This deceptive cult is pouring millions of dollars into an effort to steer the United States toward war.”
A lawyer in the former US President Bush Justice Department believes the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) is trying to steer its supporters in the United States towards a war with Iran, describing it as a bad ally.
“….This deceptive cult is pouring millions of dollars into an effort to steer the United States toward war,” Jeremiah Goulka pointed out in a recent article published in The American Prospect magazine.
..
Goulka stressed that Washington’s alignment with the MKO would undermine any attempt at credibility among Iranians because it would make Americans look like dupes.
He noted that the MKO has been lobbying Washington in its bid to get off the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list.
Goulka added that the MKO has persuaded a number of onetime officials, including former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security Adviser Francis Fragos Townsend, former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, to argue its case.
This comes as Clarence Page, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and member of the Chicago Tribune editorial board, is under fire over his speech at an event supporting the MKO in Paris late last month.
Page received USD 20,000 and was given travel expenses for the June 23 event. The columnist called for the MKO to be removed from the US government’s list of designated foreign terrorist organizations.
According to the US Supreme Court, “advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization” constitutes the federal crime of “material support of terrorism.”
The MKO fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of the country’s executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up its camp near the Iranian border.
The group is also known to have cooperated with Saddam in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and carrying out the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.
The MKO has carried out numerous acts of violence against Iranian civilians and government officials.