PODCAST: Discover how a Jewish woman tricked her way into meeting with Khamenei

A woman who outsmarted and infiltrated Iran’s ruling class reveals new details about her encounters with some of Iran’s most powerful men – and issues a dire warning.

Catherin Perez-Shakdam, a French journalist and Middle East analyst, met personally with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei in 2017 after being invited by him for a private visit.

“His movements were very slow but very calculated,” she said of Iran’s Supreme Leader.

She described her encounter with him as an “out-of-body” experience during which she was advised to avoid eye contact with him.

Shakdam said she was asked by the establishment to write for Khamenei’s website, which included conducting several interviews, one of them with George Galloway, a British member of parliament who had previously been criticized for his appearances on the Iranian-backed Press TV.

In 2022, the Fars news website, which is affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, issued a statement denying reports that Shakdam contributed to the English version of Khamenei’s website. The statement further said that Khamenei.ir does not have a columnist and that Shakdam has no direct connection to the website.

However, it was confirmed that between 2015 and 2017, Shakdam sent articles and opinion pieces on topics related to Islam and the Islamic Revolution to the website, which were published there.

How did a French Jew become friends with Iran’s ruling elite?

This meeting had been planned for years, as Nader Talebzadeh, Iran’s now deceased chief propagandist, was preparing them to become the mouthpiece of the Islamic Republic.

He made sure that Skakdam’s rise met with no resistance within the Iranian government and the IRGC, because she said he believed he could turn her into a puppet that he could control.

Shakdam first came to the attention of the Iranian regime after she wrote an op-ed for the Yemen Observer criticizing the US intervention in Iraq. She moved to Yemen in 2009 after marrying a Yemeni man with whom she had two children. The couple have since divorced.

She said she was asked to appear as a commentator on Iranian state media. Little by little, she began to network, befriend and gain the trust of the upper elite, after which they began inviting her to Iran for more official visits. She said they thought she could be manipulated to spread their message in Yemen and the Western world as well.

After hiring her, she said, she became Iran’s “most popular” Yemen expert, appearing on several Iranian state media outlets and also writing an op-ed in Russia Today (RT). Talebzadeh, she said, was involved in this.

“I have always been very careful to let them take the lead. If you come to the front on the invitation of the leadership, no one at the airport would dare to question you.”

She also said that as a woman she is not seen as a threat.

This led to further meetings with people like Qasem Soleimani, a senior general who was killed in a US airstrike in January 2020. He was seen 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.” Considered ruthless in the West, he was the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, which the United States and Canada classify as a foreign terrorist organization.

She met with Soleimani in southern Iraq, again at Talabzadeh’s invitation.

Shakdam told Iran International that she met him only briefly at a house in Karbala. He reportedly spoke about his efforts to drive ISIS out of some parts of Syria and Iraq.

“It wasn’t a very pleasant conversation… he scared me. He was terrifying.”

She also met two former Iranian presidents.

Your motivation, why do this?

Shakdam says her motivation was not curiosity, but anger.

Over time, she grew resentful in Yemen because she was a Jewish woman who wore a headscarf and felt her children were being stripped of their identities. Shakdam said she felt anti-Semitism was on the rise in the country.

She also observed changes in Yemeni society, including a growing influence of the Islamic Republic, which spreads an ideology she described as a “cancer.” Shakdam attributes the perceived infiltration of the country by Iran to the growing sectarian violence that led to its downfall.

“I viewed it as a form of colonization through indoctrination,” she said.

Yemen is ravaged by a civil war that has left civilians suffering. Many analysts say the fighting, which has now lasted for more than seven years, has become a proxy war between the Iran-backed Houthis, who overthrew the Yemeni government, and a Saudi-led coalition.

She said her undercover work as a sympathizer in Iran helped her understand the threat. How effective this was in countering the threat has yet to be determined, but she can at least pass on her knowledge and warnings.

“I wanted to find out what they (Iran) wanted.”

About their experiences on Eye for IranShakdam said the Iranian establishment is after Western civilization to undermine democracy and hijack institutions. She said the country has already managed to invade Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq – and it could happen here too.

She said Iran has built influential networks in the West, including in Britain, where she currently lives, under the guise of British educational centers, think tanks and charities.

“Wake up, world,” she said. “When they (the Islamic Republic) say death to America, that is death to democracy.”

You can find the whole episode on YouTube or listen to it Apple, Spotify or Amazon.