What Explains Latest BBC’s Anti-MEK Tirade in the Service of the Mullahs

Written by Shahin Gobadi

“I’ve been here for three days now. Like many of my friends, we had dinner with a hall full of women from the Mujahedeen e-Khalq. Only women for one evening. We walked under the stars. We spoke to them personally, privately. We heard amazing stories of courage, of conviction, of pain, of separation, of the choice of a lifetime.

These were the actions of people who are stronger than me, who have a major part, who have a mission in life and who have made a choice and they are dedicated to keeping that choice. Ladies and gentlemen, the obscuring curtain has been removed today. Never again should we hear the allegation of cult.”

Amb. Lincoln Bloomfield Jr., former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, July 13, 2019, Ashraf-3, Albania

The website for the BBC has published an utterly bogus report on the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI), also known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). In its entirety, it has rehashed the Iranian regime’s threadbare, baseless and false allegations through the voices of two notorious functionaries of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). So outrageous is the scope of lies and distortion in this report that it raises an obvious question: What kind of a deal has the Iranian regime offered to the BBC to secure such an inexplicable and vulgar hit-piece?

Peculiarly, the BBC’s latest iteration of its November 7, 2019, report has gone through a major transformation, leading to one obvious conclusion: the slanders aired on the BBC radio program did not adequately satisfy the mullahs, which explains the scandalous distortion of the BBC’s original radio report. To this end, comments by Albanian citizens and politicians voicing support for the MEK have been truncated to a bare minimum and the slurs by regime agents have been presented in a more elaborate fashion.
The BBC reporters have claimed that the MEKrepresentatives refused to be interviewed. They deliberately failed to report that they had informed the PMOI only two days before their trip to Albania, but the Organization’s representatives demonstrated their goodwill by inviting the reporters to visit Camp Ashraf on October 10, 2019, and talked to them for five-and-half hours. The MEK representatives told the BBC reporters that they could privately talk to anyone and visit anywhere they so desire as long as they need it. MEK representatives only reservation was that they should be neither expected to be part of a program that was based on an MOIS script, nor expected to appear alongside MOIS operatives who mission was spying on and assassinating MEK members. These agents, the MEK representatives said, mask themselves as “former members” or “friendly journalists,” and regime utilized the services of both them in its terrorist plans, including the foiled March 2018 plot.
The MEK representatives also provided volumes of documents and extensive information to the BBC on the regime’s terror plots against Ashraf-3, in particular about the regime’s utilizing the services of “former members” or “friendly journalists.” They also detailed the role of the above elements in the plot to bomb the gathering of Iranians in Paris on June 30, 2018, and the terror plot in Albania made public by the Prime Minister of Albania on April 19, 2018. Regrettably, the BBC report makes absolutely no mention of these documents.
On October 23, 2019, twenty days before the airing of the BBC report, the Albanian Police exposed the details of the clerical regime’s terrorist plots against the MEK members in Albania. The Albania Police Chief underscored that these plots were being commanded by the IRGC’s terrorist Quds Force in Tehran and that non-Iranian operatives, including Turks, were being deployed. He also stated that the intelligence for such operations is collected by mercenaries who pose as “former MEK members.” The press conference was widely covered by international news agencies and media outlets. In her report, however, the BBC journalist made no reference whatsoever to this development, the most important news in Albania regarding the MEK in recent weeks and months, because the primary sources for the BBC report are two of these very same “former members.”
One of these two agents is a POW named Gholam-Ali Mirzai, whose case the BBC reporter has dramatized by narrating a fairy tale. In reality, after releasing this POW and offering him a safe haven in Iraq, the MEK sent Mirzai to Albania on September 4, 2016, asking him to go on with his life. Once in Albania, however, he again requested in writing to join the MEK. Mirzai’s fake story that the MEK had not told him about his family’s visit to Iraq is absolutely false. It is common knowledge that at the time, the representatives of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), as well as the U.S. military, had been present at the MEK Camp in Iraq for many years and accessible to everyone.
Interestingly, while this story is entirely based on the remarks of these two characters, the reporter says in passing, “A diplomat says some of the ‘disassociates’ are certainly working for Iran,” adding that, “Gholam Mirzai has visited the Iranian Embassy in Tirana to ask for help, and his family has lobbied the authorities in Tehran.”
The other character, Hassan Heyrani, explicitly acknowledged in his own handwriting on April 9, 2018, that he had been expelled from the MEK over “intelligence, security concerns, and his treason” and had apologized for his actions. This document was provided to the court and available to the BBC reporter.
These bogus narratives pursue only one objective: Mollifying the criminals ruling Iran at the expense of highly enlightened individuals who have dedicated their lives to democracy and freedom in Iran, and more than 100,000 of whom have been executed by the ruling mullahs, including 30,000 massacred in 1988 by Khomeini’s fatwa. Through such reports, the religious dictatorship ruling Iran seeks to demagogically whitewash the role of its operatives such as Hassan Heyrani by advertising them as “former members” of the MEK. BBC’s lending a hand to turn individuals who are security threats and engage in intelligence collaboration with the regime into dissidents is truly shameful.
The BBC’s outlandish and uncorroborated claims about lack of access to the Internet, the denial of freedom of choice to MEK members, and the defection of 300 or 400 members from the organization in Albania merely regurgitate the mullahs’ oft-repeated propaganda.
WHY HAS THE BBC BECOME THE MULLAHS’ MOUTHPIECE?
Beset by profound internal and external crisis which threatens its very existence, Iran’s ruling theocracy is keenly aware that the issue of an alternative to this regime represents the underlying consideration as it pertains to the future of Iran. The month-long mass uprisings in Iraq and Lebanon have seriously undermined the regime’s strategic pillars and toughening international sanctions have severely crippled its economy, already reeling from massive and endemic government corruption and utter incompetence and mismanagement. These coupled with the growing wherewithal of the Iranian Resistance at home, as reflected in the escalating nationwide activities of the Resistance units, as well as its rising global stature, reflected in the July 2019 visit to Ashraf-3 by more than 350 bipartisan current and former lawmakers, officials and distinguished political, military, intelligence and law enforcement officials from 47 countries, are tell-tale signs that the evil reign of the mullahs is beginning to crumble. Now, the question in everyone’s mind is whether or not there is a viable and capable alternative in place of this criminal regime.

Under such circumstances, and having failed to physically eliminate the MEK, like a drowning man, the mullahs are grasping at straws to make it appear as though no viable alternative exists in place of their medieval regime, which if overthrown, would make the situation even worse. The latest iteration of the BBC tirade against the MEK could only be explained in this context as it provides badly-needed fodder to the narrative pushed by the mass murderers who have been ruling Iran for the past four decades thru sheer terror.

THE QUESTION WHICH BBC EDITORS NEED TO ANSWER IS WHY THEY HAVE ALLOWED THEMSELVES TO BE EXPLOITED BY THE MULLAHS?
Perhaps, from the perspective of the Iranian regime’s western appeasers and benefactors, who tried through the same slanders and slurs to delegitimize and demonize Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq, paving the way for his overthrow sixty-six years ago, the only “crime” of MEK, who consider themselves the disciples of the revered Prime Minister, is their singular focus on, and unflinching dedication to, one sacred mission: liberating Iran from the yoke of the monsters who wear the turban and the robe and exploit religion to justify their savagery, unmatched by any dictatorial regime since the Second World War.

Shahin Gobadi,

Press Spokesman, MEK

Paris