Following the massive nationwide protests in Iran, described as the largest uprising since the 1979 Revolution, journalists and analysts tried to investigate the demonstrations, its roots and the Iranian opposition groups including the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).
According to many reports, the Iranian opposition remains ideologically diverse and often fragmented. On January 27th, Natiq Malikzada and Trevor Filseth of the National Interest also suggested that “anti-regime” sentiment in Iran comes in many flavors. They try to answer the critical question: “What’s Wrong with Iran’s Opposition?”
According to Malikzada and Filseth, the Iranian opposition groups are “divided by identity, history, borders, language, religion, class, and even what the word ‘Iran’ should mean.” They present a brief but quiet comprehensive history and analysis of Iranian opposition groups of which this is about the MEK:
The other major Iranian opposition exile movement is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), better known in the West as the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). It, too, is unpalatable to a majority of Iranians.
The MEK began as a movement of Iranian leftists with Islamist ideas. Under the leadership of student leader Massoud Rajavi, it carried out bombings inside Iran, first against the Shah and later against Khomeini. After the group was banned inside Iran in 1981, it struck an alliance with Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War and established military bases in Iraq that it used to launch attacks on Iranian troops. The MEK has gone to great lengths to stress that it never actually fought alongside Saddam’s forces—yet its members still fought against their own countrymen during a war for national survival, giving them a status within today’s Iran akin to that of Benedict Arnold in the United States.
For this reason, the MEK has virtually no chance to build a mass movement inside Iran. Outside Iran, the organization has gained some measure of influence, hosting prominent Western politicians at its conferences and gaining US congressional support for its “10-point plan” for a post-Islamic Republic government. However, it has also faced persistent criticism over its cult-like structure and practices. For instance, it requires that its members remain celibate, and insists that Rajavi—who has not been seen since 2003—is still alive and in hiding. (His wife, Maryam Rajavi, leads the group in his absence.) The group also carries the stigma of having been listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in the United States until 2012.
Owing to these controversies, the MEK has few friends across the broader opposition universe, which regards it as compromised and untrustworthy. In turn, the MEK tends to treat other opposition currents as unserious or irrelevant, proffering its own structure and messaging discipline as the only credible alternatives to the Islamic Republic. These tendencies make it virtually impossible for the group to unify with any other opposition movements—and given the MEK’s baggage, it is unclear if such unity would even be helpful to the anti-regime cause.