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In an alarming editorial published on July 7, 2025, by the IRGC-controlled Fars News Agency, the clerical dictatorship in Iran brazenly calls for the repetition of the 1988 massacre—one of the most horrifying state-orchestrated killing sprees in modern history. The article explicitly states that “today is the time to repeat this successful historical experience,” referring to the mass execution of more than 30,000 political prisoners, the vast majority of them members or supporters of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
The editorial defends the massacre as a “brilliant chapter” in the regime’s record and claims, “Contrary to the narrative of anti-revolutionary networks that depict the 1988 executions as violations of human rights, today public opinion understands the necessity of such decisive actions against domestic terrorism.” It praises those involved in the executions, including the slain president Ebrahim Raisi, calling the massacre “a commendable judicial act” and asserting, “They were silenced at birth, just like what Imam Ali did to the Kharijites—striking the eye of the sedition.”
Mostafa Pourmohammadi's staged interview reveals the regime's desperation to rewrite history on the #1988Massacre and counter MEK's influence on a restless society—an organization #Tehran has tried hard to eliminate and defame while claiming it has no significant following. pic.twitter.com/dbxo2jjZGa
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) June 25, 2024
Global Condemnation of Crimes Against Humanity
These statements stand in stark contrast to the widespread international condemnation of the 1988 massacre. World leaders, human rights organizations, and legal experts have consistently denounced the executions as crimes against humanity. After conducting a years-long investigation, UN Special Rapporteur Javaid Rehman concluded in 2023 that the executions “amount to crimes against humanity and atrocities with genocidal intent.” Rehman urged accountability for senior Iranian officials involved in the killings and called for international mechanisms to bring justice to the victims.
The Fars News Agency editorial relies heavily on discredited propaganda, repeating decades-old smears that label the PMOI as a “cult” and “terrorist organization” in an attempt to legitimize future atrocities. These are the same talking points frequently parroted by the regime’s apologists in Western media, aimed at whitewashing one of the worst crimes against humanity of the late 20th century.
The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) has consistently campaigned for international recognition of the 1988 massacre, presenting extensive documentation from survivors, former prison officials, and families of victims. According to the NCRI, the victims were not violent actors, but young men and women imprisoned solely for their belief in freedom, democracy, and their refusal to renounce the PMOI or submit to the extremist ideology of Iran’s ruling clerics.
Iran #1988Massacre survivor Mostafa Naderi “After 8 months of torture, 6 of us were taken to a mullah who said we'd be executed that night. They lined us up, tied our hands & we heard the guns being loaded. They fired but it was a mock execution. It was a traumatic experience.” pic.twitter.com/jVeAyoW5PJ
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 15, 2019
A Fatwa Born of Defeat and Desperation
The 1988 massacre was not initiated in strength, but in humiliation and panic. Following Iran’s forced acceptance of UN Resolution 598, which ended the eight-year war with Iraq, the regime faced mass disillusionment. Then Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini, who had promised to “liberate Jerusalem via Karbala,” was now forced to drink the “poison chalice” of a ceasefire, after sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Iranian lives.
To avoid a political collapse and backlash from war-torn society, Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the immediate execution of all political prisoners who remained loyal to the PMOI. The regime needed a scapegoat and a shockwave of violence to reassert dominance and silence dissent.
According to Fars, the executions were necessary to “ensure national security, dispense justice, and neutralize the ongoing terrorist threat.” But as history—and the survivors—reveal, it was a calculated act of mass murder to crush organized opposition, particularly the PMOI, which remains today the regime’s most feared and resilient enemy.
#MEK’s Impact on the Iran-Iraq Warhttps://t.co/DQC5tILQhe
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) September 28, 2023
Delaying the Inevitable
The timing of Fars News’s call for a renewed massacre is telling. In recent months, the regime has faced devastating defeats: high-ranking IRGC officials eliminated, intelligence operations compromised, and its once-vaunted security infrastructure exposed as penetrable. The regime, exhausted and fractured, is turning its fury inward—against defenseless citizens, activists, and political prisoners—as a way to distract from its strategic failure and loss of control.
Yet this is not the 1980s. The people of Iran, and the world, are watching. The PMOI’s network remains active inside the country, more organized than ever. And international legal pressure is mounting.
The regime’s renewed invocation of the 1988 massacre is not coincidental. It reflects a deep recognition that its greatest threat today is not foreign adversaries, but an imminent uprising from within, organized by the very force it tried to annihilate: the PMOI and its network of Resistance Units. These organized cells have played a decisive role in sustaining unrest, exposing regime corruption, and guiding protests across Iran. The regime fully understands that the real engine of regime change is already inside the country—and that it is both popular and coordinated. In this light, the call to repeat mass executions, along with escalated repression and executions of dissidents, is a desperate attempt to instill fear and suppress a society on the verge of rebellion. Even its foreign adventurism and regional provocations have largely served to divert attention and resources from this domestic threat. Now that these external gambits have backfired and intensified internal collapse, the regime sees only one path forward: terror at home to delay the inevitable.