The move by Washington last week is, in effect, giving full approval to the MEK’s terror and assassination campaign in Iran. It is a stark reminder of Washington’s unwavering warpath towards Iran. Recently, some commentators have tended to misread Washington as giving a rebuff to Israel’s war rhetoric against Iran. But the clearance by Washington of a terrorist campaign in Iran…
In 2005, Donald Rumsfeld used MEK to carry out various reconaissance and sabotage operations in Iran after they had been equipped and trained at a base in Nevada. More recently, they have been directly linked to the assasination of Iranian military scientists, now supposedly by being trained and armed by the Israeli Mossad…
If the MEK were really what it claims to be—“the largest peaceful, secular, pro-democratic Iranian dissident group” and it didn’t need our help—we wouldn’t need to worry much. But it’s not. The MEK has almost no support among the Iranian people, who vilify the group for signing up with Saddam Hussein, killing Iranians, and then becoming a cult—or see it as a joke. There are only two ways that the MEK could achieve its goal: money or arms. Both options would likely involve the United States,
no single act by the administration so crystalizes the hypocrisy and recklessness of US postures towards Iran.The MEK has a long history of terrorist activity going back to the 1970s and has the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Because of this goal, there has been a big money push by many influential people in Washington to get the group de-listed..
What may make this decision even more damaging over the long term for U.S.-Iranian relations is that most Iranians loathe the MEK aka MKO/PMOI. De-listing the group is a mistake in its own right, but it is especially foolish because it does nothing but generate ill will from Iranians regardless of their views of the regime…
..As tensions with Iran over its nuclear program remain high, the Obama administration is wiping away the stigma from a cultish group[MKO/MEK/PMOI] that wants to overthrow the Iranian regime so badly it has attacked Iranian and other civilians to advance its agenda. And it comes after a long and deep-pocketed lobbying effort attracted a host of Washington politicos to advocate for the group
The campaign to bury the MEK’s aka MKO/PMOI bloody history of bombings and assassinations that killed American businessmen, Iranian politicians and thousands of civilians, and to portray it as a loyal US ally against the Islamic government in Tehran has seen large sums of money directed at three principal targets: members of Congress, Washington lobby groups and influential former officials.
A separate justice system for American Muslims, the US embrace of terrorism, and other key political facts are highlighted..MEK achieved its goal by doing more than merely changing the beneficiaries of its actions from Saddam to the US and Israel. It also found a way – how it did so remains a mystery – to funnel millions of dollars into the bank accounts of key ex-officials from both parties..
This is a line up that is hard to rent, much less buy, but M.E.K and its well connected lobbyists have shown how money makes things happen in Washington.It shows how porous is the terrorism issue too. It is subject to changes in political fashions, and how little the media knows or remembers and how open it is to being influenced by insiders, especially when there’s money to be paid for a few hours work.
The delisting of MEK is merely a technicality to make more overt arming and funding for the group possible. In reality, and despite being long recognized as a dangerous, extremist organization with both innocent Iranian and American blood on their hands, the US has been arming, training, and funding MEK for years, beginning under the Bush administration and continuing unabated under Obama.