A fortified camp in Manze, a small village in central Albania near the capital Tirana is home to some 3,000 members of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI, also known as Mujahedeen-e-Khalq, MEK).

These members have been in the country since the Albanian government agreed to take them in in 2013, at the request of the US and the United Nations.

What is the MEK?

The MEK is an Islamic political opposition group with socialist tendencies.

Founded in Iran in 1965, it took up arms against the ruling Pahlavi dynasty, waging bombing campaigns against the shah's government and US targets in the 1970s and supporting Ayatollah Khomeini in the 1978/1979 Islamic Revolution.

Shortly after the revolution, however, the MEK fell out with the new rulers in Tehran and was banned in the country. It then went into exile, continuing its opposition activities from abroad.

The MEK later moved to Iraq, from where it ran military operations against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war — something many in Iran resent to this day.

The US Department of State designated the MEK a terrorist organization in 1997, but removed it from its list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2012.

The group was the first to publicly reveal in 2002 that Iran had a secret uranium-enrichment program. After the ousting of Saddam Hussein, it was expelled from Iraq.

The recent protests in Iran

For Andreas Krieg, Middle East expert and senior lecturer at the School of Security Studies at King's College London, the current wave of protests in Iran "looks less like a single 'event' than a rolling convergence of long-running grievances that finally synchronized."

"It began with an acute economic shock — currency collapse and inflation translating into immediate price spikes, shortages, and commercial paralysis — and then rapidly politicized once people concluded that the state either cannot or will not stabilize everyday life," he told DW.

"What is notable is the coalition profile: Bazaar and shopkeepers helped trigger momentum, students and urban neighborhoods sustained visibility, and peripheral towns and minority areas added breadth," said Krieg.

"The state's response has moved quickly from deterrence to suppression, including a nationwide communications blackout designed to slow coordination and reduce external scrutiny, which typically coincides with harsher use of force on the ground," he said.

A fragmented opposition

Despite the fact that there have been many nationwide protests in Iran in recent decades, the Iranian opposition — both inside and outside the country — is not organized and is characterized by a large number of rival groups and ideological factions.

"Where the opposition 'stands' is best understood as fragmentation rather than absence," said Krieg, adding "inside Iran, collective action remains largely leaderless and networked: Local mobilization, social ties, workplace dynamics, and university ecosystems produce bursts of coordinated protest without an integrated national command structure."

The Iranian opposition abroad

Outside Iran, the two biggest opposition groups are the monarchists and the MEK. Leaders and members of both groups have been living in exile since after the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979.

Reza Pahlavi, the heir of Iran's last shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, is based in the US. While he has many admirers within the Iranian diaspora, it remains unclear what support he has inside the country.

"Outside Iran, the diaspora remains influential in narrative-shaping and morale, but it is organizationally divided and often distrusted by people inside the country who fear both manipulation and a post-collapse vacuum," said Andreas Krieg.

"That matters for regime security because it reduces the probability of rapid, clean elite splits, even as it increases the likelihood of recurring protest cycles. Suppressing one wave does not resolve the underlying drivers that keep replenishing the street," he added.

What role has the MEK played in the protests

The second major Iranian opposition group is the MEK, the largest member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a coalition of Iranian opposition groups.

But what role has the MEK played in the recent unrest?

Ali Safavi of the NCRI says that the MEK has been actively involved in the protests.

"Its resistance units direct, coordinate and organize the resistance against the repressive forces," he told DW. "On many occasions, they also have been playing an important role in protecting the protesters against the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps] onslaught. Were it not for their role, the regime would have quashed the uprising very quickly."

Safavi told DW that "a significant number of MEK activists are among the 3,000 murdered by the security forces."

MEK — legitimacy problems among many Iranians

For Middle East expert Krieg, however, "when it comes to MEK, it is important to separate perceived reach from real on-the-ground traction."

"The organization is disciplined, media-savvy, and able to generate noise, lobbying pressure, and messaging volume from abroad. However, it has deep legitimacy problems among many Iranians because of its history, internal-control allegations, and its long exile posture — factors that limit its ability to act as a unifying opposition vehicle inside the country. That is why claims that it functions as a foreign 'Trojan horse' resonate."

"The MEK is easy for multiple actors to instrumentalize in the information space, including anti-Iran hawks in the US and Israel. But the practical effect is more often reputational. It gives the regime a convenient foreign-proxy frame. But it does not at all have any role to play in leading these protests," said Krieg.

Considered a terrorist group by Tehran, the MEK is now calling on Europe to take robust action against the government in Iran.

"Europe must immediately designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity, to expel the regime's diplomats, recall its ambassadors from Tehran, cut off the regime from international financial system, boycott the sale of oil, and haul its leaders before international tribunals to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity. And this includes the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and other senior officials," said Ali Safavi.

The view from Albania

The Albanian media has been reporting regularly on both the protests and the MEK in Albania ever since the protests began in Iran.

For their part, MEK members in Albania have been active on social media, sharing posts and pictures relating to the protesters who have lost their lives and the MEK members they say were killed while protesting.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who cut diplomatic ties with Iran in September 2022 after claiming cyberattacks on Albania had been orchestrated by the Islamic Republic, has not made any comments on the protests in Iran at all.

Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan