On the eve of a possible war with Iraq, the United States is making direct and indirect contact with expatriate Iraqis interested in ruling the country once Saddam Hussein is ousted.
Seven “official” Iraqi opposition groups receive $92 million each year from the US State Department, including one Iran-based organization that maintains close ties to Tehran’s hard-line government. Additionally, the US government gives support to several groups close to the Turkish government and to military forces inside northern Iraq.
Late last February a conference of these notoriously fractious opposition groups ended in chaos, with many group leaders disagreeing who should be seated on a new Opposition Leadership Committee.
The biggest question left unanswered at the conference dealt with the role of the committee, which many exiled Iraqis hope will serve as the core of the country’s provisional government. Currently, the United States plans to install a military governorship in post-war Iraq for a minimum of one year.
In a move that may signal a new direction in US support of exiled opposition groups, President George W. Bush’s spokesman took the unprecedented step last week of praising an anti-Iranian organization that the US State Department officially classifies as a “terrorist organization.”
Some experts see Bush’s acknowledgement of the group, known variously as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mojahedin Khalq or the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, as the first step in an effort to bring about “regime change” in Iran, a country that, along with Iraq and North Korea, are the three countries that Bush calls the “Axis of Evil.”
White House praise for the People’s Mojahedin came at last Monday’s press briefing when Ari Fleischer, the president’s spokesman, discussed Iran’s admission that it had a uranium enrichment program that may soon enable the Islamic state to build several nuclear bombs.
“Iran admitted the existence of these facilities only after it had no choice,” said Fleischer, “only because they had been made public by an Iranian opposition group (the People’s Mojahedin.)”
There are a handful of well-organized expatriate Iranians who oppose the current regime in Tehran, notably the Washington-based Azadegan Foundation, the Washington-based National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of the United States and several groups supported by Reza Pahlavi, son of the late Shah of Iran. But the People’s Mojahedin is the most famous, and infamous.
In 1994, a case was made to apply the “terrorist” brand on the People’s Mojahedin in a classified report prepared by the State Department, the US Central Intelligence Agency and the US National Security Agency. The report said the exile group killed six Americans in Iran in the 1970s and helped seize the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979.
In 1992, said the report, the People’s Mojahedin broke into Iranian embassies in New York, Canada, Germany, France, Britain, Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Australia. Over the years, and even now, the People’s Mojahedin has been responsible for numerous bombings in Iran that have killed dozens of people, mostly civilians.
“Obviously, the People’s Mojahedin presents a quandary for the United States because they are working toward the same goals that we are: A change of regime in Iran,” says Chris Kennedy, press spokesman for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative Washington-based think tank with close ties to the Bush administration.
Iranians once closely aligned with the Shah of Iran are much more wary of the People’s Mojahedin.
“This group is not only responsible for killing six Americans and for helping take over the American Embassy, they have also helped Saddam Hussein — in return for his support, to do his dirty work,” says Ahmad Ali Massoud Ansari, a former adviser to the Shah of Iran who now lives in a Washington suburb.
“I think it would be very unwise for the United States to get close to these people. You can’t wage a global war on terror with one hand while supporting a terrorist group like the People’s Mojahedin with the other.”
Arab News Opinion 19 March 2003
