A top commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps says the European Union is only providing an excuse for the US to remove the "Rajavi Cult" from its terror list.
Brigadier General Yadollah Javani made the remarks on Saturday after the European Parliament issued a declaration on Thursday urging the removal of the Mujahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO) from Washington’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
The European Union removed the MKO from its similar list of terrorist organizations in 2009.
Brigadier General Javani said that despite placing the MKO on its list of terrorist organizations Washington has not refrained from providing all out-support for the group over the past 30 years.
"The group has conducted a terror campaign from the safe haven provided by the West, the US and the Zionists," he was quoted by Mehr News Agency as saying.
"In order to escape from the glaring inconsistency between the words and actions of the US, Washington needs an excuse and justification such as the request made by the European Union," he added.
The "Rajavi cult", as the MKO came to be known, was founded in Iran in the 1960s, but its top leadership and members fled the country some twenty years later, after carrying out numerous acts of terror inside the country.
In the 1970s the group targeted American citizens in Iran, killing William C. Cottrell, Colonel Lewis L. Hawkins, Donald G. Smith, and Colonel Jack Turner in the country.
They also masterminded the 1981 bombing of the offices of the Islamic Republic Party, in which more than 72 senior Iranian officials were killed, including the then Judiciary chief Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti.
After fleeing to neighboring Iraq, the terror cell provided security services to Saddam Hussein, fighting on his behalf during the eight-year Iraqi-imposed war on Iran.
In 1991, Maryam Rajavi as then leader of the group’s military forces directly ordered the massacre of Kurdish Iraqis in the north and the Shia population in the south.