… I agree entirely with Rezaian’s assessment, and I would add that the idea of working with the MEK is part of an effort to prevent real diplomacy from ever taking place and to make sure that animosity between the U.S. and Iran remains and increases. The main problem isn’t that some of the people promoting this idea are misinformed about the degree of support the MEK has in Iran, but that the MEK’s support in Iran or lack of it doesn’t matter to them.
… In this 2007 essay, I warned of the False Flag Incident of the Century. I sound that warning again in early 2011. Israel’s machinations for preemptive war with Iran have reached new heights and depths with their employment of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to undertake a series of terrorist actions in that country, which includes the internationally publicized cases of the assassinations of Iranian scientists and other acts of violence in Tehran, and Azerbaijan/Diyala/and Balochistan Provinces. ..
..I consider the MKO a terrorist group for good reason. There is no doubt that the MKO has targeted Americans, and no amount of slick public relations should erase that. During my time in Iran, it was clear that while Iranians respect the United States and have little good to say about their own government, they all detest the MKO/MEK/PMOI.The enemy of my enemy is not always a friend: Iranian attitudes toward the MKO are analogous to Americans’ views toward American Taliban ..
..While the human rights issue of the refugees trapped in Camp Ashraf has to be dealt with in a compassionate way, the State Department must continue to resist pressures to legitimize the MKO. Pressure to remove the MKO from the U.S. terrorism list is a cynical ploy that can only have negative consequences for both the U.S. and the Iranian people.Legitimizing the MKO will not change the fact that it remains a terrorist organization, which has betrayed the Iranian people twice and is willing to go to any length to promote its undemocratic goals..
..Some of those ways will be more feckless attempts to manipulate Iran’s internal politics—as with the Obama Administration’s exhortations for domestic unrest in Iran. We were appalled to learn recently that the Administration is considering lifting the MEK’s[MKO/PMOI] designation as a foreign terrorist organization…From an Iranian perspective, this is simply one more indicator of America’s unique combination of perfidy and incompetence in Afghanistan..
The West used to support notorious killers—Saddam Hussein and the Taliban—because they had the same enemy. And now, in an attempt to disrupt Iran, the West is befriending and supporting the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MKO). The West should learn from their disastrous experiences. The Arabic proverb”the enemy of my enemy is my friend”offers a seemingly innocuous short term logic which the US and Europe has bought into—but banding together with militant radicals to demolish a common enemy doesn’t work.
we have already heard Rajavi addressing Camp Ashraf residents, when it was surrounded by American forces, that between the arms and the master of the arms [Americans] he preferred the latter since the arms could be somehow provided at any time but hardly the master of arms. As a result, delisting of MKO is a revival of the group and its re-arming by the US for a new round of terrorism whether Americans intend it or not. But what will be the consequent of unleashing the terrorist Mujahedin..
.. No diplomatic or intelligence force should be engaging with the MKO terrorists. What the MKO says they stand for now is irrelevant. What the MKO has done to the Iranian people is unforgivable and—puppet or no puppet—they simply have no place in the equation..The MKO leaders are professional charlatans and they know how to raise money by using “human rights” poster children in order to gain sympathy .They are disgustingly slick. And now they have partners—Israel’s Mossad intelligence, the United State’s CIA, and Britain’s MI6.
..they stayed in Iraq under Saddam’s protection during the Iran-Iraq war caused widespread expressions of hate for them in Iranthey are completely guilty of terrorist operations in the pre-Revolutionary days, and they continue to take credit for bombings and civil unrest in Iran… the most important fact that Bolton, Ros-Lehtinin and others fail to comprehend is that the MEK could never, never in a million years form an alternative government in Iran. The Iranian people mistrust them at best, and most thoroughly despise them and think them to be traitors.
..None of the speakers, however, said that the State Department considers the group to have “cult-like characteristics,” and that Maryam Rajavi has established a cult of personality. MEK members are not allowed to marry, attend weekly “ideological cleansings” and children are separated from parents. When Elizabeth Rubin, a New York Times Magazine reporter, toured Camp Ashraf in 2003, she found Rajavi’s image displayed “almost as ubiquitously as the image of Saddam in Iraq or Khomeini in Iran..