Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, said: “Tell a lie that is big enough and repeat it often enough and the whole world will believe it.”
The Iranian regime has been fully implementing Goebbels’ advice. Some of the lies the Iranian regime has said during the past 41 years, would have certainly never passed Goebbels’ mind. In addition to oppression, tortures, execution, massacres, and export of terrorism, demonization and producing fake news are among the regime’s advances.
The Iranian regime, to justify its crimes and pursue its demonization campaign against its main opposition, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), has dedicated a vast part of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) to this work. The regime has wasted billions of dollars of the Iranian people’s national wealth on writing, producing, and publishing thousands of books, films, and documents filled with fake news against the MEK. These books and movies are based on spreading lies about and demonizing the MEK.
A glance at one of these lies and fabrications, which the MOIS has created and distributed among the state-run news agencies to publish, confirms this truth.
Marjan, a renowned and famous Iranian singer, who joined the MEK and continued her activities against the Iranian regime alongside the Iranian Resistance abroad, passed away on Sunday at a hospital in Los Angeles. Her death saddened all the Iranian people, including artists and athletes inside Iran, who shared messages of condolences on their social media account.
When the messages of condolences increased, and even some athletes and artists inside Iran joined this wave, the MOIS conducted a clear lying campaign to force these artists to take a position against the MEK.
Speaking of the MEK is a crime in the mullahs’ regime, yet the MOIS published a fake journal, just like the MEK’s journal, known as “Mojahed,” and in this fake journal wrote about Marjan’s death along with pictures of 16 athletes and artists, who are living inside Iran, expressing their condolences over Marjan’s death.
The MOIS then distributed this fake journal among its media, so they claim that the MEK has published pictures of those artists inside Iran in its journal, trying to show these artists are the MEK supporters.
The regime’s intention of publishing this fake journal and news is to put pressure on those artists to take a position against the MEK. The regime’s media outlets, while publishing this fake news, threatened those artists who expressed their condolences over Marjan’s death, and wrote: “Everyone knows the MEK is the most infamous terrorist grouplet among the Iranian people, and those supporting them are the same for the people.”
In other words, artists and athletes who simply send a message of condolences have been threatened to be considered as “terrorists”. The MOIS has created this fake journal, while the MEK has stopped publishing a paper journal for years, and all its news and positions are online.
The state-run Hamshahri journal’s website is among the regime’s media which published this fake news on June 9. The translation of some parts of Hamshahri’s article is as follows:
Why are the pictures of Iranian athletes and artists in the MEK’s journal?
Mojahed Journal, which echoes the MEK grouplet’s point of view, in one of its latest issues, has published the names and pictures of 15 Iranian artists and one athlete.
[The article] is about some of the Iranian actors/actresses’ reactions to the news of an old singer’s death, who had cooperated with and supported the MEK terrorist grouplet. Shahla Safi Zamir, also known as Marjan, had repeatedly supported Maryam Rajavi, the leader of this group, and their crimes against the Iranian people by attending the headquarters and gatherings of the MEK. Therefore, it was thought that the news of her death would not be reflected in the virtual pages of Iranian actors and actresses. Everyone knows that the MEK terrorists are the most hated grouplet among the Iranian people, and those who cooperate with them are no exception.
But what happened was the indifference of some celebrities to the dark background of this old singer. After the actors, actresses, and athletes expressed their condolences on the death of the singer on their personal social media pages, Mojahedin Journal seized the opportunity to publish a picture of Ali Karimi and 15 other actors and actresses in its June 9, 2020, issue with the headline “Mourning of Artists in the Death of Lady Marjan.”
This is not the first time that the Iranian regime has committed this dirty act. The regime has repeatedly produced fake Mojahedin journals and distributed them in prisons to put pressure on political prisoners and break their morale. An example of such a fake journal was published on June 18, 2003. In this fake journal, the regime wrote that the leader of the Iranian Resistance and four MEK officials were arrested by US forces in Camp Ashraf and transferred to an unknown location to be exchanged with “al-Qaeda leaders in Iran.”
