Congressional Research Service (CSR) is a nonpartisan public policy research institute under the Library of Congress of the United States Congress that serves the Congress throughout the legislative process by providing comprehensive and reliable legislative research.

The above-mentioned research provides background on the MEK, including its origins, its 1997 designation by the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), its 2012 delisting as an FTO, and the current concerns of the US government about the MEK’s violence.

While the group is still embraced by some American politicians including Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, some keynotes from the report needs to be emphasized.

On the MEK’s terrorist background regarding US citizens and interests the report reads:

The MEK in the 1960s and 1970s sought the overthrow of the then-U.S.-backed Shah through guerilla attacks against the Iranian government and other targets. Some of these attacks killed U.S. military personnel stationed in Iran according to a 1994 congressionally mandated State Department report. The MEK participated in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and, after the fall of the Shah, supported the takeover of the U.S. embassy, and opposed the release of American hostages, according to the 1994 State Department report.

On Massoud Rajavi’s undemocratic approach in ruling the MEK and its political vitrine the so-called National Council of Resistance (NCR), Clayton Thomas quotes from the very DOS’s report:

According to the State Department report mentioned above, NCRI “disintegrated in the 1980s” as various partners “left the organization because of their objections to Rajavi’s dictatorial methods and his unilateral decision to ally with Iraq.

On the claims that the black listing of the MEK in 1997 was intended as a goodwill gesture to Tehran and its newly elected moderate president, Mohammad Khatami that has featured prominently in MEK efforts to portray the designation as baseless and politically motivated, the CSR report states:

A 1999 State Department report announcing the redesignation of most of the original designees (including the MEK) featured several frequently asked questions, including, “Why was the MEK designated?” The report answered: We have sufficient grounds for concluding that they are a terrorist organization and continue to engage in terrorist violence. The designation is based on activities much more recent than the takeover of our embassy. Additionally, directing terrorism against a government or entity with whom we have differences does not exclude an organization from designation as an FTO. MEK is designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization because of the acts they commit, not who they act against and not who they are. In 1999, the State Department also added “National Council of Resistance” and NCR as aliases of the MEK.

On the MEK’s delisting under the order of the then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, in September 2012, the author of the report clarifies that the MEK’s removal from the FTO list did not mean that the DOS ignored the group’s past activities:

On September 28, 2012, the State Department announced the MEK’s delisting as an FTO. In the announcement, the Department said, “With today’s actions, the Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992. The Department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members. The Secretary’s decision today took into account the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade, and their cooperation in the peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf, their historic paramilitary base.

On the MEK’s propaganda about their so-called pubic support among Iranians, the report is pretty cautious to prove the opposite:

The MEK claims to be a focal point for broad-based opposition to the Iranian government. To bolster the group’s claims that it has support within Iran, the MEK has argued that it has received information from domestic sources on the government’s nuclear program and crackdowns on public protests. Limited public opinion polling suggests the group may not have broad popular support in Iran or within the Iranian-American diaspora.

And, the report once more emphasizes the concerns of the US government over the MEK’s abusive conduct against its own members:

In a 2022 statement to Foreign Policy, a State Department spokesperson was quoted as saying that “the United States does not see the MEK as a viable democratic opposition movement that is representative of the Iranian people.” The spokesperson also reportedly relayed that the State Department “continues to have serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, including allegations of abuse committed against its own members.” The group has long faced accusations that it holds members against their will and commits torture—allegations the group denies.

Nejat Society

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According to the FBI report, the American victims of the MEK included:


• U.S. Army Colonel Lewis Hawkins


• U.S. Air Force officers Paul Shaffer and Ja Turner


• Three American Rockwell International employees: William Cottrell, Robert Krongard, and Donald Smith


• American executive Paul Grimm

The document also references attacks against U.S. interests, including the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

Yet today, the same organization desperately tries to present itself as “pro-American,” democratic, and aligned with Western values.

The irony is unbelievable: a group once investigated by the FBI for murdering Americans now attempts to market itself as a trusted ally of the United States and the West.

Amir Yaghmai

The post FBI Document Confirms: MEK Killed Americans appeared first on Nejat Society.

Pluralistic democracy is, by definition, a political system in which there is more than one center of power. Modern democracies are pluralistic by definition because democratic systems allow freedom of associations and parties. But the half-century history of the MEK’s activities has shown that there is only one center of power in the group, and that is Massoud Rajavi, who is at the top of the organizational pyramid, followed by Maryam Rajavi and then some higher-ranking members of the group’s hierarchy.

Establishing justice in a society is not possible without deepening democracy, and in an organization like the MEK, which is run hierarchically, democracy is sacrificed first and then justice is gone. Discrimination is one of the definitive consequences of such a structure. Although the MEK, with its uniformed forces and the use of titles such as “Sister Mujahed” and “Brother Mujahed,” tries to hide its structural injustices, members who have left the group have repeatedly testified about the severe inequalities between the higher-ranking members and commanders of the group compared to the lower-ranking members and subordinate forces.

Aylin Moghadam, a former member of the MEK, was a child soldier who served the MEK for many years. In her posts on her X social media account, she writes about the extreme injustices and the discriminating system of access to facilities in Rajavi’s cult:

The authorities of the MEK eat well, but the rest of the ranks eat beef. Mehdi Abrishamchi and his daughter Ashraf Abrishamchi have natural fruit juice for breakfast. Of course, high-ranking officials like Faezeh Ranjkar, Sedigheh Hosseini, and Zohreh Akhiani all have special diets and are never the subject of any criticism session. And whether in Ashraf Iraq or Ashraf 3, they always stay in air-conditioned rooms, but the rest have air conditioning for just a few hours of the day and are mostly in the sun and in the heat, with terrible nutrition and $8 a month, the equivalent of Albanian money, with which they really can’t buy anything.

But in the wallets of the commanders there is at least a thousand dollars in cash. I said at least. In the wallets of people like Fahimeh Arvani there is even three thousand dollars in cash apart from credit cards. It is up to you!

 In addition, having a phone is free for the leadership council and high-ranking brothers, but it is forbidden for low-ranking forces!!

From these few lines written by Aylin, we can see that inequality in the MEK dominates all aspects of its members’ lives. As can be seen from the memories of other former members, this injustice in terms of nutrition, medical treatment, use of urban facilities, and enjoyment of entertainment has created a deep class gap between high-ranking and low-ranking members.

Also, in terms of enduring psychological pressure and organizational coercion, low-ranking members are greater and more numerous victims. In the pluralistic democracy claimed by the MEK, the number of underprivileged individuals is much greater than that of the well-off commanders and leaders.

Mazda Parsi

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Daniel Boffey, the chief reporter of the Guardian begins the report with an aggressive rap demonstration made by a Pahlavi supporter, named Mohraz in London. In his music show, this monarchist is pretending to shoot  the paramilitary organization known as Basij in Iran and the IRGC referred to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the MEK.

Boffey asserts that the aggressive drill music made by Mohraz, is only the most public evidence of a battle being played out on the streets of London that is not between supporters and opponents of the Iranian government but instead, within the opposition.

“It is a clash that has been electrified by the hopes raised by the US and Israeli military action over the past three months, but is now posing a headache for British police, as well as being a source of anxiety for the Iranian diaspora touched by it,” The Gurdian reporter states. “Scuffles at protests against Tehran’s regime, often requiring police intervention, have been attributed to tensions between the sparring sides, raising the concerns that matters could escalate.”

The journalist refers to other “battles” taken place among Iranian opposition in exile including the Nowruz celebration. He tries to cover the opinions from both sides. Ray (Mohammad Reza) Torabi, former child soldier of the MEK is one of those interviewed by Boffey.

According to the author, Ray Torabi, 44, who lives in Cologne, was once a member of the MEK but today regards Pahlavi as a potential transitional leader in Iran. He said he recognised that there were extremists among the supporters of the shah’s son but that it was not the full story.

He told Boffey: “One thing you can differentiate between the Pahlavi crowd and the MEK crowd is because the MEK is a cult, they have complete control over their supporters, their members, and you know they’re very well organised.”

“That’s why you really don’t see the feeling falling out of line and then doing things, but on the other hand, the Pahlavi crowd, they’re not organised the same way; they’re not a cult, they’re individuals, they’re people who, a lot of them, they see Pahlavi as the only hope for Iran. There’s a group that are really extremists, and then they really worship Pahlavi. Sometimes they take it too far.”

The deep competition between the two groups who claim they want to bring peace and democracy for Iran, indicates that they are thriving to grab the opportunity to gain some more credibility among Iranian public opinion. But, it seems that both groups have lost the game.

The MEK’s five-decade record and the Pahlavi’s past monarchy have left Iranians with memoirs and experiences of violence and treason. What Massoud Rajavi literally did, Reza Pahlavi advocates for: war for Iran and bloodshed of Iranians. Iran does not need such an opposition.

Mazda Parsi

The post Guardian: Opposition Divided, Battle Among Mujahedin and Monarchists appeared first on Nejat Society.

There is a strange ritual in Washington whenever Iran is discussed. The language begins with democracy, women’s rights, non-proliferation and regional stability. It then somehow ends with sanctions, threats, aircraft carriers, television panels and, eventually, bombs. Since Washington withdrew from the 2015 nuclear agreement, coercion has been sold as concern. In May 2026, even as a U.S. peace proposal circulated, Trump was still threatening renewed attacks and demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The gap between vocabulary and policy is no longer hidden inside power. It is power.

This is the ethical collapse at the heart of America’s Iran policy. The ordinary Iranian is invoked as the object of compassion, then made to live under policies designed to squeeze the country until daily life becomes the battlefield. Sanctions tighten through banks, shipping, medicine, food prices, import costs and family savings.

Washington may insist that pressure is targeted, but the consequences do not remain inside a ministerial office. They travel through ports, exchange rates, hospitals and kitchens. A policy that claims to stand with Iranians while making the horizon narrower for them has lost the right to call itself humane.

War is not born only when a missile leaves a launcher. It is prepared in hearings, studio interviews, think-tank papers, donor meetings and headlines. The public is taught that diplomacy is naive, then told that force is inevitable. That pattern is visible again in the current Strait of Hormuz crisis. A waterway through which a significant share of global energy moved before the war has now become the stage for threats, sanctions and bargaining. Trump has even discussed whether to lift sanctions on Chinese firms buying Iranian oil, not as a moral question, but as a bargaining chip in a larger great-power transaction.

This is where lobbying and money matter. AIPAC describes its mission as helping pro-Israel candidates win and defeating critics of the U.S.-Israel relationship. That is legal politics, but legality is not moral neutrality. Outside groups, including AIPAC, poured roughly $70 million into six open congressional races in Illinois in 2026. The problem is not that voters hear arguments about Israel or Iran.

The problem is that a foreign-policy consensus can be purchased, disciplined and enforced until elected officials learn which red lines may end their careers. Iran policy is debated after it has already been financed.

Iran International and the Mujahedin-e Khalq reveal another layer of the same machine: the conversion of exile politics into a Western theatre of legitimacy. Iran International has long faced serious questions about opaque Saudi-linked funding, while the channel has denied government influence. The MEK was removed from the U.S. terrorism list in 2012 and later courted by former U.S. officials as a possible interlocutor. The deeper issue is not simply funding or history. It is substitution. Complex Iranian society, with all its classes, memories, losses and political instincts, is flattened into English-language soundbites and conference-stage slogans. The exile microphone becomes useful precisely when it confirms what Washington already wants to hear.

Human rights language should protect people from being instrumentalised. In the American debate on Iran, it too often does the opposite. Iranian women, students, workers and families are invoked as moral witnesses, but they are rarely allowed to define the remedy. Their suffering becomes portable: carried into congressional speeches, cable-news segments and donor dinners, then used to justify policies they did not choose. Solidarity would mean lowering the temperature, opening diplomatic space and refusing to turn a nation into a laboratory for coercion. What Washington offers instead is pity with a policy memo attached.

The domestic politics are also revealing. As the war and blockade pushed oil toward $109 a barrel, Americans were asked to absorb the cost as proof of resolve. Neutral ships became bargaining symbols in a conflict sold as humanitarian management. New sanctions on buyers of Iranian oil moved through the same logic: punish the channels of survival, then call the pain leverage. Even diplomacy is framed as pressure by other means, not as a recognition that regional security cannot be built over the heads of the people who live there.

A serious Iran policy would separate the Iranian people from the uses others make of their suffering. It would return diplomacy to the centre, recognise the limits of force, and stop treating sanctions as a painless alternative to war. Above all, it would admit that democracy cannot be delivered by networks that profit from fear, exile spectacle and regime-change fantasy.

America’s crisis is not only strategic. It is ethical. It has learned to speak the language of human rights while building the infrastructure of coercion. That is why war with Iran is manufactured first in Washington’s money, media and moral imagination.

Jenny Williams, Middle East Monitor

The post How Washington profits from Iran’s pain appeared first on Nejat Society.

Amir has not contacted his family for 39 years except for two times: The first time was in Iraq, in 2004 when his father went to Camp Ashraf. He was just allowed to visit Amir for a few minutes under the supervision of MEK commanders. His later trips to Camp Ashraf were not successful. He was no more permitted to visit his beloved son.

During these years, Amir’s brother, Adel has been cooperating with Nejat Society in order to send messages to his beloved brother in the MEK and so he has been labeled as an agent of the Islamic Republic’s Intelligence ministry. This is the MEK’s tactic to demonize all families who want to contact their children taken as hostages in the group’s cult-like system.

The second contact was made by Amir! He was forced by the group leaders to write against his own family calling them “Monsters”. “My family are the Resistance Units who are fighting the regime in Iran,” he added.

However, Adel had learned from former members of the MEK that Amir and many other members of the group are manipulated and coerced to write such words against their families. Thus, he continued writing letters to send love to his beloved brother. This is a part of his last letter that has been published in Persian on Nejat website:

Yesterday I received a new photo of you. To be honest, I was very happy that I was able to see a picture of you once again, and I was also very sad that after all these years I only had to see your photo and why can’t I even hear your voice?

My good brother, when I saw your photo, I just cried in silence for a few minutes, and in those few minutes, all the past memories with you flashed before my eyes. I remembered the cries and moans of our parents, because of their distance and lack of news about you, and I felt sad for them, who passed away with a lot of regret and sighs.

Amir Hezbepour is now in the MEK’s headquarters called Ashraf 3, in Manez, Albania. Residents of Ashraf 3 are not allowed to leave the camp. They are not allowed to have any contact with the outside world either. Their families, in Iran and across the world, like the Hezbepours are deprived from their basic rights to contact their loved ones.

The post To a Brother in the MEK: I Cried When I Saw Your Photo appeared first on Nejat Society.

Social psychologist Alexandra Stein, Ph.D., specializes in cult phenomena and teaches courses at several universities in London. Her article, “Mothers in Cults: The Influence of Cults on the Relationship of Mothers to Their Children,” examines the impact of the cult experience on the mother-child bond. Dr. Stein notes that this bond is controlled in multiple ways:

mothers are often discouraged from having a special bond with the child;

mothers may spend very little or no time with their children because of the demands of the cult;

the child is physically taken from the parents; and

mothers’ behavior toward their children is carefully monitored.

Stein writes: “Doing ‘the right thing’ (for God, the Revolution, one’s personal growth, whatever) becomes synonymous with obeying the leader. To go against the leader’s directive is to go against God himself. The mother becomes psychologically trapped: she wants to be a good person, but the definition of goodness resides entirely in the cult’s domain.

In 1991 around one thousand children of Mujahed couples were separated from their parents and smuggled to Europe and North America under the order of Massoud Rajavi. More than 3 hundred of the smuggled children were later, at the ages of 14 to 19, sent back to Iraq to receive military trainings at the MEK camps.

Amir Yaghmai is one of these former child soldiers who managed to leave the MEK fighting the group leaders as well as his own leader.

He wrote and published his memoirs of being born in a Mujahed family, grown up at camp Ashraf until his 5 year-old age, smuggled to Sweden, recruited as a child soldier at the age of fourteen.

His mother is still in the MEK’s cult-like structure. She resides in the group’s headquarters in Albania. She denies that Amir is her son because as Dr. Stein expresses, she is psychologically trapped; She wants to be a good person by the definition of goodness that Massoud and Rajavi define for MEK members.

At his forties, Amir Yaghmai is a father of two girls but he is still impressed by the behaviors of his brainwashed mother trying to shed light on the nature of the MEK as a destructive terrorist cult. Here is a short memoir Amir has recently published on his X account sharing a photo of him and his mother:

1994. I am around 10 years old.

My mother is in Sweden – on behalf of the organization.

For a few days she lives in their office.

On the last day we meet in Guldfynd in the center of Kista.

She asks what I wish for.

I choose a bronze Thor’s hammer.

She buys it for me.

I think it is a farewell between mother and son.

At the last moment, just before she says goodbye, she says:

“Amir, I didn’t come here to see you.

I am here on behalf of the organization.”

The world stops.

Everything goes in slow motion.

I remember every sensory impression –

how my breath evaporates in the chilly air,

exactly where I am standing on the uphill slope,

and above all how my heart breaks.

I wanted to feel needed.

After several years of absence, I thought she came for me.

But instead I was told that I was worth less than the organization.

A feeling that was confirmed over and over again during my upbringing.

Mazda Parsi

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Jonathan Feldstein is an American who immigrated to Israel in 2004.  He has a three-decade career in fundraising and marketing for Israeli foundations. He is also an author who is considered a “respected” bridge between Jews and Christians, in Israel.

His piece is actually a response to a MEK agent who claimed that the MEK has changed and is no longer repeating its terrorist past. In response, Feldstein tries to acknowledge, while reviewing the MEK’s background, that the MEK has never changed to better; has no political or social legitimacy for Iranians and that this MEK “agent” is actually selling himself to clear the bloody record of his employers.

The Zionist author, Feldstein begins the article with a question about the MEK agent and gives a comprehensive answer:

Who is the “agent” selling out for, why, and why does it matter?

The People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (MEK) is one of the most prominent and controversial Iranian opposition groups. Founded in 1965, it evolved from a student-led Marxist revolutionary movement to an exiled organization advocating for regime change in Iran. Its history is of violent confrontations, forced exile, and robust international public relations and lobbying. It’s front organization, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) seeks to pasteurize its terrorist origins and position it as a legitimate player in the broader Iranian landscape.

MEK and NCRI are one and the same, a hand-in-glove relationship. Rather than a legitimate opposition, they represent a disgruntled and isolated – and very well-funded – terrorist group. They are nothing more than wolves in different wolves’ clothes. Sadly, there are many Western leaders who are in their pockets, literally, and others like their “agent” who are on the payroll.

When one speaks of the red-green alliance, the MEK/NCRI is the embodiment of that. They blend radical Islam with Marxist revolutionary ideology. MEK always emphasized armed struggle against oppression to achieve its goals. Massoud Rajavi joined in the late 1960s and rose to its leadership after the Shah’s regime executed the founders and other leaders.

In the 1979 Islamic Revolution, MEK supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. It gained popularity for its anti-monarchy stance and organizational strength. But they had a fallout with “Supreme Leader” Khomeini and, after being violently put down by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), they turned to terror inside Iran, leading to a brutal crackdown against its members and supporters. Its leaders fled Iran to protect themselves.

Rajavi fled to Paris, establishing NCRI as part of its exiled underground network. It relocated to Iraq in 1986, allying with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. This, and participating in the killing of Iranians in order to carry out their terrorist goals, alienated many Iranians and fueled accusations of collaboration with arch-enemy Saddam. Still today, MEK is wildly unpopular and viewed with hatred, as treasonous, by many Iranians.

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, MEK was designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., U.K., E.U., and Canada. But after purportedly renouncing violence in the early 2000s, with no confirmed terrorist acts for which they took credit for over a decade, the West delisted it as a terror group. These decisions were driven largely by geopolitical considerations and challenges in relocating MEK members from Iraq to Albania. After all, nobody wants a terrorist group in their backyard, so a thick coat of whitewash, a slick PR campaign, and international declarations of “reform” made them suddenly palatable. Good neighbors.

But more than actually renouncing terror, the reversal was the product of well-funded intense lobbying, and a media smoke and mirrors scheme such as that which their “agent” is involved. It bears repeating that there are no known instances of Islamic terrorist groups truly renouncing their ideology or use of terror to achieve their goals. Pigs flying and hell freezing over are appropriate metaphors.

Today, MEK/NCRI supporters worship Maryam Rajavi, Massoud’s wife. He has been missing for two decades and presumed dead. They view her words as gospel, her ten-point plan for Iran as coming from Mt. Sinai. On the surface, they claim to support a plan for Iran rooted in secular democracy, gender equality, and without nukes. But follow Iranians in Iran and in the diaspora, and you’ll more often than not find them deriding and delegitimizing MEK/NCRI and Rajavi.

Further accusations of MEK/NCRI being cultlike are echoed in the absolute uniformity of “thought” that they present, minimally, as if they are reading from the same script, to, in fact, being brainwashed.

After a personal encounter that became a heated on-air debate with one of their speakers placed by the “agent,” I confronted their “agent” when I heard about him promoting them. “I heard you’re promoting NCRI. Is that correct?” Usually, a publicist helps clients formulate the talking points. In this case, the “agent” has been indoctrinated by the client.

After he admitted it, he pedaled that they are “former” terrorists, as if singing a John Lennon anti-war song, insisting “people change.”

I had a prior professional connection with the “agent” and challenged him, “I remember exactly where I was when you called me to ask about them. Your take on who they are and what they represent is mistaken. They are misleading you and the world. You’re being used. Shame that you are placing booking terrorists over integrity.” […]

The “agent” doubled down, “Former terrorist entity. There’s a difference. People change. They (MEK/NCRI) are better than imposing a King on them for the new regime. Ninety-four million mostly-Persian citizens deserve better than a King (aka Shah). Don’t you think?”

No, sir, don’t YOU think? Clearly not. Not as long as the Marxist-Islamist checks are being cashed.

It’s ironic to defend MEK/NCRI as democratic when the Rajavi dynasty has been in control since the 1980s. Her colorful hijab, as compared to the Islamic Republic’s preferred black, suggests openness, but it’s just a ruse to make you think they want democracy, secular reforms, and gender equality

The “agent” is pushing MEK/NCRI and Maryam Rajavi as an addicted drug dealer would do to fund his own addiction. Ultimately, the future of Iran needs to be decided by Iranians. But don’t let people like their “agent” and others pull the hijab over your eyes. MEK/NCRI are not to be trusted and, yes, the Iranian people deserve better.

Taken from Jonathan Feldstein’s article in Townhall

The post American Zionist: The MEK is a Fake Iranian Opposition appeared first on Nejat Society.

In the midst of this, we were once again called to a grand meeting in the large hall.

The leader stepped onto the stage with heavy, determined steps. On either side of the stairs stood armed guards, motionless as statues. Further back, like a second wall, stood additional bodyguards. The security was massive, suffocating.

He stopped in the middle of the stage. His gaze swept over us.

The hall was filled – a sea of ​​green uniforms, broken by perfect, symmetrical blocks of red from the women’s headscarves. Everything was orderly. Controlled. Almost militarily beautiful. And completely lifeless.

He opened his mouth: “As part of Maryam’s ideological revolution, I have a gift for all of you…”

A gift. The word echoed strangely in my head.

“You have given me everything. But you have kept the most personal. Something that has prevented you from fully uniting with me and the struggle. Your sexual fantasies.”

He paused.

“From now on, we will introduce the weekly ablution. You will write down every private, every sexual thought you have during the week. And at the end of the week, you will read it out loud to others. The other members will attack your dirty thoughts… and you will be purified.”

Silence. Not an ordinary silence – but a total, suffocating stillness. Ten thousand people in the same room… and yet there was barely a breath. It felt as if time had stopped. As if the air had frozen. A pin could have been heard to drop.

How is this a gift?

Thoughts raced through my mind. This was not a gift. It was a demand. A demand for the last thing that was mine.

We had already lost everything – our lives, our choices, our relationships. We had no contact with the opposite sex. But thoughts… Thoughts were the last thing anyone could take away from us.

I thought.

Now they too would be gone. What is left of a self when even your innermost thoughts belong to someone else?

Maybe that was exactly the point. To wipe out the self. To replace it with something else. Something that fit into their world.

That was exactly what they had taught us about the ideological revolution.

I remembered the videotapes from the late 80s. Our parents had been in these meetings. We were children then. In the films, the leader spoke with a different voice – softer, almost convincing. He spoke of sacrifice.

How they had left everything behind: their lives in Iran, their careers, their lives in the West. But he also said they hadn’t sacrificed everything.

“Why fight halfheartedly?” he asked. “Why not take the final step?” He put his hand in his pocket. “You’re hiding something from me.”

He took out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and placed them on the table. “What do you have in your pockets that you don’t want to give up?”

The private. The hidden. What was still theirs. “Give it to me.” Then it was about spouses and children.

Now, almost fifteen years later, that wasn’t enough anymore. Now even the thoughts would go away.

Fear crept into my body in a way I had never felt before. Not even the missile attacks had scared me this much. The air was electric. Tense to the point of breaking. As if a single spark could blow everything up.

Why did everyone react like this? And why… didn’t I feel anything?

Women in the MEK: Trapped, tortured, and silenced

Brainwashed by Brother Massoud

A young man pushed his way forward. I recognized him immediately. Reza Chavoshi. The MEK’s kid from Germany. The one who used to listen to Ice Cube and gangster rap.

Now he stood there with a wild look and shouted: “Thank you, Brother Massoud! You have freed us from our inner devil! I was the devil!”

I stared at him. What the hell…? How could he change so completely?

It was as if all these people had been missing something. A final piece of the puzzle. A key.

And now the leader had given it to them. And their reactions exploded.

One by one, those who had been sitting still stood up. They lined up. The lines wound all the way to the back of the hall.

Finally, I saw it. I was the only one left sitting. Either they really believed this. Or they didn’t dare do otherwise. But I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t. How could I, at seventeen, feel that something was wrong?

while an elderly man from the United States – a man who had lived in a democratic society, had received an education, lived with freedom – stood there shouting that he had been freed from his “invisible shackles”?

One by one they came forward and thanked him.

Psychological pressure by Massoud’s devotees

Then a short, gray-haired man came up to the microphone. His name was also Massoud. He had lived in London. His voice trembled: “I’m sorry, brother Massoud… but I don’t think I can handle this…”

He couldn’t take it anymore. A roar erupted. Protests. Loud, aggressive. Growing. Then, as if on command, the entire hall began to shout: “Gomsho Pasdar! Gomsho Pasdar!” [in persain] meaning: “Go to hell, you Revolutionary Guard!”

Ten thousand voices. Like a wave.

The gray-haired man covered his ears. He collapsed. Started to cry.

I had seen people attacked in smaller meetings before. But this… This was something completely different. It was brutal. Crushing. And even though I wasn’t the target… I could feel the pressure. The psychological weight.

The leader paced back and forth on the stage. He smiled. He looked at the man. Then he said, almost calmly: “I’m not saying anything. It’s the congregation that takes a stand against you. And the congregation is always right.”

Amir Yaghmai

Taken from Amir Yaghmai’s X account, Translated by Nejat Society Website

The post Massoud Rajavi’s “Precious Gift” to his Followers appeared first on Nejat Society.

Maryam Rajavi’s presence in the European Parliament playing the part of a defender of human rights was a disgraceful and contradictory performance that drew criticism from many Iranians around the world.

Maryam Rajavi, as a person who is severe suppresser of critic and dissent in her organizational structure, caused shame and scandal to certain officials of the European Parliament on April 22 by being received at one of the halls of this institution in Brussels.

In response to such a scandal, some former members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) expressed their anger at this move by the European Parliament, condemned it, and published some of their memories on social networks, testifying about the gross violations of human rights in the MEK’s cult-like structure.

A defector of the group, Reza Gooran while condemning the European Parliament’s action, referred to the psychological repression of dissident members of the group. He cited from Massoud Rajavi the disappeared husband of Maryam Rajavi that “a dissident member deserves death sentence, but we don’t have a death sentence because we are in Iraq”.

This former member of the Cult of Rajavi, who himself experienced imprisonment and torture in Camp Ashraf, Iraq, also testified that “the cult’s torturers murdered a protester and critic who was a prisoner in the Ashraf Camp torture chamber.”

Some other Iranian users of social networks sent letters to the European Parliament, making the authorities aware of their reprehensible behavior in accepting the leader of a terrorist group with a long history of violence, terror, betrayal and sectarianism.

One of the letters from Iranian users addressed to the European Parliament, which is being circulated on social media, is as follows:

Subject: You invite Maryam Rajavi – Are you endorsing a terrorist cult?

To: Members of the European Parliament

Dear Members of the European Parliament,

On April 22, 2026, you invited Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the MEK (Mujahedin-e-Khalq), to speak in your parliament. You applauded her.

Let me ask you directly:

Do you actually support what she represents?

Because her organization has a documented history of:

Killing over 17,000 innocent Iranian civilians including a 3‑year‑old girl.

Fighting alongside Saddam Hussein during the Iran–Iraq war – the same Saddam you later condemned for genocide

Murdering 25,000 Iraqi

Kurds and Shias in 1991.

Running a cult (not a political group) – with forced divorces, brainwashing, and documented sexual exploitation of women by Masoud Rajavi, her husband.

Yet you invite her. Give her a stage. Applaud her.

So my question is simple

Are you thinking exactly like her? Are you her supporter?

Or did you simply not care to check the crimes behind the applause?

I used to believe the European Parliament stood for human rights.

Now I see for you, some murderers are acceptable as long as they are useful.

Shame on this double standard.

Sincerely,

A citizen who still remembers what human rights actually mean

In all the years that the Nejat Society and many other human rights organizations have been trying to shed light on the terrorist nature of the MEK and the human rights violations within this organization, the number of documents and evidence available in the global information space has increased day by day.

Despite all the accusations that the Rajavis have made against the whistleblowers, they still reveal that whenever MEK members refused to continue cooperating with the group and asked to leave it, they were subjected to physical attacks, humiliation, threats, and peer pressure at the instigation of commanders, mostly led by Massoud Rajavi. In these situations, the victims are subjected to severe verbal and physical abuse

Maryam Rajavi’s pro-democracy gesture is in complete contrast to the violent and ruthless actions of her five decades of organizational activity. Her presence in the European Parliament means using the issue of executions and human rights violations as a tool for political purposes. We cannot claim freedom, democracy, and the defense of the rights of the Iranian people and turn a blind eye to the behavior of Maryam and Massoud Rajavi against their fellow Iranians.

Mazda Parsi

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