Michael Rubin’s latest tirade against the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) is as predictable, as it is monotonous, a tired attempt to resuscitate long-debunked smears with the same desperation as Iran’s regime clinging to its last breath. At this point, Rubin is plagiarizing himself by hyperlinking his own articles and parroting Tehran’s official narrative with all the enthusiasm of a washed-up propagandist running out of material.
For nearly two decades, I and many others have dismantled his baseless political fan fiction (in 2006, 2011, 2021, August 2022, November 2022, January 2023, February 2023, April 2023, June 2023, October 2023, March 2024 and January 2025; also see reputable research by academics, experts, scholars, political leaders, and observers around the world).
His latest gem? The absurd claim that the MEK “isolates children” so completely that few, if any, attend public or multicultural schools. It’s a smear so lazy it barely qualifies as propaganda—more an insult to his readers’ intelligence, assuming, of course, he has any to begin with. Does Rubin cite a credible study? An eyewitness account? Even a halfway-believable anecdote? Of course not. His standard of evidence is whatever Tehran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) happens to be peddling that week.
Even if his shaky premise about structured education bore the faintest glimmer of truth—which it assuredly does not—his argument collapses under its own flimsy weight. The reality is that children of MEK members have not only attended but thrived at the most prestigious universities in the U.S. and Europe, graduating with honors. And to drive the point home, dozens of them took the stage at the International Women’s Day rally at the U.S. Capitol on March 8, speaking with a poise that makes Rubin’s “cult” jab look like the feeble overreach it is. By his own convoluted logic, Catholic schools, Jewish yeshivas, and military academies must likewise be branded “cults.” The facts stand tall while Rubin’s narrative stumbles in the dust.
Moreover, unlike the Shah’s son—whom Rubin falsely claims is lionized by Iranians, despite the former’s own public admission that even after the regime’s fall, he would not live in Iran permanently and is unwilling to sacrifice his personal freedom for the Iranian people’s freedom—100,000 MEK supporters and members, including the 30,000 martyrs of the 1988 massacre, not only sacrificed their personal freedoms but gave their very lives for Iran’s struggle for democracy.
Rubin’s crocodile tears for MEK children would be slightly less preposterous if he weren’t the same man who bragged, “I was among the first Americans to study in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” the world recorder for executing children!
How did he earn such privileged access to Tehran’s government-run institutions, including the sensitive archives of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which brutally murdered children on the streets of Iran during recent mass protests and has boasted of sending one million children to the Iran-Iraq war fronts in the 1980s as mine sweepers? His glowing, “very positive” account of Iran, shared with Radio Farda, reads like a press release from the mullahs’ Supreme Leader Khamenei himself.
Schooled in IRGC circles, no wonder he has a bizarre obsession with the MEK’s “legitimacy.” If the MEK were an irrelevant “cult” as he claims, why does he dedicate so many articles to attacking it? Why recycle the same tired accusations that have been debunked time and again? The answer is obvious: The MEK poses an existential threat to the Iranian regime (in the words of Khamenei), and Rubin, whether out of ideological zeal, financial incentives, or sheer intellectual laziness, has made himself one of the mullahs’ most reliable mouthpieces in Washington.
Don’t take my word for it. His anti-MEK screeds find a home in Iranian state-run media outlets like Alef, Raja News, SNN, Farda News, Mehr News, Bultan News, and ISNA, and, of course, the front-page of Supreme Leader Khamenei’s personal mouthpiece, Kayhan!
His claim that the FBI “does not clear MEK members” is yet another baseless fabrication. How does he know? He has run out of ammunition and desperately resorted to rambling nonsense.
As for Maryam Rajavi serving as President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) for 30 years, not 40—a distinction that Rubin conveniently distorts—it is worth noting that Nelson Mandela led the African National Congress for 29 years before playing a pivotal role in ushering in a democratic South Africa. More importantly, Mrs. Rajavi has repeatedly emphasized—most recently in November 2024 at the European Parliament—that: “The NCRI’s objective is not to seize power but to restore it to its rightful owners—the people of Iran."
Rubin “challenges” me, an NCRI official, to publicly criticize and present a different policy than the NCRI’s President-elect. In the context of American history, that is like calling Continental Army officers atop Brooklyn Heights "cult" members unless they prove that they have written letters of protest to George Washington amid the New York campaign of 1776!
I challenge Rubin to identify even a single time when his talking points differed from the regime’s anti-MEK propaganda!
For a purported “analyst,” Rubin’s track record is humiliating. This is the same character who shilled for Ahmad Chalabi, championed the disastrous Iraq War, and was caught working with the Lincoln Group. This PR firm secretly paid journalists to plant pro-war propaganda.
In 2006, The New York Times ran a front-page exposé revealing Rubin’s undisclosed ties to the Lincoln Group, which paid journalists to run “good news” articles in Iraq, sparking outrage in Washington. When pressed, Rubin weakly admitted, “Normally, when I travel, I receive reimbursement of expenses, including a per diem and/or honorarium.” The Times noted that he “would not comment further on how much in such payments he may have received from Lincoln.” In his own words, “sometimes an honorarium is not worth the embarrassment sure to follow.” And yet, with breathtaking hypocrisy, Rubin warns U.S. officials not to associate with the MEK. If anyone should be worried about embarrassing ties, it’s clearly him.
Rubin’s borrowed slander comparing the MEK to the Branch Davidians, the Unification Church, or the People’s Temple isn't merely intellectually lazy—it’s profoundly ignorant and embarrassingly illiterate. The MEK is a political resistance movement that has endured mass executions, torture, and exile while fighting one of the world’s most repressive theocracies. The cults Rubin compares them to were fringe sects with no political relevance beyond their own tragic implosions. The MEK has the backing of thousands of global luminaries and Western lawmakers. The comparison is as idiotic as equating the anti-Nazi French Resistance to Jonestown.
The real scandal isn’t the MEK’s growing influence—it’s Rubin’s ongoing masquerade as an objective analyst. His obsessive fixation on an opposition group fighting for democracy while parroting the mullahs’ anti-MEK propaganda verbatim speaks volumes.
If the MEK were truly irrelevant, why does the Iranian regime spend millions on disinformation campaigns against it? And why has Rubin—willingly or otherwise—become their loudest megaphone in the U.S.?
Safavi (@amsafavi) is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)