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…
.. not one American in one hundred could even identify this organization or anything about its history. And Rubin is clearly tripping over herself not to state what is abundantly obvious to anyone who examines the list of American politicians and national security figures who have been illegally taking MEK money in exchange for successful PR efforts to have them delisted and legitimized…
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
The move by Washington last week is, in effect, giving full approval to the MEK’s terror and assassination campaign in Iran. It is a stark reminder of Washington’s unwavering warpath towards Iran. Recently, some commentators have tended to misread Washington as giving a rebuff to Israel’s war rhetoric against Iran. But the clearance by Washington of a terrorist campaign in Iran…
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?
If the MEK were really what it claims to be—“the largest peaceful, secular, pro-democratic Iranian dissident group” and it didn’t need our help—we wouldn’t need to worry much. But it’s not. The MEK has almost no support among the Iranian people, who vilify the group for signing up with Saddam Hussein, killing Iranians, and then becoming a cult—or see it as a joke. There are only two ways that the MEK could achieve its goal: money or arms. Both options would likely involve the United States,
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.