Paris, 08 July 2006 (Iran Terror) – Most Iran-watchers are aware that the main opposition to the theocratic regime had organised a gathering north of Paris on July 1.

The gathering was held to voice support for the People’s Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI) and Iranian Resistance leader Maryam Rajavi.

As expected, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS aka VEVAK) immediately began to slander the event and minimise its significance.

“The Mojahedin’s stage-managed gathering of 2,300 people in France, with the participation of 1,300 non-Iranians took place as the Mojahedin like usual inflated that number several dozen fold and announced that 30,000 people participated”, wrote Iran Didban website in its Farsi section on July 2.

Iran Didban is notorious among Iranian exiles as a website run by the MOIS to tarnish the image of Iran’s democratic opposition.

Iran-Interlink, a site run by the husband and wife duo of Masoud Khodabandeh and Anne Singleton (both members of the terrorist MOIS operating out of Britain), carried an identical piece in Farsi (iran-interlink.org/files/farsi%20pages%2024/didban020706.htm).

It too claimed that the gathering at Le Bourget in support of the Iranian Resistance was attended by 1,300 foreigners and only 1,000 Iranians.

Meanwhile, foreign media at the scene gave a different account. The respectable TIME magazine wrote that as many as 30,000 people took part at the gathering. The news agency Reuters quoted organisers as saying that 30,000 took part, as did the French news agency AFP which also reported that a further 10,000 were on the way.

In an online article entitled, “Are The PMOI Iran's last Hope For A Peaceful Solution?” TIME magazine wrote:

“Aden Ramtini, 41, an ethnic Azeri from Iran who runs a small taxi business in Stockholm, is a far cry from anybody's image of a terrorist. But there he was last weekend with his wife and two small kids in tow at a gathering outside Paris in support of the People's Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI), which was deemed a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’ by the U.S. in 1997 and has since been similarly condemned in the European Union.

As he watches PMOI head Maryam Rajavi bringing the crowd of many as 30,000 people to its feet repeatedly with the familiar message 'Let my people go!', Ramtini tells an equally familiar tale: at the age of 17 he moved to Camp Ashraf, the PMOI's headquarters in Iraq, and spent six years there; his older brother was killed by Khomeini sympathizers in 1989; and he would love to go back to Iran — ‘but not the Iran of the mullahs.’ He swears the West has got the PMOI all wrong. ‘How can all these people from all walks of life to be part of a sect or terrorist group?,’ he says.

It's a point that Rajavi, the charismatic leader of the PMOI, never tires of making. Three years ago, French anti-terrorist forces raided her headquarters compound in the town of Auvers-sur-Oise northwest of Paris, and detained her and more than a dozen other PMOI officials. The raid set off a wave of hunger strikes and self-immolations by distraught Iranian exiles. Last month a French court lifted the final legal restrictions on activities and contacts for Rajavi and 16 others.”

 

Analysts say, the main objective of such propaganda is to show to Western powers that there is no legitimate and popular opposition to the Tehran regime, in which case, Realpolitik would dictate the status quo, i.e., working with the current regime.

Iranian exiles warn that the MOIS is engaged in a slanderous campaign against the Iranian Resistance to vilify it to pave the way for MOIS terrorists to assassinate dissidents without fear of a public outcry.