On Thursday Iranian citizens who tuned into their state-run television channel were in for a shock the channel was hacked. Only for 10 seconds but it created quite a ripple. What did the hackers do at this time? They beamed photos of Iranian dissidents. They called for the assassination of Iran's supreme leader. Who exactly is the shadowy assailant? The Teheran is pointing fingers at an old enemy.
Photographs of dissidents and a call to kill Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
These pictures beamed across the Iranian state television network on Thursday. The live broadcasts were hacked. It was a major embarrassment for Iran. Tehran is blaming an old rival for the hack. The people's Mujahideen of Iran group has long campaigned to overthrow the Islamic republic. Now it seems to be getting active again it had participated in the 1979 revolution but later fell out with Iran's first supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei in the 1980s. The group joined forces with Saddam Hussein it fought alongside Iraqi groups in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war.
In 1981 Ali Khamenei was targeted in a bomb attack he survived but the attack left his right hand paralyzed. The people of Mujahideen of Iran were blamed for the blast. In the years that followed the Iranian regime launched a crackdown thousands of mujahideen members have killed. The group did attempt some retaliatory attacks but largely remained in exile. In recent years its members have been trying to make a comeback. Several Western powers have taken off the group from their terror lists. The European Union made the first move in 2009 followed by the united states it removed the mujahideen from its terror list in 2012. Former u.s. President Donald Trump went a step further Hawkish officials like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo supported the mujahideen.
The group is now largely believed to be active in Albania and it is targeting Iran at a critical time. Attempts are underway to revive the Iran nuclear deal the Iranians are locked intense negotiations with the united states. The white house says that the agreement is in sight but there are roadblocks along the way former U.N. officials and Nobel prize winners have published an open letter they want U.N. to launch a probe into a mass execution in the 1980s. Iranian authorities have been accused of executing thousands of political prisoners many of them were members of the people's media of Iran. The cyberattack might bring attention to these demands.