re: "Unleash the Iranian Opposition[, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq]"

Daniel Pipes makes a recommendation which re-surfaces from time to time.

(Note: Dr. Pipes first came to my notice when PMOI officials shared with me and my colleagues in Iraq a videotape from a conference in London before which both he and the PMOI's leader Maryam Rajavi both spoke.)

Money quote(s):

"(O)bstacles have not, however, prevented the MEK from trumpeting Islamism as the new global threat, providing important intelligence to the West – for example, about Iran's nuclear program – terrifying the regime in Tehran, and putting on major displays of anti-regime solidarity."

&

"Westerners presently cannot work with the MEK, due to a 1997 decision by the Clinton administration, followed five years later by the European Union, to offer a sop to the mullahs and declare it a terrorist group, putting it officially on a par with the likes of Al-Qaeda, Hamas, and Hizbullah. A Portuguese member of the European parliament, Paulo Casaca, notes that "Officials on both sides of the Atlantic are on the record as saying that the only reason why the group was put on the U.S. terrorism list in the first place was to send a ‘goodwill gesture' to the Iranian regime."

But the MEK poses no danger to Americans or Europeans, and has not for decades. It does pose a danger to the malign, bellicose theocratic regime in Tehran. The MEK's utility to Western states is reflected in the inconsistent, even contradictory, U.S. government attitude toward it over the past decade. One amusing instance came in October 2003, when Colin Powell, the secretary of state, tartly wrote Donald Rumsfeld, then secretary of defense, to remind him that the 3,800 MEK forces at Camp Ashraf in Iraq were supposed to be treated as captives, not as allies."