An Answer to Michael Rubin’s Threadbare Ruse

Iran’s uprising is in its fifth month, and a revolution is in the making. Meanwhile, Michael Rubin is batting for the crumbling theocracy by smearing its principal opposition, the Mujahedin‑e Khalq (MEK). Visibly furious over my January 10 response to his gossip columns, which, like my previous rebuttals on August 16 and November 5, 2022, the Washington Examiner has refused to publish in blatant disregard for impartial and balanced journalism, a rambling Rubin is still ruminating on the regime’s decades-old derogatory epithets for the MEK, prompting concerns about a serious meltdown. 

After two decades of doubling down on the regime’s propaganda, today, stark realities are staring Rubin in the face: Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei publicly warns about the MEK’s growing influence in the latest uprisings; Desperate, the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) is explicitly threatening to launch missiles into Europe to destroy Ashraf‑3, the MEK’s home in Albania; The intelligence ministry boasts that it detained another “network” within Iran that provided financial support to the MEK, immediately after it broadcast the detention of “several teams” of young people who provided “logistical support” to the organization; And, internationally, in the past few weeks alone, the MEK’s cause has been warmly embraced by Western lawmakers and luminaries in a series of major conferences in the U.S., Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, and Ireland, among others. In light of these realities, Rubin’s cries of “it’s a cult, I tell ya!” are fading into the abyss. Yet, nestled in the lunatic fringes of American politics, Rubin refuses to meet reality.  In his latest sob story, Rubin casually shifts the burden of proof to me. His superfluous demand that MEK members must prove to him that they have disagreements with its leadership are not only childish tantrums but mirror the demands of regime i …