Visiting the Ayatollahs: 2. Code Pink

Despite being the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and a major human rights abuser, the Islamic Republic receives unexpected rhetorical and in-person support from various Western sources. Part two of this miniseries of blog posts looks at Code Pink.

Founded in 2002, Code Pink quickly gained a reputation as a radical left organization known for provocative activism, including a lengthy vigil against the 2003 war in Iraq. The organization’s name plays on the George W. Bush administration’s color-coded homeland security alerts that signaled levels of terrorist threats, repurposing the concept as a call to “wage peace.” Not only does the group vehemently oppose U.S. sanctions on authoritarian regimes like Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, China, and Cuba, it also appeases and provides cover for those anti-American and anti-Western governments.

For example, an August 2023 New York Times report revealed Code Pink’s involvement in an extensive influence campaign connected to Neville Roy Singham, a charismatic American millionaire known for far-left activism. Despite residing in Shanghai, Singham maintained a sprawling network of nonprofits and shell companies that funneled millions of dollars to various organizations worldwide. These entities were found to disseminate Chinese propaganda under the guise of progressive advocacy. Despite Singham’s claims of independence, the New York Times investigation revealed his close ties with the Chinese government media machine. He shared office space and staff with companies aiming to “educate foreigners about the miracles that China has created on the world stage,” and he participated in Chinese Communist Party (CCP) workshops about promoting the party internationally. 

Jodie Evans, Singham’s wife and a co-founder of Code Pink, was entangled in this network. Historically, Code Pink had criticized China’s human rights record, but under Evans’ influence and after receiving substantial funding from Singham-linked nonprofits, the organization shifted its stance to vigorously defend China’s policies. Evans described China’s treatment of Uighur Mulsims as a necessary counterterrorism measure and denied allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang. “If the U.S. crushes China,” she claimed in 2021, it “would cut off hope for the human race and life on Earth.” When asked if she had anything negative to say about the country, she responded, “I can’t, for the life of me, think of anything.” 

In November 2013, Code Pink San Francisco Bay Area Organizer Cynthia Papermaster spoke with the UK’s Daily Mail about allegations that the group was secretly funded by the CCP. 

When pressed by the Mail about the mass detention of one million Uighurs in Xinjiang—including the use of forced sterilization and other abuses—Papermaster declined to comment on behalf of Code Pink and engaged in whataboutism.  “I would personally consider it an atrocity,” she said, “just as I consider the similar treatment of Native Americans, immigrants, or blacks historically by the US government atrocities.” Asked about broader concerns regarding human rights abuses in China, Papermaster hedged again. “I think that’s controversial. I’ve heard that there’s repression. I’ve also heard that there’s freedom.”

Code Pink’s soft rhetoric about dictatorships is also music to the Iranian regime’s ears. The group spreads the Islamic Republic’s propaganda in Washington and online and calls on U.S. lawmakers to appease Tehran. 

The group has called for the U.S. to preemptively “cease threats of new economic sanctions, remove existing sanctions, and end threats of war.” Such logic wrongly assumes that dangerous behavior by rogue regimes is not the fault of those governments and their odious ideologies but of the U.S. and its policies.

Likewise, when it comes to securing the release of political prisoners by Tehran, Code Pink’s grand solution is to lift sanctions against the Iranian regime.

And what about women's rights? Code Pink calls itself a major “feminist grassroots organization.” One might expect that the group has at least called for tougher measures against the Islamic Republic for its brutal oppression of Iranian women, particularly after the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s Morality Police for wearing improper hijab and the resulting demonstrations throughout Iran expressing outrage at Amini’s death.

Of course not.

Instead, in a letter to President Biden, Code Pink urged his administration to rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and “lift the brutal sanctions” against the Islamic Republic and its supporters, arguing they “harm millions of Iranian women every day.” According to the group, such actions will only benefit the “Iranian women demanding justice for Mahsa,” even though ending sanctions would financially benefit the very regime that killed Amini and Iranian protesters, including many women. 

Like the Jewish fringe group Neturei Karta, Code Pink has also repeatedly visited Tehran, meeting with advisers to then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, members of the Iranian Parliament, and many others. 

In 2014, Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin and other radical left-wing activists attended the regime-sponsored New Horizon Conference in Tehran. This conference focused on supposed Zionist control of the politics of the United States and the European Union. According to the conference materials, the event covered a range of topics, including “Similarities [between] Nazism and Zionism,” “America and the Zionist crimes in the world,” and “Hollywood and the Israel lobby…” Panel titles and themes included “Mossad’s Role in the 9/11 Coup d’Etat,” “9/11 and the Holocaust as pro-Zionist ‘Public Myths,’” and “The Israeli Lobby vs. the US National Interest (especially as it relates to Middle East Policy).”

In March 2019,  a 28-person Code Pink “American peace delegation” to Iran met with then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and held a press conference criticizing the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin used the visit to condemn Israel’s supposed influence on U.S. policy. The activists, complying with Iranian mandatory hijab laws by wearing pink headscarves, emphasized Iran’s purported right to missile defense in light of perceived U.S. military threats in the region. 

When Benjamin came back from her trip, she painted a flowery picture to Democracy Now, a progressive media outlet. She described her opportunity to speak for an hour and a half

with the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister as “amazing” and gushed about her “incredible” meetings, including ones with women and minorities. Benjamin somehow neglected to mention whether she had asked the regime for permission to meet with imprisoned female and minority political dissidents.

Code Pink’s apologetics for Iran extend to that regime’s terrorist proxies. On the day of the October 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), which receive most of their military funding from Iran, Code Pink’s posted on X that “Palestinians have every right to resist [Israel].” The next day, the group issued a press release justifying the massacre as “resistance of the Palestinians”; saying Palestinians are “confronting the world with their truth,” which “should be supported and respected,” failing to condemn the attack itself or those who carried it out, none of whom were named; and blaming the situation on the U.S. and Israel. Code Pink’s call to action was for the U.S. to “withdraw all support for Israel and block any additional aid to the apartheid state.” In May 2024, Code Pink joined many radical anti-American groups in the U.S. in demanding the “complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea,” while endorsing the “right to resist by any means necessary.”

Code Pink’s excuses for Iranian-backed terrorism extend beyond Israel and Gaza. The group disrupted a February 2024 congressional hearing on Iranian-backed Houthi attacks in the Red Sea against U.S. naval and commercial ships. Code Pink later posted on X that the hearing was actually about “the US’s latest round of attacks on the people of Yemen,” conflating the people of Yemen with the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group.

Given its pro-Tehran, anti-women proclivities, Code Pink might consider a rebranding exercise and switch names to a more accurate color choice. Its true colors aren’t pink—traditionally association with feminism—but shades closer to the dark green of the IRGC.

Elliot Nazar is an intern at United Against Nuclear Iran and a candidate for a master’s degree in security studies at Georgetown University.