An armed Iranian exile group listed as a terrorist organization by the USA and European Union may now get US support to help topple Iran’s ruling regime. The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has its European headquarters in Norway.Although the MKO has been listed as a terrorist organization by the USA and EU since 1997 and its leaders are banished from most European nations, it is not listed by the United Nations.
MEK took up residence in Iraq, where they were given sanctuary and armed by Saddam Hussein. They fought against their own country on the Iraqi side during the long Iran-Iraq war. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, MEK carried out military operations in defense of the Ba’athist regime, and its main base came under attack by U.S. forces …Their fate has become a political football, pitting the U.S. State Department against the neoconservatives in Washington who now have Iran fixed in their sights. The neocons are pushing the idea that we can use the MEK to overthrow the Iranian regime
…Timothy McVeigh is being executed because of his role in the murderous and deadly attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Paradoxically, and through a twisted sense of rights and logic, the Mojahedin-e Khalq/National Council of Resistance (MEK/NCR) and their supporters claim similar cause to detonate bombs and execute mortar attacks and other violence against Iranian government and civil structures frequently resulting in death and injury to civilians and bystanders…
After bombing MEK bases in the opening days of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the U.S. military worked out a cease-fire agreement that resulted in the group’s surrender of its heavy weapons and the concentration of about 4,000 of their members, some of whom have since repatriated voluntarily to Iran, at their base at Ashraf. …Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Europeans on her trip this past week that Washington does indeed support the efforts of France, Britain, and Germany (EU-3) to reach a diplomatic settlement on the issue. However, she also made it clear that Washington has no interest in joining them at the negotiating table or extending much in the way of carrots.
The case of Ashcroft and the MKO shows just how murky fighting terrorism can sometimes get. State Department officials first designated the MKO a”foreign terrorist organization”in 1997, accusing the Baghdad-based group of a long series of bombings, guerilla cross-border raids and targeted assassinations of Iranian leaders. Officials say the MKO aka PMOI–which originally fought to overthrow the Shah of Iran–was linked to the murder of several U.S. military officers and civilians in Iran in the 1970s.”They have an extremely bloody history,”says one U.S. counterterrorism official
The announcement of the cease-fire negotiated between the United States and the Iraqi-based Peoples Mujahideen guerillas(PMOI) is a shocking development that is counter to the US strategy in both the Iraq and the war on terror. Moreover, it demonstrates the myopic and contradictory vision that continues to guide US policy in the region.
The formerly armed Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) has been based in Iraq for twenty years with regime change as its exclusive cause. Not only was it a long term irritant for Iran, launching waves of terrorist attacks from across the border, it also waged a remarkably intensive “ albeit unsophisticated “ anti-Iranian propaganda campaign from major Western capitals. It was a tempting prospect for hawks in the U.S. administration, therefore, to use the MKO“ officially classified a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU governments “ as a tool