Organization, Legitimacy, and the Opposition Inside Iran That the Regime Cannot Control
Professor Kazem Kazerounian
The principle that Iran’s alternative must come from inside Iran is not merely reasonable. It is essential. No durable political change can be imposed from abroad. No movement without deep social roots, lived experience, and internal legitimacy can shape Iran’s future. The engine of change must be the Iranian people themselves, acting inside their own country, bearing the costs of resistance, and determining their own path. On this point, there should be no ambiguity.
That is precisely why the Iranian regime seeks to hollow this principle out.
Unable to deny the existence of organized resistance inside Iran, the regime has appropriated this foundational idea and turned it into a tool of political distortion. Through its media ecosystem and affiliated voices, it repeatedly implies that any opposition associated with leadership or organization outside the country is disconnected from Iranian society. At the same time, it quietly tolerates and actively promotes Reza Pahlavi and monarchist narratives inside Iran, precisely because they lack legitimacy, grassroots organization, internal networks, and the capacity to mobilize sustained resistance. This contrast is deliberate. The argument is not meant to clarify legitimacy. It is designed to smear and demonize the MEK, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, while elevating smokescreen alternatives that are safe for the regime.
In reality, the MEK is the most deeply rooted and genuine grassroots opposition in Iran’s modern history. Its presence predates the Islamic Republic and spans both dictatorships. Under the Shah, MEK members and leaders were imprisoned, tortured, and executed. After 1979, repression escalated into mass extermination. Under Khomeini and his successors, more than 120,000 MEK members and supporters were executed, including many senior leaders killed inside Iran. Entire networks were dismantled and rebuilt through sacrifice. This history produced underground organization, not exile politics.
At multiple points, the MEK’s demise was confidently predicted. It was said the movement would collapse after it took up arms against Khomeini’s campaign of mass murder. It was said it would disappear when it refused to legitimize the Iran–Iraq war and rejected the regime’s mobilization of youth into a war of attrition. It was said it would not survive the creation of the National Liberation Army, or the sustained military and political assault that followed. Later, it was said the MEK would be sidelined by the rise of so-called reformists, when many political figures, including Reza Pahlavi, chose to wear the green ribbon and place their hopes in a regime-managed illusion. Each time, the prediction was wrong. The MEK paid a price for refusing compromise. It chose consistency over convenience. It stood on principle. And it survived and grew because its legitimacy and roots were inside Iran, embedded in society, renewed across generations, and carried forward by networks that repression could disrupt but never erase.
That continuity is not abstract. It is visible today in action.
The MEK operates through resistance units active across Iran’s cities and provinces. These units organize protests, coordinate acts of defiance, distribute information, document repression, and sustain momentum between uprisings. Thousands of resistance unit members were arrested during the 2022 uprising. Yet despite relentless repression, around 40,000 acts of resistance over the past year alone have been attributed to these units. This is not conjecture. It is acknowledged by the regime itself. Iranian officials and state media repeatedly admit that what they call the monafeghin play a central role in organizing unrest, including in statements made in recent weeks.
If this is the reality, why is much of the MEK’s leadership outside Iran?
The answer is operational and political necessity under dictatorship. When a suppressed environment makes it impossible to lead effectively from inside the country, responsible leadership must adapt. Anything else would amount to abandoning the very members who expect timely direction, coordination, and strategic clarity. Totalitarian systems deliberately target leadership to paralyze movements. Effective resistance ensures leadership can function beyond the regime’s immediate reach.
History confirms this model repeatedly. The African National Congress operated this way under apartheid. Resistance movements across Eastern Europe did the same under communist rule. European resistance movements during World War II combined internal cells with external command. Even Khomeini himself directed his network from exile with decisive effect. Lenin led from abroad. Charles de Gaulle coordinated the French Resistance from outside occupied France. These examples are cited not to legitimize their causes, but to state an undeniable fact. Under repression, effective leadership is defined by function, not location.
The principle stands. Iran’s alternative must come from inside Iran. The MEK does. That is precisely why the regime works so relentlessly to distort this truth.