The US government adviser, Michael Rubin states that the recent Iranian protests have confirmed that the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) has no backing or legitimacy among ordinary Iranians advising the secretary of state department to re-designate the group.
Rubin is an American historian, foreign policy analyst, government adviser, and military lecturer who holds the position of a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has long been a critic of the Iranian government as well as the MEK.
In his recent article published by the Middle East Forum, supporting the protests in Iran, Rubin warns about the MEK’s violent background. “Mujahedin bombs killed hundreds of Iranians, as the cult-like group cared little about collateral damage” he writes. “As a result, many Iranians consider them terrorists.”
The American historian correctly notifies that “more damning in Iranian eyes was the Mujahedin-e Khalq’s defection to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq at the height of the Iran-Iraq War.”
About the MEK’s current status as a “chameleon cult”, he writes: In the decades since, the Mujahedin has grown only more cult-like even as it has become a political chameleon, shifting its rhetoric to support whomever it thought its patrons might be. When it solicits Congress, it feigns commitment to democracy, even as its actions and its internal rhetoric suggest it remains unchanged and unabashedly anti-American. “Victory or martyrdom, fighting with America rises from our voice. … Compromise is a shame. Shout from your heart: destroy America!” goes one Mujahedin-e Khalq anthem.
Although this anti-Islam foreign policy analyst seeks the overthrow of Islamic Republic government, he truthfully asks Marco Rubio to designate the MEK as a Foreign Terrorist Organization because he thinks that this unpopular group might deviate the aspirations of Iranians.
He assumes Rubio as the right person to do so: “Rubio, unlike some predecessors, has never accepted Mujahedin-e Khalq bribes under the guise of donations or honoraria; he is not beholden to a group Iranians despise.”
