On February 16, 2020, The New York Times published a deeply flawed article by Patrick Kingsley, filled with a litany of unfounded allegations targeting Iran’s principal opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK). At the time, detailed rebuttals were submitted to the Executive and Foreign Editors of the Times, emphasizing that several of the individuals cited by Kingsley were, in fact, operatives working with the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). The editors were also provided with a comprehensive, point-by-point refutation of each allegation raised in the piece.
The New York Times never responded.
More recently, on March 4, 2025, the central source relied upon by Kingsley—Mr. Abdolrahman Mohammadian—submitted a formal letter to the UN Secretary-General in which he confessed to having been recruited by the MOIS in 2016. In his letter, Mohammadian admitted to coordinating the activities of other Iranian agents as part of a broader campaign of disinformation.
Following this extraordinary revelation, on April 21, the legal counsel to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Professor Steven Schneebaum, wrote directly to The New York Times, including Executive Editor Joseph Kahn and his senior leadership team. In his letter, Professor Schneebaum cited Mohammadian’s confession and formally requested that the Times either retract the article or, at the very least, issue a clarification informing readers that the piece relied heavily on sources later exposed as operatives of the Iranian regime’s intelligence services.
To date, The New York Times has not responded.
In the interest of truth and accountability, and to set the record straight, we are publishing the full text of Professor Schneebaum’s letter to Mr. Kahn.
Mr. Joseph Kahn
Executive Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Re: Mujahedin e-Khalq
April 21, 2025
Dear Sir:
On February 16, 2020, The New York Times published an article under the byline of Patrick Kingsley, discussing the reporter’s visit to Ashraf-3, the residence of members of the Mujaheddin e-Khalq (MEK) in Albania. The MEK, part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), is an organization dedicated to replacing the governing theocracy, and establishing a secular, democratic, and non-nuclear government, in the Islamic Republic of Iran. That goal, one might have thought, would be generally shared not only within Iran, but by the vast majority of people concerned with world affairs.
The article, entitled “Highly Secretive Iranian Rebels Are Holed Up in Albania. They Gave Us a Tour,” contained many falsehoods, exaggerations, and other misstatements. Its author did not provide the MEK with the opportunity to correct them, or to clarify matters that he had misapprehended. At the time, a senior official of the NCRI – Mr. Mohammad Mohaddessin, Chair of its Foreign Relations Committee – wrote to your predecessor, requesting that The Times permit its readers to hear the other side of the story. Mr. Mohaddessin never received the courtesy of a response. Mr. Ali Safavi, of the NCRI’s Washington office, also submitted to The Times a point-by-point response to Mr. Kingsley’s article; it too was ignored. I will be happy to supply either or both of these documents should you wish to see them.
I am writing to you now, however, because the evidence on which Mr. Kingsley appears to have relied has been thoroughly debunked. The article recounts a conversation with a man named Abdulrahman Mohammadian, identified as having “joined the group in 1988 and left in 2016.” Mr. Mohammadian is quoted as having described his 28 years in the MEK in these words: “You forget yourself and you change your personality. You only obey rules. You are not yourself. You are just a machine.” Mr. Kingsley followed that quotation with the obviously sarcastic observation, “The group strongly denied the accusations and portrays many of its critics, including Mr. Mohammadian, as Iranian spies.”
We now know, however, that Mr. Mohammadian was, in fact, by his own admission, an agent of the Iranian regime. His assigned mission was to ensure that the Times reporter would disparage the MEK and the people of Ashraf-3. And he has admitted that he did precisely that. In a lengthy letter sent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on March 4, 2025, he confessed that he was taking orders from Tehran, and explained the tactics, including threats and blackmail, that the regime deployed in order to get him to parrot its propaganda. (I can send you the letter should you want to evaluate it for yourself.)
It is a shame that a New York Times reporter was so easily taken in, and was so uninquisitive as to allow himself to be manipulated in this way. But although his article appeared in the newspaper over five years ago, the prestige of The Times has conferred upon it a long life. Indeed, a report of the Congressional Research Service published on February 25, 2025, cites Mr. Kingsley’s piece as a source – unaware, as you were likely unaware, that the article was based on lies fabricated by the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security and deliberately fed to your reporter by its agent, posing as a defector from the MEK.
Having visited Ashraf-3 several times, I can represent that it is not a hermetically-sealed enclave of “highly secretive Iranian rebels.” Rather, it is the home of some 3,000 men and women working hard to bring about democratic change in their homeland.
It is not too late to correct the record. We respectfully request that Mr. Kingsley’s article, now known to have been based on regime-generated falsehoods, be retracted and taken down from the online archives of The Times. Or, alternatively, if the article is to be retained, The Times could inform its readers of what they would otherwise have no way of knowing: that it was in significant measure based on the testimony of a witness who, at the time, was acting under orders from the regime and its intelligence apparatus in Tehran.
I look forward to your reply. Thank you in advance.
Yours sincerely,
Steven M. Schneebaum
Counsel to the National Council of Resistance of Iran
Cc: Mr. Michael Slackman, Assistant Managing Editor
Mr. Philip Pan, International Editor