In from the cold, and now on Pennsylvania Avenue just a block from the White House!<\/p>\n
The National Council of Resistance of Iran, an umbrella group that includes an armed wing (Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK), opened its new Washington office Thursday.<\/p>\n
A fierce foe of the Tehran government, the group — which the regime brands a violent cult — had been on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations since 1997. The NCRI hasn’t been able to operate in this country since 2003.<\/p>\n
There had been 3,000-plus MEK members in Camp Ashraf in Iraq near the Iranian border. The MEK turned over its weapons to the Army — and has rejected violence, an NCRI official told us. But pressure from Iran led the Iraqis to close the camp recently and move the MEK closer to the capital — where they get hammered regularly by mortar fire. (The group’s leadership is based in Paris.)<\/p>\n
A lengthy lobbying and legal campaign — backed by folks such as former U.N. ambassador John Bolton; Rep. Dana Rohrabacher; former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich (R), Rudy Giuliani (R) and Howard Dean (D); and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell — eventually forced the State Department to remove the organization from the terrorist sponsor list.<\/p>\n
NCRI officials noted that Bolton, former Obama national security adviser Jim Jones, former congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and other backers attended the opening of the office of what’s now styled as “Iran’s parliament-in-exile.”<\/p>\n
By AL Kamen, (In the loop)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u2026 A lengthy lobbying and legal campaign \u2014 backed by folks such as former U.N. ambassador John Bolton; Rep. Dana Rohrabacher; former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich (R), Rudy Giuliani (R) and Howard Dean (D); and former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell \u2014 eventually forced the State Department \u2026<\/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":[98],"class_list":["post-5135","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-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5135","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=5135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5135\/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=5135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5135"},{"taxonomy":"module","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/module?post=5135"},{"taxonomy":"ctype","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ctype?post=5135"},{"taxonomy":"blog","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nejatngo.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog?post=5135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}