So what is the MEK? Well, that depends on who you ask… The MEK/MKO/PMOI says it renounced violence in 2001 and professes to be leading the resistance to the Iranian regime. That claim, in addition to lucrative payments to former officials in both parties, has bought it a lot of attention and friends in Washington. But how can senior officials take money from a terrorist group?
Dozens of retired U.S. government officials, spanning the liberal-to-conservative political spectrum and some paid tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees, have joined a well-orchestrated lobbying campaign to remove MKO/MEK/PMOI from the list of FTOs..Prominent Americans should not be accepting payments and supporting a group that has shed American blood in the past and has no viable support inside Iran. We urge Secretary Clinton to keep the MEK on the terrorist roster.
Delisting the MEK has little to do with humanitarian concern or support for a democratic Iran, and everything to do with putting the military option at the center of our Iran policy. The group’s biggest supporters in Washington have suggested using the MEK in a ‘tit for tat’ campaign of attacks against Iran that could quickly escalate into war..delisting it would only worsen humanitarian concerns in Camp Ashraf by empowering the group’s leadership.
The message that delisting the MKO will send to the public is on the one hand, the fact that you can buy everything in the US. You are able to consider a group a friend or a freedom fighter or a pro-democratic movement rather a terrorist communist cult, just if you are well paid by the group. On the other hand, removing the MKO from the list opens the door for other terrorist group’s lobbying efforts in the US government…
It is not hard to imagine how Americans would react if they learned that Al Qaeda had hired top lobbyists to help promote its agenda in Congress. Or if they heard that influential active and retired government officials were being paid to attest to Hezbollah’s good character. They would be appalled. But, amazingly, a group similar to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah is doing just that. It is the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian exile group that is on the Department of State’s list of FTOs ..
The organization, accused of having a cult-like culture, bought a full page ad in the Washington Post and has purchased the support of dozens of American politicians and national security experts. The Huffington Post lists 31 prominent people from both sides of the political aisle who have appeared at Mujahedeen Khalq aka MKO/MEK/PMOI-related events.We get analysis from Narimon Safavi, a Worldview regular and president of the Pasfarda Arts & Culture Exchange.
A banned Iranian Terrorist group has been mounting a persistent and expensive lobbying campaign in both Canada and the United States to have its ban lifted. The Mujahideen-e-Khalq/MKO/MEK/PMOI has a violent past. Some describe the group as an authoritarian cult. But the group has supporters, including high profile current and former politicians who see MEK as a possible instrument of regime change in Iran.
Closer to the truth, is not that the MEK’s Western supporters don’t know, it’s that they don’t care. It’s as simple as the proposition that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. The MEK is attractive because it offers to provide a neat solution to the problem of a belligerent Iran.At a recent Congressional hearing on Capitol Hill Democratic Congressman Bob Filner was told by an expert witness that the MEK had a”discursive ideology with violent elements”. Filner replied,”So what, so what!”
The current debate over delisting seems premature to most experts, but it presents an important opportunity to restore the rights of hundreds of individuals trapped at Camp Ashraf. Removing the MEK from the U.S. terrorist list would do nothing to end the human rights violations faced by MEK members. Only by dismantling the camp, disarming the group, separating the leadership from the rank and file, and providing low-level members rehabilitation support can the human rights situation be resolved.
The New York Times also recently noted that the Obama administration — far from abandoning the MEK members in Iraq — has been engaged in active diplomacy to get them out of harm’s way, eventually hoping to relocate them to a third country outside Iran (where they’re also likely to face persecution) or Iraq. However, the diplomacy, reported the Times, has thus far hit a dead end because “the residents are refusing to leave, and no countries have come forward to welcome them.”