Former deputy director of the US State Department’s Middle East Intelligence Office believes the U.S. scratched off Mujahedin-e Khalq organization from the FTO list to pressure Iran over its nuclear program.<\/p>\n
“The MEK has a rather unsavory history of opposing the release of the US hostages in January 1981, terrorism in Iran, a long period when much of it was a mercenary brigade in Saddam’s Army, and, of course, its cult-like and bizarre internal politics that have involved some insider human rights violations,” Wayne White told Habilian.<\/p>\n
“That’s why, if someone wants to place the list game with it, it probably should be on the list, not off of it,” he added.<\/p>\n
Asked if MEK poses a threat to U.S. national security, White said, “they are intensely pesky, have tons of (typically naive) supporters, and if they chose to act against the US they have assets.”<\/p>\n
“Since plenty of silly Americans comprise their only major source of support (and probably funding), I doubt they would want to bite the hands that feed them,” Wayne White, now a scholar at the Middle East Institute of Columbia institute, further added.<\/p>\n
He finally said, “I personally just wish they had died out by the late 1980’s after their defeat in Iran & were barely a memory.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former deputy director of the US State Department\u2019s Middle East Intelligence Office believes the U.S. \u200escratched off Mujahedin-e Khalq organization from the FTO list to pressure Iran over its nuclear \u200eprogram.\u200e\u200e\u201cThe MEK has a rather unsavory history of opposing the release of the US hostages in January \u200e\u200f1981\u200f\u200e, \u200eterrorism in Iran…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":-1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[85,20],"module":[67],"ctype":[17],"blog":[306],"class_list":["post-4895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mujahedin-khalq-proxy-force","tag-mujahedin-khalq-terrorism","tag-third-view-mek","module-news","ctype-story","blog-habilian-association"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895","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=4895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=4895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}