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By
ANDREW HIGGINS
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JAYSOLOMON
,The Wall Street JournalNovember 29, 2006
Early this summer, as Washingtonfretted about Iran's nuclear pro-gram, supporters of Mujahedin-eKhalq, an Iranian oppositiongroup, held a rally in an audito-rium two blocks from the WhiteHouse. Prominent members of Congress addressed the crowd, asdid the State Department's re-cently retired ambassador-at-largefor war crimes.
Maryam Rajavi, the dissident out-fit's leader, beamed in a stirringspeech via satellite from France.Denouncing Iran's clerical rulersand their nuclear ambitions, sheproclaimed democracy "the an-swer to Islamic fundamentalism."
Mujahedin-e Khalq, known asMEK, is Iran's largest exile opposi-tion group and, say its supporters,the best hope of bringing democ-racy to Iran. It reaches into Iranthrough its own satellite TV chan-nel and claims an undergroundnetwork of activists inside theIslamic republic. It also has a bigpresence in neighboring Iraq,where U.S. soldiers watch overmore than 3,000 MEK membersgathered in a sprawling campnorth of Baghdad.
The MEK, however, has a bighandicap: The U.S. governmentsays it's a terrorist organization.Officials cite its role in the murderof Americans in the 1970s andsubsequent terror attacks thatkilled hundreds of Iranians. An-other big blemish is the group'slong collaboration with SaddamHussein. On top of all that, formermembers describe the MEK as apersonality cult obsessed withcelibacy and martyrdom.
So how does an outlaw organiza-tion with a bloodstained past, ahistory of intimacy with Iraq's top-pled despot and a reputation foroddness generate thunderous ap-plause almost within earshot of the Oval Office?
Part of the answer lies in subter-fuge: Mujahedin-e Khalq, whichmeans People's Holy Warriors, hasa raft of support groups with in-nocuous names, such as the Na-tional Convention for a Democ-ratic, Secular Republic in Iran, thehost of the Washington event.These haven't been banned anddisavow violence.
More important in blurring theMEK's status, however, is themuddle surrounding U.S. policytoward Iran. With the U.S. armedforces bogged down in Iraq andAmerica's military options againstneighboring Iran severely limited,the MEK and its fans are lobbyinghard to present the group as anally that can help curb Tehran'sgrowing influence. These support-ers, who include lawmakers andconservative foreign-policy ana-lysts, insist the MEK has no linksto terrorism.
Most U.S. officials scoff at formingany alliance with the MEK anddispute its claims of having a massfollowing in Iran, stressing thatmany Iranians despise the organi-zation. A senior White House offi-cial says the Bush administrationcontinues to view the MEK as aterrorist organization and "not anadvocate for democracy or humanrights" in Iran.
But some Iran analysts say theMEK's thinly disguised presence inthe U.S. makes a mockery of theadministration's antiterrorismcampaign. The White House ac-cuses Iran of supporting terroristgroups, they say, yet turns a blindeye toward the MEK. "It gives theimpression that some terroristorganizations are better than oth-ers," says Trita Parsi, president of
Strange Bedfellows,
Called a Terror Cult by Many, MEK WinsFriends in U.S. Because It Opposes Tehran
the National Iranian AmericanCouncil, an Iranian-American civicorganization.
Charm Offensive
Leading the push to get the MEK's"terrorist" tag removed, with helpfrom some members of Congress,is an outfit called the Iran PolicyCommittee. The committee'spresident, Raymond Tanter, a for-mer National Security Council offi-cial under President Reagan, saysthe MEK's designation is"restraining" the organization'sability to promote democraticchange in Iran. His group recentlypublished a glossy book that chal-lenges the terrorism charges madeagainst the MEK, and this monthhelped host an event on CapitolHill arguing the same point.
The charm offensive has taken theMEK far from its origins. First setup in 1965 by vaguely Islamic left-wing intellectuals in Tehran, Muja-hedin-e Khalq used to curseAmerican "imperialism" and mur-dered a string of U.S. military per-sonnel and defense contractors inthe 1970s, says the State Depart-ment. The group blames the at-tacks on rogue Marxist factionsand says they were not endorsedby MEK's leaders, who were in jailat the time or had been executed.
Shortly before Iran's 1979 Islamicrevolution, the Shah's crumblingAmerica-backed regime released jailed MEK activists. One of them,Massoud Rajavi, a former law stu-dent at Tehran University, becamethe group's paramount leader andallied with Islamist forces to topplethe Shah. But the group quicklysplit with Iran's new clerical rulersled by Ayatollah Khomeini, whoexecuted thousands of MEK sup-porters. The MEK retaliated with awave of terror of its own.
Mr. Rajavi fled to France, wherehis brother, a doctor, has a housein Auvers-sur-Oise, a sleepy townoutside Paris. To rally Iranians tohis cause, Mr. Rajavi sent MassoudKhodabandeh, a British-educatedelectrical engineer, to Iran's Kurd-ish region to set up a radio trans-mitter. He began to broadcasttaped tirades against AyatollahKhomeini.
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