Three-minute read
In recent days, the Iranian regime’s propaganda apparatus has intensified its smear campaign against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), yet in doing so, it has inadvertently acknowledged the PMOI’s status as the only organized political alternative to its rule.
The latest episode came in the wake of the Free Iran Summit 2025, held on July 31 in Italy, along with two related conferences in the Italian Parliament and Senate that drew a broad spectrum of European political figures. In response, the regime released a statement titled “Protest Letter from Families of Terror Victims to Italian Authorities.” The language and tone leave little doubt that it was drafted under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the regime’s so-called “Nejat Association” — an affiliate of the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) — serving as its public front.
According to the regime’s state-run Defa Press Agency on August 8, 2025, the letter was presented as “an open protest letter to the judicial authorities and the presidents of the Italian Chamber of Deputies and Senate.”
International #FreeIran2025 Summit in Rome, Italy brought global voices together in support of a democratic, secular republic in Iran. Mrs. @Maryam_Rajavi was the keynote speaker as well as dignitaries such as @CharlesMichel, Mayor @RudyGiuliani, @CarlaHSands, @matteorenzi,… pic.twitter.com/D6kRjUbFD4
— SIMAY AZADI TV (@en_simayazadi) August 6, 2025
Regime Letter Admits PMOI’s International Standing
Ironically, the text repeatedly acknowledges the PMOI’s international credibility and even details the high political profile of participants in the Rome conference.
It notes, with apparent frustration: “Some Italian politicians, for unknown reasons, support this group and even arrange programs to promote it in Italy. The action of the Vice President of the Italian Parliament, who recently awarded a prize to one of the members of this group, and the recent invitation by some Italian politicians to the leader of this group on June 30 to Rome, where she delivered a speech in the Italian Parliament… These politicians are members of parliament and recognized as representatives of the Italian people.”
The regime’s letter goes further, displaying the theocratic dictatorship’s intrinsic ignorance of democratic norms. It seeks to lecture European legislators on their own laws, threatening that “promoting terrorist activities through the media or any other public means is a crime and punishable by imprisonment.”
#Iran’s Regime Admits Failure in 44-Year Effort to Discredit #MEKhttps://t.co/rgxK3iXWrE
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) January 29, 2024
Unintended Confession About EU Delisting
In another revealing admission, the letter undercuts years of spin from the regime’s lobby groups and mouthpieces, which have long claimed the PMOI’s removal from the EU terror list was the result of political pressure or PR campaigns. It concedes instead that the 2009 delisting “was due to judicial rulings” — an acknowledgment that the decision was grounded in law, not backroom deals.
This grudging acknowledgment undermines the regime’s decades-long false narrative and reaffirms the PMOI’s lawful standing.
The Real Source of Tehran’s Fury
The regime’s true outrage lies in the fact that the Free Iran Summit in Rome, attended by Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), fully complied with Italian and European legal frameworks. The event’s central themes—exposing the Iranian regime’s human rights atrocities, including executions, amputations, and political repression—resonated strongly with Italian and European lawmakers.
Most galling for Tehran was the public support expressed by members of the European Parliament and Italian legislators for Maryam Rajavi’s Ten-Point Plan for a free, democratic, and non-nuclear Iran.
Regime’s Fear of Open Legal Challenge
The Iranian Resistance has repeatedly invited the regime to present all alleged “terror victims’ families” and related documents against the PMOI before an international court, pledging that the Resistance would do the same with its evidence and witnesses. The regime has never dared to accept this challenge.
Instead, the regime orchestrates crude spectacles—such as staged “families of terror” events and a so-called trial against 104 members of the Iranian Resistance—in an attempt to evade international law and hide from the historic legitimacy and 46-year record of the PMOI’s struggle for freedom in Iran.
The latest smear attempt, much like its predecessors, only underscores the regime’s fear: the PMOI represents the only organized, credible, and democratic alternative capable of replacing the theocracy in Tehran.