It looks like Hillary Clinton may make the right decision and remove the Iranian opposition group MeK off the list of terrorist organizations.
There was an earthquake two days earlier, a thunderstorm the day before and a hurricane (whose name, Irene, ironically means "peace") two days after, but the day itself was brilliantly hot and sunny. What day ? Friday 26 August, when thousands of people, many from Iran but others from all over the world, stood in front of the State Department in Washington D. C., and then marched all round it. They approached it more closely, I was told, than anyone has ever before been allowed to do. They were demonstrating in favor of the dissidents of Iran.
The People's Mojahedin of Iran, also known as Mojahedin-e-Khalq, form the main opposition to the mullahs' regime in Tehran. About 3,400 of them, refugees from their own country, live in Camp Ashraf in Iraq, north of Baghdad, of whom 36 were murdered and 345 wounded on 8 April by Iraqi forces. (President Ahmadinejad of Iran sent them a message of congratulation.) One reason for the rally was the need to protect the survivors.
By the end of the year American troops will leave Iraq, and the government has clearly stated that Ashraf is to be closed down. The American ambassador, Lawrence Butler, suggested that the residents should be dispersed throughout Iraq, which would make another massacre far more likely. Time is running out.
One obstacle, perhaps the principal one, to their protection is that the PMOI/MeK are on the US Government's list of terrorist organizations. The object of the demonstration was to persuade the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to take them off it.
American politicians and security officials, and one British MP, spoke at the rally. So, by video link, did Mrs Maryam Rajavi, the President Elect of the National Council of Resistance in Iran. (Because she is officially a terrorist, one speech pointed out, she is not allowed to come to the US, but President Ahmadinejad is.) The first speaker, Patrick Kennedy, stated that no organization should be on the list just because Americans don't like it; it should only be there if it constitutes a threat to the US, which the PMOI/MeK doesn't. They laid down all weapons in 2003, and the residents of Ashraf are supposedly protected persons under the fourth Geneva Convention. The US government signed an agreement to protect every one of them. We know the result.
The "terrorist" designation, as several speakers pointed out, was made for political reasons. The State Department (the same one that claimed the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction which turned out to be non-existent, and plunged both the US and Britain into war) hoped that agreeing to put the PMOI/MeK on the list would enable the US to negotiate with Tehran. After fourteen years, this hope has come to nothing.
Courts in the UK, the EU, France and Washington have all ruled that there was no basis for the listing, but the State Department, after a review lasting for over 400 days, still hasn't decided. Unless and until it does, the Iraqis and Iranians have a free hand to treat the Ashrafis and other PMOI/MeK supporters as badly as they like, and all that will happen is "strong condemnation" when it is too late.
One of the arguments against delisting is that the group have little or no support inside Iran. That they have no overt support I can well believe, seeing what happens to anyone who admits to supporting them. I know of one supporter whose car was ambushed in Istanbul, where he was helping Iranian refugees, in 1990. He narrowly escaped with his life; his liver was pierced and permanently damaged, and is now held together with a plastic mesh. Agents of the regime twice tried to kill him while he was being treated in hospital, pretending on one occasion to be Turkish police officers and on another to be friends. At the end of last year a man was executed in Iran for visiting his son in Ashraf. According to Amnesty International, Iran executes more people than any country except China, and a higher proportion of the population than any other country in the world. (The runner-up is Afghanistan.) In circumstances like these, a shortage of people who admit to supporting a party can hardly be taken as hard evidence that they don't.
Another accusation is that the PMOI/MeK are a cult (on the flimsiest of evidence, such as the number of pictures of Mrs Rajavi in Ashraf: if that is the sign of a cult, what else is an American presidential campaign ?) Even if that were true, as one speaker said, it would be no excuse for mass murder. Security officials who have been stationed near Ashraf and worked with its residents categorically denied the accusations; one, Colonel Wesley Martin, insisted that he had always had accurate information from the Ashrafis and had often had inaccurate information from the State Department. Mrs Clinton may be making her decision within a few weeks. Which opinion will she listen to ?
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