and NCRI for more than two decades, I am accustomed to this sort of egregious behaviour and soon after these articles appeared the Albanians uncovered further plots by the Iranian ambassador and his gang to organize bomb plots, assassinations and cyberattacks, the Iranian embassy was finally closed, and the ambassador and his diplomats expelled.
Have you ever been subject to any of this sort of campaign by the Iran's regime associate?
I have also been personally affected by the regime’s campaigns. After making a speech at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva where I attacked the theocratic regime’s use of cyberwarfare against its opponents, I returned home to find that my entire website had been destroyed. When I contacted the company that managed security on my website in London, they told me that among the thousands of websites they managed, mine had been the only one hacked. They said it had clearly been a sophisticated operation. It cost me several thousand pounds to rebuild my website and I now have a password that is around a mile long!
Can you explain in detail the tactics and lies, and the propaganda used by the regime to smear the image of the MEK?
Typical of smear campaigns waged by the mullahs was the article that appeared in the French daily newspaper, Libération, in November 2021, in which they said the MEK was an “Islamic-Marxist group” who “sided with Saddam Hussein” during the Iran/Iraq war, and that the MEK has “been on the lists of terrorist organizations in the United States and in Europe for years.” As usual, this was all lies and tired and weary propaganda, fed into the system by Iran’s MOIS. But left-wing press like Der Spiegel in Germany, and the Guardian and Channel 4 News in the UK, have all published outrageous stories traducing the MEK and the Iranian dissidents in Ashraf 3 in Albania.
Is there any connection between the demonization campaign of the regime and the appeasement policy?
The demonization machinery is still at work and aids and abets the western policy of appeasement. The regime has infiltrated their agents into the very heart of our western democracies. When I was in the European Parliament, every time we tabled a motion criticizing the mullahs, the senior advisor to the Socialist group on Middle Eastern affairs, Eldar Mamedov, a Latvian with Iranian origins, always briefed against us and put down pro-regime amendments. We always assumed he was controlled by the mullahs, but we could never prove it. Then along came the Qatargate corruption scandal, and Mamedov was quickly exposed as one of the key officials involved. He was immediately dismissed from the Socialist group and the European Parliament.
Individual MEPs in the European Parliament and MPs in Western democracies are often singled out for an onslaught of misinformation, whenever they express support for the MEK or call for freedom and democracy in Iran. They are often bombarded with misinformation about the MEK and can often also receive calls from the Iranian embassy or from people who claim to be disaffected former members of the MEK, although they are in fact trained MOIS agents who have been recruited by the regime.
Who are the elements who carry out these campaigns on behalf of the Iran's regime outside of Iran, especially in Western countries?
We have known for years that MEK activists who drop out or defect, are quickly picked up by the mullahs’ intelligence agents. These defectors are often homesick and want to return to their families in Iran. They are told that first they will have to work for the MOIS by providing bogus interviews to Western journalists, based on lies and propaganda handed to them by the MOIS. Only after they have done this for at least two years are they allowed to travel back to Iran. Our assertions have been completely vindicated by the recent mass hacking of files from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran, by hackers from the opposition inside Iran.
The mountain of leaked confidential information reveals that a so-called "former member of the MEK," who was interviewed by Der Spiegel, was actually an agent of the Iranian regime. Gholamreza Shekari was hired by the MOIS to pose as an opponent of the regime and spread disinformation to demonize the Iranian resistance. In February 2019, Der Spiegel published an article entitled "Prisoners of the Rebellion," in which they interviewed Shekari under the guise of a "former member of the MEK." He claimed that he was tortured by the MEK and made several accusations against the organization and the NCRI. One leaked document contains a letter from Shekari's mother, who refers to him proudly as a collaborator of the MOIS. She requests that the Foreign Ministry facilitate her son’s return to Iran, citing that he has been cooperating closely with the MOIS, and has taken risks to try to get others to defect from the MEK and he has exposed the "terrorist nature of the MEK publicly”.
The mullahs also go to great lengths and devote millions of dollars to somehow infiltrate parliaments, spread disinformation and attempt to discredit the only viable Iranian democratic alternative, because of their utter fear of the MEK and their realization that they lead the struggle for freedom in Iran. And it seems as if their propaganda campaign is designed, not to fool the Iranian people, but to fool the Western media, who often report regime talking points without even investigating them.
The theocratic regime’s mercenaries in Europe who have posed deceptively as refugees, should have their passports and EU citizenship revoked. Known agents from the MOIS and Quds Force should be arrested, prosecuted and expelled and Iran’s network of embassies, which they use as bomb factories and terrorist cells, should be closed down and their so-called diplomats banished.
In September last year, the London-based TV station ‘Iran International’ and the news website ‘Semafor’, sent shockwaves through Europe and America when they revealed that an influential organization known as the Iran Experts Initiative (IEI), which had consistently lobbied and advised the Biden administration, EU governments and the European Parliament, was in fact set up and controlled by Tehran, stirring profound implications for global diplomacy and security. Based on an avalanche of leaked emails translated from Farsi into English by Iran International and Semafor, the two news organizations showed how the so-called ‘Experts Network’ had been created by the mullahs’ regime in 2014 “to improve Tehran’s image abroad”. ‘Experts from the network had consistently peddled misleading information designed by the mullahs, while also demonizing the NCRI and the MEK.
The leaked emails exposed how the theocratic regime sought to use the Experts Network to build international ties with influential academics and researchers, penetrating governments, think tanks and advisory groups at the highest level and spreading the regime’s propaganda in Western media. They revealed the disturbing fact that European governments and institutions were relying on analyses and recommendations for their policy on Iran provided by these so-called experts. The emails unmasked the Iranian regime's covert initiative to advance Tehran's interests, including its nuclear programme, while diverting attention from its appalling human rights record.
What is the role of the western media in these campaigns?
When we think of the role of Western media in the Iranian regime’s propaganda wars, we should always remember Voltaire’s statement: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” Disgracefully, some newspapers and TV channels, like Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Algemeine, the Guardian and Channel 4 News, have been seduced by the regime’s demonization campaign. They are the willing tools of the regime. When this evil dictatorship in toppled, history will record the names of those journalists who played this dishonest game in a rollcall of shame.
