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..
Closer to the truth, is not that the MEK’s Western supporters don’t know, it’s that they don’t care. It’s as simple as the proposition that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The MEK is attractive because it offers to provide a neat solution to the problem of a belligerent Iran.At a recent Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill Democratic Congressman Bob Filner was told by an expert witness that the MEK had a”discursive ideology with violent elements”. Filner replied,”So what, so what!”
The current debate over delisting seems premature to most experts, but it presents an important opportunity to restore the rights of hundreds of individuals trapped at Camp Ashraf. Removing the MEK from the U.S. terrorist list would do nothing to end the human rights violations faced by MEK members. Only by dismantling the camp, disarming the group, separating the leadership from the rank and file, and providing low-level members rehabilitation support can the human rights situation be resolved.
The New York Times also recently noted that the Obama administration — far from abandoning the MEK members in Iraq — has been engaged in active diplomacy to get them out of harm’s way, eventually hoping to relocate them to a third country outside Iran (where they’re also likely to face persecution) or Iraq. However, the diplomacy, reported the Times, has thus far hit a dead end because “the residents are refusing to leave, and no countries have come forward to welcome them.”
Mr. Dean’s speech stunned me. But then came Rudolph W. Giuliani saying virtually the same thing. At a conference in Paris last December, an emotional Mr. Giuliani told Ms. Rajavi,[MKO/MEK/PMOI so called leader]”These are the most important yearnings of the human soul that you support, and for your organization to be described as a terrorist organization is just simply a disgrace.”I thought I was watching The Onion News Network. Did Mr. Giuliani know whom he was talking about? Evidently not.
The MeK’s aka MKO/PMOI history of terrorist attacks includes repeated attacks on US businessmen and military personnel in pre-revolution Iran, and the group was one of the founding members of the “Foreign Terrorist Organization” list when it was created by the US State Department in 1997. The group is typified by its harsh reaction to any criticism, and was reported by Human Rights Watch to have run a private system of detention centers …
The selective application of the label of “terrorist” based on who the U.S. is choosing to fight at any given point is further evidence of the bankruptcy of this term.”Terrorists”are those who are interred in CIA black sites, subject to legally sanctioned torture and killed without public outcry; but as the case of the MEK /MKO/PMOIshows the very definition of who is a terrorist is based not upon what acts individuals or groups commit, but upon how favorably or unfavorably those acts are …
Trita Parsi, founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, discusses the Mujahideen-e Khalq’s tendency to accuse their critics of working for the Iranian government; how constant US belligerence and the MEK’s violent radicalism serve as useful foils for the Iranian regime – discrediting dissidents and keeping the people in fear; how violent coups beget radical authoritarian governments, while nonviolent methods often deliver democratic results; the many former US officials now employed as well-paid lobbyists…
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses the MEK’s rightful place on the State Department’s (admittedly flawed and politicized) terrorism list; why a lack of determined opposition (unlike to, say, Jonathan Pollard’s pardon) will probably get the MEK what it wants; why Americans never seem to catch on even after being lied into war again and again;…