Elizabeth Rubin is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, where her article “The Cult of Rajavi” appeared in July 2003.
A FEW weeks ago she received an e-mail from an acquaintance with the subject line: Have you seen the video everyone is talking about?
When she clicked play, there was Howard Dean, on March 19 in Berlin, at his most impassioned, extolling the virtues of a woman named Maryam Rajavi and insisting that America should recognize her as the president of Iran.
Ms. Rajavi and her husband, Massoud, are the leaders of a militant Iranian opposition group called the Mujahedeen Khalq, or Warriors of God.