Catherine Perez-Shakdam is a French journalist, political analyst and commentator. She specializes in West Asian and Islamic affairs. Shakdam is a former consultant for UNSC on Yemen and she is an expert on Islamic terrorism, radicalization and antisemitism. [1]
Shakdam was born into a secular Jewish family in France. [1] Her maternal grandfather fought Nazis during the Nazi occupation of the country. Her paternal grandfather was a Holocaust survivor. [2] She has a bachelor's degree in Psychology and two Master's degrees in finance and communications from University of London. During her studies at University of London she met a Muslim man from Yemen and later converted to Sunni Islam during their marriage. However she later became a Shia Muslim and wrote several books and many articles about Shia Islam. She divorced from her husband in 2014 and has custody of her two children. She now identifies as a Zionist and an atheist. [3]
Prior to becoming a full time journalist, she worked for Wikistrat, an Israeli geostrategic and analysis firm, for seven years. [4] She wrote extensively for the Russian International Affairs Council, Tehran Times , IRIB, The Majalla , Press TV, HuffPost , the Foreign Policy Association, Yemen Post , The Oslo Times, Your Middle East, The Guardian , RT, Mehr News and Tasnim News agencies, The Foreign Policy Journal, The Duran, MintPress News , the American Herald Tribune, openDemocracy, The Age of Reflection and many more. [4] [5]
Shakdam is also the managing director of Access Media [6] and served as Special Adviser for the Middle East for the late Prince Ali Seraj of Afghanistan. She is the director and founder of Veritas-Consulting. [5] She was affiliated with Shafaqna Institute for Middle East Studies in the UK (2015–2017). [7]
Shakdam traveled frequently to Iran and became a regular author in many Iranian right wing news agencies such as Mashregh News, Tasnim News, Mehr News and even Iranian supreme leader's website "Khamenei.ir". In November 2021 Shakdam wrote in her blog in The Times of Israel that she is divorced and no longer a Muslim. She implied that her radical Muslim persona was in order to infiltrate Iran and other Muslim countries. [1]
Shakdam traveled to Iran in 2017 and met with then candidate Ebrahim Raisi. She accompanied Raisi on his travels to Rasht and sat exclusively with him for an interview. Shakdam wrote in her blog that Iranian authorities trusted her because of her French nationality and marriage to a Muslim man. She wrote that she was invited by one of the important people of the revolution who studied in the United States. [1]
In February 2022 a Telegram channel supporting the former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote an article based on the blog post in The Times of Israel that the highest level of Iranian government had been infiltrated by Israeli spies. Many Iranian right-wing news agencies immediately took down all the articles written by Shakdam and denied collaboration. [8]
Shakdam wrote in her blog that she detested Islam's disdain for women. She further added that prior to her visit to Iran she neither argued nor revealed her true intentions.
Radical articles and pieces written by Shakdam were criticized heavily by many Jewish organizations such as Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and MEMRI without ever mentioning her Jewish ancestry. [9] [10]
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), officially the Middle East Media and Research Institute, is an American non-profit press monitoring and analysis organization that was co-founded by Israeli ex-intelligence officer Yigal Carmon and Israeli-American political scientist Meyrav Wurmser in 1997. It publishes and distributes free copies of media reports that have been translated into English—primarily from Arabic and Persian, but also from Urdu, Turkish, Pashto, and Russian.
Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei is an Iranian Twelver Shia marja' and politician who has been the second supreme leader of Iran since 1989. He previously served as third president of Iran from 1981 to 1989. Khamenei is the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East, as well as the second-longest-serving Iranian leader of the last century, after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
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Nada Al-Ahdal is a human rights activist and resident of Yemen known for escaping two different child marriage pacts her parents had made for her. In 2013, al-Ahdal posted a YouTube video decrying child marriage and her being forced into marriage contracts, which quickly went viral and prompted coverage of Yemen's continued practice of child marriage.
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The Ebrahim Raisi 2017 presidential campaign began when Ebrahim Raisi, chairman of the Astan Quds Razavi, launched his campaign for the 2017 presidential election. Raisi's campaign pursued a populist agenda.
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Hamidreza Moghaddamfar is an Iranian university professor, expert on strategic issues, cultural and media adviser to the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of Iran, deputy of the Office of Preservation and Publication of Seyyed Ali Khamenei's Works, secretary of the People's Headquarters of Commemoration of Qassem Soleimani and cultural adviser of the Islamic Azad University. He is in charge of publishing and advertising the works of Seyyed Ali Khamenei to the youth of Europe and North America. He was the CEO of Fars News Agency from 2007 to 2011. Then, he became the cultural and social deputy of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and was in this position until September 2014. In 2015, Moghadamfar received the official Iran honorary badge of The Striving in the Field of Culture and Art. He is also a member of the board of trustees of the shrine of Sultan Ali ibn Muhammad Baqir.
https://www.gahspmedia.com/conversation/a-thousand-facets-of-katerina-perez-the-qu-a