re: "MEK rally planned for Friday at State Department"

Josh Rogin at The Cable ("Reporting Inside the Foreign Policy Machine") posted a decent piece about the PMOI/MEK in advance of one of their rallies.

Money quote(s):

"Supporters of the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) movement are planning their largest-ever gathering in Washington on Friday in front of the State Department."

CAA wasn't really around much that day so I couldn't say it was any bigger (or smaller) than the usual bunch of usual-suspects hanging around the Foggy Bottom metro station or across C Street.

"The State Department placed the MEK on its list of foreign terrorist organizations in 1999 for its involvement in bombings that killed six Americans, but is reviewing that status now.

The event is the latest and greatest example of the MEK's multi-million dollar effort to build support among Washington's political elite."

Every organization on the FTO list gets reviewed periodically; it's part of the process once you're on the list. Some organizations, presumably, graduate from the FTO list. There are established criteria in that regard and, should the PMOI/MEK ever manage to meet them, then they'll be taken off of the list.

As for their "involvement in bombings," that's accurate if you define "involvement" to include things like "planned" and "carried out."

"So what is the MEK? Well, that depends on who you ask. The group, which has an ideology based on the fusion of Islam and Marxism, was formed in Iran in 1965. It allied itself with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and fought against the Shah and his Western backers. After falling out of favor with Khomeini, the group was given shelter in Iraq by Saddam Hussein, who used them to conduct brutal cross-border raids during the Iraq-Iran war.

MEK leader Maryam Rajavi, who lives in Paris with her husband Massoud Rajavi, reportedlytold her followers in 1991, "Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards."

After the fall of Saddam, the United States helped broker an agreement whereby 3,400 MEK members were confined to a complex in Iraq called Camp Ashraf, which was protected by the U.S. military but then handed over to the Iraqi government in 2009." (Emphasis in original text. - CAA.)

Not a bad three-paragraph history, but some (IMHO) high points it misses are these:

- The PMOI/MEK may very likely have been involved with the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and subsequent hostage-taking. They didn't have their big fallout with the mullahs until afterwards; and

- Nobody's seen husband Massoud since sometime in 2003. There's speculation in some informed circles that he may have been one of the PMOI/MEK members (including leadership) who were killed by Coalition (presumably U.S.) airstrikes on PMOI/MEK bases in Iraq during the U.S. invasion (and before the PMOI/MEK formally capitulated to U.S. special forces).

"The MEK says it renounced violence in 2001 and professes to be leading the resistance to the Iranian regime. That claim, in addition to lucrative payments to former officials in both parties, has bought it a lot of attention and friends in Washington."

Cash always will do that.

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