Iran, having suffered a long record of the killing of its officials in bombings and other acts of terror, mostly carried out by the terrorist Mujahedin Khalq Organization (MKO) regards itself a victim of terrorism.Out of the 17,000 Iranians killed in terrorist attacks since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, some 12,000 of them have fallen victim to MKO terrorism.
Four years after Sarah Palin famously accused then-candidate Barack Obama of “palling round with terrorists,” it can be said truthfully. Last Friday, news leaked that the U.S. State Department is going to remove the Iranian terrorist group Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) from its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
“The US government’s decision to take Mujahedin-e Khalq, the exiled Iranian organization, off its list of terrorist groups is a vivid example of the influence of money and lobbying in Washington. At worst it highlights the analytical fog that clouds many US policy heavyweights’ view of Iran.”
MEK is led by the husband-and-wife team of Massoud Rajavi and Maryam Rajavi. Massoud Rajavi heads the organization’s military forces. Experts say that MEK has increasingly come to resemble a personality cult that is devoted to Mr. Rajavi’s secular interpretation of the Koran and is prone to sudden, dramatic ideological shifts.
And the big two cases that came down—or, really, the two situations that came down were first with the MEK, which is a former Iranian group living in Iraq that had been listed on a U.S. terrorist list. That means that you couldn’t support that group in any way in the United States. They’ve listed the MEK aka MKO/PMOI as a terrorist group. ..
The opposition has lost much of its aura in Iran.”The People’s Mojahedin are opponents in exile and have lost all legitimacy in Iran since the episode of the war with Iraq, where they conducted operations against the Iranian army,”explains Thierry Coville. The”Iranian public opinion far from considering them as opponents see them as traitors.
The selective branding of WikiLeaks, the MEK aka MKO/PMOI or other organizations aligns with the security interests of the U.S. While the MEK may share some of the same goals, namely, regime change in Iran, the labeling indicates an underlying desire to justify alliances in the name of security.
This week saw two separate but equally important events which cut’s to the core of this debate. The first important event is the ruling of the European court of human rights ruling, that Abu Hamza Al-Masri should be extradited to the United States. Abu Hamza stands accused of trying to set up a terrorist training camp…The second important event has been the de-listing of the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MKO or MEK)
The six people the MEK/MKO/PMOI killed in the 1970s are still dead. They were dead when the State Department designated the MEK as a foreign terrorist organization and they have been dead all the years since and they won’t get any less dead when the State Department removes the MEK from its FTO list. The MEK is the organization that once allied with Saddam Hussein; that historical fact hasn’t changed…
Perhaps, removing the MeK/MKO/PMOI from the US DOS list will make it possible for its members to interact more freely with the ICRC, or return to their families in Iran with more ease… if the MeK actually decided to stop its overt activities as well as covert terrorist operations against Iran and accept a more democratic structure in order not to be listed as a terrorist organization again, it would perhaps die in a few years.