How badly does Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) want to squander a deal with Iran over its civilian nuclear program? Bad enough to become the fastest rising star of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, yes, but this week the freshman senator went even further than sending a letter to the Iranian government.
On Wednesday, Cotton participated in a panel called “After Iran Nuclear Framework Agreement, Now What?” organized by the Organization of Iranian American Communities (OIAC) in a Senate meeting room. The OIAC, through spending millions of dollars lobbying, is responsible for getting an Iranian dissident terrorist group removed from the State Department’s official list of terrorist organizations in 2012 by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
That would be the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a group that assassinated half a dozen Americans in Iran and targeted many others in the run up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The MEK was founded with Marxist, feminist, and Islamic tenets and incorporated cultish tendencies including personality worship of its husband-wife founders, forced divorces for elderly women, and a forbiddance to marry for young women.
The revolutionary group considers itself a government-in-exile, ready to return to Iran once the current regime is overthrown. The MEK has no measure of support from the Iranian people.
Its possible Tom Cotton is (willfully?) ignorant to the leftist, tyrannical values and aspirations of the MEK. But like Howard Dean, Rick Perry, Rudy Giuliani, and many other politicians, there are big opportunities to work together for mutual political growth and enrichment.
Here’s a tweet heralding the alliance between Cotton and the MEK-fronting OIAC:
For Cotton and the MEK, prospects of their shared enemy in Iran reaching a nuclear deal inspires outrageous rhetoric. The female co-founder of the MEK, Maryam Rajavi, has said that toppling the government in Iran is the best shot the US has at defeating the Islamic State. Cotton has said bombing Iran would last no longer than how long proponents of the 2003 Iraq War promised.
A little more on the MEK: Prior to giving themselves up to Americans in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 US invasion in Iraq, the group was financed by Saddam Hussein (remember the reason for invading, his support for terrorists?). Since then their anti-imperialist leanings have given way to promoting “human rights,” and they’ve dropped their anti-Israel schtick for a partnership with the Mossad, Israel’s secret intelligence service. Through American intelligence officers, NBC News and Seymour Hersh have each concluded that the MEK carried out assassinations on five Iranian nuclear scientists after training with Mossad.
Neocons and Marxist-Islamist terrorist cultists joining together to undermine US-led international negotiations to prevent war with Iran. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
by Nick Hankoff, VoicesofLiberty.com