Analysis by PMOI/MEK
Iran, Aug. 8, 2019 – After the Iranian people, who have suffered the most under the 40-year tyrannical rule of the mullahs in Iran, comes other countries in the region suffering from this tyranny. Iraq is geographically the closest nation to Iran, considered a fertile ground by the Iranian regime during the past 40 years to meddle in and exploit it before and after the 2003 war.
A Wall Street Journal article coauthored by Ambassador Lincoln Bloomfield and former Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, depicts Iran’s malevolence and demonization against the Iranian opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK).
The following is the WSJ article:
Tehran’s disinformation continues to influence the policy conversation in Washington, to our strategic detriment.
One of the sites of the reported attack is Camp Ashraf in Iraq, which from 1986 to 2012 housed 3,400 members of the Iranian resistance group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Today, the site reportedly is used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Shia militias loyal to Iran for “storing, deploying and transporting weapons” that threaten Iraq and Israel, among others.
Those MEK members were the target of longstanding Iranian disinformation efforts that influenced U.S. actions only a decade ago. Although all had been disarmed, vetted by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement, cleared of any prior wrongdoing and offered U.S. protection in 2004, the U.N. and U.S. policy officials viewed them as dangerous terrorists holding their own people against their will, and insisted that they be relocated to a prisonlike compound near Baghdad airport. Although four major court cases in the U.S. and Europe and much independent research debunked these toxic allegations, the defenseless MEK men and women suffered seven lethal attacks by Iraqi army units and pro-Iran militias, which killed over 140 and wounded over a thousand; seven were abducted in 2013 and haven't been heard from since. The survivors were finally evacuated in 2016 to Albania, which agreed to accept them as refugees.
That their former residence has now become a hub of Iran’s regional destabilization campaign makes one wonder how much Tehran’s disinformation continues to influence the policy conversation in Washington, to our strategic detriment.
Mr. Bloomfield served as assistant secretary of state 2001-05. Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the U.S. 2007-09.
