Warnings from a British journalist who infiltrated the Iranian regime

A Jewish journalist and Middle East expert who infiltrated the Iranian regime warned that the West is not taking the threat from Iran seriously.

In an interview with The Telegraph in London, U.K., Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a Jewish mother of two who grew up in Paris, France, tells how she concealed her true identity to pose as a supporter of the Iranian regime and even managed to infiltrate the Iranian government. She went as far as gaining a private meeting with supreme leader Ali Khamenei. After her experience, she called on the West not to underestimate the threat of Iran.

Perez-Shakdam, who currently serves as the executive director of We Believe in Israel, pointed out that in the U.K., there are senior members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. operating in the country, and they often travel to Iran pretending to act on behalf charities, schools and so on. The journalist remarked that these people report to the regime and also take orders from Tehran.

According to Perez-Shakdam, these members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps. have managed to install a very powerful lobby in the United Kingdom, aimed at adjusting the narrative and establishing new connections, among other activities in the country.

The Middle East expert also argued that the West does not take this threat seriously out of "sheer arrogance." She noted, "We have a sociopath with a gun loaded telling you, ‘I’m going to kill you'" while the authorities convince people that in reality "he doesn’t mean what he’s saying."

Perez-Shakdam further stated that the West does not take this threat seriously partly because it succeeded in defeating Nazism, which is why it believes it no longer has to confront it. However, the journalist indicated that it is necessary to do so, since evil "doesn’t show up twice with the same face."

How did she manage to infiltrate the Iranian regime?

Regarding her infiltration of the Iranian government, Perez-Shakdam explained that it all started when she moved to Yemen in 2009 and wrote an article in the Yemen Observer criticizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which aroused the interest of members of Iran’s leadership, who decided to contact her.

Then, some Tehran-backed media outlets began to invite her as a commentator to criticize the West's presence in the Middle East, and in 2017 she was invited to a conference in Iran.

As she stated in the interview, she believes that the Iranian regime sought to make her an important propagandist in the United Kingdom, where she was residing at the time.

Perez-Shakdam maintained that during one of her trips to Iran, she was informed about a plot by the regime to mark important individuals and organizations among the Jewish diaspora in order to perpetrate attacks and assassinations against them. According to the journalist, the aim of the regime was to force Jews to flee to Israel, since "it’s easier to hit them there in one place" and to create a narrative that the mere existence of members of this community was dangerous for the security of a country.

The expert stressed that at the time she thought that no one could believe this, but noted that she was evidently wrong, since nowadays "you hear things like, ‘They don’t belong here, they should go home.’"

Perez-Shakdam concluded with an important warning to the West, noting that the Iranian regime uses Israel as a Trojan horse, as the anti-Israeli narrative is often accepted, but clarified it uses it as a way to support its anti-Western message.