PODCAST: Discover how a Jewish woman tricked her way into meeting Khamenei
A woman who tricked and infiltrated Iran's ruling class is revealing new details about her encounters with some of the most powerful men in Iran - and shares a dire warning.
A woman who tricked and infiltrated Iran's ruling class is revealing new details about her encounters with some of the most powerful men in Iran - and shares a dire warning.
Catherin Perez-Shakdam, a French analyst, Middle East expert, who leads the advocacy group We Believe in Israel, came face-to-face with Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei in 2017 after being invited for a private visit by the top leader.
"He was very slow in his movements but it's very calculated," she spoke of Iran's Supreme Leader.
She described her encounter with him as an "out of body" experience where she was advised not to make eye contact with him.
Shakdam said she was asked by the establishment to write for Khamenei's website. That included conducting several interviews, one of them being with George Galloway, a British MP who had previously been criticized for his appearances on Iran-backed Press TV.
In 2022, Fars news website, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, published a statement to reject reports about Shakdam contributing to the English version of Khamenei’s website. The statement added that Khamenei.ir doesn’t have any columnist and Shakdam has no direct connection with the website.
However, it confirmed that Shakdam sent articles and opinion pieces on issues related to Islam and the Islamic Revolution to the website from about 2015 to 2017 that were published on the site.
How did a French Jew befriend Iran's ruling elite?
It was an encounter that was years in the making as she was groomed into becoming a mouth piece for the Islamic Republic by Nader Talebzadeh, Iran's chief propogandist who has since passed away.
He ensured that Skakdam's rise within Iran's government and IRGC ranks was met with no resistance, believing, she said that he could turn her into a pawn that he could control.
Shakdam first gained attention from the Iranian regime after she wrote an opinion piece for the Yemen Observer, where she criticized U.S. intervention in Iraq. In 2009, she moved to Yemen after marrying a Yemeni man, with whom she had two children. The couple has since divorced.
She said she was asked to appear as a commentator on Iranian state-media channels. She slowly started to get connections, befriending the upper elite, gaining their trust where they began to invite her to Iran on more official visits. She said they thought she could be manipulated to spread their message to Yemen and the western world too.
Once she had her in, she said she became Iran's 'favorite' Yemeni expert, featured on several Iran state media outlets, and was also featured as an Op-ed write from Russia Today (RT). Talebzadeh, she said, was involved.
"I was always very careful to let them lead. If you come up on the invitation of the leadership no one at the airport would ever dare question you."
She also said being a women meant she wasn't seen as a threat.
That led to more meetings with the likes of Qasem Soleimani, a top General, who was killed by a US airstrike in January 2020. He was regarded as a powerful man and even hailed as a hero by IRGC sympathizers.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, once called him a “living martyr of the revolution.” In the West, he was viewed as ruthless and was the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, which was deemed to be a foreign terrorist organization by the US and Canada.
She met with Soleimani in Southern Iraq, again under the invitation of Talabzadeh.
Shakdam told Iran International her interaction with him was brief at someone's house in Karbala. He reportedly spoke of his efforts to push ISIS out of some parts of Syria and Iraq.
"It wasn't a very comfortable conversation...he scared me. He was terrifying."
She also met with two of Iran's former presidents.
Her motivation, why do this?
Shakdam says what motivated her was not curiosity, but anger.
Over time, she developed resentment in Yemen as a Jewish woman who wore a hijab and felt that her children's identity was being stripped from them. Shakdam said she felt antisemitism growing inside the country.
She also saw shifts in Yemeni society with a growing influence of the Islamic Republic spreading an ideology she described as a "cancer." Shakdam attributes Iran's perceived infiltration of the country to growing sectarian violence that has led to its downfall.
"I saw it as a form of colonization through indoctrination," she said.
Yemen is the site of civilian suffering amid a civil war. Many analysts say the fighting, which is now more than seven years old, has turned into a proxy war with Iran-backed Houthis, who overthrew the Yemeni government, against a coalition led by Saudi Arabia.
Going undercover in Iran as a sympathizer, she said, helped her understand the threat. Just how effective has it been an thwarting the threat has yet to be determined, but she can at least share her knowledge and her warnings.
"I wanted to establish what is it they [Iran] wanted?"
Speaking about her experiences on Eye for Iran, Shakdam said the Iranian establishment is after Western civilization in a bid to subvert democracy and hijack institutions. She said the nation has already managed to infiltrate Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq - and that it can be done here too.
She said Iran has established networks of influence in the West like in the United Kingdom, which is where she currently resides, through the guise of British education centres, think-tanks and charities.
"Wake up world, " she said "When they [Islamic Republic] say death to American, this is death to democracy."
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