{"id":10209,"date":"2019-09-26T10:23:52","date_gmt":"2019-09-26T06:53:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/?p=10209"},"modified":"2021-01-21T19:28:17","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T15:58:17","slug":"cement-ties-to-mek-terrorists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/posts\/10209","title":{"rendered":"Cement ties to MEK Terrorists!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran hawks cement ties to former US-designated terrorist group<\/strong><\/p>\n

United Against Nuclear Iran’s CEO embraces the MEK as his group prepared to host Pompeo.<\/p>\n

Demonstrators rally to support a leadership change in Iran outside the UN headquarters in New York City, New York, US, Sept. 24, 2019.<\/p>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Leading Iran hawks are increasingly open about their ties to a controversial opposition group, triggering Iranian retaliation and posing a quandary for the Donald Trump administration.<\/p>\n

On the eve of the hawkish United Against Nuclear Iran’s annual summit featuring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, UANI CEO Mark Wallace Tuesday convened a gathering of Iranian opposition groups. The event was billed as an unprecedented gathering of diverse opposition groups, including Kurds, Balochs and Azerbaijanis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first time in history, since the Iranian revolution in 1978 and 1979, that such a broad cross-section of the leaders and delegates from Iranian dissident \u2026 groups have gathered in a convention for Iran’s future,\u201d Wallace said. \u201cThis gathering demonstrates the willingness of many here today to set aside many of the disagreements of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

But attendance was dominated by the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq (MEK) and its allies. Iran considers the MEK a terrorist group, as the United States did until 2012.
\nAlso read<\/p>\n

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UANI denied any involvement with Tuesday’s event and said Wallace convened it in his \u201cpersonal capacity.\u201d The program for the event at the Roosevelt Hotel, however, listed UANI as the organizer. UANI said that was an error.
\nThe program for the event listed UANI as the organizer. UANI says that was an error.<\/p>\n

The group may be reluctant to be seen as openly rooting for the MEK, which advocates for overthrowing the ruling clerics in Tehran and has critics even among Iranians who oppose Tehran. A Los Angeles-based Iranian American pro-democracy activist told Al-Monitor that people in that community had advised UANI against being involved in an event including the MEK and controversial ethnic separatist groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerrible choices,\u201d the activist said. \u201cMany separatist groups [were invited] \u2026 They [UANI] did not listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several days ago, an umbrella group of several Iranian Kurdish political parties \u2014 including the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (PDK-I), Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and two branches of the left-wing Komala party \u2014 announced it would skip the event but did not offer a reason. The event had signs for several of the groups, but their seats were empty.<\/p>\n

Openly embracing the MEK could also put the Trump administration in an uncomfortable spot. The administration does not officially support regime change, but recently stopped ruling out the MEK as a political alternative.<\/p>\n

Regardless of UANI’s denials, Al-Monitor spoke with several participants at the event who believed the group was involved. Tehran seems to think so as well, and announced Tuesday that it would be designating UANI a terrorist group following similar action against the hawkish Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the one hand, the United States deceitfully speaks of compromise and negotiation,\u201d Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi said Tuesday. \u201cAnd on the other hand, it organizes, finances and arms criminal and terrorist groups \u2026 and provides them with intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Brodsky, UANI’s policy director, denounced the remarks in a tweet from inside the Future of Iran conference: \u201cFirst FDD is declared as a terrorist organization. Now, Iran’s regime follows by declaring UANI a terrorist organization. The regime\u2019s war on research continues.\u201d He later wrote on Twitter that, like Wallace, he was attending in his personal capacity.<\/p>\n

Minutes later, UANI’s CEO invited to the stage Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lawyer and a longtime MEK advocate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call them the regime of terror,\u201d Giuliani said to thunderous applause. \u201cWe’re here today, and we’re going to support a regime of freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Laura Rozen contributed to this report.
\nJulian Pecquet , Al-monitor.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran hawks cement ties to former US-designated terrorist group United Against Nuclear Iran’s CEO embraces the MEK as his group prepared to host Pompeo. Demonstrators rally to support a leadership…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8815,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[85,642,20],"module":[81],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-10209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-mujahedin-khalq-terrorism","tag-paid-advocacy-for-mko","tag-third-view-mek","module-article","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10209"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=10209"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=10209"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=10209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}