Inside the MEK: The "Cult", the Lobby and the Manufactured Crowd.

@samsamiei · Sep 24

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The MEK: The Iranian Opposition Group Iran Hates and Iranians Reject

An evidence-graded investigation into the Mojahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) and the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). It covers the group's violent history, how it runs internally, how it sells itself abroad, and the independently documented online influence operations linked to it, up to and including Anthropic's September 2026 report on the MEK's use of AI.

Why this matters now

Western audiences often meet a very different MEK from the one many Iranians remember.

They see large rallies in European capitals. Former prime ministers, generals, intelligence chiefs and cabinet officials appear on its stages. Maryam Rajavi presents a ten-point plan promising elections, secular government, gender equality and the abolition of the death penalty.

Behind that presentation is a much more complicated organisation.

The MEK's record includes:

a guerrilla past that killed Americans;
bombings and assassinations inside Iran;
years spent fighting alongside Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war;
long periods on Western terrorism lists;
serious abuses against its own members, documented by independent investigators;
compulsory divorce and celibacy;
a well-funded political influence network in Western capitals.

Since 2021 there has been another strand. Two technology companies, working independently, have each documented organised inauthentic activity linked to the group:

Meta (2021) removed what it called a "tightly organized troll farm" linked to the MEK, operating from Albania.
Anthropic (September 2026) removed a distributed MEK/NCRI-linked influence operation. According to Anthropic, it used Claude to impersonate a real Iranian activist, profile people inside Iran, create synthetic "ordinary Iranians", and disguise MEK material as independent content.

These findings change the evidentiary picture. Claims of manufactured support no longer rest only on defectors, rival opposition groups or Tehran.

This file sorts every claim into one of four categories:

Documented: established by primary records, courts, governments, platforms or credible independent investigations.
Attributed: officially blamed on the MEK by an identifiable source, but not proven in court.
Disputed: credible sources disagree, or the MEK denies it.
Testimony: first-hand accounts from former members that have not been independently adjudicated.

That discipline matters. The Islamic Republic has spent decades producing propaganda about the MEK and is not a neutral source. But Tehran's propaganda does not make independently documented evidence disappear.

Part I — History

1. Origins: guerrillas against the Shah

The MEK was founded in 1965 by university-educated Iranian revolutionaries opposed to Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Its ideology mixed revolutionary Shia Islam with Marxist and anti-imperialist ideas.

Americans killed in Iran — Documented / partly Disputed

A 1994 US State Department report attributed these killings to the organisation:

Lt Colonel Lewis Hawkins, June 1973;
US Air Force Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lt Colonel Jack Turner, May 1975;
three Rockwell International employees, August 1976.

There is a complication. In 1975 the organisation went through a violent ideological split. While Massoud Rajavi was in prison, a Marxist faction took over part of the group; it later became Peykar. The MEK argues that the 1975–76 killings belong to that faction. A Peykar founder, Vahid Afrakhteh, confessed to the Shaffer–Turner killing and was executed.

That defence has some basis for 1975–76. It cannot cover Hawkins, who was killed in 1973, before the split.

When Washington delisted the MEK in 2012, the State Department said it did not "overlook or forget" the killing of US citizens in Iran in the 1970s, or the MEK's 1992 attack on US soil.

The US Embassy

US government accounts also cite the MEK's support for the 1979 seizure of the American embassy in Tehran.

After the revolution, the MEK and Khomeini's new government quickly became enemies. By 1981 the conflict had become a war.

2. War with the Islamic Republic (1981)

In June 1981 the MEK launched an armed uprising. The regime answered with mass arrests and executions of members and sympathisers, many of them teenagers. At the same time, major bombings devastated the new leadership.

Hafte Tir, 28 June 1981 (Attributed). A bomb at the Islamic Republican Party headquarters killed 74 officials, including Chief Justice Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti. The regime first blamed SAVAK and Iraq. Two days later Khomeini blamed the MEK. The bomb was planted by Mohammad Reza Kolahi.

Prime Minister's office, 30 August 1981 (Attributed). This bombing killed President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad-Javad Bahonar. No group claimed it. The regime named Masoud Keshmiri, who disappeared after the attack. Some scholars have floated the possibility of factional involvement inside the ruling party.

Both attacks remain attributed, not proven in any court. The MEK's campaign of assassinations continued through the decade, and so did the regime's imprisonment, torture and execution of MEK members. Neither history cancels the other.

3. Saddam Hussein's Iranian army (1986–2003)

This chapter, more than any other, explains the MEK's reputation among Iranians.

In 1986, under pressure from France, Rajavi moved the organisation to Iraq while the Iran-Iraq war was still being fought. Saddam provided territory, weapons and logistics. Camp Ashraf became the group's base, and its armed wing operated as the National Liberation Army.

Operation Forough Javidan / Mersad, July 1988 (Documented). About 7,000 MEK fighters crossed from Iraq into western Iran. Their aim was to take Kermanshah and ultimately topple the regime. Iranian forces destroyed the offensive.

Shortly afterwards, the regime carried out the 1988 prison massacre, in which thousands of political prisoners were executed, many of them MEK supporters. That was a crime of the Iranian state.

The political consequence for the MEK was still profound. Opposing the Islamic Republic was one thing. Crossing into Iran with an army based and supplied by Saddam, at the end of an eight-year war, was another.

The 1991 Iraqi uprisings (Attributed / Disputed). The State Department reported that the MEK helped Saddam's Republican Guard crush the Kurdish and Shia uprisings after the Gulf War. RAND says US forces initially designated the MEK a hostile force in 2003, partly for this reason. The MEK denies it.

4. The terrorism years and the lists

US terrorism reporting records attacks including:

April 1992: near-simultaneous attacks on Iranian diplomatic missions in multiple countries, including Iran's UN mission in New York. The State Department says 13 countries; the Congressional Research Service says 11.
1998: bomb and mortar attacks inside Iran that killed at least 15 people, and the assassination of the former head of Iran's prisons.
April 1999: the assassination of Brigadier General Ali Sayyad Shirazi, deputy chief of the Armed Forces General Staff.
April 2000: an attempted assassination of the commander of Tehran's Nasr Headquarters.

Western governments listed the group as terrorist for years:

Delisting was won in court as well as lobbied for

It would be wrong to say the MEK simply bought its way off the lists. In each case the delisting also involved litigation.

United Kingdom: the Proscribed Organisations Appeal Commission ruled against the government in 2007. The Court of Appeal upheld that ruling in 2008, and the ban was lifted.
European Union: the listing fell after the group won a series of EU court challenges.
United States: a federal appeals court found that the State Department had denied the group due process. The courts then set a deadline that forced a decision. In September 2012 State removed the MEK. It cited three reasons: the group's renunciation of violence, no confirmed terrorist acts for more than a decade, and its cooperation in closing Camp Ashraf.

The MEK litigated, and it also paid for political advocacy. Both are true. Delisting did not erase the historical record.

Part II — How the organisation actually runs

Calling an organisation a "cult" can become a substitute for evidence. A better test is to look at specific mechanisms:

What happens to marriage and family?
Can members criticise the leader?
Can they leave?

Independent investigators have answered those questions in detail.

5. The "ideological revolution" — Documented

In 1985 Massoud Rajavi married Maryam Azodanlu after her divorce from senior MEK member Mehdi Abrishamchi. The organisation presented the marriage as the start of an "ideological revolution."

It spread from the leadership to every member. According to HRW, RAND and later BBC and New York Times interviews with former members, it moved through three stages:

Legal divorce of married members, by order of the organisation.
"Ideological divorce." Members were required to renounce not just the marriage but the feelings behind it.
Mandatory celibacy, with men and women strictly segregated.

RAND's 2009 Pentagon-commissioned study summarised the resulting system as cult-like. It listed authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labour, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.

6. Confession discipline — Documented (multiple independent sources)

The daily texture of this system is what Western rally footage never shows.

Former members interviewed by the BBC in Albania (2019) and by the New York Times (2020) described being required to record their sexual thoughts, dreams and attachments. They then had to confess them in writing and in group sessions before commanders and comrades. Elizabeth Rubin, reporting from Camp Ashraf for the New York Times Magazine in 2003, described weekly public "ideological cleansings" built on the same practice.

The MEK says these accounts come from people manipulated by Iranian intelligence. But the testimony was gathered separately, by different outlets, in different years, in different countries.

7. The children — Documented as practice; numbers uncertain

Around the 1991 Gulf War, members' children at Camp Ashraf were separated from their parents. Many were sent abroad, to relatives, to foster families or to MEK-run homes, including in Europe.

The MEK presented this as a wartime safety measure. Defectors describe it as part of a system that dismantled family life. Some parents went decades without contact with their children. RAND reported that relatives inside the organisation could be separated and needed permission to communicate.

One case shows what this meant in practice. Batoul Soltani told The Intercept that in 1991 MEK commanders took her two children, aged six months and five years, and sent them to live with MEK members in the Netherlands and Sweden. She said she felt unable to oppose it. Since leaving, she has tried to rebuild those relationships, and says her children, now in their early twenties, are angry and struggle to understand the decades she spent away. (Testimony.)

How many children were involved, who cared for them, and how many later returned to the organisation remain open questions. They deserve their own investigation.

8. No exit — Documented

Human Rights Watch, No Exit (2005). HRW interviewed twelve former members. They described abuses against people who dissented or asked to leave:

prolonged solitary confinement, in one case eight and a half years;
beatings;
psychological abuse;
coerced confessions;
threats of execution;
transfer of dissidents to Iraqi custody, including Abu Ghraib;
torture that, in two cases, led to death.

MEK supporters attacked the report and claimed the witnesses were Iranian agents. HRW then re-interviewed all twelve witnesses in person in Europe. It concluded that the criticisms were unwarranted.

In 2011 HRW warned that a "substantial number" of Camp Ashraf residents may have been held involuntarily. It called for residents to be interviewed privately, outside the camp.

Recruitment. RAND reported that many Ashraf residents had been recruited under false pretences and then found it very difficult to leave. Recruits included Iranian prisoners of war in Iraq and migrants in Turkey and the Gulf, who were promised work or a route to Europe.

Albania today. This is not only a 2005 story. In 2019 the BBC reported that hundreds of members had walked out of Ashraf 3 since the move to Albania. Some cited the rules on celibacy and family contact. Dozens were left stranded in Tirana, unable to return to Iran and cut off from the organisation. One man told the BBC he had not spoken to his wife and son for more than 37 years; they had believed he was dead.

9. The graver allegations — Testimony, not adjudicated

On 22 March 2020, The Intercept published "Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult." Former members made two sets of allegations: that women were pressured into sterilisation, and that they were sexually abused by Massoud Rajavi.

Batoul Soltani (also spelled Sultani) is a former member of the MEK's High Council who defected in 2006. She told The Intercept:

The rationale. According to her, Rajavi said the womb drew women towards motherhood and family life and held back the organisation's goals.
The groups. She said the leadership then began approaching women "to get them in groups of 20 or 30 to have a hysterectomy."
Her own case. She said she resisted, eventually agreed under intense pressure, and left before the surgery took place.
The "castle" meeting. She described a meeting where Rajavi asked how many women had "reached the castle," which she took to mean the operation. According to her, a doctor answered that about 50 women had undergone it.

"Sima." A second former High Council member, identified only by that name because she feared retaliation, joined in the 1980s and left in 2014. She said that in 2011, after sustained pressure, she agreed to have her ovaries removed. "When you are under brainwashing," she said, "you would do anything and everything."

Sexual relations with Massoud Rajavi. Soltani told The Intercept that Massoud Rajavi had been turned into an object of worship, and that female members were expected to show their devotion physically. Her account:

Maryam Rajavi's role. She said Maryam Rajavi repeatedly asked female members why they had not "demanded to see our leader in his bedroom." There was, she said, "a strong pressure" on women to begin sexual relationships with him "to show your commitment to the leader and the group."
The pendants. Female members were periodically given stainless-steel pendants printed with Rajavi's face, which she said meant they had been summoned to his bed. She received hers in 1997 and became sexually involved with him.
"Over 400." According to records that Soltani and other defectors say they kept, more than 400 female members had sexual relations with Rajavi.

The "400" and the "50" both need particular care. Neither is an audited figure; both come from defectors, and each should be quoted that way:

Soltani told The Intercept that, according to records she and other defectors say they kept, more than 400 women had sexual relations with Massoud Rajavi. It must not become "Rajavi abused 400 women."
Soltani told The Intercept that an MEK doctor said at a meeting that about 50 women had undergone operations. It must not become "50 women were sterilised" or "The Intercept found that 50 women were sterilised."

What The Intercept itself says about its evidence. The reporters say it was "not possible to independently verify all parts of the defectors' stories." Five former members spoke on the record, and the reporters describe their accounts as "broadly consistent," often confirming parts of each other's stories. The Intercept also says that secret Iranian intelligence documents it obtained confirmed several of their claims. Given this file's rule about Tehran as a source, that corroboration carries little weight here.

The MEK's response. The MEK did not respond to The Intercept's requests for comment. Before publication, senior MEK official Ali Safavi denounced the story on a website associated with the group as "a new propaganda hit piece," orchestrated by Iran's clerics to distract from the coronavirus crisis.

The grading has to be precise:

Documented: The Intercept conducted and published these interviews.
Testimony: what the defectors say happened to them.
Not established: that the MEK ran a systematic forced-sterilisation programme, or that the allegations against Massoud Rajavi have been independently proven.

These accounts are serious, detailed and on the record. They have not been examined by a court or confirmed by an independent investigation comparable to HRW or RAND. They belong in this file, but graded as testimony, not as documented fact.

10. The self-immolations — Documented

In June 2003, French police raided MEK properties on terrorism suspicions and arrested Maryam Rajavi and about 160 others. MEK members and supporters then set themselves on fire in several European cities.

RAND's 2009 study puts the number at approximately ten self-immolations or attempts. The Associated Press reported that two people died and six others were injured. The two who died were women: Neda Hassani, outside the French embassy in London, and Sediqeh Mojaveri, in Paris.

The MEK's position. Maryam Rajavi issued a statement from detention urging supporters not to resort to self-immolation. An NCRI spokesman called the acts "spontaneous." French investigators later dropped terrorism charges against 24 of those detained; nine remained under investigation for financial matters.

The existence and approximate scale of the self-immolations are documented. Whether the leadership ordered, encouraged or coordinated them is a separate question that would need separate evidence. The documented event is disturbing enough without embellishment.

11. The vanishing leader

Massoud Rajavi disappeared around March 2003, at the time of the US invasion of Iraq. His last public statement was an Ashura message that year. More than 23 years later, no independently verifiable video, audio or proof of life has appeared. Written messages are still attributed to him.

At a 2016 MEK rally, former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal referred to him as deceased. The MEK did not confirm this.

His status is unknown. An organisation that presents itself as Iran's next government has never given its own members or the public an account of what happened to its founding leader.

Part III — How it sells itself

12. MEK, PMOI, NCRI: one machine or a coalition?

MEK, MKO and PMOI are different names for the core organisation. The NCRI presents itself as a broad coalition and "parliament in exile." Maryam Rajavi is its "President-elect."

In 1999 the US State Department formally added "National Council of Resistance" to the MEK's list of aliases. Critics and many governments treat the NCRI as the MEK's political front. The NCRI rejects this and describes itself as a coalition of organisations and individuals.

Rather than settle the question by terminology, ask practical questions:

Who controls the institutions and appoints leaders?
Who owns the media and pays the staff?
Who approves the messaging?
Can any "coalition member" openly disagree with the MEK leadership?

13. The influence network and the money

After delisting, the group built one of the most effective foreign-policy lobbying operations in Washington and European capitals.

Documented payments:

During the 2012 delisting campaign, the US Treasury subpoenaed the representatives of former officials who had been paid to speak. Reported fees were $20,000–30,000 per speech, plus first-class travel. Names linked to the campaign include Rudy Giuliani, Gen. James Jones, Andy Card, Frances Townsend, Gen. Wesley Clark, Porter Goss, Gen. Richard Myers, Ed Rendell, Louis Freeh and Gen. Hugh Shelton.
Syndicated columnist Clarence Page was paid $20,000 to speak at a 2012 Paris rally. He later returned the fee and was reprimanded by the Chicago Tribune.
Elaine Chao received $50,000 in 2015 for a five-minute speech to the MEK's political wing.
CREW reported in 2023 that the NCRI paid former Vice President Mike Pence $190,000 for a single speech in Albania. The NCRI-aligned Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) made a further six-figure payment to him.
Former Senator Robert Torricelli has long represented the MEK through his firm, Rosemont Associates.

The live political ask. In January 2025, OIAC published a "strategic framework" asking the US government to "formally recognize" the NCRI as a parliament in exile. In March 2026 it hosted a congressional briefing calling for recognition of the NCRI's "provisional government."

Where does the money come from? — Unknown / Disputed. The fees are documented; the source of the treasury is not. The MEK says its funding comes from Iranian donors. Critics have long alleged support from Gulf states, but no primary document in the public record proves it. This file treats the origin of the money as an open question, not a finding.

14. The rallies: the crowd is part of the product

The MEK's rallies are the visual centrepiece of its campaign. Buses arrive from across Europe. Thousands wave identical flags and wear the same yellow. Western politicians address the crowd. The footage is then circulated to Western audiences as proof of a mass Iranian movement.

That footage is the evidence the MEK asks outsiders to accept. When journalists have gone inside and asked who is actually in the crowd, the answer has not matched the claim.

Villepinte, 30 June 2018 — Documented (eyewitness reporting; the NCRI disputes it)

This is the clearest on-the-ground account on the record. The Guardian's Arron Merat reported from inside the rally at the Parc des Expositions, and co-wrote the piece with Julian Borger ("Rudy Giuliani calls for Iran regime change at rally linked to extreme group"). What the reporters saw:

The size. About 4,000 people arrived by bus. That is set against the NCRI's standard claim that its annual Paris gatherings draw 100,000.
Who was there. "Around half of the attendees were Iranian." The other half, in the paper's words, "consisted of an assortment of bored-looking Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Germans and Syrians who responded to a Facebook campaign promising travel, food and accommodation to Paris for a mere €25."
Refugees. "Hundreds of Syrian refugees settled in Germany also attended."
How they got there. The crowd was described as "many of them refugees and young eastern Europeans who had been bussed in to attend the rally in return for a weekend trip to Paris."
How engaged they were. "Many snoozed under trees during speeches."
In their own words. A young Syrian mother, sitting on the conference floor with her two children, told the paper: "We saw the deal on Facebook and we agreed to come on a holiday. I have never seen Paris. I don't know anything about the MeK."

The same crowd was presented from the stage as Iran's democratic alternative. Rudy Giuliani told it: "Freedom is right around the corner… Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran!" He was one of 33 senior US officials and military figures at the event.

The NCRI's position. The NCRI says its annual gatherings draw 100,000 supporters from around the world. It has attacked the Guardian's coverage of the group as serving the Iranian regime. It has not produced independent evidence of who was in that crowd.

The organisers' own logistics — Documented

The bussing is not a secret the Guardian uncovered. It is how the events are built, and the organisers say so:

At an earlier Villepinte rally, organisers told the Associated Press they had hired 1,000 buses to bring people from across France and Europe.
For a 2012 Paris rally, organisers claimed 100,000 attendees. ProPublica noted the figure had never been verified.

The same pattern, rally after rally — Widely reported online; not yet independently documented

Iranians have documented this pattern at rally after rally, and not only in Paris. Posts and videos across X and Instagram show MEK/NCRI demonstrations with large numbers of attendees who do not appear to be Iranian:

Recent rallies in Berlin and elsewhere in Europe are reported to include groups of Ukrainian, Syrian and other refugees.
Protests outside the UN General Assembly in New York are reported to include Chinese, African and other non-Iranian participants in MEK colours.
One widely shared video appears to show an Iranian filming a man of East Asian appearance wearing the MEK's yellow uniform. The Iranian asks why he is there and why he is presenting himself as Iranian, and the man walks away rather than answer.

For Iranians who watch these events, this is an open secret. For this file, the recurring pattern is the finding: independent reporting from inside a flagship rally, the organisers' own busing figures, and years of footage from Iranians all point the same way.

Why these clips are graded as they are. Individual videos are graded separately from the Guardian's reporting, for one reason: the MEK's standard defence is to call every critic a regime agent, and an undated clip is the easiest thing for it to dismiss. Each video will be promoted to Documented in this file once it has the following:

an archived original upload, with date and poster;
the location and event matched against the MEK/NCRI's own announcements for that date;
where possible, the recruiting advert or message, or a participant who says on the record how they were brought there.

Meeting that bar would give the MEK nothing to dismiss.

What the rallies do and do not prove

Documented: at the MEK's flagship European rally, reporters inside the hall found that about half the crowd were non-Iranians recruited through a €25 travel, food and accommodation offer, some of whom said they knew nothing about the MEK. The organisers themselves describe hiring buses by the thousand.

Not yet documented: that every MEK rally is staffed this way, or who paid for any particular crowd.

The conclusion that follows: MEK rally footage cannot, by itself, be treated as evidence of Iranian support. When reporters were inside a flagship rally and asked people why they were there, about half the crowd turned out to be non-Iranians brought in on a subsidised trip. The organisation has never allowed independent verification of who attends. Until it does, the burden is on the MEK to show that any crowd it films is what it claims to be.

15. The troll farm Meta found — Documented

In March 2021, Meta (then Facebook) removed a network operating from Albania:

128 Facebook accounts;
41 Pages;
21 Groups;
146 Instagram accounts.

Meta described it as a long-running operation that "appears to be a tightly organized troll farm linked to" the MEK. Most accounts were run by operators in Albania who shared technical infrastructure. The same operator could run several accounts, and several operators could run the same account.

Meta found links between fake accounts and authentic accounts of MEK-linked individuals. It also concluded that the network had largely failed to build a real audience.

Meta also found a striking operational signature. In its words, the campaign "appeared to operate according to a shift pattern on Central European Time with a dip in activity in the early afternoon consistent with a lunch break, and a nearly complete pause overnight." Albania runs on Central European Time. Ben Nimmo, who led Meta's threat-intelligence team, summed it up for reporters: "Even trolls need to eat."

That pattern supported Meta's assessment that this was not a loose collection of supporters posting on their own, but a staffed operation working office hours. Meta also reported that many of the accounts used photos of deceased dissidents, Iranian celebrities, models and even children.

The MEK denied any link and called Meta's report "absolutely false."

This matters because the finding does not depend on defectors. A major platform found the infrastructure itself.

16. Then came AI: the Anthropic findings — Documented (by Anthropic; disputed by the MEK)

On 10 September 2026, Anthropic published its threat-intelligence report Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026. One case, designated GTG-84006, is headed "Disrupting a distributed MEK/NCRI-aligned influence operation that used a shared AI agent to impersonate real people and recruit inside Iran."

Anthropic said it removed a distributed influence operation targeting Iranian audiences inside Iran and abroad. Its investigation linked the activity to the PMOI/MEK and the NCRI. At least four of the individuals running it worked for official NCRI media outlets.

Anthropic's key findings are set out below.

Impersonating a real activist

The operators tasked a shared AI agent to clone a real activist's personal Telegram account. They told it, in Persian, that it was now that person. It read roughly 8,400 of his Telegram posts to copy his style and then held live political conversations with his contacts. As far as Anthropic knows, those contacts did not know they were talking to an AI-assisted account.

The impersonation accounts also sent a fabricated breaking-news headline to more than 30 contacts at once.

Profiling people inside Iran

The operation scraped more than 500 social-media channels to profile individuals inside Iran. It grouped them by city, age, occupation, political alignment and arrest history.

It then analysed about 51,944 archived messages to build psychographic dossiers on dozens of specific individuals in Iran. Anthropic noted that arrest-history profiling targets people who can face imprisonment or execution under Iranian law.

Manufacturing "ordinary Iranians"

To promote Maryam Rajavi's ten-point plan, the network created AI-generated avatars. They were animated, given Persian audio and styled to look like average Iranians, with the fact that they were synthetic deliberately hidden. Anthropic also found historical-figure deepfakes used to manufacture false authority.

Hiding the MEK behind "independent" accounts

An automated pipeline ran networks of Instagram accounts on coordinated posting schedules, tailored to different audiences. Early posts deliberately avoided naming the Mojahedin, so the propaganda would look like neutral news.

Anthropic also found media laundering: MEK-affiliated media was rewritten and redistributed as independent reporting. This included watermark stripping and disguising organisational content as the voices of ordinary compatriots.

Targeting the rest of the opposition

The messaging focused on the Iranian government, monarchists and the Pahlavi camp. The network spread a fabricated video attacking a member of the Pahlavi family and used the "Neither Shah Nor Sheikh" framing. Anthropic assessed that the content was designed to strengthen the MEK's position within the Iranian opposition.

Building the ideology into the machine

The operators shared an AI agent platform. Each workspace kept long-term memory files holding:

banned-word lists;
approved sources;
account-management rules;
detection-evasion methods.

One actor loaded MEK founding doctrine into memory as "strategic base data" for others to reuse. The same playbook appeared across every workspace.

The human side was just as structured. Anthropic found:

a dedicated approval committee;
a review chain running from content correctors to managers;
repeated use of the phrase "per our contract";
regular references to the MEK leadership.

Most output swapped the 2022 protest slogan "Woman, Life, Freedom" (زن، زندگی، آزادی) for the MEK's variant, "Woman, Resistance, Freedom" (زن، مقاومت، آزادی).

What Anthropic did not establish

Anthropic's own caveats matter, and should be quoted fairly:

The actors did not share account infrastructure or show visible signs of coordination. The link to the MEK/NCRI came from Anthropic's wider investigation.
The committee approvals and references to leadership suggest central tasking is likely. But Anthropic says it cannot verify the level of centralised control.
Anthropic rated the operation Category Two on the Brookings Breakout Scale. That means it ran across multiple platforms, through the network's own NCRI media properties and amplifier accounts, without evidence of breakout into authentic communities.

The MEK's response

The NCRI called the allegations "entirely false." It said Anthropic never contacted it before publication, and it pointed to Anthropic's own caveats on coordination and central control.

The evidence establishes an organised influence operation staffed in part by NCRI media employees. It does not establish that the operation changed Iranian public opinion.

17. From rented crowds to troll farm to AI agent

Put three independently sourced episodes side by side, spanning eight years:

2018 — The Guardian: reporters inside the MEK's flagship Paris rally found that about half the crowd were non-Iranians who had answered a €25 Facebook offer of travel, food and accommodation. Some said they knew nothing about the MEK.
2021 — Meta: a staffed network in Albania, working shifts on Central European Time, ran fake and authentic accounts on shared infrastructure.
2026 — Anthropic: MEK/NCRI-linked operators, including NCRI media staff, used AI for impersonation, profiling, coordinated amplification, synthetic "ordinary Iranians" and content laundering.

These episodes do not prove one centrally directed strategy, and this file does not claim they do. What they share is a pattern: in each case, support was presented as more independent and grassroots than the investigators found it to be. The technology changed from buses to fake profiles to AI agents; the pattern did not.

That leads to the most defensible question this file can put to the MEK: how much of the support it shows the outside world can actually be demonstrated to be organic?

That matters whenever follower counts or engagement are offered as proof of support. Followers are not voters. Accounts are not necessarily people. And after the Anthropic findings, even a familiar Iranian activist's account cannot be assumed to be run by the person it appears to be.

18. 2026: trying to write itself into the succession

The Khamenei compound claim, 24 February 2026 (Unverified / Disputed). The MEK announced that 250 of its members had carried out an armed operation near Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's compound in Tehran, and that 100 of them had been killed. No footage, photographs or verified eyewitness accounts emerged. The Middle East Forum reported that the MEK's own coverage used an image from the 2017 Islamic State attack on Iran's parliament. The claim should be treated as unproven.

The "provisional government," 28 February 2026 (Documented). On the first day of the US–Israeli strikes, Khamenei was killed in his compound. That same day, the NCRI announced a "provisional government for the transition of sovereignty to the people of Iran," headed by Maryam Rajavi. It was an immediate bid to occupy the succession vacuum. Instead, Iran's Assembly of Experts named Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader.

19. The nuclear file

Natanz and Arak, 2002 (Documented). The NCRI publicly revealed Iran's undeclared nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak. This remains the group's most consequential intelligence contribution, and it should be credited. It does not wash away the rest of the record.

Nuclear scientists (Attributed / Disputed). In 2012 NBC News reported that US officials said MEK operatives, trained and funded by Israel, carried out the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. The claim rests on anonymous officials. The MEK denies involvement.

Part IV — Why the sale fails inside Iran

20. What the data says

Iran does not allow free polling, so there is no perfect measure of support. The best available data points one way.

GAMAAN, June 2024. The survey had 77,216 respondents inside Iran, weighted to represent the literate adult population. Asked whom they would vote for in a free election, 0.3% chose Maryam Rajavi, up from 0.1% in December 2022. Reza Pahlavi scored 31.4%.

Rajavi's small base also forms a cluster entirely of its own, disconnected from every other opposition current.

Caveat: GAMAAN recruits online through a VPN provider and social media, then applies statistical weighting. Its figures are not a conventional probability poll. But a gap of this size is hard to explain away.

Congressional Research Service, 2025. CRS found there is no reliable information on the MEK's support inside Iran. It noted that the limited polling available suggests the group lacks broad support, both in Iran and in the Iranian-American diaspora.

Why so low? Most Iranians associate the MEK with Saddam's war, the 1980s bombings and a closed, leader-centred organisation. Large rallies abroad cannot fix that. Neither can social-media engagement, especially now that two platforms have independently documented inauthentic amplification linked to the group.

Part V — The other side of the ledger

21. The regime is not a neutral witness

Tehran has spent decades using "Monafeghin" ("hypocrites"), its term for the MEK, as a smear against opponents who have nothing to do with the group. State media, intelligence-linked NGOs and so-called "former-member" organisations produce huge volumes of anti-MEK material. Some of it may contain real evidence. Much of it is propaganda.

This file does not rely on Nejat Society, Iran Interlink, Habilian, or testimony from Tehran's trials in absentia. No allegation should be accepted simply because the Islamic Republic makes it.

22. The MEK is also a victim of state violence — Documented

Iraq, 2009–2013. After US protection of Camp Ashraf ended:

July 2009: Iraqi security forces stormed the camp. Amnesty International reported at least nine residents killed, and that 36 detainees were allegedly tortured.
April 2011: Iraqi troops raided Ashraf with live ammunition. Amnesty counted at least 36 dead; UN observers reported 34 killed and more than 300 injured.
February–December 2013: rocket attacks on Camp Liberty killed residents. A leader of the Iran-backed Mukhtar Army militia claimed responsibility.
1 September 2013: 52 residents were killed at Ashraf and seven abducted. US intelligence officials told Foreign Policy they believed Iranian commandos took part.

Europe, 2018. Belgian police stopped a couple carrying TATP explosives and a detonator meant for the NCRI rally at Villepinte. Iranian diplomat Assadollah Assadi was convicted in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years.

Executions inside Iran. Alleged members continue to be executed after trials human-rights groups call grossly unfair:

Behrouz Ehsani and Mehdi Hassani, July 2025;
Akbar Daneshvarkar and Mohammad Taghavi-Sangdehi, March 2026;
Hamed Validi and Mohammad (Nima) Masoum Shahi, 20 April 2026. Iran Human Rights reported that of 15 political prisoners hanged between 19 March and that date, eight were affiliated with the PMOI/MEK.

Trial in absentia. Tehran is still prosecuting 104 MEK members, and the organisation itself as a "legal entity." Hearings resumed on 22 September 2026 after a seven-month pause.

Criticism of the MEK does not justify any of this. Both things are true at once: the Islamic Republic persecutes and tries to kill MEK members, and independent evidence establishes serious problems with the MEK's own conduct.

The central contradiction

The MEK asks to be judged by its ten-point plan. The plan promises political pluralism, free elections, freedom of expression, gender equality, a secular state and the abolition of the death penalty.

So judge the organisation by the standards it proposes for Iran:

The plan promises gender equality and freedom. Inside the organisation, independent investigators documented compulsory divorce, mandatory celibacy and public confession of sexual thoughts.
The plan promises pluralism and free expression. Inside, members who asked to leave faced solitary confinement, beatings and handover to Saddam's prisons, according to HRW.
The plan promises free and fair elections. Maryam Rajavi has been "President-elect" since 1993. Her husband, the co-leader, has been missing since 2003 without explanation.
The plan promises a free press. Anthropic found NCRI media staff among the operators of a network that impersonated a real activist and disguised MEK content as the voice of ordinary Iranians.

Questions any journalist should put to the MEK:

Can ordinary members publicly challenge Maryam Rajavi, or organise to replace her?
Can members marry, raise children, and keep private friendships and family contact?
Can members leave without retaliation, and can journalists interview them privately, without supervisors present?
What happened to Massoud Rajavi?
How are the organisation's finances audited, and who funds it?
Who controls NCRI media, and who approved the operations Meta and Anthropic documented?

Conclusion: judge the organisation by the evidence

The MEK cannot be reduced to the Islamic Republic's description of it. Nor can it be reduced to the image presented on stages in Paris, Washington or Albania.

The evidence shows one organisation passing through several eras:

a revolutionary guerrilla movement;
an armed enemy of the Islamic Republic;
an Iranian force based in Saddam Hussein's Iraq;
a designated terrorist organisation;
a disarmed exile movement;
a sophisticated international lobbying operation;
and, according to independent investigations by Meta and Anthropic, an organisation connected to coordinated inauthentic online influence activity.

Independent investigators have documented the internal regime:

Human Rights Watch: imprisonment, beatings and torture of dissident members.
RAND: compulsory divorce, celibacy, family separation and blocked exit.
The BBC: members walking out in Albania and left stranded.
The Guardian: reporters inside a flagship Paris rally found about half the crowd were non-Iranians on a €25 trip, some of whom knew nothing about the MEK.
The Intercept: senior former members describing children sent away, pressure on women to undergo sterilisation, and pressure on women to have sex with the leader. This is testimony, not adjudicated fact.
Meta: a troll farm working office hours.
Anthropic: NCRI media staff among operators impersonating a real Iranian, profiling people inside Iran by arrest history, and manufacturing synthetic "ordinary Iranians."

And inside Iran, in the best available data, 0.3% say they would vote for its leader.

The organisation is also genuinely persecuted by the Islamic Republic. That fact does not cancel the others.

The useful question is not whether someone is "pro-MEK" or "anti-MEK." It is whether the organisation's documented practices match the democratic principles it promises to bring to Iran. That question can be answered without relying on a single word from Tehran, using the records of Human Rights Watch, RAND, Meta, Anthropic, courts, governments, and the MEK/NCRI's own publications.

Sources

Primary and government records

Anthropic, Detecting and countering misuse of AI: September 2026 (10 September 2026), case GTG-84006 — https://www.anthropic.com/threat-intelligence-report-september-2026 (PDF: https://www-cdn.anthropic.com/e50be2e51e7695dc4b1366a37a245a597377d3b5/Anthropic-Detecting-and-countering-091026.pdf)
Meta, March 2021 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report — https://about.fb.com/news/2021/04/march-2021-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior-report/
US State Department, Delisting of the MEK (28 September 2012) — https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2012/09/198443.htm
US State Department, 1994 report on the MEK — https://iran.org/news/1994_10-State-Dept-MEK-report.htm
Congressional Research Service, The Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) or People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) (2025) — https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R48433
OIAC, 2025 Iran policy / strategic framework — https://oiac-us.com/2025-oiac-iran-policy/

Human rights and research

Human Rights Watch, No Exit: Human Rights Abuses Inside the MKO Camps (2005) — https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/mena/iran0505/4.htm
HRW, statement on responses to No Exit (2006) — https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/02/14/statement-responses-human-rights-watch-report-abuses-mojahedin-e-khalq-organization
HRW, letter on Camp Ashraf (2011) — https://www.hrw.org/news/2011/12/16/letter-german-foreign-minister-camp-ashraf-iraq
RAND, The Mujahedin-e Khalq in Iraq: A Policy Conundrum (MG-871, 2009) — http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG871.pdf
Amnesty International, Camp Ashraf deaths (2013) — https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2013/09/iraq-impartial-investigation-camp-ashraf-deaths-crucial/
Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO), executions of Validi and Masoum Shahi (20 April 2026) — https://www.iranhr.net/en/articles/8694/
GAMAAN, Iranians' Political Preferences in 2024 — https://gamaan.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Iranians-Political-Preferences-in-2024-GAMAAN-Report-English.pdf
CREW, "Mike Pence made more than $7 million since 2022" (2023) — https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/crew-investigations/mike-pence-made-more-than-7-million-since-2022/

Reporting

BBC News, "The Iranian opposition fighters who can't think about sex" (Linda Pressly and Albana Kasapi, November 2019)
The Guardian, Arron Merat, "Terrorists, cultists – or champions of Iranian democracy? The wild wild story of the MEK" (9 November 2018) — https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/09/mek-iran-revolution-regime-trump-rajavi
The Guardian, Arron Merat and Julian Borger, "Rudy Giuliani calls for Iran regime change at rally linked to extreme group" (30 June 2018). Checked against a saved copy of the original.
NCRI, "The Guardian Demonises Iran's Democratic Opposition to the Benefit of the Ruling Regime" (11 November 2018) — https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-resistance/the-guardian-demonises-iran-s-democratic-opposition-to-the-benefit-of-the-ruling-regime/
Global News / AP, Meta MEK takedown and Ben Nimmo briefing (2021) — https://globalnews.ca/news/7742328/facebook-accounts-removed-iran/amp
Exit News, Meta shift-pattern finding (2021) — https://exit.al/en/facebook-accuses-mek-of-running-troll-farm-from-albania
Meta, detailed March 2021 CIB report (PDF) — https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/March-2021-CIB-Report.pdf
AP (via Fox News), France drops terror charges against MEK members; self-immolation casualties (2009) — https://www.foxnews.com/world/france-drops-charges-against-iran-opposition-group
AP (via Southeast Missourian), Maryam Rajavi urges supporters not to self-immolate (June 2003) — https://www.semissourian.com/news/france-detains-iranian-activists-112194
The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain and Matthew Cole, "Defectors Tell of Torture and Forced Sterilization in Militant Iranian Cult" (22 March 2020). Checked against a saved copy of the original. — https://theintercept.com/2020/03/22/mek-mojahedin-e-khalq-iran/
The New York Times, Patrick Kingsley, interviews with former members in Albania (February 2020)
Elizabeth Rubin, "The Cult of Rajavi," New York Times Magazine (13 July 2003)
IranWire, "How the Islamic Republic and the MEK Misused Claude AI" (2026) — https://iranwire.com/en/features/157572-how-the-islamic-republic-and-the-mek-misused-claude-ai/
Iran International, Anthropic report coverage (2026) — https://www.iranintl.com/en/202609131676
The Daily Beast, Facebook MEK troll-farm takedown and MEK denial (2021) — https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebook-busts-iranian-dissident-groups-elaborate-troll-farm-operation/
Balkan Insight, Facebook MEK takedown (2021) — https://balkaninsight.com/2021/04/07/facebook-removes-a-troll-farm-of-mek-in-albania/
Middle East Forum, MEK claim about Khamenei's compound (25 February 2026) — https://www.meforum.org/mef-observer/mojahedin-e-khalq-lies-about-attacking-khameneis-compound-erode-its-credibility
Middle East Eye, MEK in 2026 — https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/iran-mek-opposition-us-backed-path-power-albania
ProPublica, Clarence Page paid speech (2012) — https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-page-spoke-at-rally-for-iranian-militant-group
Charity & Security Network, Treasury investigation of paid speakers (2012) — https://charityandsecurity.org/archive/treasury_investigating_officials_advocacy_mek/
CBS/AP, Elaine Chao paid speech (2017) — https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elaine-chao-trump-transportation-secretary-paid-iran-exile-group-mek-ap/
NBC News, Israel and MEK (2012) — https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-teams-terror-group-kill-irans-nuclear-scientists-u-s-flna241673
Times of Israel, Assadi conviction (2021) — https://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-diplomat-convicted-of-plot-to-bomb-opposition-rally-in-france/
RFE/RL, Albania raid (2023) — https://www.rferl.org/a/albania-iran-peoples-mujahedin-organization/32467998.html

The MEK/NCRI's own statements

NCRI, response to the Anthropic report (Iran News in Brief, 15 September 2026) — https://www.ncr-iran.org/en/news/iran-news-in-brief-september-15-2026/
NCRI-US, Maryam Rajavi's message of 28 February 2026 — https://www.ncrius.org/message-from-maryam-rajavi-president-elect-of-the-national-council-of-resistance-of-iran-for-the-transitional-period-to-the-iranian-people.html