“The [State] Department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of U.S. citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on U.S. soil in 1992,” it said in a statement. It “also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members
as the US made its case for invading Iraq in 2003, it cited the Iraqi leader’s support for the MEK/MKO/PMOI as evidence of his support for terrorism.But now, after a two-year lobbying campaign that enlisted many prominent US politicians and former military officers, the group will no longer be considered a terrorist organisation
So how do you land an upgrade from terrorist to democrat? That’s a no-brainer; you hire the best lobbying money can buy – and invest in effective PR. In MEK’s case, that’s been the job of three top Washington firms; DLA Piper; Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld; and DiGenova & Toensing. These three have bagged nearly $1.5 million over the past year to legitimise MEK at all costs…
Although the list of foreign terrorist organizations unfortunately has come to be regarded as a kind of general-purpose way of bestowing condemnation or acceptance on a group, we should remember that delisting changes nothing about the character of the MEK/MKO/PMOI. It is still a cult. It still has near-zero popular support in Iran. It still has a despicably violent history. As for more recent chapters of that history…
there is undoubtedly more to the decision to delist the group than the fact that it showered money on former U.S. officials — funds that were probably extracted from American taxpayers at some point. .. numerous reports indicate that the cult has been as busy as ever. As recently as 2009, for example, the U.S. State Department warned that “MEK leadership and members across the world maintain the capacity and will to commit terrorist acts
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…
This is a bloody-minded, bloody-handed organization with a past history of assassination and involvement in ethnic cleansing, murder, and human rights abuses on a large scale.Does the United States really think it can adopt its own extremist organization, domesticated and house-trained like a well-mannered pet to be used against Iran, without consequence?
And now, with the MEK aka MKO/PMOI, we have a group that, at least according to some reports, appears to have intensified its terrorism, and yet they are removed from the list. Why? Because now they are aligned against the prime enemy of the US and Israel – and working closely with those two nations – and are therefore, magically, no longer “terrorists.”
..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.