Removing a 'cult' from the US 'terror list ... against all Iranians!

Via Friday-Lunch-Club

"... Iran's opposition may be in store for another blow - this time, at the hands of those in Washington who profess to support their cause.

A newly fashionable foolishness in Washington is public advocacy by leading establishment figures on behalf of Iran's Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), which has since 1997 been on the State Department's list of foreign terror organizations. It may be a radical group founded from a mix of Marxist and Islamist ideas, which the State Department says killed Americans working in Iran in the 1970s and which served as an adjunct to Saddam Hussein -- and it may function as a cult, according to the RAND Corporation, with many members forced to remain in the organization against their will -- but the campaign to take it off the State Department's "terrorist" list unites longtime neocon ideologues, former U.S. military and security officials, Republican presidential hopefuls and now a growing number of senior Democratic foreign policy mavens....

When the U.S. occupied Iraq in 2003, the fate of the MEK became an American problem. While the Bush Administration, in line with the terrorist designation and commitments to Iran, undertook to close the camp, it hedged on the issue as more hawkish elements in and around the Administration lobbied furiously for the MEK to be supported as a proxy force to wage war against Iran -- you know, just like Saddam had done.... a desire to seek regime change on the cheap....

... the problem with Washington's new MEK fantasy is that -- like its fascination with the Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi who nine years ago convinced American leaders that their troops would be greeted by Iraqis with "sweets and flowers" -- it is failing to notice the obvious: Just as the CIA used to joke that Chalabi was far more influential along the Potomac than he was along the Tigris, so are the new crowd of MEK converts ignoring the fact that the MEK is detested not only by Iran's regime, but also by the very opposition movement that has challenged the regime in the streets.

When the Green Movement took to the streets took to challenge the regime in the wake of Iran's contested 2009 presidential election,  the regime sought to portray the MEK as behind the movement, in order to discredit it in the eyes of ordinary Iranians.

Former presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi was having none of it, branding the MEK a "hypocritical and dead organization". Fellow Green Movement leader Zahra Rahnavard, wife of Mir Hussein Moussavi, was even more forthright in an interview with a Farsi news outlet last year: "This government has tried to revive the MEK by associating it with the Green Movement, which again is a very funny notion because the Green Movement is a people's movement that is alive and dynamic and holds a very red wall between itself and the MEK."

Tehran-based journalist Jason Rezaian  writes that the hostility is based on the MEK having fought for Saddam Hussein in a war that left hundreds of thousand of Iranians dead or maimed. It's regarded in the same way that Americans view John Walker Lindh. "There are still thousands, perhaps millions, of Iranians completely willing to speak openly about their attitudes on the 2009 election," Rezaian writes, "but good luck finding a single person who is pro-MEK."......

That view is echoed by Michael Rubin in Commentary magazine, proving that not all neocons share the enthusiasm of some for the MEK. "There is no doubt that the [MEK] 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 [MEK]... One thing is certain: embracing the [MEK] is the surest way to make anti-American the 65 million Iranians who dislike their government and dislike theocracy."..."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 3:10 PM

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