Mick Hartley

David Rose in the JC talks to Catherine Perez Shakdam, a French-born Jew now living in London, on her extraordinary undercover experiences in Iran – including a meeting with Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei:

“I thought infiltrating the regime would give my life a purpose. With my marriage, I had messed up, and this was a way to atone. I wanted to understand Shia radicalism, to find out how they thought, how they worked. The further in I went, the more I realised how bad it was.”

She started contributing to the state-controlled Russian television station, RT. This, she said, was another reason the Iranians valued her.

“In their minds, if you could pass the test of Russia, you were good,” she said. Soon she was asked to write opinion pieces and interviews for Iranian news agencies which were close to the IRGC.

Then came the turning point, an invitation to attend a conference in Tehran in February 2017 called New Horizons from its founder, Talebzadeh.

“When I got to Tehran, I didn’t know who Talebzadeh was,” she said. “But he knew exactly who I was. His wife was lovely and spoke perfect English. It was a process of seduction. Later I realised that he was the Goebbels of the regime, incredibly close to both Khamenei and the IRGC.”

Khamenei opened the conference with a speech describing Israel as a “cancerous tumour”. Soleimani was there, along with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, senior Hezbollah operatives, Putin’s adviser Dugin, the future president Raisi and dozens of Western “anti-imperialists” from the extreme left and right, including some from the UK.

Her first meeting with dark-suited IRGC agents came over coffee inside the conference hall. This was followed by an invitation to a shisha joint.

“By Iranian standards, the IRGC guys dress well,” she said. “Once you get to know the regime, you can smell them. No one has to tell you who they are.

“I started gushing about Ayatollah Khomeini, saying I’d read his books. They loved that. They asked me who I’d most like to meet and I said, Khamenei.”

Her wish was granted: an audience with the man himself.

“We pulled into a courtyard with trees,” she recalls. “I was ushered into a sitting room. There was a carpet, and rugs on the carpet, with photos of Khomeini and Khamenei.

“I’d expected something presidential, but this was humble. There were Arab-style sofas and cushions on the floor. I was given sweet tea in a glass with a stirring stick covered in saffron sugar crystals and walnuts to nibble.

“There was a commotion around the doorway and Khamenei came in. He told me through an interpreter to sit on the floor. He sat in a chair. I’d been warned not to make eye contact, and not to speak unless he asked me a question.

“Khamenei spent a few minutes on chit-chat,” she said. “Then he began talking about the End of Days, how he would be the one who would usher in the return of the Mahdi [the mythical leader who will herald the apocalypse].

“His voice was quiet, high-pitched. He talked about this great war that would take place, and how al-Aqsa had to be liberated for the Mahdi to return to save humanity. He talked about the wars Iran was fighting in Yemen and Syria and how he had a divine mission.

“He was basically trying to justify crimes against humanity, saying you had to harm the enemies of God, who shouldn’t be seen as human beings.

“He said killing the innocent was OK, because they weren’t really innocents.

“A mistake we make is to assume he cares about his country. He doesn’t. He will literally see it burn if it means Islam will triumph.”

She said Khamenei seemed scared of only one thing — an Israeli attack. “He believes Netanyahu’s threats and he knows that, for now, Israel is militarily superior. And he feels that the Iranian regime can’t sustain a defeat.”

After half-an-hour, she said, the Iranian leader abruptly got up and left. “Afterwards, I felt as if I’d had an out-of-body experience. I was back in the car and thinking to myself: What the f*** just happened?”

The encounter left her with an abiding sense of the Iranian threat. The ideology expressed by Khamenei, Soleimani and Raisi was, she said, just as terrifying as Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

“If we are serious about combating terrorism and Islamic radicalism, and stand by the rule of law, we have to proscribe the IRGC,” she said. “We know now that Churchill was right and taking on the Nazis much earlier would have saved many lives.”