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Even as the terrorist regime in Iran fights a direct conflict with the United States and Israel, its security apparatus is intensifying a domestic crackdown that singles out one group above all others: the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). On 17 May 2026, the regime’s commander of the State Security Forces (SSF), Ahmad Reza Radan, announced that more than 6,500 “spies and nation-sellers” had been arrested since the war began.
“From the beginning of the war until now, more than 6,500 nation-sellers and spies have been arrested,” he told state media, according to Asriran.com. Of those, 567 were flagged as “special cases” linked to Monafeqin — the regime’s official term for the MEK— along with “thugs” and anti-revolutionary elements. Arrests connected to January unrest, he added, “continue.”
The same day, authorities in Lorestan province reported the arrest of an MEK “operational element” in the town of Azna. The suspect was accused of sabotage in multiple provinces, sharing intelligence with contacts abroad, and cooperating with the “terrorist MEK group,” according to an ILNA report carried by Feragh News.
"What truly keeps Tehran awake at night is an organized movement that can seize every #IranProtest, every grievance, every crack in the facade—and forge it, with discipline and direction, into a force for ultimate change," writes @khansari_m.https://t.co/TvzWUinhOv
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) March 24, 2026
Regime Insiders Admit PMOI’s Enduring Threat
Eight days earlier, on 8 May 2026, a former intelligence minister and current Friday prayer leader in Arak made an unusually frank admission. Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi told worshippers: “The hypocrites still do not let go… Today, in all incidents and events, the cursed hypocrites are role-players.” He referenced the group’s long history of opposition, from the Iran-Iraq war era to its role in fierce fighting against the regime’s military forces.
The PMOI continues to occupy the regime’s foreign-policy calculations. In a mid-May 2026 segment on state television, a regime-affiliated analyst proposed using control of the Strait of Hormuz as leverage in bilateral negotiations with every country whose ships use the waterway.
“The point of the negotiations is that we must start bilateral negotiations with all the countries that use the strait,” he said. Officials should quickly compile, through the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Intelligence and security agencies, “a list of our claims or issues we have with each side or country.” He gave the MEK as the very first example: “For example, with the French, we have the Monafeqin organization. We should message the French that if you want your ship to pass through the strait, resolve the issue of the Monafeqin organization.” The same demand was made for Albania: “We should give the same message to Albania, where they have a base. We say you must dismantle it, otherwise your ship will not pass.” The analyst concluded that this tactic of extracting concessions country-by-country was “better than negotiating with America.”
Khamenei’s Friday Leaders Reveal Deepening Fear of the @Mojahedineng https://t.co/AbATaTeBED
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 20, 2025
Military Drills and Civilian Weapons Training Signal Panic
On 13 May 2026, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran province wrapped up a five-day urban-combat exercise. Brigadier General Hassan Hassan-Zadeh said commando units and Basij militiamen had rehearsed “all pre-planned scenarios, team and individual tactics and techniques against the enemy in any terrain.”
The drill, code-named after a “martyr leader” and carried out under the slogan of loyalty to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, was intended to showcase readiness against “any American-Zionist enemy moves,” according to state media.
At the same time, Iranian state television and local mosques have launched public training sessions teaching regime supporters — including women, teenagers and children — how to handle firearms and “defensive preparedness.” Images of young people in military-style clothing at pro-regime night rallies have triggered widespread backlash. Some outlets such as Sazandegi and Asr-e Iran denounced the “militarization of the national media,” calling it propaganda that risks turning society into a garrison state.
How the #Iranian Regime’s Fear of the Uprising and @Mojahedineng Signals Its Imminent Downfallhttps://t.co/qvvUKqH5p0
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 18, 2025
Leaked Files Expose Deep Official Anxiety
Classified minutes and audio transcripts from the Tehran and Alborz Provincial Security Councils, spanning 2020 to 2025 and later leaked by opposition sources, reveal a very different picture from the regime’s public confidence. In November 2020, officials called the MEK the “primary issue at the top of the agenda” for provincial intelligence, noting roughly 144 cases tied to its Resistance Units over the previous two years.
By September 2022, at the height of nationwide protests, the head of Alborz Intelligence warned that PMOI directives included the order “the fire must never leave the streets” and discussed plans to disarm police stations. In December 2023, Tehran Intelligence chief Rastegar conceded that after repeated arrests, “the operational teams had been reconstructed” and their numbers had increased again. “We have never seen this before,” he said of a 2024 scheme to strike six points at the Supreme Leader’s office.
Leaked confidential documents expose Tehran’s fear of MEK Resistance Units https://t.co/xM7KBdRx47
— People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) (@Mojahedineng) May 19, 2026
Resistance Units Rebuild Faster Than Repression Can Break Them
Meetings in 2024 and 2025 repeatedly documented the rapid reformation of PMOI cells. In March 2025, IRGC intelligence reported more than 1,050 instances of anti-regime graffiti in Tehran in a single month, rising 50 percent to 1,560 the next. Between 17 January and 9 February 2025 alone, Tehran saw 25 explosive disruptive actions and 23 publicity operations attributed to the group — twice the national average. Officials also noted NCRI President-elect Maryam Rajavi’s “Third Way” strategy of internal uprising, distinct from reliance on foreign intervention or appeasement.
The regime has answered with executions of eight named Resistance Unit members — Mohammad Taghavi, Akbar Daneshvarkar, Babak Alipour, Pouya Ghobadi, Vahid Bani Amerian, Abolhassan Montazer, Hamed Validi, and Mohammad (Nima) Massoum Shahi — intended to intimidate the population. Yet the internal records show officials privately acknowledge that such measures have not dismantled the network.
IRGC-run Fars News Calls for Repeat of #1988Massacre Amid Crumbling Authority and Fear of @Mojahedineng https://t.co/YyGpEExjrn pic.twitter.com/eEcGg8a1KW
— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 8, 2025
Why the PMOI Terrifies a Besieged Regime
The regime knows from bitter experience that it can survive foreign air strikes and even million-strong spontaneous, leaderless uprisings, as it has repeatedly demonstrated in recent years. What it truly fears is the agency of an organized movement with six decades of experience — one that played a major role in the 1979 revolution that ousted the Shah, refuses to let go after nearly half a century of resistance, and possesses the discipline to mobilize raw social rage and turn it into a coherent campaign for regime change.
Leaked documents and public statements alike confirm that the clerical leadership views the MEK’s decentralized Resistance Units not as a relic but as a persistent, adaptive strategic threat capable of giving direction, continuity and staying power to public discontent. For a system now fighting on two fronts — external war and an explosive society at home — the greatest danger is not the enemy at the gates, but the organized resistance within.