Group on U.S. terror list lobbies hard

United Press Int'l | May 31st, 05 | UPI

[Khashayar]

I hate MEK more than I hate Mullahs!

I'd rather have Mullahs in Iran in power than MEK in power

That is a big mistake to support these group against the Iranians' will

[Khashayar]

INFO ON FOREIGN TERRORIST GROUP PING!

Down with MEK and Mullahs together!

[F14 Pilot]

The US government will lose its crediblity among Iranians if they remove this terrorist regime from the terror list

[moog]

While I know that many students support our culture, what credibility do we have among them? They don't seem to have any with us.

[AdmSmith]

MEK has Marxist ideology, that's enough for me to put them in the trash bin of history.

[nuconvert]

"the Iran Policy Committee, a Washington think tank of former U.S. officials that specializes in Iran policy and favors the removal of the group from the terror list, said the move would "send a signal to the Iranian rulers that their days are numbered." In a written statement to questions about the MEK, the IPC called the organization the "best organized, most credible Iranian opposition group" that stands for a democratic, secular republic in Iran."

""send a signal to the Iranian rulers that their days are numbered."?? Please! The regime isn't afraid of them. They already know they're in trouble.
Removing MEK from the list will only alienate Iranians and cause distrust of U.S. intentions. Iranians DO NOT want to see MEK gain stregnth and support.

Have those IPC members ever talk to Iranians inside Iran to find out how they feel about MEK?

For the IPC to state that a marxist-islamic group "stands for a democratic and secular republic", is just asinine.

[humint]

"That is a big mistake to support these group against the Iranians' will"

 

That's funny... the will of the Iranian people has been [temporarily] co-opted and consolidated under one man based on the principles of Velayat-e-Faqih.  When Khamenie and Velayat-e-Faqih are gone and freedom of press is established, we can have a legitimate discussion about the will of the Iranian people.

 

Until then, U.S. officials working on Iran should be extremely skeptical of any opposition to any opposition.

 

Khamenie has openly established his will and I think it’s asinine to abide by it.  His clergy shout “Death to America, Death to the MEK” in successive breaths.  He wants an anti-American Iranian president to replace Khatami in August.  Listening to the mullah’s Friday prayers, it’s obvious the MEK are posing a serious political and ideological threat to this theocracy.

 

The founders and leadership of the MEK were and are well educated.  They may have read Marx but have never called themselves Marxists.  It’s a SAVAK label that has been so effective in the disinformation campaign against them that it has propagated into MOIS language.

 

It’s asinine for American policy makers to allow the Iranian government, our nemesis, to define the MEK for us!  It’s time to let DOD and their first hand experiences define the MEK.  It’s obvious they are not terrorists so they shouldn’t be on our FTO list.  Their designation is destabilizing the entire FTO concept.

 

It’s also time to filter out Iranians who are not serious enough or not capable enough to do anything about fixing this explosive mess and decide what to do with them.  Arbitrarily throwing money at them is not the answer.  We have to stop protecting the regime and allow all of their opponents, including the MEK, to do what they do best.

 

The mullahs manufacture impudent dissenters and thrust them before cameras and microphones.  The patterns are clear… colorful hejabs, trimmed beards and modern glasses cannot bury the mullah’s betrayal of the Iranian people’s pursuit of liberty and happiness.

 

They can’t fool all of the people all of the time… but expect them to try.

[AdmSmith]

They may have read Marx but have never called themselves Marxists.

Is that so?:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/mek.htm

MEK was founded in the 1960s by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists opposed to the country's pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Although the group took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the shah with a Shiite Islamist regime, MEK's ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, put it at odds with the postrevolutionary government. In 1981, the group was driven from its bases on the Iran-Iraq border and resettled in Paris, where it began supporting Iraq in its eight-year war against Khomeini's Iran. In 1986, MEK moved its headquarters to Iraq where it received its primary support to attack the regime in Iran.


and Amir Taheri wrote June 23, 2003:

http://www.derafsh.org/News/37e.htm

The MEK was founded in 1965 after a split in a Marxist- Leninist movement that had waged a guerrilla action in northern Iran. Its ideology emerged as a mix of Islam and Marx, with ingredients from the Iranian religious sociologist Ali Shariati, who advocated an "Islam without a clergy." The MEK, with KGB help, engaged in a campaign against the Shah and sent cadres to Cuba, East Germany, South Yemen, and Palestinian camps in Lebanon to train as guerrillas.

Vladimir Kuzishkin, a former KGB head in Tehran, reveals in his memoirs that the MEK became a major source of information on Iran for Moscow. It also helped Moscow in its efforts to thwart U.S. influence in Iran. In 1970 and 1971 the MEK murdered five American military technicians working with the Iranian army. An MEK team tried to kidnap U.S. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur III in Tehran. The attempt failed and their leader, Rajavi Massoud, was handed a death sentence, later commuted thanks to a plea to the Shah from Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny.

During Iran's 1978-79 turmoil the MEK played an active role in helping Khomeini to power. Its squads burned cinemas, restaurants, hotels and bookshops, and murdered policemen. After Khomeini seized the reins, it did all it could to radicalize the regime, supporting the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Yet within a year the MEK -- now led by Rajavi, who had come out of prison during the revolution -- decided that the Khomeinist regime was not revolutionary. It had to be toppled; so there ensued a terrorist operation against the regime, that still continues.

Over the years the MEK organized an asylum seekers' racket -- 40,000 Iranians to Europe on bogus claims and in exchange for "voluntary contributions" of up to $10,000 each. Now a personality cult built around blind devotion to Rajavi, it has recruited its adepts mainly from relatives of people executed by the Khomeinist regime. Individuals are brainwashed, and not allowed to develop normal relationships outside the organization. They refuse to send their children to school, insisting that they be educated at home.

By 1988, the MEK had created a 10,000-strong fighting force in Iraq, which helped Saddam Hussein in his genocidal campaign against the Kurds, and also helped him crush the Iraqi Shiites in the south in 1991.

[humint]

Amir Taheri and globalsecurity.org may be good sources of information for many things but you haven’t disproved my assertion. The truth is, the MEK as an organization has never referred to itself as Marxist in any of its literature. Buy and read the book, "Iranian Mojahedin", ISBN 0-300-04423-2.

In fact the NCRI of which the MEK is a member advocates a free market economy for Iran which stands in stark contrast to the assertion that the MEK is fundamentally a Marxist organization.

[AdmSmith]

"The truth is, the MEK as an organization has never referred to itself as Marxist."
- - - - -

Do you trust the German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution? check out page 239 about the Revolutionary Marxists group:
http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/de/publikationen/verfassungsschutzbericht/vsbericht_2004/vsbericht_2004.pdf

[humint]

My German is a little rusty but I like what I'm reading... and BTW Germany is the EU's largest trading partner with Iran so they/you have strong economic interests in keeping MEK on the EU terror list.

Page 239 is excellent!!!

"most powerful and most militant Iranian opposition group"  so they have been making some noise…

Page 240 was great too!!!

"Approximately 5000 supporters of the NCRI demonstrated in front of the European Union parliament in Brussels and demanded the MEK be removed from the EU's FTO list."  That’s not a small demonstration of Diaspora… To policy analysts, that translates into significant support for the group inside Iran.

Thanks for the link…

[wtc911]

"Approximately 5000 supporters of the NCRI demonstrated in front of the European Union parliament in Brussels and demanded the MEK be removed from the EU's FTO list." That’s not a small demonstration of Diaspora… To policy analysts, that translates into significant support for the group inside Iran.

-------------------------------------------

That number (if true) would be exponentially larger than the size of any recent internal demonstrations against the mullahs.

[nw_arizona_granny]

an excellent thread.

ping.

[F14 Pilot]

What is your point?

There is no good terrorist. Good terrorist is a dead one!

And I doubt that Iranians would rather live under another Marxist dictatorship led by a whore "Maryam Rajavi".

[F14 Pilot]

So you also support terrorists?

[Khashayar]

Well,,, you might be true but I'd rather live under the rule of idiot Mullahs than live under the rule of bunch of terrorists who dont hesitate to kill innocent people!

Moreover, I will fight against MEK if they try to invade my country as they did back in 1980s.

That is my final word!

And now you and your MEK like people can try to regain power in Iran. I think there is no difference between Mullahs and MEK in any way.

[Khashayar]

This terrorist group is so hated among us. I dont know why the US govt wants to support them!

[Khashayar]

I as a true Iranian hate MEK very much!

[Khashayar]

MEK members are known as Hypocrites (Monafeghin) among Iranians. Because they easily change their colors to cheat people and foreign governments!

[F14 Pilot]

The biggest crime the Terrorist MEK committed was to fight against their own country men along with another criminal named Saddam!

I don't understand why some insist to portray this group as a trusted and nice Political group.

It is obvious that they are natural born terrorists!