BBC’s Distorted Report on the Iranian Opposition Mek

Events in the region and in Iraq have made many actors enter the scene, at least if one believes what circulates among the Iranian diaspora these days.

Among those actors, Iranians specifically point to the BBC, nick-named Ayatollah BBC since long ago among Iranians. The nomination comes after the Iranian exile community, as well as those back home, began talking about increasing biased reporting by the broadcasting corporation in favor of the clerical regime ruling Iran. 

Following an emission broadcast on the BBC world last week, Iranians were angry at the fact that a half-hour emission from Albania, where the bulk of the main Iranian opposition movement has settled since 2016, did not contain any interviews with the members but concentrated on affirmations by those who many Iranians have no doubt on their relations with the Iranian regime and its notorious Minister of Intelligence and Security MOIS. Further, the BBC did not run the rebuttal of the MEK, which everybody read on websites of the movement as well as their TV broadcast.

Certainties, and not doubts, of virtually all the Iranian community members, are well-founded.

If two people from among those who BBC says dissociated from the MEK, and which BBC claims to be several hundred – a shear lie clear to every Iranian familiar with current politics of Iran – are finger pointed as MOIS agents, why could not the BBC journalists contact others of the group? How come that those individuals continue to appear and reappear in a series of commanded articles while they claim there are a lot more people? Are not their names circled among journalists with a mandate who rush to Albania for those kangaroo interviews? 

Would not impartial journalism imply that the BBC:

• tried to talk to some of those hundreds that are streaming the streets in Tirana – if one tends to believe BBC’s claims – to at least add some evidence to hollow claims?
• pointed to the fact that between October 10, when BBC came to Albania, and the time the BBC piece was aired, in a press conference for all the world to see the Albanian Police Chief gave details of how “dissociates” have cooperated with the MOIS to blow up a meeting with thousands of people taking part in Tirana?
• pointed to the fact that State Security services of most European countries have expressly made known that the Iranian regime uses individuals posing as “former members of the MEK” for espionage activities and for setting the stage for terrorist operations?
• said that 350 dignitaries from 47 countries spent five days at Ashraf-3, the home of MEK members in Albania, in July of this year, talked freely to anybody they chose and saw everything up close and personal? Nobody mentioned a military-style camp with resemblance to George Orwell’s Animal Farm!

Even BBC’s biased report quotes a diplomat saying “some of the “disassociates” are certainly working for Iran. “

So what is the truth?

NCRI’s Security and anti-terrorism Committee explained the reason in its latest communique in response to BBC’s reportage:

Continuing uprisings in Iraq and Lebanon have undermined the strategic depth of the ruling theocracy ruling Iran. Intensifying international sanctions, rise in the Iranian people’s protests and the Resistance activities pose an unprecedented challenge to the regime’s survival.

According to the NCRI, under such circumstances, the regime has stepped up “terrorist activities and its campaign of demonization against the Iranian Resistance and the MEK, as though that there is no alternative to their regime and that the West is better served by continuing the policy of appeasement.