![\"Michele](\"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Michele-Flournoy-2.jpg\")
Former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Mich\u00e8le Flournoy<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cWhen she agreed to the engagement, Ms. Flournoy was unaware of the affiliation,\u201d a Flournoy spokesperson told The Daily Beast. \u201cShe would not have participated had she known of it, and she refused payment for the engagement once she learned of it. She has no affiliation with the MEK and will never appear at their conference again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flournoy is the rare Democratic A-lister who\u2019s publicly linked themselves to the MEK, which has historically enjoyed support from right-wing neoconservative allies such as Giuliani, former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton, former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, retired Gen. Jack Keane, who is a regular on Fox News, and others. On the other side of the aisle, former Vermont governor, Democratic National Committee chairman, and also-ran presidential candidate Howard Dean has made paid and unpaid speeches for the MEK.<\/p>\n
\u201c[W]hen there is an internal regime change, and a government comes to power that renounces its revolutionary aims and terrorism, the United States will be the first in line to engage it,\u201d Flournoy told the summit audience. \u201cIn the meantime, we must continue to applaud and support the important work of diaspora groups like yours that keep alive the vision of a secular, free, and democratic Iran.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT), tweeted, \u201cI\u2019m tempted to say that this is horrible staff work from Flournoy\u2019s team in letting her do this, these invitations can often be deceptive, but at this point no former nat sec official really has any excuse for not knowing what the MEK is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial media has been abuzz with words of condemnation from journalists and other users who said it was both \u2018shocking\u2019 and \u2018embarrassing\u2019 for Michele Flournoy, former U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, to address the annual summit of the notorious anti-Iran [MEK] terrorist group,\u201d Iranian state media crowed.<\/p>\n
The speaker\u2019s list at this year\u2019s summit included a mixed bag of names, from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).<\/p>\n
While the MEK began in 1963 as a revolutionary movement agitating for human rights and democracy in Iran, it has more recently been described as \u201ca secretive, cult-like group that resembles a militant, Islamist version of the Church of Scientology.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the 1970s, the MEK \u201cstaged terrorist attacks inside Iran and killed several U.S. military personnel and civilians working on defense projects in Tehran,\u201d according to the State Department, and supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in the capital city. In the early 1990s, State says the MEK \u201cconducted attacks on Iranian embassies in 13 different countries, demonstrating the group’s ability to mount large-scale operations overseas.\u201d In June 1998, MEK planted bombs in Tehran that killed three people.<\/p>\n
The group also fought against the U.S. in the early stages of the Iraq War. According to the U.S. Army\u2019s official history of the conflict, \u201cby 2003 the MEK has become an elite element in the Iraqi Army and had fought against Coalition forces in March and April of that year.\u201d MEK forces later surrendered to American special operations forces and the U.S.-led coalition provided security for the group members detained in Camp Ashraf facing attacks by Iranian-backed militias. MEK members were subsequently evacuated from Iraq to Albania.<\/p>\n
Interviews with MEK dissidents conducted by Human Rights Watch in 2005 included testimony from ex-members about \u201cabuses ranging from detention and persecution of ordinary members wishing to leave the organization, to lengthy solitary confinements, severe beatings, and torture of dissident members.\u201d A 2009 study by the RAND Corporation alleged that MEK displayed various \u201ccult characteristics,\u201d such as \u201cintense ideological exploitation and isolation,\u201d \u201csexual control,\u201d \u201cemotional isolation,\u201d and other such tactics.<\/p>\n
In April, Facebook exposed a troll farm run by the MEK. However, the illicit initiative \u201cachieved little to no audience visibility,\u201d largely failing to gain significant numbers of new followers, according to Facebook.<\/p>\n
By Justin Rohrlich, The Daily Beast<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
OH?\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Mich\u00e8le Flournoy claims she didn\u2019t realize this weekend\u2019s conference where she was a featured speaker on regime change was put on by the once-terror-listed MEK. An Obama-era…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13011,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[24544,79,85,642,20],"module":[67],"ctype":[17],"blog":[109],"class_list":["post-13010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-organizations-propaganda-system","tag-michele-flournoy","tag-mujahedin-khalq-declining","tag-mujahedin-khalq-terrorism","tag-paid-advocacy-for-mko","tag-third-view-mek","module-news","ctype-story","blog-western-bloggers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13010","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=13010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13010\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13010"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=13010"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=13010"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=13010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}