| The United States is mulling over removing the anti-Iranian Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) from its terrorist watch list and giving refuge to its members, a move which indicates Washington's support for terrorism. |
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/212420.html
Former CIA directors James Woolsey and Porter Goss together with former FBI director Louis Freeh are among those lobbying President Barack Obama to delist the MKO from the US terrorist list, The New York Times reported.
Others include former attorney general Michael Mukasey, President George W. Bush's first homeland security chief Tom Ridge, President Obama's first national security adviser General James Jones, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Vermont governor Howard Dean.
The MKO is designated as a terrorist organization under United States law, and has been described by State Department officials as a repressive cult. The Iraqi government has made clear its plans to close down the notorious Camp Ashraf , located about 120 kilometers (74 miles) west of the border with Iran, which hosts about 3500 MKO terrorists, before US troops pull-out by the end of the year.
Members of the terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization will be then moved elsewhere in Iraq in order to reassert Iraqi sovereignty over the land where Camp Ashraf is located. The MKO has carried out numerous acts of terror and violence against Iranian civilians and government officials. The group fled to Iraq in 1986, where it enjoyed the support of Iraq's executed dictator Saddam Hussein, and set up camp in Diyala Province, near the Iranian border. The organization is also known to have cooperated with Saddam in suppressing the 1991 uprisings in southern Iraq and the massacre of Iraqi Kurds. Iran has repeatedly called on the Iraqi government to expel the group, but the US has been blocking the expulsion by mounting pressure on the Iraqi government.
The extraordinary lobbying effort to reverse the terrorist designation of MKO comes as Washington is seeking to stop Iran's nuclear program by means of maximum covert operations including the assassination of Iranian scientists. Speaking at the Republican presidential debate in Spartanburg, South Carolina, on November 12, former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich openly advocated increased covert terrorism against Iran.
He suggested employing “maximum covert operations to block and disrupt the Iranian program including taking out their scientists, including breaking up their systems. All of it covertly, all of it deniable.” Gingrich advocated “actively funding every dissident group in Iran.” US Senator Rick Santorum explicitly advocated a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities and said, “We would be working with Israel right now to do what they did in Syria, what they did in Iraq, which is take out that nuclear capability.”
Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, also criticized the US president for not being pretty tough on Iran. “If we reelect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon.” When asked whether he would choose to strike Iran militarily, Romney said “absolutely.”
The calls for assassination and terrorist acts come as Iran has lost a number of its scientists to terrorism in recent years. On November 29, 2010, unidentified terrorists slapped adhesive bombs onto the vehicles of Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi. Professor Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi and his wife sustained minor injuries and were rushed to hospital.
On Nov. 4, 2011 Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili announced that Tehran has irrefutable evidence that proves the US government was involved in anti-Iran conspiracies as well as in dispatching elements to carry out acts of sabotage and terror in Iran and other regional countries.
Jalili said that the documents show Washington has been directing and funding terrorist rings to achieve its regional objectives, adding that Tehran would be passing on the evidence to the UN.