Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, addressed a rally staged by an extreme Iranian opposition group in Paris on Saturday, calling for regime change in Tehran.
The extreme group, called Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK) or Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), has long history of assassinations and terrorist activities inside and outside Iran.
Analysts are of the opinion that Giuliani is either too stupid to know about this group, or he is being too much money to speak at the gathering, or he and other American hawks are so obsessed with animosity against Iran that they desperately to resort to extremely radical groups to show their teeth to Iran.
The Iranians refer to the MKO as monafeqin (hypocrites). They sided with Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran in the 1980s. The Saddam regime also used the group to suppress the Kurds and Shias in northern and southern Iraq.
The group was until recent years listed as a terrorist organization in the U.S. and Europe.
It is widely hated in Iran. It has close links to Israeli intelligence. Israel used the MKO operatives to assassinate a number of Iranian nuclear scientists just in the recent past.
The MKO is still widely viewed as a Marxist-Islamist cult built around the personality of its leader, Maryam Rajavi.
“We are now realistically being able to see an end to the regime in Iran,” Giuliani told a crowd of about 4,000, many of them refugees and young eastern Europeans who had been bussed in to attend the rally in return for a weekend trip to Paris.
Ridiculously, Giuliani said the current ruling system in Iran “must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents”.
In remarks which looked like a joke, Giuliani said, “Next year I want to have this convention in Tehran!” the Guardian reported.
The former New York mayor, who became a cyber security adviser in the White House before being named as Trump’s personal lawyer in April, is one of a long line of American conservative hawks to attend the MKO annual conference. Another guest on Saturday was Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and a close Trump ally.
Giuliani also claimed that the protests in Iran, which were driven by a devaluation of national currency and a rise in prices, was being orchestrated from outside.
“Those protests are not happening spontaneously,” Giuliani said.
The guest of honor at last year’s MKO conference was John Bolton, who has since become Trump’s third national security adviser. Bolton told the 2017 rally U.S. policy should be to make sure the Islamic Republic “will not last until its 40th birthday” –1 April 2019.
Giuliani was one of 33 senior U.S. officials and military brass at the year’s conference on Saturday. Bill Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, U.S. energy secretary and Democratic governor of New Mexico, was also in attendance.
Stephen Harper, former prime minister of Canada, also delivered a speech advocating regime change in Iran.
It was unclear if the speakers at the Saturday conference were paid. The NCRI and MeK have been known for paying very high fees. The money mostly comes from Saudi Arabia.
In sweltering temperatures on Saturday, around 4,000 people arrived by bus at the Parc des expositions centre. Many were draped in the MeK flag, which replaces the sign for “Allah” on the Iranian flag with a yellow lion. Others wore yellow sun hats displaying the hashtag “#Maryam Rajavi”.
Around half of the attendees were Iranian. The other half consisted of an assortment of bored-looking Poles, Czechs, Slovakians, Germans and Syrians who responded to a Facebook campaign promising travel, food and accommodation to Paris for a mere €25. Hundreds of Syrian refugees settled in Germany also attended. Many snoozed under trees during speeches.
“We saw the deal on Facebook and we agreed to come on a holiday,” said a young Syrian mother as she sat on the conference floor, fanning her two young children. “I have never seen Paris. I don’t know anything about the MeK.”