RNA - Yet that’s exactly what the United States government is doing right now. The country which claims to be at the forefront of the global war on terror is sending two confidants of President Donald Trump to speak Saturday before the terrorist group of Mujahedeen-e-Khalq Organization (MKO, also known as MEK, NCR, NCRI, and PMOI or the Hypocrites as they are called by Iranian people).
It gets worse to remember that this is the same group that was previously designated as a terrorist outfit by the United States. It raises fresh questions about the group’s Washington influence as Trump pursues a pressure campaign against Tehran.
However, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and informal adviser Newt Gingrich are listed as headliners for Saturday’s conference in Paris, organized by the MEK and its affiliates. For 15 years, the US designated the MEK a terrorist group, and now it is attending its frequent conferences. More so, the US officials are also going to get handsome speaking fees for their services – following in the footsteps of National Security Adviser John Bolton.
Little wonder Trump has also taken several steps in line with the terrorist group’s desire to undermine Iran. They include Trump’s exit from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and increased sanctions and other pressure that some Trump aides hope will force the establishment to negotiate its conventional missile defence program.
The appearance of Giuliani and Gingrich at the MEK conference underscores once more how the US government is playing double standards when it comes to the issue of fighting terrorism in all shapes of form. This is the same terrorist group that carried out a string of bombings in the 1970s and 80s that killed over 17,000 people and several Americans in Iran, including military personnel. The MEK also earned the enmity of Iranians because of its support for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
It should surprise no one that the Obama administration reversed the group’s terrorist designation in 2012 amid the claims that the group had shed its terrorist past. Now even Trump’s colleagues wouldn’t mind headlining its bogus gatherings, even if that means attracting international criticism as it could help fan unrest in Iran!
The message is clear. The United States has been and still is behind the ongoing violence and terror all over the Middle East: The ongoing Saudi-led military aggression against Yemen, the ongoing tragedy in Syria, the instability in Iraq, and the jihadist terrorism which dares to speak in the name of Islam. The Iranian-led resistance front is facing all these American-made challenges, violence and terror with honour, with dignity, and with great human solidarity.
Trump’s foreign policy against Iran, just like those before him, Obama and Bush, will fail. It only demonstrates that American terrorism does not discriminate by race, ethnicity or region. Instead, it uses terrorists to indiscriminately target those seeking to live a peaceful, loving and free life.
According to Fars News Agancy, the US stands up for its terror proxies in the region and in the world. And the most important friends are Israel and Saudi Arabia. The Trump administration is steadfast in supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia, and it continues to support anti-Iran groups like MEK to wage terrorism and violence against Iran, the kind of instability and chaos for which the Israeli-Saudi regimes plan, pay and pray.
In choosing to acknowledge and support the policy ramifications of terrorist groups like MEK while completely ignoring Iran’s true fight against terrorism in Syria, Trump and Republican policymakers are consciously and callously choosing to value the life of terrorists more than the life of victims because it’s more politically convenient for them and because it appeases Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The US is not ditching double standards vis-à-vis Iran just as the way it’s not stopping terror double standards in Syria, Yemen and occupied Palestine. The US is reluctant to let go of its anti-Iran policy because it helps sell weapons to Saudi Arabia and others in the region. The US is reluctant to bomb positions of the Al-Nusra Front, the Al-Qaeda branch in Syria, because it justifies further US occupation and intervention. Quite the opposite, the US takes the heat off the group – just as the way it is taking the heat off the terrorist group of MEK in Paris.
Sadly, the US government’s calculated neglect of Iran’s repeated requests that MEK leaders be turned over for criminal prosecution for acts of terrorism draws virtually no media attention in the West. Perhaps the true meaning of “American exceptionalism” is that the rules apply to every nation except America. The Trump administration very clearly feels no obligation to enforce international laws against terrorism, but not just because American officials like Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingric and their MEK friends are the ones implicated. The main reason, rather, lies in the pivotal role that the MEK plays in Washington's complicated plot against Iran's security and economy. After ISIL (ISIS) failed to strike at Iran's security in its last year attacks on the Iranian parliament and the shrine of the Late Founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, in Southern Tehran, the MEK is now their only hope to infiltrate the Iranian border and society to conduct terrorist operations and acts of sabotage not just in area of security, but in various fields of economy.
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