Maryam Rajavi, a variant of Coronavirus, as dangerous as it is or even more
Maryam Rajavi, countdown of her rule and Ashraf
Maryam Rajavi is not a democratic opposition leader but she is the evil hand to run the dictatorship of her husband’s cult of personality
Iran has said talks will still go ahead in Vienna in spite of an attack on its nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Israel was behind the cyber-attack but stressed Iran would not fall into the trap of halting talks. Indeed, efforts to move beyond the Trump legacy in relation to the JCPOA last week have been constructive. Shuttle (or rather hotel hopping) diplomacy between Iran and America with France, Germany, UK, China, Russia and EU negotiators acting as go between have brought the sides closer to agreement. All sides have been willing to engage. The Americans – the Biden administration – frontingtrea a deeply divided nation successfully navigated the dangerous rocks of the domestic audience. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araghchi later reported there were signs that the Americans would be willing to lift all the sanctions in one go to return to the JCPOA. Talks resume this week.
It is inevitable though that as the two sides inch toward making workable compromises that will lead to the reinstatement of the JCPOA, enemies of the deal will do their utmost to derail it. As well as Israel, Saudi Arabia and US neocons are poised to oppose. For this reason, at the outset of the talks the Iranians passed their concerns to the Austrian police and security services, warning that the Albanian based Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult would be sure to lob a symbolic stink bomb or two to toxify the atmosphere. Forewarned, Austrian police were able to curtail MEK activity, except for one lone MEK protestor who managed to shout at Araghchi and his colleague as they emerged from the building to get into their car.
This alone was such a trivial incident that analysts examining the talks in Vienna may be forgiven for missing the significance of this small detail. But there it was, hidden in plain sight, the west’s go to tool for regime change. The MEK, as ever, threatening to hijack the Iran agenda. It is beyond a joke that this rogue group which is infamous for using violence – whether in terrorist attacks in and beyond Iran, against its own members and former members, in the service of Israeli assassinations and false ops – and which threatens mass suicide whenever it feels existentially threatened, should be free to deploy ‘protesters’ to interrupt these high-level talks in Europe.
How come the MEK is still tolerated?
It’s certain that the Biden administration officials did not want the MEK to interfere in these efforts to engage Iran in talks. It’s even likely that the majority of Republicans would not condone this. The MEK has become synonymous with Donald Trump’s approach to Iran – fabricate and inflate the threat posed by Iran to the Middle East (read Israel and Saudi Arabia), and threaten war and punish the whole country with extreme sanctions. This cannot be and was not the American opening position in Vienna this week.
Even Facebook has tired of them and their ilk. Last week, Facebook blocked 300 MEK-linked accounts; though this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of MEK’s social media presence. After 2017, the MEK took advantage of the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to Iran and built a slave camp in Albania under the auspices of the CIA in which it housed a click farm and troll accounts to unduly influence western opinion on Iran. It was in this camp, remember, that Rudi Giuliani symbolically spat on and tore up a copy of the JCPOA document.
However, it is worth noting that the majority of the MEK’s propaganda sites and social media accounts are in English. Their Farsi presence is negligible. The few Farsi sites they have are only viewed in the hundreds by their own supporters. Among the 80 million population of Iran the MEK are either unknown or hated as a treacherous group that sided with Saddam Hussein to attack their homeland in the 80-88 war. For a group which has spent millions of dollars and uses click farm slaves to convince western policy makers that the group is the vanguard of regime change, they have not shown any evidence that anyone in Iran is behind them – or even aware of them. So, to answer the question, ‘why are the MEK still here in 2021?’ It’s not because they are successful, it’s because no one has chosen to stop them.
As the Vienna talks demonstrate, rolling back the Trump administration’s errors in relation to Iran can be difficult. In some cases, such as the assassination of general Qasem Soleimani, impossible. But direct talks are not the only means to that end. We wrote in January that a quick, effective and pain free policy win for Biden on Iran would be to return to the Obama administration’s plan to dismantle the MEK in Albania. This would achieve several outcomes. It would signal to the Iranian people that America will not pursue a foreign policy based on terrorism and violence against them. It would free the two thousand slave members of the MEK in Albania and allow them to return to their families and civilian life. It would help stem an inflow of some foreign funds into America that is used to skew analysis and policy making on Iran. (The MEK is funded largely by Saudi Arabia and amplifies its anti-Iran propaganda.) It would also, and this is relevant at this moment, rob the Iranian hardliners of their weapon; the MEK is used as the stick to beat the west over ‘terrorist interference’ in the country, as indeed happened in Vienna. If compromise is to be reached, the Iranians should at least not be given grounds by the MEK presence there to complain of American double standards.
By Massoud and Anne Khodabandeh
Soheil Khattar, nicknamed Sasha, was a young boy when, in 2001, he went to Iraq to join the Mujahedn Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi). A relative of theirs, from Netherlands, had advised Soheil and his cousin Mehran to immigrate to Europe via the MEK in Iraq.
However, they were forcedly recruited by the MEK and taken as hostages in Camp Ashraf. Soheil was mysteriously killed in the Camp, a few years later.
It took his parents, Teymour Khattar and Afsaneh Minayee, a while to learn about Soheil’s death. They went to Camp Ashraf in March, 2008. They wanted to take Soheil’s body but the MEK leaders only showed them the grave.”They gave us a very short time to visit Soheil’s grave”, his father says.”We complained and warned them that we would sue them in Iraqi judiciary.”Consequently, the parents filed a lawsuit against the MEK leaders in Iraq but it did not bear any fruit.
At least three former members have so far given testimony that Soheil was killed by the MEK commanders in Camp Ashraf. Bizhan from Iran, Keyvan Radbin from Canada and Majid Rouhi from Europe acknowledged that Soheil (Sasha) was a dissident member in the MEK system and wanted to leave the group. They affirmed that he was killed by three bullets shot in his head and back.
“When I was in Ashraf Camp I made friendship with Soheyl Khattar (Sasha),”Keyvan Radbin writes.”He also had same problems as mine and he also had been tortured. He tried to escape but eventually he was killed by his person in charge (called mas’ul) when he was in the Iraqi base (feylaq). Actually the doctor who was called Hassan Aref told me that because he was witness there when Sasha`s dead body was brought to the clinic.”
Nevertheless, the MEK leaders first announced that he was shot unintentionally by himself when he was cleaning his gun. After a while, the group listed Soheil Khattar as a”martyr”killed by American bombings in Iraq.
Soheil’s parents are still demanding the trial of MEK leaders for the unjustified murder of their son. They have recently written a letter to the supreme court of Albania –where the MEK is located now— asking for the punishment of the group leaders, compensation and the return of Sasha’s body to Iran. They believe justice has to be served.
The NCR, as the political arm of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) considered Facebooks’s report as”ridiculous and absolutely false”, after the Associated Press reported that the platform has removed 300 of fake accounts linked to the group calling it a troll farm in Albania.
Mojahedin-e Khalq did not respond to questions from the press, but constantly began to criticize Facebook for the action. Ali Safavi, the MEK’s propaganda figure called Facebook’s statement as”Iranian regime’s lies about”troll farms”.
If Safavi is right, what’s the benefit for social media platforms to be”agent of the Iranian regime”?
Actually, the MEK leaders seem to be unaware of the regulations of the social media. They should know that in the digital age, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is constantly renovating social media, from augmenting user experience. When users log on to their social media accounts and upload picture, notice an interesting advertisement, or comment on a post, they should keep in mind that with the help of AI, data about their activity is continuously being compiled and analyzed — and will impact what they see and engage with in the near future. Thus, AI is a key component of the popular social networks we use every single day.
Today, consumers constantly interact with social media and eventually companies are very eager to take advantage of their continuous engagement with platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat. As a result, a growing number are incorporating AI in social media to better connect with potential customers.
Moreover, researchers have been studying these online social networks to see the impact they make on the people. They warn about the malicious accounts that are used for purposes such as misinformation and agenda creation. Detection of malicious account is significant. The methods based on machine learning-based were used to detect fake accounts that could mislead people. These methods are determined by various. Therefore, it seems quite simple and at the same time essential, for Machine Learning algorithms of Facebook, Twitter or other platforms to detect fake accounts of the MEK troll farm.
The owners of the platforms do not risk their property by letting states or groups to contaminate their space. Fake accounts like the ones of the Cult of Rajavi can help trend and spread Fake News and opinions, creating confusions and potentially, spreading rumors. Filtering the spam users allows you to listen to unbiased opinions of the users about a topic and filter the noise created by spammers.
While the NCR officially denies that any accounts affiliated with MEK have been removed and denies that there is a troll farm in Albania affiliated with them in any way, Facebook presents detailed information based on calculated results of its machines with numbers, dates, hours, names and locations.
This is not the first time that Facebook removes fake accounts from all over the world. In October and November 2020, Facebook removed 1,196 accounts and 994 malicious accounts from Instagram, along with 7,947 Pages and 110 Groups involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior.
The MEK and its propaganda vitrine, the NCR, has the notoriously known habit to deny every single fact on the group’s violent past and deceitful present as the”Regime’s lies”. No matter how firmly documented, investigated and calculated the fact is.
Mazda Parsi
January 19, 1981, when Musa Khiabani’s team house, the headquarters of the terrorists of the Mujahedin Khalq Organization (the MKO/ MEK/ PMOI/ Cult of Rajavi) in Tehran was attacked by the security forces, Khiabani, the top man of the group in Iran, Ashraf Rabiei, the first wife of Massoud Rajavi, and about 20 others members of the group at that house, were killed.
All the residents of that house were killed in the operation in Zafaraniyeh, Tehran and eventually the group’s terror acts in Iran stopped because of the disappearance of the command room. But that operation also had a survivor! A young child who had been born that year. The son of Massoud Rajavi and Ashraf Rabiei: Mostafa Rajavi.
A few minutes after the end of the operation, the Tehran prosecutor, Lajevardi, while hugging the same child, described the operation in front of the camera and addressed the grandfather of the child, the father of Massoud Rajavi, to go the Prosecutor’s Office to take the baby.
Very soon, Mostafa Rajavi was handed over to his grandfather in Mashhad. Then the group’s operatives secretly transferred him to France. Mustafa became known as Mohammed Rajavi after entering the MEK’s headquarters in France. He studied there for a while until he was transferred to the Camp Ashraf in Iraq with his father’s command.
After the disastrous Eternal Light operation against the Iranian border, which left the MEK with huge casualties, Massoud Rajavi began a series of cult jargons under the title “Ideological Revolution”. He forced married members to divorce. Eventually, During the Kuwait war, he separated children from their parents under the pretext of the danger of the war, and smuggled them to Europe. Years later, the group authorities returned these children to Camp Ashraf.
Mostafa Rajavi was transferred to Camp Ashraf Iraq together with a large number of other MEK children who were all at their teen age.
The presence of Mohammad Rajavi in Camp Ashraf had a great use for Massoud Rajavi, which allegedly showed his devotion. But Mohammad was not happy with living in Camp Ashraf. He began dissent and therefore commanders placed him in a separate house to conceal his discontent with the sectarian relations within the MEK and the disagreements with his father. They provided all kinds of facilities to keep him silent.
Although Rajavi tried to induce his forces that there is no exceptions in Ashraf, Mostafa enjoyed a better living condition which only Massoud and Maryam and some of the upper classes enjoyed. Meanwhile, other parents were banned from meeting their children in Camp Ashraf. All teenage members had to attend”passing the family”classes daily while Mostafa could see his father whenever he wanted to.
However, Mostafa Rajavi, who studied and grew up in Europe, considered the entire organization as a prison. Despite having at least six security guards, he tried to escape. With several friends of his age, he hit the barbed wire with a heavy military vehicle overnight but he was arrested by one of the guards while he was trying to flip over the truck’s roof over the barbed wire. Mostafa’s companions were all jailed in solitary confinement where they were beaten and tortured. But Mostafa was only transferred to his place of residence and was held there.
After the collapse of Saddam and the entry of Americans into Iraq, the Americans began to reach Ashraf and its inhabitants in order to get informed of both the status of the Camp Ashraf and the capacity of its inhabitants to be employed in Iraq. According to former members of MEK, the Persian translator of the American army repeatedly called for an interview Massoud Rajavi’s son but the request was faced with severe opposition by the side of the group commanders each time. The leaders of the group were struggling to hide Mostafa’s positions against his father’s organization.
Muhammad Rajavi moved to Liberty after the shutdown of Camp Ashraf, and he was removed from Iraq during the transition to Albania and sent to Norway. Mostafa was no more a teenager who could be silenced by the commanders but he was afraid of the organization’s decision to eliminate him, which was not far from mind –Muhammad was familiar with that technique because of his life experience in Ashraf.
His criticisms made the organization provide him an easier condition in Norway. It was told that a salary of several thousand dollars a month and the expenses of his education in one of the prestigious universities in Norway were the costs the MEK paid to silence Rajavi’s son.
However, Mostafa Rajavi did not keep silent as the MEK leaders desired. In August 2020, he was interviewed in a Persian-language TV show hosted by Zina Tehrani a monarchist figure. During the Phone interview, Mostafa criticized the Mujahedin Khalq Organization and particularly his father Massoud Rajavi.
In April 2021, Jack Turner of Geopolitica reported that Mostafa Rajavi is still under the pressure of undemocratic approaches of the MEK leaders. He published parts of a law suit signed by Mostafa Rajavi against the MEK. His statement begins with this: I want to reveal about a dirty and illegal ransom to put pressure on me.
Maryam Rajavi is not a democratic opposition leader but she is the evil hand to run the dictatorship of her husband’s cult of personality
The cult-like MEK, whose allies have included Rudy Giuliani, Howard Dean, and John Bolton, was linked to hundreds of sham FB profiles—some using AI-made photos of fake users.
Facebook says it busted a troll farm run by the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK)—a dissident Iranian group that lobbies for the overthrow of Iran’s revolutionary government—that used artificial intelligence-generated fake faces to populate sham accounts.
The social media company linked the troll farm, based alongside the MEK’s headquarters in Albania, to 300 different assets on Facebook’s platform, including pages, groups, and accounts engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior.
MEK members working in the ‘Twitter troll factory’ in Manez Camp, Albania
The MEK, which began as a Marxist revolutionary organization, opposed Iran’s monarchy in the 1970s and fought alongside the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to overthrow the shah of Iran. After the revolution, the IRGC cracked down on the MEK and the group sought refuge in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The U.S. designated the group as a terrorist organization in 1997, but the Obama administration removed the designation in 2012.
Since then, the group has spent millions of dollars cultivating allies in the U.S. and advocating for regime change in Iran. It’s also spent big on speaking fees for high-profile Democratic and Republican heavyweights it considers allies, including Rudy Giuliani, former Vermont governor and DNC chair Howard Dean, and former Trump national security adviser John Bolton.
The group is known for its strict control of members. A 2005 study by Human Rights Watch based on interviews with MEK dissidents included testimonies about “abuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members.”
In a 2009 study, RAND researchers alleged that the group displayed a number of “cult characteristics,” including “intense ideological exploitation and isolation,” “sexual control,” “emotional isolation,” and other such tactics.
While the U.S. has accounted for much of the MEK’s lobbying focus, the troll farm it ran was apparently focused more on Iranian and diaspora audiences. Facebook says the majority of posts by the troll farm were in Farsi with a smaller number in Arabic and English.
In terms of content, the troll farm pushed traditional MEK messages that criticized Iran’s clerical regime and praised the MEK itself. The trolls also tried to push its audience towards websites that served as fronts for the MEK without disclosing their association with it. The effort, however, was mostly a failure, as the operations “achieved little to no audience visibility,” garnering few followers on its various accounts, groups, and pages, according to Facebook.
MEK trolls used a few different tactics to populate their Facebook properties with identities that would seem authentic. In some cases, the trolls used photos of famous poets as avatars. In a smaller number of cases, the trolls used AI-generated fake faces of people who didn’t exist.
The operation posted content on a schedule that aligned with Albania’s time zone and bore “hallmarks of a so-called troll farm—a physical location where a collective of operators share computers and phones to jointly manage a pool of fake accounts as part of an influence operation,” according to a report on the operation released by Facebook.
Reports of MEK-run troll operations on other social media platforms surfaced long before the recent takedown by Facebook. In 2019, The Intercept reported that Heshmat Alavi, a pro-MEK Twitter account with over 80,000 followers, was run by a team of four MEK social media trolls, according to an MEK defector interviewed by the news outlet. Twitter briefly suspended the Alavi account after The Intercept’s reporting but subsequently reinstated it.
Facebook announced its identification and enforcement against the MEK’s troll farm as part of its monthly announcement of coordinated inauthentic behavior operations on its platforms. The latest report included an announcement of takedowns from 11 different countries, ranging from Mexico to Egypt, Spain, and others.
The company also announced the takedown of a small Iranian-run network aimed at sowing discord within Israeli politics. Facebook says it identified 29 Facebook accounts, two pages, and 10 Instagram accounts involved in an effort to masquerade as left-wing Israelis critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
In a press conference, Facebook’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said the scale of the latest monthly takedown of coordinated inauthentic behavior was a reflection of the company’s investments in detection and enforcement—making such operations more difficult for adversaries to pursue in the future.
In a statement released after Facebook’s announcement, the MEK denied any affiliation with the accounts and called the company’s report “absolutely false.”
by Daily Beast
Contrary to Mujahedin-e Khalq claims of being democratic, the terrorist group of MEK has no democracy at all, according to the separated members of this group, members have been forced to do things that the leaders of the group want, such as participating in ceremonies, forced divorce, women marrying Massoud Rajavi again by force, etc. The members are not allowed to enjoy even the most basic needs of every human being to the extent that they do not even have the right to think freely and they have to report their thoughts to their leader so that if they are against the group, they will be insulted and humiliated by other members.
Another thing that is noteworthy is that the MEK are causing problems for their members and even those who have left the group. By the help of the United States they infiltrate to the Albanian government and this has made the separated members unable to work and earn money, which is why some of these people have been forced to sleep in the streets.
The MEK did not even have mercy on Massoud Rajavi’s son and in an action asked him to sign a letter against a separated person that in this letter, the separated member is introduced as an agent of the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran and he is accused of espionage, this is while Mohammad Rajavi, the son of Massoud Rajavi, has been separated from this group for some time and has strongly opposed and criticized the performance of this group. For this reason, he has sued the MEK and has filed a lawsuit in this regard.
Mohammad Rajavi describes this incident as follows:
I want to reveal about a dirty and illegal ransom to put pressure on me. Some time ago, the foreign employer of the company I work for, following a series of previous attempts to pressure me, sent me a letter asking me to copy and sign it. The text of this article was prepared by two well-known Mojahedin officials. One is Mohammad Mohaddesin, known as Behnam in the Mojahedin, and the other is Mohammad Sadat Khansari, known as Adib. In this regard, the letter that Adib sent to the employer and specified the lines of work for him, is available as a document.
In this letter, I was asked to write against Mr. Iraj Mesdaghi and introduce him as a mercenary. An act that was unacceptable to me. I will not call anyone a mercenary of the Ministry of Intelligence without a sufficient and court-friendly document. This has always been my position because I consider it immoral and it is against my principles.
Considering that this action was unacceptable and illegal in my opinion, I did not accept to do this signature and instead informed the syndicate about the matter. The syndicate officials, who had never encountered such cases in European countries, were very shocked by this action and it was unbelievable for them! For this reason, the syndicate’s lawyer sent a letter to Adib asking him to explain in order to better understand the matter. Until now, no response has been given to the lawyer’s letter. A case has been filed in court in connection with these illegal actions of the employer, which are carried out by taking direct orders from these two people.
Today, I want to address Mr. Mohaddesin and Mr. Khansari publicly: Mr. Khansari, Mr. Mohaddesin, who’s this dirty and illegal ransom? Why are you pressuring me through the employer to sign your statement? Don’t you, who have lived in Europe for nearly 30 years, know that this is immoral and illegal? Where in Europe and Scandinavia does an employer allow himself to get such a signature from his employee? Why didn’t you go directly to me and instead made the employer as a tool to put pressure on me? Please respond in front of public opinion if you dare!
Let me correct a point here. I have no connection with Mr. Iraj Mesdaghi and I do not know him at all. His positions towards the Mujahedin Organization are not my positions at all and I do not approve of them at all. Many of the things he says may be wrong, and baseless, but there is no reason to consider him a mercenary of the Ministry of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic. Doing so is against my principles.
I also have a word with the supporters of the Mujahedin. I have absolutely no intention of hitting and creating problems for the Mujahedin. I have nothing to do with politics, nor with the organization, nor with the opinion of the organization, and I also pray for each and every member of the Mujahedin. I am looking for a normal life away from controversy and useless noise. If you have been told something else, it is wrong and you can be sure that it is not true. But at the same time I have principles that I cannot deviate from. How the Mujahedin treats its critics is up to it, but it has no right to force me to follow them in this regard. Such an expectation is unreasonable, immoral and illegal. To this day, I have tried to resolve issues with reason and logic so that it does not lead to futile conflicts and does not take energy from me. Unfortunately, no result was reached and the court was forced to intervene to solve this problem. The syndicate’s lawyer has now filed a complaint with the court, and the date and time of the court hearing have been determined. I will keep you informed of further developments.
Important Note: Due to personal issues that can be understood by all dear compatriots, I refuse to mention the name of the company and the place of work.
Now a question rises that how a group whose members are fleeing from this group due to high internal pressure can claim democracy? Upon further examination of the group’s performance, it can be concluded that instead of the word democracy, it is better to attribute the word dictatorship to this group, a word that is perhaps the least adjective that can be used to describe the inner space of this cult. An atmosphere that has become difficult for most members of the group to bear.
Jack Turner, Geopolitica