So what is the MEK? Well, that depends on who you ask… The MEK/MKO/PMOI says it renounced violence in 2001 and professes to be leading the resistance to the Iranian regime. That claim, in addition to lucrative payments to former officials in both parties, has bought it a lot of attention and friends in Washington. But how can senior officials take money from a terrorist group?
Dozens of retired U.S. government officials, spanning the liberal-to-conservative political spectrum and some paid tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees, have joined a well-orchestrated lobbying campaign to remove MKO/MEK/PMOI from the list of FTOs..Prominent Americans should not be accepting payments and supporting a group that has shed American blood in the past and has no viable support inside Iran. We urge Secretary Clinton to keep the MEK on the terrorist roster.
The protest took place as the State Department prepares to decide whether to remove the organization from its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The MEK denies that it supports terrorism…”If the MEK campaign is successful,”Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council said,”it means that America’s national security is officially on sale to the highest bidder, and terror groups are free to set U.S. policies if the price is right.”..
It is not hard to imagine how Americans would react if they learned that Al Qaeda had hired top lobbyists to help promote its agenda in Congress. Or if they heard that influential active and retired government officials were being paid to attest to Hezbollah’s good character. They would be appalled. But, amazingly, a group similar to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah is doing just that. It is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian exile group that is on the Department of State’s list of FTOs ..
The MEK did not become “radical” as a result of being “listed” as a terrorist organization in 1997. It was an extremist group way before that date. What fuels its radicalism and taste for terrorism is not how it is termed by the State Department or the nature of its relationship with the U.S, but its fanatical ideology, pugnacious discourse, undemocratic structure, leadership, mission and agenda…among the FTOs, the MEK is in one grim sense one of the few exceptions ..
… MUJAHADIN-E KHALQ ORGANIZATION. aka MEK; MKO; Mujahadin-e Khalq; Muslim Iranian Students’ Society; National Council of Resistance; NCR; Organization of the People’s Holy Warriors of Iran; the National Liberation Army of Iran; NLA; People’s Mujahadin Organization of Iran; PMOI; National Council of Resistance of Iran; NCRI; Sazeman-e Mujahadin-e Khalq-e Iran. Description: The Mujahadin-E Khalq Organization (MEK) was originally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on October 8, 1997..
The organization, accused of having a cult-like culture, bought a full page ad in the Washington Post and has purchased the support of dozens of American politicians and national security experts. The Huffington Post lists 31 prominent people from both sides of the political aisle who have appeared at Mujahedeen Khalq aka MKO/MEK/PMOI-related events.We get analysis from Narimon Safavi, a Worldview regular and president of the Pasfarda Arts & Culture Exchange.
Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for IPS News, discusses the infamous “laptop of death” documents from which the vast majority of “evidence” about Iran’s supposed clandestine nuclear weapons program comes from; the conspicuous mistakes in the documents that lead him to believe a foreign intelligence agency (probably Mossad) fabricated them; and how the MEK launders information, passing off documents sourced from Israel as their own…
A banned Iranian Terrorist group has been mounting a persistent and expensive lobbying campaign in both Canada and the United States to have its ban lifted. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq/MKO/MEK/PMOI has a violent past. Some describe the group as an authoritarian cult. But the group has supporters, including high profile current and former politicians who see MEK as a possible instrument of regime change in Iran.
The MEK has a radically different agenda, and like some of its neoconservative counterparts, wants to silence independent voices opposing their pro-war agenda. The MEK and these neo-conservatives sought hard to hide the true source and reasons for the attacks against prominent Iranian Americans and NIAC. The MEK knows very well how despised they are in the Iranian-American community. More often than not, their attack dogs pretend to be Monarchists or of some other denomination..