by Chris Bodenner
Trita Parsi sounds the alarm over the powerful lobbying efforts of the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) to get removed from the US government's list of terrorist groups:
[T]he desire to de-list them in Washington seems partially driven by gravitation towards covert military action against Iran. Neither sanctions nor diplomacy have yielded the desired results on the nuclear issue, and some in Washington are advocating using the MEK to conduct assassination and sabotage campaigns inside Iran. As one former State Department official put it, the "paradox is that we may take them off the terror list in order for them to do more terror."
Parsi also insists that de-listing the MEK "would spell disaster for the Iranian pro-democracy movement." Jasmin Ramsey concurs:
Iranian politics are complex and can be as confusing as US foreign policy is on Iran, but of this you can be certain: the MEK and it’s “parliament in-waiting” is considered illegitimate at best by the vast majority of Iranians living inside and outside of Iran. It can’t serve the interests of the US government or normal Iranians either. But that doesn’t seem to matter to the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Tom Ridge, John Bolton and other neoconservatives, far right-wingers and their European counterparts (ever heard of Lord Corbett of Castle Vale?). …
[I]s it naive to hope that the mainstream media which failed so badly in the run up to the Iraq war with figures like Ahmed Chalabi will give this group better investigative coverage?
The Dish 