Inciting Violence Against the MEK: Rubin Calls for Extrajudicial "Targeting"

Michael Rubin’s latest tirade, “Iran Turns to Iraqi Militias to Save its Revolution (Washington Examiner, January 14, 2026),” doesn’t just recycle debunked propaganda about the alleged role of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) in suppressing Iraqi Kurds and Shiites—it escalates into something far more sinister. In his concluding paragraphs, he draws a grotesque parallel between the Hashd al Shaabi, the Iraqi paramilitary group, which is a proxy of the Iranian regime, and the MEK, labeling both as “little more than mercenaries for hire.” He then declares: “It is time to target any Iraqi militiaman who seeks to profit from murder in Iran, just as it would be right to target any Iranian who now or in the past sought to profit from murder in Iraq.”

This is no subtle hint. Rubin is explicitly calling for the targeting, meaning military strikes, assassinations, or other lethal actions, of the MEK, after first falsely accusing the organization of involvement in past “murders in Iraq.” His language is not analytical or rhetorical; it is operational. In the context of U.S. national-security discourse, “targeting” denotes the use of force. Framing an unarmed opposition movement as a legitimate military target, based on false, unsubstantiated and legally rejected allegations, amounts to an incitement to murder and mirrors the Iranian regime’s own justification for attacking dissidents abroad.

Given his obsessive focus on the MEK throughout the piece, characterizing them as Saddam’s collaborators in atrocities (claims thoroughly discredited by Kurdish leaders, UN reports, US investigations, and Iranian regime defectors), this is a thinly veiled incitement to murder against the MEK and its members, who have already been targeted by Tehran’s assassins in Europe and the U.S.

As with other allegations, this latest absurd claim by Rubin also collapses the moment it is confronted with the record. There is not a shred of evidence that the MEK participated in the repression of Iraqi Kurds. On the contrary, the most decisive and dispositive testimony comes from Hoshyar Zebari, then the foreign-policy spokesman of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iraq and later Iraq’s foreign minister. In a 1999 letter to a Dutch court, Zebari, speaking for the Kurdish leadership itself, stated unequivocally: “We can confirm that the Mujahedeen were not involved in the suppression of the Kurdish people, either during the uprising or in its aftermath. We have not found any evidence whatsoever that the Mujahedeen acted with hostility toward the people of Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Four years earlier, an official United Nations document had refuted those allegations, noting that they were part of a well-orchestrated misinformation campaign by the Iranian regime to discredit the MEK. “From our independent investigation and discussion with parties involved, we find these allegations false,” wrote International Educational Development, a non-governmental organization with consultative status at with UN.

in a November 2006 letter to then-US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, Mr. Mohammad Mehdi Hachem, a senior official of the Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), expressed concern about the allegations and activities against the MEK, and reiterated the amicable relationship that exists between the people of Iraq and the organization. Among other things, for example, he wrote that MEK members have been law-abiding residents in Iraq for over 20 years. In a separate statement on December of that year, Mr. Hachem emphasized that the “PMOI [MEK] has never acted against the Kurdish people in Iraq and has not been involved in any suppressive action against them. The rumors spread by the Ministry of Intelligence of Iran are all false and a conspiracy.”

In response to a question about the involvement of the MEK in the suppression of the Iraqis, the prominent and senior Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Iyad Jamal ad-Din, then Deputy Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Iraq’s Council of Representatives, told the Al-Arabiya television in 2009, “I have personally followed up and reviewed many of the files in the intelligence services of the previous government and special security agencies to see whether I could find a single page of evidence, or a photograph or a document that would show that this organization had participated in the suppression of Iraqi. We did not find any such document or evidence that the Mujahedin-e Khalq took part in the crackdown against the people of Iraq... In my view, these lies are being disseminated by the Iranian intelligence to tarnish the image of the Mujahedin-e Khalq.”

Moreover, senior IRGC commanders have acknowledged that following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Tehran launched a covert cross-border operation using IRGC units disguised as Iraqi Kurdish fighters, from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), to target the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and frame the group for killing the Iraqi Kurds. The operation, carried out north of Khaneqein, involved at least four IRGC divisions and was intended to deliver what officials described as a decisive blow against the opposition movement.

This is not a partisan defense, nor an MEK statement, it is the formal testimony of the Kurdish side itself. It decisively nullifies the smear that Rubin recycles. To continue repeating this allegation in the face of such a record is not analysis; it is disinformation.

The irony is chilling—and blood-chilling. The Iranian regime has already massacred tens of thousands of MEK members and sympathizers over decades, including the infamous 1988 prison massacre. In that summer of blood, following a fatwa from Khomeini, 30,000 political prisoners, primarily loyal MEK supporters, were summarily executed after sham interrogations by “death commissions.”

Rubin, who postures as a fake champion against Iranian tyranny, now echoes the very narrative the mullahs use to demonize their primary opposition. By calling for “targeting” those he falsely accuses of past crimes in Iraq, crimes refuted by the former Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, Ayatollah Iyad Jamal ad-Din, and others, he effectively aligns with Tehran’s long-standing goal: the physical elimination of the MEK. The regime has bombed their camps, assassinated their leaders abroad, and plotted attacks on their gatherings (as exposed in European courts). Is Rubin, in his zeal, advocating that the US join this crusade?

This isn’t analysis; it’s dangerous incitement. The MEK serves as a key source exposing the regime’s nuclear program, terrorism, and internal crackdowns. It inspires Iran’s ongoing protests for freedom, democracy, and gender equality. Rubin’s words reveal more about his agenda than about the MEK: when facts fail, some turn to calls for violence. History will judge such positions harshly.