Glorification of a military operation indicates violence is still boiling inside MKO
To many who have met with the large-scale struggle of Mojahedin Khalq Organization MKO/MEK
On 25 July 1988, only days after Iran-Iraq governments accepted the UN Security Council Resolution 598 that called for a cease fire in the eight-year long war, MKO launched its major military invasion onto the Iranian borders. Supported by Iraqi army and its air cover, Rajavi dispatched his estimated 7000 forces National Liberation Army (NLA) to demonstrate his organization’s military potentiality in a four-day lasted operation, namely ”Operation Eternal Light”. In its unclassified 1992 report on MKO, the State Department refers to the operation as an explicit evidence of MKO’s armed struggle and close collaboration with Saddam’s regime.
“The group launched its most significant incursion in June and July 1988, when they coordinated an advance into Iran with Iraqi forces. During the same offensive, Iraqi units in other sectors of the front used chemical weapons against Iran. NLA units briefly seized the Iranian border towns of Mehran, Karand, and Islamabad-e Gharb. The Mojahedin claimed to have killed 40,000 Iranians, but other military observers said the, NLA “just got wiped out” when Iranian reinforcements arrived.”
The operation on which MKO had heavily invested turned to be a total military failure and a proven suicide operation that led nearly 1300 forces, according to the organization’s own report, to their sacrifice. In fact, MKO hurried to take advantage of a no-war no-peace situation created after the ceasefire in limbo, a golden opportunity for Rajavi to take his last chance totally disregarding the high cost it would impose. In fact, he was desperately in need of and search for an outlet out of an inevitable cul-de-sac rather than to accomplish a strategic necessity.
The consequence of MKO’s widespread terrorist operations of bombing and assassination inside Iran and its later out-of-the-border organized hit and run operations perpetrated in the last three decades as well as its broadly launched military operation like that of the Eternal Light was to be globally recognized as a terrorist group. However, the good part is that the history and the recorded facts can never be distorted. And MKO does not seem to have any interest in renouncing its spectacular military venture as it has been condoned by some Western countries when they made a sudden U-turn and decided to delist the group.
Under the Terrorism Act passed in 2006, glorification of terrorism is outlawed in the UK; it was overlooked when a British court ordered removal of MKO from the country’s list of terrorist groups in 2008. However, a state’s decision that meets political interests differs with a nation’s opinion that can easily judge by evident discrepancy between claims and facts. Commemorating the anniversary of a terrorist military offense like the operation Eternal Light is an evident example of the glorification of violence and death-seeking attitude still boiling inside MKO.