ERBIL, Kurdistan Region--Dozens of former US officials have called on the President-elect Donald Trump to open channels of communications with the Iranian dissent group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), a designated terrorist organization by the US until 2012, and one that advocates for regime change in Iran.
The former officials, among them former FBI director and national security adviser to President Obama, has urged the incoming Trump administration “to establish a dialogue with Iran’s exiled resistance, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).”
The group was treated as a terrorist organization by the US until it was removed from the list by the State Department in 2012.
The officials claimed that they now know that the designation was not based on evidence, but rather “all were diplomatic gestures taken at the request of Tehran.”
The MEK, also known as People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) has established a self-styled parliament in exile under the umbrella of NCRI, a coalition of five groups dominated by the MEK.
The Paris-based MEK leader Maryam Rajavi is the group’s president-elect for a transitional period with a “mandate to oversee the peaceful transfer of power to the Iranian people following the regime's overthrow.” It aims to establish a “secular democratic republic in Iran”.
President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly denounced the nuclear deal. on Sunday, he said in interview with a German and a British newspaper that "I'm not happy with the Iran deal, I think it's one of the worst deals ever made.". His policy towards the ever increasingly powerful Iran however is not clear, as it seems there are clear differences between him and the people he has nominated for defense and state departments.
Iran considers the group a terrorist organization and blames it for thousands of deaths since the group took arms against Tehran including the bombing of a gathering of Islamic Revolutionary leaders in 1981 that killed 75 people, among them Ayatollah Beheshti, the second-in-command to Ayatollah Khomeini.
The majority of the MEK members have taken refuge in Europe and the US, increasingly so after the US in 2003 toppled the Baathi regime in Iraq, where they had military bases, which the neighboring Iran considered it a threat to its own security.
Last September, the last 280 members of the MEK departed their Iraq camp and were relocated to Albania.
The MEK was temporarily based at Camp Liberty near Baghdad’s international airport under the supervision of the Iraqi security force.
MEK leaders took Iraq as their base of operations during the eight-year war between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s after they fell out with the clerical rulers of Iran following the 1979 revolution.
Their camps in Iraq came under attack immediately after the US invasion. Its leaders long accused Iran of organizing the attacks through local militia groups.
The temporary Camp Liberty also came under repeated mortar attacks since 2012, which led to the death and injury of dozens of MEK members.
In one incident a Shiite militia thought to be close to Iran claimed responsibility.
Among senior officials who have tirelessly advocated for the relocation of the MEK members is US republican senator John McCain, also seen as an MEK supporter.
from Rudaw http://ift.tt/2iBs2ze
via Defense News
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