NCRI – In contrast to previous years, when the regime tried to comply with a policy of silence and did not talk about the PMOI too much inside Iran, in 2010, it has launched an extensive propaganda campaign to discredit the organization. The following statistics reveal a small part of these propaganda efforts:
– When entered in Google, the term Monafeqin (regime’s derogatory term for the PMOI) returns more than 20,000 results,
– The state-run Tabnak website published 735 stories about the PMOI in the span of a month, from September 23 to October 23,
– The state-run Jahan News website published 89 stories about the PMOI in one week.
The posts and stories referred to above cover issues regarding Camp Ashraf, the relation of the Green Movement with the PMOI, responses to questions about the massacre of political prisoners in 1988, perceived PMOI activities inside Iran, perceived financial support for the PMOI inside Iran, responses to the PMOI’s nuclear revelations or the massive New York rally against Ahmadinejad’s trip to the UN, the passing away of Iranian diva Marzieh in October, and other misinformation about the Resistance.
The regime’s security and intelligence organs also routinely publish and distribute books on the PMOI inside Iran, the latest of which is “Monafeqin Khalq” penned by Mehdi Haqbin in September.
The regime’s so-called Habilian Association has set up exhibitions against the PMOI over the past two months in almost all universities in Tehran, many provinces, several military bases and in several cities.
What is the reason?
The regime’s security and intelligence organs (including the Ministry of Intelligence and Security – MOIS, the Intelligence Organization of the Revolutionary Guards and other suppressive organs) that were actively involved in confronting the nationwide uprising of 2009, have submitted a report to the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei about the PMOI’s activities inside Iran. Among its findings, the report says, “In the course of investigations regarding various agents of the unrests that started from June 13, 2009, it became obvious that in more than 60 percent of the cases, the PMOI was the instigator of unrest.” The report also says that the PMOI has been able to recruit extensively in Tehran and other cities.
Intelligence organs have said in their reports to Khamenei that the main security challenge in the present circumstances is the PMOI.
Subsequent to this report, the regime reached the conclusion that the approach of the past several years, which called for exercising silence on the PMOI in order to avoid giving them coverage and publicity inside society, was mistaken because the PMOI has still been able to recruit from among youths. So, now the regime must try its utmost to discredit the PMOI among youths.
Khamenei has specifically ordered intelligence and security organs, including the MOIS, the Intelligence Organization of the Revolutionary Guards, the Sarollah Base, and the paramilitary Bassij Force that they must react to the PMOI on a massive scale.
The factions affiliated to Khamenei and Ahmadinejad are also trying to convince the rival factions that the main party that would benefit from the latter factions’ activities would be the PMOI, and that the Iranian Resistance has steered Moussavi, Karoubi and the entire uprising throughout the past year.