Surge in the Iranian regime’s terrorist activities against MEK
Former Member of the European Parliament for Scotland, Struan Stevenson, wrote an op-ed in the British newspaper, the Times. Entitled ‘Mullahs Agents Operate Across Europe’, the piece revealed that Iranian regime agents could be operating undercover in Glasgow, Scotland.
The revelation comes after the United States government identified two Iranian Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS) agents working in the UK who had previously been involved in espionage activities against the People’s Mujahedin Organisation of Iran (MEK) in Iraq and Albania.
Targeting the Opposition
The MEK has long been the target of the Iranian regime’s violence. Just last year, MOIS agents were involved in espionage and terror activities against MEK members in Albania, Bulgaria, the US, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark.
A 2013 report from the US government entitled ‘Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: A Profile’ found that the Iranian regime tasked the MOIS with identifying and eliminating MEK members living at home and abroad. Stevenson writes:
“It found that the key task of Ministry of Intelligence (Mois) agents was to identify and eliminate opponents of the regime at home and abroad, with the main target being the key democratic opposition movement, the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) and its charismatic Paris-based leader, Maryam Rajavi.”
The German interior ministry carried out a similar investigation and came to the same conclusion, that MOIS agents were placed to combat opposition at home and abroad.”
This campaign of identifying and eliminating MEK members abroad led the Iranian regime to plan a terror attack on the MEK’s annual Grand Gathering in June 2018.
A diplomat based at the Iranian regime’s embassy in Vienna, Austria, provided a Belgian-Iranian couple with explosive material and detailed instructions to head to Paris and detonate a car bomb at the event. The disaster was narrowly averted for the 100,000 attendees when Belgian authorities detained the couple en-route to the event.
Stevenson himself had more cause than most for alarm. He writes in the Times, “As a long-term opponent of the fascist regime in Iran, I was there myself.”
In response to the terror attacks planned on European soil, France and Albania expelled Iranian diplomats and the EU has implemented its own sanctions against individuals in the regime.
“When I tried to pull his arm off me I felt something poking me in the base of my spine. I looked around and saw he had a handgun with a silencer. He told me if I did anything drastic he would shoot me there and then” https://t.co/fZnrZJjfLW
— The Times and The Sunday Times Scotland (@timesscotland) May 15, 2019
The Trump administration has designated the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) a foreign terror organization, severely impacting the regime’s ability to raise foreign capital. The US economic sanctions are also starting to bite.
The regime also faces an expanding protest movement and increased domestic pressure from the Iranian people. It will likely respond to this increased pressure by cracking down on political opponents within Iran and abroad.
Staff Writer