Most Iranians and a grim minority of Western journalists and scholars understand that the MKO has a Hitleresque type leadership. People who follow the activities of the MKO know that the US State Department designates the MKO as a”cult-like”terrorist organization that”uses propaganda and terrorism to achieve its objectives.”..to the mainstream public the MKO may appear to be a legitimate organization pushing bonafides democracy..
… The second group surviving pre-revolutionary armed warfare was Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO, MEK, PMOI, NCR, NLA). Mujahedin insisted to continue their armed strategy and rejected new rules as they had their own interpretation and analysis of the post-revolution era. They refused to deliver their weapons over to the newly formed regime and instead opened a front of controversy that led them to pursue their goals through violent means that eventually culminated to terrorism. The role of Pahlavi’s authoritarian and repressive regime for the birth of the two challenging groups, among many other armed groups, was inevitable …
According to the CFR’s profile of Mujahideen-e-Khalq, the group has been engaged in terrorist activities for the better part of forty years dating back to before the Islamic revolution:The group has targeted Iranian government officials and government facilities in Iran and abroad, and during the 1970s, it attacked Americans in Iran. While the group says it does not intentionally target civilians, it has often risked civilian casualties. It routinely aims its attacks at government buildings in crowded cities..
The terrorist Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) had attempted to lure Iranian nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi into cooperation, but it went for the option of assassination after Ali Mohammadi turned down the offer, his wife said..The MKO is behind a slew of assassinations and bombings inside Iran, a number of EU parliamentarians said in a recent letter in which they slammed a British court decision to remove the MKO from the British terror list. The EU officials also added that the group has no public support within Iran because of their role in helping Saddam Hussein ..
MEK has attacked US military and diplomatic personnel, and has been described by former members as a cult: ideologically, the MEK started out as a far leftist group, but like the neocons who have taken up its cause, has traveled to the other end of the political spectrum, offering itself up to the US … MEK’s American supporters want to use it as a battering ram against the Iranian regime, what support they had inside Iran evaporated when they fled to Iraq and took up with Saddam Hussein, whose government succored and armed them. MEK fought in the Iran-Iraq war – on the Iraqi side.
However, there are limits to the logic of”the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. The decision by the US and UK to permit arms sales to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq propped up a regime even worse than the one it was fighting against (Iran), and enabled Saddam to subsequently invade Kuwait…. there is a strong credibility gap between the group’s rhetoric and its past actions, especially its associations with Saddam between 1986 and 2003.According to the Council on Foreign Relations, MEK directly participated in the savage reprisals against ..
..“Material support meant to ‘promot[e] peaceable, lawful conduct’ can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. “Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups-legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds-all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks.”..
Imagine if a group of leading American liberals met on foreign soil with — and expressed vocal support for — supporters of a terrorist group that had (a) a long history of hateful anti-American rhetoric, (b) an active role in both the takeover of a U.S. embassy and Saddam Hussein’s brutal 1991 repression of Iraqi Shiites, (c) extensive financial and military support from Saddam, (d) multiple acts of violence aimed at civilians, and (e) years of being designated a”Terrorist organization”by the U.S. under Presidents of both parties, a designation which is ongoing? The ensuing uproar and orgies of denunciation would be deafening.
Well, Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says that the Bush administration (and especially Dick Cheney) helped to fund groups which the U.S. claims are terrorists.. former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani,..- who all said that the terrorists were going to get us if we didn’t jettison the liberties granted under the Bill of Rights – are now supporting terrorists..Does American exceptionalism mean that terrorism is okay when we promote it? Some in government have been acting as if they believe so.
… The focal point here is that it is not the status of a terrorist group like MKO aka MEK,PMOI on a terrorist list that calls for its recognition but the amount of its perpetrated atrocities including the actual acts, the perpetrators of acts of terror themselves and their motives in the past, present and future. Though there are states that consider MKO a terrorist group and are decisive in their decision, but the existing problem is lack of a general consensus on the definition of terrorist behavior first and ….