The leader of the group, Maryam Rajavi, said the change in the group’s status means it can now raise more money, boost its anti-regime operations and play a larger role in global diplomacy.
Many analysts and commentators were looking for some hidden reason for the State Department action. In Iran, the standard interpretation was that the US government wants to use the group more actively to attack Iran and thus took it off the FTO list. In the West, a common view was that the State Department reacted under pressure from numerous retired officials who have actively lobbied—after being paid by the Mojahedin—to have the group taken off the list.
A State Deportment official laughed at that view. “These decisions are made on the merits and not made to appease any group of lobbyists, no matter how famous they are,” he said.
State Department officials said they simply could not defend keeping the organization on the list when more than a decade has passed without any terrorist actions attributed to it. State Department officials had argued in recent years that the group should be kept on the FTO list because it possibly retained a desire and some capability of engaging in terrorism. But State Department lawyers reportedly said that argument wouldn’t fly if the Mojahedin went to court to challenge its listing.
The reaction in Tehran was firmly critical of the US government. Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, who is one of the loudest critics of the United States, said the Americans had violated “international norms and human criteria” by delisting the Mojahedin. He didn’t explain what that meant. There are no international norms in this area. The United States invented the idea of declaring groups to be terrorist in the 1990s. Very few countries maintain such lists. The only other such major list is that posted by the European Union, which de-listed the Mojahedin in 2009 because it wasn’t conducting terrorist actions anymore.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry similarly claimed that the de-listing was “a violation of America’s legal and international obligations,” without citing any legal code. The ministry said the US decision “will bring US responsibility for past, present and future terrorist operations by this group,” presumably meaning that the US government is now responsible for the murder of US government officials in the 1970s by the Mojahedin.
President Ahmadi-nejad said the Mojahedin was a group that “openly sanctions the killing of Iranian women and children.” That is false. Even when the Mojahedin were openly carrying out frequent attacks inside Iran in the 1900s, it insisted it was only attacking government officials, though critics pointed out a major tactic was to fire inaccurate mortars at government buildings inside cities, though those mortar rounds periodically missed their targets and landed on civilians.
The State Department’s formal announcement said, “With today’s actions, the department does not overlook or forget the MEK’s past acts of terrorism, including its involvement in the killing of US citizens in Iran in the 1970s and an attack on US soil in 1992. The department also has serious concerns about the MEK as an organization, particularly with regard to allegations of abuse committed against its own members.”
That last clause was a reference to allegations that the Mojahedin is a cult that forces some people to join the group and does not allow members to leave it. In a 2009 study commissioned by the Pentagon, the RAND think tank accused the Mojahedin of “authoritarian control, confiscation of assets [of its members], sexual control—including mandatory divorce and celibacy—emotional isolation, forced labor, sleep deprivation, physical abuse and limited exit options.”
A State Department official who formally briefed reporters on the decision went even further and denounced the Mojahedin as undemocratic and politically worthless. “We have no evidence and we have no confidence that the MEK is an organization that can promote democratic values that we would like to see in Iran. They are not part of our picture in terms of the future of Iran.” That, of course, went unreported inside Iran.
As to why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton decided to de-list the group now, the announcement said: “The secretary’s decision today took into account the MEK’s public renunciation of violence, the absence of confirmed acts of terrorism by the MEK for more than a decade, and their cooperation in the peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf, their historic paramilitary base.”
Clinton was under court orders to make a decision on the group by September 30. The formal de-listing came on September 29, the last business day of the week when the daily Federal Register was published to carry the formal legal notice.
The State Department had listed the Mojahedin under so many aliases and so many designation categories that it took 54 individual paragraphs to scrub every mention of the group as a terrorist organization. The de-listing covers not just the parent Mojahedin-e Khalq, but also such subsidiary organizations as the National Council of Resistance, the National Liberation Army of Iran and the Muslim Iranian Students Society.
The de-listing means the Mojahedin-e Khalq can now operate openly in the United States and resume its fund-raising operations. It also means that its funds—frozen in 1997 when it was first put on the FTO list—are now freed and returned to the group. Those funds totaled $120,488 as of the end of last year, including interest earned since the assets were frozen.
In Auvers-sur-Oise, outside Paris, where the Mojahedin maintain their international headquarters, Maryam Rajavi, the co-leader of the group gave a rare interview Friday to the Associated Press.
She said she hopes the organization can now have the ear of the world’s diplomats to help bolster its bid to overthrow Iran’s clerical regime. She stressed that its goal was to replace the Islamic Republic with a democratic government.
“It now has become evident for everyone that these [terror] allegations were untrue,” she said, mischaracterizing what the State Department said.
Rajavi, 58, denied charges by critics that her group has all the earmarks of a cult, blaming Iran for such allegations, although the cult charge has been leveled mainly in the Iranian expatriate community.
“All the energy and potential of our movement were chained” during the 15 years the Mojahedin-e Khalq was listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, she said.
“The diplomatic scene will be completely different” because the group’s status as a pariah will evaporate, she said. But “the most important impact … will be seen inside Iran.
“The balance of power is going to change. For example, the first message for the Iranian people will be that they won’t fear increasing their activity and increasing their demonstrations,” she said. The fear “will evaporate … and that will lead to the expansion of anti-regime activities within Iran.”
With a clean bill of health in the West, the Iranian regime “will no longer have the excuse” of acting against an organization deemed terrorist by the United States.
Maryam Rajavi is officially the co-leader of the organization along with her husband, Masud Rajavi, who was among the organization’s founders in the 1970s.
A veil of mystery surrounds Masud Rajavi. He was last reportedly seen early in 2003, shortly before the United States invaded Iraq and captured all the Mojahedin bases. There is speculation he is dead, but Maryam Rajavi told the AP he is alive, although she would not say where he is living.