Ex-Pentagon official: MKO is a dishonest, creepy cult

Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, a.k.a. MEK and NCRI) is a dishonest and creepy cult “that killed not only regime officials but ordinary Iranian citizens”, says a former Pentagon official.

“The only thing on which Iranians agreed was their dislike of the Mujahedin al-Khalq Organization (MKO),” Michael Rubin wrote in an article entitled “Yes, Mujahedin al-Khalq Is a Dishonest Cult” in Commentary Magazine.

Having lived in Iran during the 1990s, Rubin says MKO’s” involvement in terrorism that killed not only regime officials but ordinary Iranian citizens, as well as their willingness to accept aid and shelter from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in the years after Iraq’s invasion of Iran, delegitimized the group in the face of the public they claim to represent.”

“The Clinton administration designated the MKO to be a terrorist group, but after years of lobbying—and buying support by paying huge honoraria to a bipartisan array of senior officials—the MKO was delisted in 2012,” Rubin added.

“No longer being considered a terrorist group does not make the MKO democratic, however, as anyone who has ever studied their internal workers can attest.”

He also made a reference to Alymkoulova’s dairy about her trip to MKO’s rally in Villepinte and wrote, “It seems that the MKO leaders must now not only pay speakers to sing their praises at their rallies, but also the audience members.”

Alina Alymkulova, who studies Journalism and Mass Communication in Kyrgyzstan, told RFE/RL last week how she was recruited to travel from Prague to Paris to attend MKO’s June 23 rally.

“I was in Prague listening to music online and checking news on social media when an advertisement caught my eye. It offered a weekend trip to Paris, a city I always dreamed of visiting at least once during my lifetime.”

“The price was amazingly cheap -- round-trip by bus and bed and breakfast at a four-star hotel would cost me only 35 euros ($46),” she added. “I met many Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, and students from Asian countries who were all recruited via the Internet.”

Michael Rubin finally adds that the MKO, “is not only a creepy cult, and willing to say anything to buy support regardless of the group’s record, but an empty shell as well.”