Administration Friday to take the Mojahedin-e Khalq off the US terrorism blacklist and support regime change in Iran.
Three former cabinet members—Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, Ambassador to the UN John Bolton and Attorney General Michael Mukasey—plus Frances Townsend, who was Homeland Security advisor in the Bush White House, all backed delisting the Mojahedin organization.
The officials said such an approach was needed because the Obama Administration policy of engaging Iran will fail to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
“We should take off the list of terrorist organizations the one group that is devoted to restoring freedom in Iran,” Mukasey told an audience in a Washington hotel.
The Mojahedin were originally designated by the US State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) on October 8, 1997, during the Clinton Administration. The group was been redesignated in subsequent years during the administration of George W. Bush.
Townsend said the Mojahedin should not only be delisted but the terrorism blacklist of 47 groups abolished because, she said, it is not compiled objectively.
Speakers at the symposium, entitled “Countering Iran’s Nuclear and Terrorist Threats: What are the US Policy Options?” supported the Mojahedin as an alternative to military strikes on Iran’s suspect nuclear sites.
“There’s no doubt that a pre-emptive strike would not be a permanent answer,” Bolton said, explaining there were too many secret nuclear sites to find and hit militarily. “There has to be a long-term solution, which is replacing the regime in Tehran,” he said. “It should be the declared policy of the United States … to change that regime.”
The Mojahedin-e Khalq is the right movement to be supported because it “has renounced nuclear weapons unequivocally,” and because it has democratic aims, Bolton said.
Ridge, the former Homeland Security secretary, said “let’s delist” the group and show the world the United States is committed to its own values of freedom.
None of the four is known to have argued for delisting the Mojahedin when in office.