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A fierce struggle has erupted inside the clerical dictatorship as rival factions turn on the regime’s president Masoud Pezeshkian, openly raising the specter of his downfall only a year into his tenure. The crisis exposes both the fragility of the system and its deep, enduring fear of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
Eqtesad News reported that Pezeshkian was compared to former president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, who was impeached in 1981 and managed to flee to France with the PMOI’s help. Firebrand MP Hamid Rasaee warned Pezeshkian “not to become the subject of [his] own analogies,” reminding elites that Bani-Sadr’s links with the PMOI once gave him mobilization power during crises.
Other outlets amplified and weaponized the narrative. The IRGC-run Mashregh News warned against deepening internal feud, “Who wants to turn the president into another Bani-Sadr?” and alleged a Mossad-backed push for resignation, impeachment or no-confidence, further claiming the “Bani-Sadrization project” was being advanced by “infiltration networks tied to the PMOI’s cyber wing.” By contrast, the Ham-Mihan ran an editorial titled “Bani-Sadrization?” criticizing radicals for normalizing impeachment and recycling the analogy. Together, the conflicting lines showcase the regime’s paranoia and incoherence.
#Iran News: #IRGC Media Reveals Deep Regime Fear of PMOI’s Growing Power at Home and Abroadhttps://t.co/zSBENSyqmN
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) May 31, 2025
That paranoia spills into regional policy. In a letter publicized by the Basij Student Organizations, state-aligned “activists” warned that if the planned Zangezur Corridor between Armenia and Azerbaijan proceeds with U.S. involvement, Iran would face a “large security front” — absurdly lumping together HTS/al-Nusra, the PMOI and the United States as would-be neighbors.
At the same time, the system remains fixated on the PMOI’s past nuclear revelations. Ettela’at cautioned against turning impeachment into a routine cudgel and underscored the costs of 1981 — adding that the state is “still entangled with the nuclear file that was raised in 2002,” a clear allusion to the Iranian Resistance’s disclosures that exposed secret sites to the world. Shargh’s publication of Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 2002 diaries the same week adds texture; those entries show senior officials discussing how aspects of the revealed activity might fall under IAEA oversight — a window into the regime’s frustration that the PMOI blew the cover.
The regime’s own media makes clear that its main enemy is the PMOI. Tasnim News Agency, aligned with the Quds Force, wrote: “since other counterrevolutionary groups, like the monarchists, have no operational capability and are only propaganda, one can count on the operational capacities of the PMOI.”
#Iran News: Regime’s Fear of @Mojahedineng Surfaces in Political Debatehttps://t.co/hMRjfYHeRv
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) April 6, 2025
Friday prayer leaders echoed the message. In Kermanshah, Seyed Amir Mohammadi-Pour attacked opposition forces in his sermon; in Qom, Mohammad Saeedi cast the PMOI as a force that will never abandon the fight, saying its members are “incapable of repentance.”
Threaded through these reports is a consistent signal: the clerical dictatorship treats the PMOI as its principal adversary. And by publicly undermining its own president — a figure vetted and upheld by Ali Khamenei — the regime broadcasts weakness, while its fixation on the PMOI betrays the vulnerability that four decades of repression have failed to erase.