https:\/\/dlb.nejatngo.org\/Media\/Report\/Soap_Box_MEK_201811.mp4<\/a><\/video><\/div>\nSaddam Hussein, who was fighting a bloody war against Iran with the backing of the UK and the US, saw an opportunity to deploy the exiled MEK fighters against the Islamic republic. In 1986, he offered the group weapons, cash and a vast military base named Camp Ashraf, only 50 miles from the border with Iran.<\/p>\n
For almost two decades, under their embittered leader Massoud Rajavi, the MEK staged attacks against civilian and military targets across the border in Iran and helped Saddam suppress his own domestic enemies. But after siding with Saddam \u2013 who indiscriminately bombed Iranian cities and routinely used chemical weapons in a war that cost a million lives \u2013 the MEK lost nearly all the support it had retained inside Iran. Members were now widely regarded as traitors.<\/p>\n
Isolated inside its Iraqi base, under Rajavi\u2019s tightening grip, the MEK became cult-like. A report commissioned by the US government, based on interviews within Camp Ashraf, later concluded that the MEK had \u201cmany of the typical characteristics of a cult, such as authoritarian control, confiscation of assets, sexual control (including mandatory divorce and celibacy), emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options\u201d.<\/p>\n
After the US invasion of Iraq, the MEK launched a lavish lobbying campaign to reverse its designation as a terrorist organization \u2013 despite reports implicating the group in assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists as recently as 2012. Rajavi has not been seen since 2003 \u2013 most analysts assume he is dead \u2013 but under the leadership of his wife, Maryam Rajavi, the MEK has won considerable support from sections of the US and European right, eager for allies in the fight against Tehran.<\/p>\n
In 2009, the UK delisted the MEK as a terror group. The Obama administration removed the group from the US terror list in 2012, and later helped negotiate its relocation to Albania.<\/p>\n
At the annual \u201cFree Iran\u201d conference that the group stages in Paris each summer, dozens of elected US and UK representatives \u2013 along with retired politicians and military officials \u2013 openly call for the overthrow of the Islamic republic and the installation of Maryam Rajavi as the leader of Iran. At last year\u2019s Paris rally, the Conservative MP David Ames announced that \u201cregime change \u2026 is at long last within our grasp\u201d. At the same event, Bolton \u2013 who championed war with Iran long before he joined the Trump administration \u2013 announced that he expected the MEK to be in power in Tehran before 2019. \u201cThe behavior and the objectives of the regime are not going to change and, therefore, the only solution is to change the regime itself,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n
The main attraction at this year\u2019s Paris conference was another longtime MEK supporter, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, now Donald Trump\u2019s lawyer. \u201cThe mullahs must go. The ayatollah must go,\u201d he told the crowd. \u201cAnd they must be replaced by a democratic government which Madam Rajavi represents.\u201d Giuliani also praised the work of MEK \u201cresistance units\u201d inside Iran, that he credited with stoking a recent wave of protests over the struggling economy. \u201cThese protests are not happening by accident,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re being coordinated by many of our people in Albania.\u201d (Giuliani, Bolton and the late John McCain are among the US politicians who have travelled to Albania to show support for the MEK.)<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, back in Albania, the MEK is struggling to hold on to its own members, who have begun to defect. The group is also facing increased scrutiny from local media and opposition parties, who question the terms of the deal that brought the MEK fighters to Tirana.<\/p>\n
It would be hard to find a serious observer who believes the MEK has the capacity or support within Iran to overthrow the Islamic republic. But the US and UK politicians loudly supporting a tiny revolutionary group stranded in Albania are playing a simpler game: backing the MEK is the easiest way to irritate Tehran. And the MEK, in turn, is only one small part of a wider Trump administration strategy for the Middle East, which aims to isolate and economically strangle Iran.<\/p>\n
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![\"Somaye](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mohamamdi_Albania_1.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Somaye](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mohammadi_Mostafa_Somaye_1.jpg\")