When Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power, he denied having any interest in personal power. Rather, he described himself as a figurehead for a coalition of Islamist and leftist groups opposed to the Iranian monarchy. “Personal desire, age, and my health do not allow me to personally have a role in running the country after the fall of the current system,” he told The Associated Press on November 7, 1978. He lied. As soon as Khomeini returned to Iran, he set upon purging his former allies.
Among the first to go was the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), a group which fused Khomeini’s Islamism with Marxist beliefs. They were also among the most anti-Western groups, training with the Palestine Liberation Organization, bombing American companies in Iran and assassinating American businessmen and military officers.
In the United States and Europe, the MEK engages in a psychological operation to suggest they are pro-Western or committed to democracy.
The MEK hated the shah, but they turned their guns and bombs on Khomeini, his regime, and ordinary Iranians after he betrayed them. They opposed Khomeini not because they objected to his ideology but because they wanted power.
In the United States and Europe, the MEK engages in a psychological operation to suggest they are pro-Western or committed to democracy. That is nonsense. They operate as a cult, isolate their members, and foster anti-Americanism. They have become North Korea, only with more food and slicker public relations. Many of the MEK’s claims of infiltrating Iran or running operations inside the country are demonstrably untrue. Former officials who support them do so not because of ideological fealty, but rather because of lucrative honoraria.
Today, MEK cult leader Maryam Rajavi is desperate. During and after the protests, Iranians chanted former Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi’s name; they ignored or cursed Rajavi and the MEK. Despite the MEK’s grandiose statements and paid-for endorsements, the January 2026 Iranian revolution exposed the MEK as little more than a scam.
Rajavi’s announcement of a “provisional government” is little more than play-acting; no U.S. official—even those to whom the MEK and its proxy organization have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars—takes the MEK’s would-be government seriously.
Pahlavi, son of the late shah, has long had the greatest name recognition inside Iran. He has stumbled in recent months, due both to his unwillingness to cooperate with others, unlike the Iran Freedom Congress coalition, and because of his staff’s amateurish behavior of his staff. If Pahlavi is bold enough to return to Iran, Iranians will rally around him. A minority will support him because they want monarchy. More will rally around him because they associate his father with a golden age in Iran, before currency crashes and disenfranchisement of women.
The MEK remains as hostile to the Pahlavi family as when it joined [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini.
If Pahlavi returns—and he appears to have the support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, if not yet the White House, to do so—the biggest problem will be how to keep him alive. When the Central Intelligence Agency inserted Abdul Majid al-Khoei into Iraq in 2003, Muqtada al-Sadr’s thugs hacked him to death and the CIA had no Plan B.
The MEK has always been Islamist. So, too, is Rajavi, who enforces strict veiling on the group’s women, even as Iranian youth rallied for the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement. The MEK remains as hostile to the Pahlavi family as when it joined Khomeini. The most important thing for Rajavi, however, is power.
If Pahlavi or the Iran Freedom Congress stands in her way as Iran’s regime crumbles, the United States must be prepared to protect them against not only any insurgency that the most ideological members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps may wage, but also potential assassination campaigns by the MEK cult.
For Secretary of State Marco Rubio, there should be no delay: The State Department must re-designate the MEK as a terrorist organization to roll up its U.S. infrastructure and members, and pressure European states to do likewise with Rajavi and her inner circle. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and top regime officials are dead; others will follow or become prisoners. To have a truly clean slate to rebuild Iran, sweeping society of the MEK enablers of the Islamic Revolution and anti-American terror will be just as important, if only to protect the real democrats who seek to build society on the basis of liberal values rather than bombs and bullets.
