An ex-member of the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as the MEK, PMOI and NCRI) said the terrorist group moves in line with the White House policies and is now seeking to empty the Iranian society from hope.
Massoud Khodabandeh, a former high-ranking MKO element, made the revelations in an interview with FNA on Saturday.
Ebrahim Khodabandeh: I was manipulated to tell lies
He explained that after hostilities between Iran and the US increased and the Iranian people showed resistance against Washington’s policies, the MKO were ordered by the White House to make the Iranians disappointed at their government and country.
Khodabandeh noted the propaganda operation of the terrorist group, and said the MKO members who are active in the social media have been trying dissuade the public in Iran from supporting any side in case war breaks out between the US and Iran.
“Such a stance is clearly understood as betrayal to your nation in any part of the world and in any country”but the MKO members are attempting to display it as legitimate with their social media propaganda, he said.
“This betrayal has directly originated from the White House,” Khodabandeh underlined.
In relevant remarks late in July, Head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali said Washington is using the MKO terrorists to attain its goals against Tehran until their expiry date arrives.
“The Monafeqin (hypocrites as MKO terrorists are called in Iran) have always been a plaything in the US hands and of course, they have an expiry date,”General Jalali said in Tehran.
He expressed pleasure that the MKO terrorist group had been expelled from Iraq, and said,”Their headquarters is now in Albania and they are pursuing a new plot using the internet.”
General Jalali explained that the MKO terrorists were misusing some economic weaknesses inside Iran and attempting to create chaos in the country, adding that the foreign social media have turned into a new ground for the MKO to exercise their terrorist moves.
The MKO is listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community. Its members fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq, where they received support from then dictator Saddam Hussein.
The notorious outfit has carried out numerous attacks against Iranian civilians and government officials for several decades.
In 2012, the US State Department removed the MKO from its list of designated terrorist organizations under intense lobbying by groups associated to Saudi Arabia and other regimes adversarial to Iran.
A few years ago, MKO members were relocated from their Camp Ashraf in Iraq’s Diyala Province to Camp Hurriyet (Camp Liberty), a former US military base in Baghdad, and were later sent to Albania.
Those members, who have managed to escape, have revealed MKO’s scandalous means of access to money, almost exclusively coming from Saudi Arabia.
The MKO terrorist group specified the targets as Major General Qassem Soleimani, who commands the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and Iranian Judiciary Chief Seyed Ebrahim Rayeesi.
The terrorist organization said it would “welcome” their assassination, adding that it desired for the ranking officials to “join” Asadollah Lajevardi, Tehran’s former chief prosecutor, and Ali Sayyad-Shirazi, a former commander of the Iranian Army’s Ground Forces during Iraq’s 1980-88 war against Iran.
Earlier in June, a leaked audio of a phone conversation between two members of MKO, revealed Saudi Arabia has colluded with the MKO elements to frame Iran for the recent tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf.
In the audio, which is being released by the Iran Front Page for the first time, Shahram Fakhteh, an official member and the person in charge of MKO’s cyber operations, is heard talking with a US-based MKO sympathizer named Daei-ul-Eslam in Persian, IFP news reported.
In this conversation, the two elements discuss the MKO’s efforts to introduce Iran as the culprit behind the recent tanker attacks in the Persian Gulf, and how the Saudis contacted them to pursue the issue.
“In the past week we did our best to blame the [Iranian] regime for the (oil tanker) blasts. Saudis have called Sister Maryam (Rajavi)’s office to follow up on the results, [to get] a conclusion of what has been done, and the possible consequences,” Fakhteh is heard saying.
“I guess this can have different consequences. It can send the case to the UN Security Council or even result in military intervention. It can have any consequence,” Daei-ul-Eslam says.
Attacks on two commercial oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman on June 13, and an earlier attack on four oil tankers off the UAE’s Fujairah port on May 12, have escalated tensions in the Middle East and raised the prospect of a military confrontation between Iran and the United States.
The US, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have rushed to blame Iran for the incidents, with the US military releasing a grainy video it claimed shows Iranian forces in a patrol boat removing an unexploded mine from the side of a Japanese-owned tanker which caught fire earlier this month.
It later released some images of the purported Iranian operation after the video was seriously challenged by experts and Washington’s own allies.
The MKO which is said to be a cult which turns humans into obedient robots, turned against Iran after the 1979 Revolution and has carried out several terrorist attacks killing senior officials in Iran; yet the West which says cultism is wrong and claims to be against terrorism, supports this terrorist group officially.
After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, the MKO began its enmity against Iran by killings and terrorist activities.