Three-minute read
In recent weeks, senior clerics, Revolutionary Guard representatives, and state media have issued a coordinated chorus of warnings about the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). The tone is unusually sharp, betraying a deeper anxiety: that the opposition movement’s political reach, combined with its domestic resistance network, is eroding morale within the regime’s own ranks.
On August 8, in the city of Yasouj, Amin Mousavi, Khamenei’s appointed Friday Prayer Leader, cautioned his audience against what he called the PMOI’s “attractive” rhetoric: “They speak very beautifully—about a classless, monotheistic society, about helping the oppressed,” he said, before labeling the group “Monafeqin” (Arabic for hypocrites, the regime’s pejorative term for the PMOI) and accusing it of killing “more than 17,000” people. Mousavi warned that vigilance was needed so that “what happened in Libya” would not happen in Iran.
In Birjand, Friday Prayer Leader Mohammad Mokhtari pressed the Ministry of Intelligence and other security bodies to “take the question of infiltration more seriously”: “We have suffered the greatest harm in our history and during the revolution from infiltration. In the 1980s, we lost 17,000 [people]—certainly because of infiltration. In the imposed war, we lost our best commanders and scientists for the same reason.”
Officials in #Tehran Reveal Dread of @Mojahedineng as Social Unrest Brews Nationwidehttps://t.co/pvUHNUFpLd
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 4, 2025
In a telling display of regime paranoia, the state-run daily Kayhan attempted to tie the Paris-based headquarters of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to the Iranian opposition. “The FATF headquarters is in Paris—the same city that for decades has hosted the Monafeqin,” the paper declared.
The article warned that accepting FATF requirements would “expose the channels for bypassing sanctions” and strengthen the West’s ability to track Tehran’s finances—echoing past statements by Western officials advocating for stricter banking oversight to weaken the regime’s “axis of resistance.” By placing the PMOI and FATF in the same breath, Kayhan revealed not just opposition to financial transparency but an enduring fear that international institutions and its arch enemies are part of a single, coordinated front aimed at dismantling the regime’s survival mechanisms.
The alarm has also reached the regime’s foreign policy apparatus. On August 8, Ali Bagheri Kani, secretary of the Supreme Council of Strategic Foreign Relations, lashed out at European countries for hosting PMOI gatherings: “Some European countries have taken in these executioners of the 1980s and let them hold meetings. We must make such reckless actions costly for them.”
Internal Rifts and MEK Threat Leave Iran’s Regime in a State of Fear https://t.co/b8JWIgvUll
— M. S. Khansari (@khansari_m) February 24, 2025
Within the Revolutionary Guard, Khamenei’s representative Abdollah Haji-Sadeghi acknowledged a vulnerability that officials rarely voice in public: “The enemies thought the people would no longer follow the leadership, that the arms of the revolution in the region had been cut, and that only one shock was needed for the country to collapse from within. We must not allow the Monafeqin and the enemy to claim the great victory for themselves.”
The judiciary has been even more explicit about the PMOI’s effect on regime morale. The state-run Mizan News Agency wrote on August 3: “The Mojahedin used social media and Persian-language satellite channels to spread rumors with the aim of creating despair in society and projecting weakness and defeat among Iran’s armed forces. Experience has shown that during national crises, the Mojahedin become more active.”
This admission—that the PMOI can influence the armed forces’ perception of their own strength—cuts to the core of the regime’s fear. In a system that relies on ideological loyalty and the readiness of its security apparatus to suppress dissent, even small cracks in morale carry strategic risk.
#Iran’s Top Officials Warn of @Mojahedineng Influence and Looming Revolthttps://t.co/uJxSXN18t9
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) April 18, 2025
Meanwhile, the state broadcaster’s newspaper Jam-e Jam underscored the persistence of the threat by highlighting an ongoing trial: “A court is currently underway for 104 members of the Monafeqin—showing the continuing security threat this group poses to the system. With the intensification of the Mojahedin’s activities, their role and position in Iran’s political landscape have once again come into focus.”
Taken together, these statements reveal a layered concern. Publicly, the clerics and officials speak of “terrorism” and “infiltration.” Beneath the rhetoric lies a recognition that the PMOI’s endurance—its ability to organize, to secure high-profile platforms abroad, and to reach audiences inside Iran—has strategic consequences. The regime fears not just the opposition’s message, but the effect that message has on the cohesion and confidence of its own forces.
In a political climate already strained by economic crisis, regional setbacks, and the aftermath of costly conflicts, the regime’s own officials betray a deeper anxiety: that the greatest threat is not a foreign airstrike or international isolation, but an explosive society at home. Their warnings and coordinated rhetoric reveal that they fear the morale-sapping effect of an organized resistance movement far more than bombs from abroad.