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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| From Terror List to Political Lobbying – Assassinations, Abuse, and International Maneuvering |
| 2026-02-23 |
| [News With Views] For decades, a specific brand of political theater has played out in Washington ballrooms: high-ranking American officials standing before rows of cheering, flag-waving supporters to declare that the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) is the "democratic alternative" to the Islamic Republic. Figures like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Rudy Giuliani have spent years cashing massive speaking fees to shill for a group that nearly every credible analyst — and 80 million Iranians — recognize as a treasonous, totalitarian cult. The push to install the MEK as a puppet government isn’t just bad diplomacy; it is a direct assault on the aspirations of the Iranian people. If history repeats itself, the U.S. risks making a blunder even more catastrophic than the perceived "installation" of Khomeini in 1979 — this time by forcing a group upon Iran that the population views with visceral, historical hatred. The primary reason the MEK is despised across the Iranian political spectrum is not their ideology, but their record during the Iran-Iraq War. While Iranian soldiers and civilians were dying by the hundreds of thousands to defend their soil against Saddam Hussein’s invasion, the MEK relocated to Iraq and fought alongside Saddam. In the eyes of Iranians — whether they support the current regime, loathe it, or fall somewhere in between — the MEK are not "freedom fighters." They are "Monafeqin" (Hypocrites) who committed the ultimate sin: siding with the enemy during a war for national survival. Their participation in Operation Mersad, a failed 1988 invasion of Iran backed by Iraqi air power, cemented their status as traitors in the national consciousness. Behind the slick PR and the "National Council of Resistance of Iran" (NCRI) branding lies a structure that human rights organizations and former members describe as a personality cult. Led by Maryam Rajavi (and and early on by her late husband Masoud), the group enforces: |
| Posted by:Besoeker |