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\nCertain Trump administration officials favor the US government supporting the MEK, an Iranian opposition group exiled in Albania. Yet a look at the MEK\u2019s history paints a disturbing picture that should give officials in Washington major concerns about any plans for enhancing US cooperation with the organization.<\/p>\n
The People\u2019s Mujahedin of Iran, or Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), has a dark history of violence and acts of terrorism against American interests. Established in the 1960s, the Marxist-Islamist group killed members of the Shah\u2019s security apparatus on the streets of Iranian cities. Anti-American to its core, the MEK quickly earned a negative reputation in Washington for killing six US citizens, and for targeting American-owned hotels, airlines, and energy companies in Iran. The lyrics from an MEK song illustrate the vitriol which the organization held for the US during its early years: \u201cDeath to America by blood and bonfire on the lips of every Muslim is the cry of the Iranian people.\u201d<\/p>\n
The revolutionary student-led group played an important role in the Shah\u2019s 1979 ouster. However, after Ayatollah Khomeini\u2019s ascendancy and the Islamic Republic\u2019s consolidation of power, Khomeini and his loyalists refused to share power with their former ally and began to crackdown on MEK protests. MEK responded by accusing Khomeini\u2019s loyalists of monopolizing power, and then resorted to acts of violence and terrorism, including the bombing of the Office of the Prime Minister, killing both President Mohammad-Ali Rajai and Prime Minister Mohammad Javad Bahonar.<\/p>\n\n
Having been forced to take refuge in Iraq under Saddam Hussein\u2019s protection, the MEK sided with Baghdad in the eight-year conflict with Iran. In 1986, Saddam Hussein provided the MEK with a military base at Camp Ashraf, located 50 miles from the Iranian border. From there, the organization waged attacks in Iran with arms provided by the Iraqi government. Immediately after the implementation of the ceasefire between Iran and Iraq in 1988, roughly 7,000 Iraqi-backed MEK fighters launched Operation Forugh-e Javidan (Eternal Light) aiming to oust the regime in Tehran, only to be crushed in a counter-offensive days later by Iranian forces. In 1999, the MEK took its revenge by assassinating Lieutenant General Ali Sayyad-Shirazi, Deputy Chief of Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff, who had suppressed the MEK\u2019s incursion.<\/p>\n
As part of its overture to Iran, former President Bill Clinton\u2019s administration designated the MEK a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). In 2002, when President George W. Bush was seeking to build up international support for his plans to invade Iraq, he cited Saddam Hussein\u2019s record of sponsoring \u201cterrorist organizations that direct violence against Iran, Israel, and Western governments\u201d, a tacit reference to Baghdad\u2019s patronage of the MEK. Meanwhile, in the post-Saddam environment, more figures in the US government began to view the MEK as a tool to pressure the Islamic Republic. As such, the US military began secretly training the MEK in Nevada. \u201cWe did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the Department of Energy owns all this land in southern Nevada,\u201d a former senior US intelligence official told investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.<\/p>\n
In Baghdad however, the Shi\u2019a government no longer welcomed MEK\u2019s presence in Iraq, and tacitly allowed the Iranian military to attack MEK\u2019s base on its territory. By 2012, when it became clear that the MEK had no security in Iraq, the Obama administration, under much pressure from well-funded lobbyists, removed the group from the State Department\u2019s FTO list. Meanwhile, the US government reached a secret deal that would relocate roughly 3,000 MEK members from Iraq, where they no longer had security, to Albania. As one former US diplomat involved in the deal explained, the relocation agreement had to be done secretly given the extent to which many government officials in France, Iraq, and Iran would have objected had they been aware of it at the time.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/MEK_Albania_Spiegel_1.jpg)
How has a Marxist-Islamist group that defined itself based on an ideology hostile to America gained popularity in Washington?<\/strong><\/p>\n As the MEK openly calls for the overthrow of the Iranian government, and the recognition of Maryam Rajavi (the wife of MEK\u2019s founder) as Iran\u2019s next leader, the group has garnered strong support from Trump administration officials. But how, one must ask, has a Marxist-Islamist group that defined itself based on an ideology hostile to America gained popularity in Washington?<\/p>\n MEK\u2019s role in exposing Iran\u2019s nuclear activities during the early 2000s, gained the support of DC, where some officials unwisely began seeing it as a force capable of leading Iran into a post-Islamic Republic. Credible reports further suggest that MEK has paid handsome speaking fees to US officials for their appearance. Addressing MEK\u2019s \u201cFree Iran\u201d conference in 2017, National Security Advisor John Bolton proclaimed that \u201cthe only solution is to change the [Iranian] regime itself.\u201d Bolton also predicted that before 2019 \u201cwe here will celebrate in Tehran.\u201d In January 2019, Ayatollah Khamenei, told a Qom audience that \u201c\u2026 one of the US politicians [Bolton] said that he hopes and wishes to celebrate this year\u2019s Christmas in Tehran. Christmas celebration was a few days ago\u2026 they are truly first-class idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n Vagueness and a lack of transparency surround the MEK\u2019s source(s) of funding. Numerous investigative journalists in Albania have explored this question. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia shows support for the MEK politically, yet there is no solid evidence to back up the common assumption that the Saudi government finances the group. Fortunately for Tehran, opposition to the Islamic Republic has been fragmented. Deep divisions between various opposing factions\u2014including the MEK, monarchists, and various non-Persian ethnic minorities \u2014have thwarted the establishment of any unified opposition. As the Middle East expert Borzou Daragahi recently explained, a common perception among Iran\u2019s ethnic minorities is that for all their reasons to loathe the Islamic Republic regime, both the MEK and the monarchists would be more hostile to them than their ruling government.<\/p>\n Daragahi also noted that officials in Tehran do not perceive the MEK as a grave threat to the regime\u2019s survival, using it instead as a prop to persuade more Iranians that the \u201copposition\u201d is dark and beholden to hostile foreign powers targeting Iran since 1979.<\/p>\n
\nThe Regime Change Debate<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/MKO_Albania_Cyber_Terror_1.jpg)