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A wave of recent statements by senior officials and regime-affiliated media reveals the Iranian regime’s growing fear of an imminent nationwide uprising, with particular anxiety focused on the enduring influence of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). Across Friday sermons, parliamentary speeches, and state broadcasts, officials have increasingly invoked the PMOI as a persistent internal threat and warned of destabilizing dissent fueled by socioeconomic collapse, political disillusionment, and public exposure to independent media.
On April 18, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib warned during a speech in North Khorasan that “the enemy is planning instability inside the country,” and again framed the threat as internal, not foreign. He described any public anticipation around nuclear negotiations as a dangerous illusion: “We must not condition our national stability on the outcome of negotiations,” he said, echoing the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s longstanding call for domestic resilience and rejection of “false hopes.”
On April 17, interim Friday prayer leader Ahmad Khatami delivered a sermon in Tehran dismissing the importance of nuclear negotiations and insisting the regime’s only trust must be in God—not foreign diplomacy. Khatami blamed media narratives for creating societal polarization, warning, “The Americans and their media want to divide our society, to sell the idea that the key to solving our problems lies in negotiating with the United States.”
Former MOIS Interrogator Warns Against #MEK Influence in #Iran, Calls for Internet Restrictionshttps://t.co/FKQS8AGR8F
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) January 10, 2024
Meanwhile, on April 16, Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf openly acknowledged the regime’s crumbling religious legitimacy in the capital, stating: “In Tehran, out of more than 600 mosques that should hold morning prayers, fewer than 10 percent are actually active.” Drawing a direct line between religious disengagement and political vulnerability, he recalled the military operations carried out by the PMOI during the early 1980s and described the group as a once-covert threat that “brought bloodshed daily to the streets of Tehran.” He warned that even now, “the continuation and preservation of the revolution depends on each and every heart of the people.”
Even voices within the regime’s own Parliament are publicly expressing alarm. On April 16, MP Abolfazl Aboutorabi told a session of the Majlis that the “enemy” is banking on four points of pressure to ignite unrest: the nuclear talks, compulsory hijab, economic hardship, and the issue of foreign nationals. “They want to polarize society and incite chaos,” he said.
Perhaps the most damning admission came from Amir Hossein Sabeti, an MP from Tehran, who on April 16 exposed regime infighting and the extent of ideological penetration by accusing officials of giving high-ranking posts to individuals with family ties to the PMOI. “Someone whose family belonged to the hypocrites [regime slur for PMOI] was appointed despite negative intelligence reports,” he said during a televised Parliament session. “What kind of administration is this? Are you going to fight America with people like this?”
Watch and judge how #MEK's influence inside #Iran has become a devastating factor affecting the regime's internal feud pic.twitter.com/7xLNf7QUB9
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) January 17, 2024
Sabeti also denounced systemic corruption and elite capture of economic resources, calling them “domestic tyrants” and accusing them of directing national policy to protect their interests. His remarks reflect growing concern that the regime is not just at war with foreign powers, but facing internal ideological decay—and that the PMOI’s legacy of resistance continues to haunt and undermine the clerical dictatorship from within.
On April 14, Army Ground Forces Commander Kioumars Heydari stated that the military remains “in the field to stand against the hypocrites,” framing the organization as an ongoing domestic threat. He added that the army had confronted the group “without media coverage” from 1996 to 2005, and emphasized that today’s ground forces are fully mobilized and restructured to respond rapidly to such internal challenges.
These repeated invocations of the PMOI by regime officials are not nostalgic warnings about a past threat—they are urgent admissions of fear in the face of a current and growing challenge. The clerical regime’s obsession with the Resistance, particularly the PMOI’s network of Resistance Units, stems from their daily acts of defiance across Iran: projecting opposition slogans in city streets, torching regime symbols, and organizing grassroots protests.
#Iran News in Brief
The Friday Prayer Leader of the regime in Kerman, issued a warning regarding the influence of the #MEK in Iran's society.
Mehdi Arabpour: “You can see that they are still active. In a recent announcement from one of the security organizations, it was stated… pic.twitter.com/Htoipe43iX— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) August 13, 2023
This is not a movement remembered—it is a movement lived, one that has increasingly captured the imagination of Iran’s youth. The regime’s crackdown, arrests, and even mock trials against PMOI members abroad reflect a deep and unresolved fear—not of what the PMOI once did, but of what their Resistance Units are doing right now, in neighborhoods, on walls, and in the hearts of a new generation determined to break free.
As regime officials continue to invoke the PMOI’s past and present influence in nearly every sphere—military, religious, political, and economic—the message is increasingly clear: the clerical establishment fears not a foreign invasion, but a domestic rupture, fueled by a disenfranchised population and inspired by a movement it has failed to eradicate.