Anti-Iran MKO, Extremely Marginalized Terror Group: Commentator
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A political commentator and a senior associate at Oxford University described the anti-Iran Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO also known as MEK) as a marginalized terror group, which enhances its funding opportunities via demonizing the Iranian government.
“The MEK’s main interest is in constant demonization of the Iranian government because it enhances their funding opportunities and gives them access to some rather shifty ‘policymaking’ rooms in the West,” Sharmine Narwani said.
“So Vienna was a valuable platform for them - it probably earned them a few extra dollars. They make good parrots, but nothing more,” she added, speaking of the recent nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers in the Swiss city of Vienna.
Narwani further said that the MKO has turned into an isolated terror group, stressing, “Look, the MEK doesn’t really figure into any serious analyst’s calculations on anything to do with Iran. They are an extremely marginalized group within Iran - in all my visits to the country over the years, I have never heard a supportive word for the MEK from a single Iranian.”
The Lebanon-based political analyst said the terror group is simply a stooge in the hands of some certain Western countries and that it has continued its terror acts with the “tacit approval” of its Western hosts.
“Even when the organization was listed as a terrorist group in the West, it continued to function under different aliases, with the tacit approval of its Western hosts. It has only ever been used as a tool by the West, to be pulled out when these states want a ‘lever’ against Iran…Like many other Western-groomed ‘opposition’ groups based outside the Middle East, it will be employed opportunistically by its hosts, and cut off when it is no longer of use,” she said in a recent interview with Habilian Association.
The MKO - listed as a terrorist organization by much of the international community - fled Iran in 1986 for Iraq and was given a camp by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
They fought on the side of Saddam during the Iraqi imposed war on Iran (1980-88). They were also involved in the bloody repression of Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq in 1991 and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds.
The notorious group is also responsible for killing thousands of Iranian civilians and officials after the victory of the Islamic revolution in 1979.
More than 17,000 Iranians, many of them civilians, have been killed at the hands of the MKO in different acts of terrorism including bombings in public places, and targeted killings.
Back in December 2011, the United Nations and Baghdad agreed to relocate some 3,000 MKO members from Camp New Iraq, formerly known as Camp Ashraf, to the former US military Camp Liberty outside Baghdad.
The last group of the MKO terrorists was evicted by the Iraqi government on September 11, 2013 to join other members of the terrorist group at Camp Liberty and await potential relocation to other countries.
