The good news is that MEK lobbying efforts against diplomacy with Iran are unlikely to succeed. Even with the extravagant funds the MEK has spent on endorsements by political elites, the group’s prominence in the EU is confined only to one part of the EP. The foreign policy decision-making bodies of the EU — the Council of the EU and …
“The entire atmosphere around the MEK’s campaign to be removed from the FTO list – the fact that (former) American government officials were allowed to actively and openly receive financial incentives to speak in support of an organisation that was legally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, without consequence – created the impression that the list is essentially a meaningless political tool,”…
.but also because of the MEK’s aka MKO/PMOI dishonest merging of the humanitarian concerns at their Camp Ashraf base with their FTO listing. Many expected that the Obama administration would announce a decision in September after dragging its feet for over a year following a 2010 Court of Appeals rare order that the designation be reevaluated, but no final announcement has been made and to date the MEK remains FTO-listed…
The MEK’s ongoing delisting campaign is guided by the belief that the American public and the U.S. government are ignorant enough to believe its statements no matter how many times they’re proven false. The breathless claims of seeming support made by former U.S. officials are marketed by the MEK as a testament to its legitimacy, especially when these people conflate the human rights issue at the MEK’s base in Camp Ashraf near the Iran-Iraq border with its FTO delisting campaign…
The New York Times also recently noted that the Obama administration — far from abandoning the MEK members in Iraq — has been engaged in active diplomacy to get them out of harm’s way, eventually hoping to relocate them to a third country outside Iran (where they’re also likely to face persecution) or Iraq. However, the diplomacy, reported the Times, has thus far hit a dead end because “the residents are refusing to leave, and no countries have come forward to welcome them.”