Not any more. “One of the operational assets being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq… which is being ‘run’ in two southern regional areas of Iran, both bordering Pakistan. They are Balucistan, a Sunni stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in the last three months,” according to Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story. “One former counterintelligence official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice President’s office and opposed by the State Department, National Security Council and then-National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.” The State Department lists MEK as a terrorist organization.

Even so, MEK is a favorite of more than a few Congress critters. “Despite its terrorist designation, the group has amassed powerful allies on Capitol Hill, including Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairwoman of the International Relations Subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia,” The Hill reported in 2003. “Ros-Lehtinen has written a number of letters in support of the group, both public and private, urging the State Department to remove the MEK’s terrorist designation.” Reps. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.), Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.), Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) support the terrorist group, once again demonstrating that when it comes to killing people and supporting homicidal nut cases, there is scant difference between Republicans and Democrats. Never mind that Human Rights Watch has documented “abuses carried out by MKO leaders against dissident members [including] prolonged incommunicado and solitary confinement to beatings, verbal and psychological abuse, coerced confessions, threats of execution, and torture that in two cases led to death.”

Rumsfeld wanted to use MEK as a “military special ops team” in Iran but apparently Condi and the State Department resisted. “According to still another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Cheney, came up with a plan to ‘convert’ the MEK by having them simply quit their organization” and Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence Stephen Cambone “made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them.” Embracing well-documented terrorists alarmed a few intelligence types but “Rumsfeld under instructions from Cheney, began using the group on special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a potential Iran strike.” Alexandrovna quotes one intelligence source as saying these supposedly former MEK members “are doing whatever they want, no oversight at all,” in other words they are killing people in Iran, as per the Straussian neocon game plan. According to a UN official close to the Security Council, the “newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run [as] military advance teams, committing acts of violence in hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni population.”

In short, as usual, the United States is sponsoring terrorism against a sovereign state. It is interesting, if not absurd, that Stephen Cambone would have MEK terrorists “swear an oath to Democracy” before killing Iranians. Cambone is a dedicated PNAC neocon, a former death merchant industry flunky who was taken under Dick the Destroyer’s wing and serves as Rumsfeld’s right-hand man (or henchman, as the non-neocon wing of the Pentagon calls him).

“Asked how long the MEK agents have been active in the region under the guidance of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official explained that the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly by several agencies.” Earlier this week, Iran shot down a drone violating its airspace. The Iranian Jumhuri Eslami newspaper reported “officials have obtained information from the plane system and recordings,” according to Iran Mania.

Last month, as the U.S. was unleashing the murderous MEK in Iran, the corporate media in this country reported “U.S. intelligence officials, already focused on Iran’s potential for building nuclear weapons, are struggling to solve a more immediate mystery: the murky relationship between the new Tehran leadership and the contingent of Al Qaeda leaders residing in the country,” according to the complaisant “liberal” Los Angeles Times. “Some officials, citing evidence from highly classified satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping, believe the Iranian regime is playing host to much of Al Qaeda’s remaining brain trust and allowing the senior operatives freedom to communicate and help plan the terrorist network’s operations.” In other words, there is no evidence “al-Qaeda” is in Iran, never mind that “al-Qaeda” has vowed to kill “infidel” Shia Muslims (Iran is primarily Shia). If you believe “highly classified satellite feeds and electronic eavesdropping” have revealed “al-Qaeda” in Iran, I have a proverbial bridge for sale. Naturally, Larisa Alexandrovna’s report that the United States is organizing and directing MEK terrorist attacks against Iran will never receive the sort of exposure the fairy tale about “al-Qaeda” teaming up with Iran received. MEK does not have the brand recognition—and for good reason.

“The civilians in the Pentagon [read: neocons] want to go into Iran and destroy as much of the military infrastructure as possible,” a “government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon” told Seymour Hersh last year. Actually these “civilians” want to “go into Iran and destroy as much” of the civilian infrastructure “as possible,” essentially doing a re-run of Iraq. However, the “civilian” neocons (members of Cosa Nostra were considered “civilians” too) like the idea of fanatical MEK terrorists killing people in advance of a shock and awe campaign. Of course, there is absolutely no chance MEK will unseat the mullahs of Iran, even though they suffer from a dismal lack of popularity.

MEK’s task is to create tension in Iran’s minority communities and seed the sort of ethnic division and animosity currently at work in Iraq. Remember, for the neocons, the idea is to balkanize the entire region through ethnic and tribal divisions that will result in “civil war.”

“In a stunning repeat of pre-war Iraq activities, the Bush administration continues to publicly call for action and pursue diplomatic solutions to allegations that Iran is bomb-ready. Behind the scenes, however, the administration is already well underway and engaged in ground operations in Iran,” writes Alexandrovna. In fact, for the Straussian neocons, terrorizing Iran through MEK attacks and eventually bombing the country are the only solutions to a situation custom-made to fit the neocon plan to destroy Muslim society and culture.