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Five Decades of Trying to Explain Away the MEK in Iran

Written by Mohammad Sadat Khansari
MEK Resistance Units across Iran undertake daring activities throughout the third week of June 2026
MEK Resistance Units across Iran undertake daring activities throughout the third week of June 2026

Three-minute read 

For nearly five decades, the clerical establishment in Iran has pursued an unusual political ritual. It declares the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) defeated, discredited and devoid of social support—and then explains, in extraordinary detail, who its leaders are, how it organizes, how it recruits, how it influences protests and why Iranians should fear it. 

The latest example came on September 8, 2026, two days after Ms. Mahnaz Maimanat was elected the MEK’s new Secretary-General. The state-affiliated Rouydad24 did not limit itself to denunciation. It published a lengthy political and organizational profile titled, “Who is Mahnaz Maimanat? Commander of Eternal Light becomes First Secretary of the MEK.” 

Ruydad24 proceeded to explain the significance of the Secretary-General’s office, its relationship with the MEK Central Council, Maimanat’s progression through the organization, her family history and even her testimony in the Stockholm prosecution of former Iranian prison official Hamid Noury.  

A Five-Decade Pattern

This is not new behavior. Since the political confrontation between the MEK and the newly established clerical order began after the 1979 revolution, Tehran has repeatedly reconstructed the organization’s history for each new generation: its early student following, its clashes with the ruling establishment, its leadership, military history, international activity and internal structure. 

The remarkable fact is that after almost five decades of executions, imprisonment, censorship and relentless demonization, the regime still considers it necessary to “teach” young Iranians who the MEK is. 

The campaign became particularly revealing during the summer of 2026. 

On August 6, 2026, in an extensive examination of MEK strategy, the seminary-affiliated Hawza News described the development of decentralized “Resistance Units” and acknowledged that they had “always played a major role in nationwide protests inside the country.”  

Five days later, on August 11, the IRGC-linked Tasnim News Agency warned that MEK media strategy sought to influence Iranian “public opinion, especially elites and young people.” Tasnim identified narrative-building, highlighting crises, creating hopelessness and influencing younger generations as components of a broader confrontation in which Iranian public opinion itself had become a battlefield. 

On August 16, Farhikhtegan attacked France for hosting Maryam Rajavi and accused Paris of facilitating a “cognitive war” against the regime. Particularly telling was its complaint about efforts by Simaye Azadi satellite broadcasting to influence Iranian public opinion at “critical political junctures.” 

On July 20, 2026, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei warned senior officials that they must be “more vigilant than in the past” about the Monafeghin—the regime’s pejorative term for the MEK—and infiltrators. He stressed that such an opponent would not enter society carrying an enemy banner but would appear “with a mask” and “under the title of an insider,” seeking to spread rumors and despair. The source material collected for this report records the same warning in full. 

What Tehran Is Really Describing 

Then came the security establishment itself. On August 27, 2026, the IRGC Intelligence Organization warned that Iran’s adversaries were seeking to exploit domestic grievances, conduct psychological operations, activate clandestine networks and drive dissatisfaction into street mobilization. 

That statement did not explicitly name the MEK, but placed beside Ejei’s July 20 warning, the Hawza analysis of August 6, Tasnim’s warning of August 11, and Farhikhtegan’s attack of August 16, a consistent threat perception becomes visible: Tehran fears the intersection of organized networks, political messaging, a discontented younger generation and renewed nationwide unrest. 

The regime’s difficulty is conceptual as much as political. 

An organization cannot simultaneously be irrelevant and require almost continuous explanation. A movement with no social resonance should not require warnings from the head of the judiciary about concealed adherents, analysis from the theological establishment about its role in nationwide protests, IRGC-media concern about its influence on young people, or detailed profiles of its leadership succession. 

Ruydad24’s September 8 article therefore belongs to a much longer continuum. Its significance is not that Iranian state media discussed the MEK. They have done so obsessively since the first years of the clerical dictatorship. 

What matters is what Tehran now feels compelled to explain: organizational continuity, leadership succession, Resistance Units, influence over youth, information warfare and participation in nationwide unrest. 

After nearly five decades, the regime is still trying to persuade Iranians that the MEK does not represent a viable alternative. Yet its own propaganda apparatus tells a different story: the lengthy analyses, the continuous warnings, and the repeated diplomatic encounters in which the MEK becomes a subject of bargaining or a test of the other party’s willingness to accommodate Tehran all point in the opposite direction.

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