Analyst's note: The Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) or PMOI (People’s Movement of Iran) was originally designated as a terrorist group – senior security figures now suggest removing this label. It would be good to have a real people's movement operating in Iran that favored freedom and liberty.
"How often do you see the A-Team of George W. Bush foreign policy advisers in back-to-back performances in Washington and Paris? Not often will you find such luminaries as Michael Mukasey, attorney general, 2007 to 2009; Tom Ridge, homeland security adviser from 2001 to 2003 and homeland security secretary, 2003 to 2005; Rudy Giuliani, mayor of New York, 1993 to 2001; and Frances Fragos Townsend, homeland security adviser to George W. Bush, 2004 to 2008 singing from the same song sheet of conservative foreign policy at home and abroad.
Joined by President Bush’s former Ambassador to the UN, John Bolton in Washington, these five prominent Bush foreign policymakers made breaking news in highlighting the Iranian threat to the United States but also suggesting ways to counter that threat by focusing on an Iranian solution: removal of the unwarranted terrorist tag on a principal Iranian opposition group—the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK).
Their basic argument is sound: The designation is unjustified because the Clinton administration placed the MEK on the list of terrorist organizations for nonterrorist reasons, e.g., to encourage Tehran to engage with Washington; and the Bush administration mistakenly kept the MEK on the list out of fear that the Iranian regime would send additional arms to Iraq for killing American soldiers, which Tehran did in any event.
Moreover, the United Kingdom and then the European Union removed the MEK from their respective terrorist lists after being prompted by the Courts, which conducted a thorough review of open source and classified evidence. As a result of such actions, the terrorist tag seems unjustified by historical circumstances.
[....] On the basis of a designation based on nonterrorist criteria; lack of evidence in the public record of MEK involvement in terrorism, terrorist activities, or current capability and intent; as well as doubts expressed by the Federal Appeals Court of the credibility of classified sources used in the redesignation, the terrorist tag on the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq is simply perverse.
It is in the U.S. interest to correct this unwarranted designation; by doing so, President Barack Obama would place the United States in a much stronger diplomatic position in the aftermath of the failed Istanbul nuclear talks with Iran, January 21-22. Although it may be asking too much to expect Obama to follow the suggestions of Mukasey, Ridge, Bolton, Giuliani, and Townsend, the race for a bipartisan center in domestic policy by the Obama administration following the shellacking in the November midterms might be followed by a similar move in foreign policy."
