As the regime in Iran inches closer to meeting its inevitable fate and it becomes more vital for the Iranian diaspora to focus their attention to call on the international community to take effective measures to support the protesters in Iran, we have witnessed a strange and dubious campaign orchestrated over the past few weeks against the most active Iranian opposition movement over the past forty years.
Revolution is afoot in Iran. Protesters have burned the ancestral home of Ruhollah Khomeini, the religious dictatorship’s founder. They have chanted “Death to Khamenei”, “Death to the oppressor, be it the Shah or the Leader”, and “Freedom, Freedom, Freedom”, whilst raging about decades of injustices against women, a future robbed from the young generation, egregious human rights violations, and lack of civil, economic, and political liberties for all under this regime.
The uprising that began on September 16 portends hope for Iranians who have long suffered under the heel of the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and his hardcore loyalists and apologists in the ruling establishment. Everyone senses “this time is different.” A banner recently hung on a major highway in Tehran read, “We are no longer afraid, we will fight,” epitomizing this shift in the balance of power between a desperate regime and an emboldened population.
And as to prove their point, demonstrators have come out into the streets every day and night now for 75 days, to face down a brutal and merciless Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Basij militia and State Security Forces that have been exhorted to use maximum force and violence to put down the uprising. But the regime’s enforcers, such as IRGC commander in chief, Hossein Salami, who “ordered” the protesters to stay home a month ago, have admitted to the regime’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) that security forces are exhausted and fraying, and that they have done all they could to turn the tide but to no avail.
As the protests have continued despite brutal suppression, gradually more and more governments, lawmakers, and human rights advocates have been denouncing the regime’s brutal crackdown and, at the same time, lauding the audacity and defiance of the Iranian people, reflected in statements of support and speeches in meetings and conferences in Europe, the United States and Canada.
Dubious campaign
As the regime inches closer to meeting its inevitable fate and it becomes more vital for the Iranian diaspora to focus their attention to call on the international community to take effective measures to support the protesters in Iran, we have witnessed a strange and dubious campaign orchestrated over the past few weeks against the most active Iranian opposition movement over the past forty years, namely the coalition of National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) and People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Among the Iranian diaspora, much like any other community or society, there are different opinions. However, in the midst of the uprising in Iran, with youth and especially women risking their lives, turning differences of opinion into smear campaigns against the organized opposition is counterproductive and dubious. This paper is an attempt to address this vitally important issue, given experience that the Iranian regime has been engaged in massive disinformation campaigns to tarnish the image of the opposition, both within parliaments and among political dignitaries as well as in social media through its cyber army. These smear campaigns have targeted the NCRI and the MEK because the regime fears them the most.[1]
The purpose of this paper is to address the substance and the sources of these ad hominem attacks, which denigrate the organized opposition’s historical and critical role in the decades-long struggle against the regime, and to lay out details and instances of the regime’s manipulation and pressure campaigns against honorable Western politicians and dignitaries who have lent their support to the Iranian Resistance and the MEK since a long time ago.
These misrepresented and warped attacks, emanating directly or indirectly from allegations sourced to the Iranian regime, only serve the purpose of muddying the waters for the regime and throwing it a lifeline at a defining moment for the Iranian people. To this end, it is important to keep a sharp focus on this regime’s egregious record of abuses and crimes and to support the Iranian people and resistance in their right to abolish it and to institute a democratic republic in their country.
[1] Based on internal reports from within the regime that the MEK has received, judicial officials of the Iranian regime have stated that upwards of 60% of the nearly 30,000 detainees in the current uprising are affiliated or sympathetic to the MEK and their indictments have been filed on this basis.
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ISJ-IRAN-UPRISING-2022-The-Spread-of-Disinformation-v6