At last, after months of manipulating advertising techniques through its sizable direct and cyber propaganda machine, Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK, NCRI, PMOI, NLA) managed to hold its announced gathering at Taverney, near Paris, on 26 June. But what happened in Taverney went against the expectations and predictions regarding the number of the participants of the Iranians living in European countries. Far less than the expected minimum number! The organization itself preferred to remain silent about the exact number of those who gathered in the rally but the responsibility, as usual in such cases, was on the others whom it quoted. For example, Terry Glavin in his covering of the story stated “The NCRI gathering, which drew about 30,000 Iranian exiles from around the world, was more like an outdoor rock concert than a political rally. Jean Bouin Stadium in Taverny, a Paris suburb, was transformed into a sea of mauve hats and mauve sun umbrellas”. Or quoting Al-Quds daily, MKO-run media released “In the Iranian massive gathering held in Paris, nearly 100,000 attended, among them hundreds of youths of the Iranian uprising could be seen who had fled the country”. How such a remarkable difference can be justified is a question that only those who are masters of faking figures can possibly answer.
None of the reporters releasing the news and the event were themselves present at the rally and they only repeated what was put before them by the organization. That is obvious that when the sole reporting eyewitness is the organization itself, the rally is publicized as a gathering of tens of thousands, 30,000, 35,000, and at last 100,000. And to conceal the reluctance of the claimed the exiled Iranian participants, compared with similar events, there was no cover better than “a sea of mauve hats and mauve sun umbrellas”.
As the husband-appointed political wing of the organization, Maryam Ralavi had nothing more to add to her previously stated idea of democratic change in Iran. The new points were attaching the creators of the post-election anarchy in Iran to the organization’s policies and to stress that their move was nothing new but the continuation of the line of struggle MKO had already started: “Your uprising represents the triumph of a path for which Ashraf has been the standard bearer”.
Of the organization’s biggest prides in this gathering was the presence of John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, who repeated what the organization was delighted to hear, that is the support of the United Sates government for the regime change in Iran and to remove its designation as a terrorist organization. Of course, there were other ex and retired politicians whose only job was to read from the notes the organization had prepared and set before them. MKO rally at Taverney was in fact the end of a scenario MKO’s was planning and advertising to direct and put into practice just coincident with the anniversary of its bloody atrocities in June 1981, when it destroyed all bridges of any democratic struggle behind it and announced an all-out military campaign. And an end to all promises of Rajavi and Maryam Azdanloo in the past few months.
The bomb Massoud and Maryam had promised to explode in the month of June to change everything, and specifically from June 10 to 20, was turned into the purple balloons that were exploded at Taverney’s gatherings; the created sound was hardly audible to the participants at the rally, let alone to the world and the Iranian people. However, the end of this gathering is the beginning of a rather longstanding planned propaganda from which the organization habitually benefits most, to repeat a thing that they know isn’t true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it, others might come to believe it. But it teaches a lesson to the Rajavis and their advocates and sympathizers as well, that the hired masses and paid hirelings to be demonstrated as Iranian people and supporters, although costly, can build no more hope and aspiration.
Of course, the organization had done its best to attract, if not all but a big number, from among the supporters of Mousavi, the leader of the Green Movement, in abroad to bring them to Taverney’s gathering by declaring its backing of his move. The organization hit another failure, anyway, and adding digits to the number of the participants in its razzle-dazzle rally can no longer save it from the abyss of the illusion it is thoroughly drowned in.
